Chapter 78
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She'd looked at him miserably once they'd been alone in the bedroom. ‘I had no idea they would do this. I'm as shocked as you, believe me. But if I cause a fuss they'll get embarrassed—'
He'd waved a hand. ‘It's fine. It's not like we've not shared a room before.'
‘No,' Aneesa had said, avoiding his eye. Evidently she hated this as much as he did and just wanted him to return to England so that she could get on with her own life and having the baby.
Something in her demeanour had made his voice sharp. ‘Look, I'll stay a couple of days and then I'll have to return anyway, so we can put up with it till then, can't we?'
She'd shrugged insouciantly, making something even more caustic rise from his belly. ‘Sure. I can if you can. I won't have a problem with this.' She made a flippant gesture to the king-size bed.
It was in that moment that Sebastian realised how deep was the chasm that had formed between them. It had started the moment she'd announced she wanted to come home. And even though every beat of his pulse cried out to touch her and he ached all over with wanting her, he couldn't touch her.
Now as he looked around the dinner table and took in the affectionate bickering between Akash, Aneesa's brother, and Amrita, her sister, he found that much to his surprise, he felt … comfortable. There was something incredibly soothing
about the inconsequential chatter, the fact that they could bicker and tease until Amrita would lean over and pinch Akash's cheek affectionately. His whole life he'd felt on the fringes of things, on the fringes of his own family, and yet here, even though these people were little more than strangers, he felt included in their warmth in a way that stunned him slightly.
Aneesa came out of the kitchen at that moment holding a steaming bowl of vegetables. When she put it down she affectionately ruffled her brother's and sister's heads. They all touched one another all the time … and earlier he'd seen Mr Adani pinch Mrs Adani on her bottom when he'd thought no one was looking.
Sebastian could remember rough-housing with his brothers growing up and his fragile mother's sporadic bursts of being affectionate, but it had never been consistent enough to depend on. He'd certainly never witnessed any kind of affection between his own parents. Their family housekeeper had been motherly but he'd never really felt comfortable when she tried to hug him and he'd get embarrassed when she got emotional after taking him and his brother on their monthly visits to see their mother.
He realised now that he'd always been intensely uncomfortable with any kind of physical intimacy that went beyond the bedroom, and yet with Aneesa, from day one, it had been second nature to touch her, or hold her hand. And he hadn't even noticed.
Watching everything with shrewd black eyes sunk in a wizened face was Aneesa's grandmother, who they all called Beeba. She hadn't said much to Sebastian but she looked at him all the time and he had the uncomfortably prickling sensation that she saw something that he didn't.
As Aneesa came around the table Amrita said, ‘Your belly is nearly a proper bump, Neesa. Is the baby kicking yet?'
Mrs Adani chided Amrita and Sebastian felt something fiercely possessive rush through him, almost as if Aneesa's bump was his. And yet, it was … but it wasn't, and he felt a wrenching sensation to realise that. And then he wanted to
know if the baby had started kicking.
Aneesa deflected the attention and sat down beside Sebastian, and her delicate scent wound around him, making his body tighten. He seriously questioned whether he should ask to be put in a separate bedroom that night as the past few nights had been torture. He'd lain awake while Aneesa lay curled up as far away as she could get, and had had to grit his teeth to try and curb his insatiable desires.
Gritting his teeth again, he smiled in answer to something Amrita had said with a flutter of her long black lashes and tried to block out the welling sensation of something elusively precious slipping out of his grasp.
Aneesa lay in the bed that night and tried to ignore the fact that Sebastian lay just inches away from her. After his initial reaction to her family which had been a bit like a deer stuck in the headlights, he'd somehow relaxed into their unique way of being and interacting. She'd seen him observing everything going on around him, as if fascinated, but not bored, or daunted.
Amrita already had a crush on him. He'd been her audience along with Aneesa when she'd tried out a Bollywood routine she was perfecting for an audition. Her parents were in awe of him, and Beeba, well, she just watched him the same way she watched everyone. And even though Aneesa wasn't in a traditional relationship with him, he'd already been tacitly accepted by her family on a level that Jamal never had been and she could see now how abrasive her ex-fiancé had been within her family.
