Chapter 6.
Warning: Mature Content (18+]
In accordance with her plan to arrive at the Farm House a bit late, Zoya asked the butler for the keys to her car and walked out onto the drive at eleven-twenty, only to find that there were at least six cars blocking hers.
By the time the owners had been identified, the keys found and the cars moved, it was eleven forty-five, and Zoya was a little frantic. Her hands clenched the steering wheel as she swung her car out onto the main road. What if he had decided not to wait?
Exactly in two miles she saw a blacktop driveway on the left with a small wooden sign that read Gupta House, and she turned in to it.
An L-shaped house loomed into view at the end of the driveway, a spectacular structure of glass and rough-sawn cedar that looked as if it belonged on a cliff overlooking the Ocean. Zoya braked the car to a jarring stop beside the house, grabbed her purse and hurried up the wide flagstone walk to the front door.
She rang the bell and waited, then she rang it again and waited even longer. But when she pressed it the third time, she already knew that no one was going to answer. No one was there.
Turning, Zoya gazed depressingly at the small manicured lawn. Asad hadn't been willing to wait very long for her, she thought bitterly. When she didn't arrive on time he must have thought that she'd left for Mumbai. He didn't have a car of his own, so he must have gone off somewhere with the owner of this magnificent home.
She started walking back down the path, feeling very stupid and very much like crying. She couldn't just sit down on the doorstoop and hope Asad eventually came back there to sleep that night, and she couldn't return to Sia's place, since she was there as his guest. She should have known better than to try to play games with a man who was obviously a master at them. Because of her scheming, she was going to end up spending this glorious day driving back to Mumbai after all.
Swallowing the lump in her throat, Zoya opened the car door and put her purse on the passenger seat. As she paused to look once more at the wild beauty of her surroundings, her gaze locked onto some steps carved into the rocky bluff just beside her, and she heard a strange metallic sound coming from far below. The steps obviously led down through the trees to the beach"and someone was down there. With her heart slamming into her ribs she hurried down the steep steps.
On the bottom step she stopped, paralyzed with joy and relief at the sight of Asad's lean, familiar form. Clad only in a pair of brief white tennis shorts, he was crouched down, working on the motor of a small boat that had been pulled up onto the narrow crescent of sandy beach. For a long moment Zoya simply watched him, her eyes delighting in the sheer male beauty of his wide shoulders, muscular arms and tapered back, gleaming like oiled bronze in the sun.
As she stood there, he stopped working on the motor and looked down at his wristwatch. His arm dropped, and he slowly turned his head to stare at something on his right. He was so perfectly still that Zoya finally tore her eyes from his profile and followed his gaze. When she saw what he had done, tenderness vibrated through her entire body. He had spread blankets on the sand and placed a huge beach umbrella behind to screen them from the sun. A linen tablecloth had been carefully set with china, crystal goblets and silver. Three wicker picnic baskets were off to one side, and a bottle of wine was protruding from the open lid of one of them.
He must have made half a dozen trips up and down those steep steps, Zoya realized. Considering that a few minutes before she'd thought he didn't even care enough about her to wait until she got here, this evidence of how much he actually did care was doubly touching.
Not that touching, she hastily reminded herself, trying unsuccessfully to banish her smile. After all, what she was really looking at was the carefully prepared scene of her very own seduction... Attempted seduction, she corrected, with an inward grin.
Smoothing down the bright green V-necked velour top that matched her shorts, she decided she would say something witty by way of greeting. And Asad would, of course, be very casual and pretend he hadn't even noticed that she was late. With that scenario in mind she stepped forward. Unfortunately, she couldn't think of anything witty to say. "Hi," she called out cheerfully.
In his crouching position, Asad slowly pivoted around, the wrench still in his hand. He draped his arm across his bent knees and stared at her with cool, enigmatic gray eyes. "You're late," he said.
That was so far from what she'd envisioned that Zoya had to gulp back a stunned giggle as she walked over to him. "Did you think I wasn't coming?" she inquired innocently.
His dark brows lifted sardonically. "Wasn't that what I was supposed to think?"
It wasn't a question, it was a cool accusation, and Zoya's first impulse was to deny it. Instead she nodded her head, an irrepressible smile teasing her lips. "Yes," she admitted softly, watching his chilly gray eyes turn warm with fascinated interest. "Were you disappointed?" Instantly she regretted the question, because she knew Asad would now retaliate by saying something cutting.
"Very disappointed," he admitted quietly.
A treacherous heat was seeping through Zoya's nervous system as she gazed into those mesmerizing gray eyes, and as Asad put the wrench down and slowly stood up, she cautiously backed away a step.
"Zoya?"
She swallowed. "Yes?" "Would you like to eat first?"
First," she whispered hoarsely. "Before what?"
"Before we go sailing," he replied, studying her with puzzlement.
"Oh, sailing!" Her breath came out in a laugh. "Yes, thank you, I would like to eat first. And I'd love to go sailing."
Zoya had never known a more glorious day than this. In the two hours since they sailed away from the House, a warm comrade had sprung up between them"a companionship that was made up of spontaneous comments and shared laughter, punctuated with long relaxed silences.
