Rebel Hard (Hard Play #2)(2)

Love? Oho! You young people, always talking about love-schlove. Love comes after marriage, with your husband.

Telling herself to breathe, that the cage doors hadn’t shut quite yet, Nayna smoothed her hands over the dress she’d bought in a fit of Madhuri-induced insanity. Her scandalous older sister, young divorcée and all-around gorgeous glamour-puss, had dropped by for a visit the previous Sunday while Nayna was preparing a traditional meal for lunch for her parents and grandmother.

At the time, Nayna had been wearing old sweatpants and an equally old T-shirt stained with ink from the time she’d broken a fountain pen and sprayed herself a beautiful shade of aqua blue. She’d been perspiring from working at the stove, her infuriatingly straight hair pulled loosely back into a bun that had begun to fall apart.

Madhuri had been curled and perfumed and vivacious.

She’d hugged Nayna and told her she had to look after herself or she’d never find a man to marry. “You think I wake up like this?” A perfectly manicured hand indicating her va-va-voom curvy body in its fitted dress of delicate green lace. “It takes work, Ninu. I woke up at eight to give myself a facial and do my hair.” Then she’d hopped up on a breakfast stool and begun to touch up her lipstick while asking Nayna if she minded making her a cup of coffee.

Nayna loved her sister, and she was beyond happy that Madhuri was no longer estranged from the family, but sometimes she had to fight the compulsion to strangle her. Surely the judge would rule it justifiable homicide? Or maybe she could use the insanity defense? Speaking of which…

“You must’ve lost your mind,” she muttered, running her hands over the dress again.

It looked like she’d wrapped a wide and lightly shimmering black bandage around herself and called it done. There were even slivers of flesh visible where the bandage crisscrossed her body. Not that it covered much of the rest of her either—the so-called dress stopped high up on her thighs, leaving far more of her legs visible than she’d ever before shown in public.

She ran her hands nervously over her not-va-va-voom hips—which the dress managed to make look hot—and felt the heavy line of her panties. She’d already gotten rid of her bra after it proved impossible to either hide it or make it look like she was showing her bra on purpose. It helped that she had small breasts and the dress was tight.

Sad as it was, she didn’t have a jiggle problem.

Angling her body, she examined her butt in the mirror. “Damn it.” The panties were obvious, and they ruined the line of the dress.

She glanced at the door to her room even though she’d locked it herself. Then she bit down on her lower lip and took off the expensive scrap of nothing she’d bought specifically because it was meant to be “invisible” under clothing. “I want my thirty dollars back,” she groused as she got them off over her feet.

To make sure she wouldn’t lose her nerve, she threw the panties in with the dirty clothes she’d put in the little laundry basket she kept in her room; she’d chuck it all into the wash tomorrow.

Then she looked at her butt again.

The dress skimmed over her body like a lover’s hand—not that Nayna would know anything about that. High school had been a washout. Nerds with flat chests didn’t get much action. University had been… strange, her parents jumpy every time she left for a class, always worried she’d randomly decide to run off with a boy.

And Nayna, so fiercely determined to reunite her fragmented family that she’d focused all her energy on that. She’d succeeded in her second year as a university student, brought Madhuri back into the fold—and spent the rest of the time trying to make sure they’d never break again. Following rules listed and unspoken. Not doing anything to hurt her parents.

For a long time, that had been enough. She’d been so happy to have her entire family around the table at birthdays and on Diwali and during all the moments small and big that were vitally important in life. It hadn’t mattered that she’d traded in her own dreams to glue her family back together. Even to the extent of agreeing to marry a man her parents would choose.

Madhuri was the scandalous one, the gorgeous flirt, Nayna her far more boring shadow. The good girl making up for the sins of the bad girl.

“Not tonight,” she vowed to the mirror. “Tonight you’re going to be the bad girl. And you’re going to break all the rules.” Nayna had plans to find some gorgeous man and do all the things she’d never done because she’d been so busy following the rules so her family wouldn’t fall apart—because the cracks? They were still there.

But even prisoners got time off for good behavior.

Nayna deserved this night, and she was taking it.

Swiveling away from the mirror on that silent vow, she stuffed her feet into the comfortable professional heels she wore to work every day. Then she pulled on a coat that covered up the dress. She made sure it was buttoned up to the throat and that the lower half didn’t split so high as to expose her bare thighs.

She checked herself in the mirror one final time before picking up her small evening purse—that, she could get away with—and unlocking her bedroom door. The sounds of the TV reached her the second she stepped out into the hallway of her childhood home. Her parents were watching their favorite Indian soap opera. From memory, the evil sister-in-law was currently trying to break up the hero and heroine—said heroine was, of course, all things sweet and kind and bashfully lovely.