StT{Thread2} Prequel OS - PG- 36 - Page 19

"Do you realize Damien ... that you have proposed to my wife at four, broke my daughters heart at 19 and now at 26 you are somehow involved in this sham engagement in more than the obvious sense ... I wonder what you would say if I were to tell you to give me one good reason not to put you six feet deeper into the ground you're standing on?"

Damien felt a reluctant smile tug at the corners of his lips ... Never let it be said that Arnav Singh Raizada did not know how to play the game.

His brow quirking in imitation of the man he was about to antagonize, he replied, -"I believe I'd have to say ...I have excellent choice in women ... Uncle ... "

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Present Day,

Outer grounds,

Lennox-Hill, New-York.

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"Do you realize Damien ... that you have proposed to my wife at four, broke my daughters heart at 19 and now at 26 you are somehow involved in this sham engagement in more than the obvious sense ... I wonder what you would say if I were to tell you to give me one good reason not to put you six feet deeper into the ground you're standing on?"

Damien felt a reluctant smile tug at the corners of his lips ... Never let it be said that Arnav Singh Raizada did not know how to play the game.

His brow quirking in imitation of the man he was about to antagonize, he replied, -"I believe I'd have to say ...I have excellent choice in women ... Uncle ... "

* * *

Arnav could feel his jaw clench in an effort not to bury the smooth-talking little usurper where he stood.

Instead he reminded himself that a much younger, version of the boy had helped his wife get over her developed aversion to children. He reminded himself how upset Khushi would be with him if he did give in to temptation and cause the little ….Bass…bodily harm.

Patience was key.

Besides if the younger Bass wanted to court his daughter, in a manner resembling an eighteenth century masquerade, the least he could do was deal if not duel with her 'suitors'. A ghost of a smile wavered at the corners of his lips as he thought of the hell his daughter would put Damien 'Darling' Bass through if it ever came to light that he was the one to unveil the duplicity of her social-climber of a fiance.

In fact so amused was Arnav, that he reached into the inside pocket of his suit and drew out the envelope Charles had handed him mere hours ago, when the two had met to confer over the minor flag Aasha had thrown up when she'd claimed to have gotten herself engaged to the Shergill pup, and placed it carefully on the set Aasha had vacated not moments ago.

And looked Damien square in the eye as he replied – "Let's see if you know how to protect your women then."

* * *

Damien Bass had seen Aasha Raizada cry on many an occasion.

He'd seen her cry over goat's eating her Barbie's.

Over her first scraped knee when she'd finally gone off her training wheels.

Over a pimple days before her Debutante Ball.

Hell he'd seen her bawl like a baby over a some dead elf in a Harry Potter book!

All in all – a tear stained Aasha Raizada wasn't a sight he was unfamiliar with.

In fact it wasn't even one he was particularly afraid of.

Damien had learned a long time ago, the things that really hurt Aasha, she never cried about. Those things she held on to. Those wounds she let fester.

Despite that – the knowledge that Aasha was shedding tears – possibly over a prick of a fiance - did not set well with him. In fact even as he spotted her arms tightly crossed around herself as she stood looking off the eastern horizon at the slight brightening of the sky her cheeks glistening with the sheen of fresh tears as she sniffled loudly in comical contrast to her silent tears.

Leaning in, so he was mere inches away from the sensitive shell of her ear, Damien whispered – "You do realize smudged khol was most definitely last season."

Only to step back with adroit grace, as he watched as she took a furtive step back and glared at him angrily – "Not now Damien." She said, her voice echoing her leave-me-alone stance as she dashed another quick tear from her cheeks, with the back of her palm.

"Not now Damien." He mimicked softly earning him an annoyed roll of her khol smudged eyes and a half-hearted glare that took Damien back to a time when she would follow him around mimicking his every word because she had discovered one fine morning that doing so annoyed him to no end.

In fact if memory served, she had only stopped when he had stuffed a jalebi into her mouth, for a fleeting moment Damien felt that tug at his heart strings from seven years ago, the one that had got to him when she had come to him for kissing lessons, and when she had 'accidently' let dropped blue dye into one of his girlfriends shampoos.