The brilliant blue sky was decorated with puffy white clouds, and the wind caught the sail, sending the boat shooting soundlessly through the water. She watched a sea gull screeching overhead, then glanced at Asad, who was seated at the tiller, facing her. He smiled and Zoya smiled back, then she lifted her face to the sky again, basking in the sun's golden warmth and in the knowledge that Asad's lazy, admiring gaze was on her.
"We could drop anchor here and do some sunbathing and some fishing. Would you like that?" Asad said.
"I'd love it." Zoya watched him roll to his feet and begin taking in the sail.
"There's great salmon fishing here, but we'd need down-riggers, and we'd have to troll."
Zoya had fished with her father many times when she was little, but she'd never fished from a boat. She didn't have the faintest idea what a down-rigger was or what trolling was either, but intended to find out. If the man she loved liked to fish from boats, she would learn to like it too.
"I've got one," Asad called a half hour later as his line played out with a whir.
Zoya dropped her rod and went racing toward his end of the boat, unthinkingly shouting directions: "Set the hook! Keep your rod tip up. Don't let the line go slack. He's running"loosen the drag."
"Lord, are you bossy!" Asad grinned, and she realized with a rueful smile that he was handling the fish with expertise. A few minutes later he leaned over the side of the boat and scooped the big perch into a long-handled net. Like a proud little boy who was showing off his trophy to someone special, Asad held up his flapping fish for Zoya to properly admire. "Well, what do you think?"
One look at that boyish expression on his ruggedly chiseled features, and the love that had budded inside Zoya burst into full bloom. You're wonderful, she thought. "He's wonderful," she said.
And in that outwardly casual moment, Zoya made the most momentous decision of her life. Asad already owned her heart; tonight it was right that he have her body too.
The sun was setting in a blaze of crimson when Asad let out the sail and they started back to the House. Zoya again felt his gaze on her as he sat at the tiller, facing her in the waning light. It was getting chilly, and she drew her legs up against her chest, wrapping her arms around them. The question of how they were going to spend the night had been completely resolved in her mind, but it bothered her that she was about to take such an irrevocable step with a man whom she adored, but about whom she knew so very little.
"What are you thinking about?" Asad asked quietly.
"I was thinking that I know very little about you."
"What would you like to know?"
It was the opening Zoya desperately wanted. "Well, for a start, how do you happen to know Sia and the crowd at her party?"
As if he was delaying his answer, Asad took a cigarette from the package in his pocket and put it between his lips. He lit a match and cupped his hands over the flame, lighting it. "Sia and I grew up next door to each other," he said, extinguishing the match with a deft shake of his wrist. "Near where Tony's restaurant is now."
Zoya was astounded. Tony's restaurant was in what was today a fashionably renovated downtown neighborhood. But fifteen or twenty years ago, when Asad and Sia were growing up there, it couldn't have been very nice at all.
Asad watched the play of emotions across her features and apparently guessed the direction of her thoughts. "Sia married Vinay, who is nearly twice her age, in order to escape from the old neighborhood."
Cautiously, Zoya approached the topic that Asad had avoided earlier and that interested her the most. "Asad, you said your father died when you were four, and that your grandparents raised you. But what happened to your mother?"
"Nothing happened to her. She went back to live with her parents the day after my father's funeral."
Oddly, it was his complete indifference that alerted Zoya and made her study him sharply. His handsome face was composed, a neutral mask. Too composed, too unemotional, she thought. She didn't want to pry, but she was falling in love with this compelling, enigmatic, passionate man, and she desperately needed to understand him. Hesitantly she said, "Your mother didn't take you with her?"
The curtness of Asad's tone warned her that he was not pleased with the direction of the conversation, but he answered, "My mother was a wealthy, pampered Woman who met my father when he went to her family's house to repair some electrical wiring. Six weeks later she jilted her bland but wealthy fianc, and she married my proud but penniless father instead. Apparently she regretted it almost immediately. My father insisted that she live on what he could make, and she hated him for that. Even after his business was doing better, she despised her life, and she despised him."
"Then why didn't she leave him?"
"According to my grandfather," Asad responded dryly, "there was one area where she found my father irresistible."
"Do you resemble your father?" Zoya asked impulsively.
"Almost exactly, I'm told. Why?"
"No reason," Zoya said. But she had a rueful feeling that she understood exactly how irresistible Asad's father must have been to his mother. "Go on with the story, please."
"There isn't much else to tell. The day after my father's funeral, she announced that she wanted to forget the poor life she'd led, and she moved back to her parents' house. Apparently I was part of what she wanted to forget, because she left me behind with my grandparents. Three months later she married her former fianc and within a year she had another son"my half brother."
"But she did come to visit you, didn't she?"
"No."
Zoya was horrified at the idea of a mother abandoning her child and then living in luxury only a few miles away from him. "You mean you never saw her again after that?"
"I saw her occasionally, but only accidentally. One night she pulled into the gas station where I was working."
"What did she say?" Zoya breathed.
"She told me to check the oil," Asad replied calmly.
Despite his outward attitude of total indifference, Zoya couldn't believe that as a younger man he'd been so invulnerable. Surely having his own mother treat him as if he didn't exist must have hurt him terribly. "Is that all she said?" she asked tightly.
