Rebel Hard (Hard Play #2)(8)

Nayna swallowed and tried to channel every rom-com and Bollywood romance she’d ever watched. What would one of the heroines do now? Probably not stumble around her tongue, saying, “You build things?” Smart, real smart, Nayna. You build things?! ARGH!

“Yeah.” A shift in his body, the fresh scent of him washing over her.

As if he’d showered before the party.

He’d probably been all sweaty and dusty from being on a work site. And she really should’ve worn panties.

A taut silence filled with the heat coming off his body.

Raj parted his lips to speak. Loud laughter burst into the void a second later.

Glancing back, he frowned darkly, then turned to her. “You want to walk out in the garden?” Rough words, nothing too smooth or polished or smarmy about him. “Little quieter.”

He was asking her to go out with him into the dark, away from the safety of the crowd. Nayna didn’t do things like that. Nayna also didn’t pick up men at parties. Or go out in public wearing not a single piece of underwear.

Throwing back the champagne, she said, “Yes” just as she heard a distinctive ping.

Reaching into the small purse she wore on one shoulder, she pulled out her phone. “It’s my friend ísa.” When she checked it, she saw that ísa had sent her a message saying she was going off with a blue-eyed man whose picture she’d snapped.

Startled at how quickly ísa had moved on from the hot gardener—Nayna could’ve sworn her best friend’d had a serious reaction to said gardener—Nayna nonetheless wished her luck, then added that she was with the hunk and about to let him do whatever he wanted to her. “Done,” she said afterward, slipping her phone away.

Instead of being annoyed, he raised an eyebrow. “Buddy system?”

“You’re a stranger.”

He didn’t laugh at her dorkily prim statement, his face back to full-on serious. Nayna kept thinking about what all that control must contain… and what would happen if he released the reins.

Raj locked his eyes with hers, his pupils jet black and his irises deep brown with a faint glow of gold bursting out near the pupil. “Are you going to go out into the night with this stranger?”

Bones liquid from the heat in his eyes and nipples hard points rubbed by the deep timbre of his voice, Nayna just nodded.

Raj got rid of their drink glasses, then took her hand into his bigger, rougher one and weaved through the crowd. It was like the waters parted for his big, sexy body. Nayna stayed close to the hard heat of him, her blood roaring so loudly through her ears that she couldn’t hear much of the party anymore. Raj didn’t take them toward the front or the back door but to a small side hallway and out through a door no one else seemed to be using.

“I helped build this place,” he told her as he stepped outside. “Put in this door myself.” A pat at the polished wood.

Nayna felt a sense of wonder. “You must feel such pride when you see something you constructed with your own hands.”

Tugging her outside, he closed the door. “Yes,” he said with a quiet self-possession that sang to everything in her. “I can point out every house I’ve ever worked on from back when I first became my dad’s apprentice.”

They stepped off the path… and her heel sank in. “Oh.” She stumbled against Raj.

Who caught her with his hands around her waist. “You okay?”

“Yes, just my heels.” Pressing a hand against his chest without thought, she lifted a foot up. “I’ll take them off so I can walk on the grass.” Heat burned her, his muscles flexing as he helped her keep her balance.

She was thinking about panties again by the time she got her heels off, hanging them both on one hand. “Thanks.”

Clasping her free hand in his, he led her across the grass. “If you stand here,” he said, “you can see a view over the trees and across the water.”

When Nayna stopped and looked out along the line of his arm, she saw the moon rippling on the ocean, the sight so unbearably romantic that her heart clenched. She’d read romances since she was a teenager, but never had she dared believe she’d get a kiss in the moonlight from a tall, dark, and fascinatingly intense man.

Raj turned to her even as the thought passed through her mind and, releasing her hand, cupped the side of her face. Her breath caught, her heart thumped. And her lips parted. Zeroing in on that betraying act, he dipped his head and touched his lips firmly to hers. No hesitation for Raj, nothing tentative.

The man knew what he wanted—and it was her.

Nayna dropped her heels to the grass. Pressing her hands against his chest, she rose up on tiptoe. He deepened the kiss, one hand stroking down the curve of her waist to stop on her hip where he found a sliver of skin through her dress. When she shivered, he licked his tongue across the seam of her lips.

She parted them and the kiss turned wet and deep.

His stubble created rough friction against her skin and she thought, “He’s marking me.”

She didn’t care, it felt so good.

A moan sounded and she didn’t realize it had been her until he rumbled his approval, his chest vibrating against her fingers. Ready for more, for everything, she pressed in closer. Raj nudged her back, and she had a sudden stab of worry that she’d bungled it—she wasn’t exactly an expert on kissing.