For a second, as he stepped closer, one hand catching the one she had brought up yet again to brush at her glistening cheeks, Damien, forgot everything else.

In that one moment – his hand holding hers trapped against his chest, his other soothing away tears with his thumb, her half angry eyes looking up at him with a mix of surprise and confusion – all he saw was what could have been.

His eyes lowered slightly from her eyes to her full bottom lip, his thumb brushing against it – and suddenly the entire world shrunk to each uneven breath she drew, and the perfect curve of her lower lip, the one he had wanted to kiss so badly then – the one he couldn't look away from now.

And as if gravity had drawn him down, Damien lowered his mouth to swallow her startled gasp, savoring it in the cavern of his mouth as he breathed himself into her, his hand now no longer wiping errant tears but cupping her cheek in the softest caress possible, as his lips worshiped hers, his tongue tracing briefly the seam of her mouth until a sharp push thrust him away from her.

* * *

Aasha was drowning.

In a longing that had been buried impossibly deep for six years.

In a caress that seared through six years worth of heartbreak, tears and maybe's.

In a kiss that was six years in the making.

All at once it all flashed before her –

The mussed chestnut-brown hair, tousled over the crisp white shirt he had been wearing.

The look of guilt when she'd let out a sharp gasp of recognition.

The bright red stain of Mac's latest lipstick, decorating the collar her nearly nude best-friend was burying her face into.

And the cliched way her name had fell from these same lips accompanied by an excuse Anji Bua had always told her to steer clear of – "It's not what it looks like."

Her eyes snapping open, she stiffened perceptibly before pushing him sharply away.

Damien Bass – was the last person on earth she should be kissing even if, she reasoned, she had been drowning in him.

Raising pools of caramel to tempered steel, Aasha stepped carefully out of Damien Bass's reach as she intoned in a voice devoid of any reflection of what had just passed between them.

"Three months – long enough for Ma to believe we were engaged and long enough for us to convince her we realized we were better off as friends."

"And then?"- asked Damien, the raw huskiness in his simple question tempting Aasha to ask if the kiss had affected him as badly as it had her.

She didn't.

Instead with a practiced poise that came with years of training in the best private schools on two continents, she answered- "And then you can leave with whichever flavor of the month you come across."

"And if I don't want to?"

* * *

As a Bass, Damien more often than not found himself in unusually tense situations.

As Damien Bass – he had compounded his chest of situational scars with a glaring number of actual one's during a brief foray into the military war-zone that controlled certain areas of Africa and the Middle East.

Neither of those had bothered him as much as this one chit of a girl.

He'd seen her jerk slightly when he'd asked, "And then?" Her flippant response mere moments after she'd been in his arms goading him into cornering her with an impulsive - "And if I don't want to?"

For a brief second Damien watched Aasha stiffen, realizing he'd done the same as soon as the words left his mouth – If he didn't want to? After three months?– what the hell did he mean?

However Damien never managed to figure out just what he had meant – for before he could say anything at all Aasha had broken the uneasy silence with steel that belied her years – "Raizada's never make the same mistake twice."

And thus said she turned carefully on her suede heel and walked away, the soft click of her heels reverberating on the marbled walkway surrounding the grounds.

Leaving behind a Bass who could naught but wonder if the same could be said for Bass's with a particular penchant for doe-eyed –jalebi-loving-Raizada's.

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Hey Upper East Sider's, Gossip Girl here.

Your one and only source into the scandalous lives of Manhattan's Elite.

They say it's shame on you if you fool me once, but shame on me if you fool me twice. But I wonder, in this wonderful web of fools how much damage can fooling around get you in?

You know you love me.

XOXO

Gossip Girl

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Author's Note:

Okay so updates will be slow in the making - because i have HUGE exams looming in Dec. However nice long reviews are what have me writing on my off days so for now. XOXO. and READ AND REVIEW people!