She knew he was awake next to her and she sighed deeply. There was really no point in pretending anymore.
‘Thank you for taking Akash to the hotel to meet with your Michelin-starred chef today. It's possibly the most exciting thing that's ever happened to him. I think you've become his number-one hero for ever.'
Aneesa could feel Sebastian's shrug in the bed beside
her.
‘It was nothing.'
The silence dragged out but unlike the previous nights when Aneesa had rolled over and gone to sleep after long torturous minutes, tonight it seemed to be an impossible dream.
Sensation skated over her skin and she was acutely aware of everything. The warm night air swirled around them with the motion of the fan in the ceiling; the scent from the fruit trees outside the window was heavy and luxurious. But worst of all was the mosquito net around the bed which cocooned them in what felt to Aneesa like a sensual prison.
And itching inside her was this awful ravening need to touch Sebastian, to have him touch her. The tension reached screaming point for Aneesa and suddenly terrified that she wouldn't have the strength not to give herself away, she sat up and put on the light.
‘Look, I know this is awkward for both of us. You don't want to be here. I'll go to another room. I'll sleep with Amrita.'
She was getting out of the bed when Sebastian snaked out a hand and took her wrist. His touch seared her skin like a brand. ‘I thought you didn't want to embarrass your parents.
The whole of Mumbai will know by morning if you go to Amrita's room.'
Aneesa tried to yank her wrist away but his grip was too strong. She was crying out inside. ‘Well, then, I'll sleep on the floor, or something.'
‘Why?' he asked silkily. ‘I thought you didn't have a problem with this.'
Aneesa all but groaned, kicking herself for having faked such insouciance on that first day. This was Sebastian half sitting up, naked from the waist up, his skin burnished gold in the soft light, eyes glittering. Her breasts felt heavy, the peaks tight and tingling painfully. How could she ever not have had a problem with this?
Her pride was in tatters as it was. She gritted her teeth and said defiantly, ‘So what if I do?'
Inexorably he started to pull her back towards him. ‘I never said I didn't want you, Aneesa. I never stopped wanting
you.'
She frowned minutely, still resisting his pull. ‘But you
never tried to …' She trailed off ineffectually, giving herself away spectacularly. Even though she'd struggled to maintain the moral high ground and not give into the excoriating need to have Sebastian make love to her, she'd hungered for him desperately.
‘Because I thought you didn't want it, and I thought it was for the best.'
Because they were meant to be going their separate
ways.
‘But now,' he continued with a glint in his eye that sent
a spiral of desire through Aneesa, ‘I can see that that reasoning was very flawed. I've been going through torture—wanting you and trying not to touch you.'
Aneesa felt a whole host of conflicting emotions take flight in her chest. On the one hand she wanted to say stop! That he'd been right to do the honourable thing because it would kill her to know the exquisite pleasure of his lovemaking again, but on the other hand … she couldn't imagine going to her death without knowing that pleasure one more time.
Hating herself for her weakness she let him pull her back until she was lying down on her back and he hovered over her. His head dipped but she stopped him with a finger against his lips.
‘Wait … when are you going home, Sebastian?' I need to know so I can start to get over you. ‘I need to know. I can't …' She stopped. She was so close to showing him how hard it was for her to have him here and see him interacting with her family. ‘I just need to get on with things here, my life …'
Something in his face hardened and Aneesa couldn't understand it. Surely he should be looking relieved?
His jaw clenched. ‘I have business to attend to at the hotel tomorrow and then I'll be leaving the next day. I'll stay at the hotel tomorrow night.'
Aneesa felt her heart break. ‘Good. That's good, then.' With an almost savage intensity Sebastian slanted his
mouth over hers and kissed her. Passion blazed up around them so fierce that Aneesa wondered how the bed didn't catch fire. Her vest top was pulled off. She yanked down her knickers herself, and emitted a gasp of pure pleasure when she felt Sebastian's hot naked body next to hers.