Unaware that Zoya was not sharing his ironic humor in the story, he said, "No"I think she asked me to check the air in her tires too."
Zoya had kept her voice neutral, but inwardly she felt ill. Tears stung her eyes, and she turned her face up to the purpling sky to hide them, pretending to watch the lacy clouds drifting over the moon.
"Zoya?" His voice sounded curt.
"Hmmm?" she asked, staring steadfastly at the moon.
Leaning forward, he caught her chin and turned her face toward his. He looked at her brimming eyes in stunned disbelief. "You're crying!" he said incredulously.
Zoya waved a dismissing hand at him. "Don't pay any attention to that"I cry at movies too."
Asad burst out laughing and pulled her onto his lap. Zoya felt strangely maternal as she put her arm around him and soothingly stroked his thick dark hair. "I suppose," she said in a shaky voice, "that when you were growing up, your brother got all sorts of things that you could only dream of having. New cars and everything."
Tipping her chin up, he smiled into her somber blue eyes. "I had wonderful grandparents, and I promise you that I don't have any emotional scars from what happened with my mother."
"Of course you do"anyone would! She walked out on you, then practically before your eyes lavished her attention on her next son..."
"Stop it," he teased, "or you'll have me in tears."
With quiet gravity Zoya said, "I was crying for the boy you were then, not for the man you are now. Despite everything that happened"no, because of it"you became a strong, independent man. Actually, the one to pity is your half brother."
Asad chuckled. "You're right"he's an ass."
Zoya ignored his humor. "What I meant was that you've succeeded on your own, without wealthy parents to help you. That makes you a bigger man than your half brother."
"Is that why I'm bigger?" he joked. "I always thought it was in my genes. You see, my father and grandfather were both tall..."
"Asad, I'm trying to be serious!" "Sorry."
"When you were young, you must have dreamed of becoming as rich and successful as your mother's husband and her son."
"Richer," Asad confirmed. "And more successful."
"So you went to college and got your engineering degree," Zoya concluded. "Then what did you do?"
"I wanted to start my own business, but I didn't have enough money."
"That's a shame," Zoya said sympathetically.
"That's also enough of my life history for now," he finished evasively. "We're almost home."
The warm closeness that had developed between them as they sailed back was still enfolding them as they dined by lantern light on the cedar deck suspended out beyond the bluff.
"Don't bother," Asad said quietly when Zoya stood with the intention of clearing the china and crystal from the table. "The housekeeper will take care of it in the morning." He picked up a bottle of wine and poured some into two fragile glasses. He handed her one, then leaned back in his chair. Raising his glass to his lips, he contemplated her over the rim.
Zoya rolled the stem of her glass between her fingers, trying to ignore the atmosphere of expectation that was hanging over them. Her time was running out; Asad had satisfied their physical hunger, and now he was lazily preparing to satisfy their sexual hunger. She could see it in the way his possessive gaze lingered on her delicate features as she sat across from him, and in his warmly intimate smile when he spoke to her.
She raised her glass and took a sip. Any moment he would stand up and take her inside. She glanced up as he lit a cigarette. In the flickering glow of the lantern, his dark handsome features seemed shadowy and almost predatory. A chill that was part fright, part excitement danced up her spine.
"Are you cold?" he asked softly.
Zoya quickly shook her head, afraid that he would immediately suggest they go in. Then she realized he must have seen her shiver, and she added, "I mean I was a little chilly just then, but it's so lovely out here I can't bear to go in yet."
Several minutes later Asad stubbed out his cigarette and moved his chair back from the table. Zoya's heart lurched. She drained her glass and held it toward him. "I'd like a little more."
She saw a flicker of surprise in his expression, but he obligingly poured more wine into both their glasses, then he lazed back in his chair again, openly watching her.
Zoya was too jumpy to either meet his gaze or endure it. She stood up, smiled shakily and walked over to the edge of the deck, gazing across the black lake at the lights twinkling in the hills. She wanted to please him always, and in all ways, but what if she failed tonight? Asad was so alarmingly virile and blatantly experienced that her virginity and inexperience might seem like a nuisance to him.
Asad's chair scraped against the wooden deck, and Zoya heard him approach, stopping right behind her. He put his hands on her shoulders and she jumped. "You're cold," he murmured, drawing her back against his chest and wrapping his arms around her for warmth. "Is that better?" he asked, his lips against her hair.
The imprint of his legs and thighs pressing against her seemed to rob Zoya of the power of speech. She nodded, and then she trembled uncontrollably.
"You're shivering." His hands shifted to her waist, and he turned her with gentle insistence toward the house. "Let's go inside where it's warm."
Zoya was so nervous that she didn't realize the sliding glass doors Asad led her to were not the ones that opened into the living room until she stepped inside and found herself in a luxurious bedroom decorated in shades of caramel, white and brown. She stopped in her tracks, her eyes on the huge king-size bed across the room. She heard Asad close the glass door with a final, deathlike thud, and her whole body tensed.
His arm slid around her waist from behind, drawing her rigid form against him. With his other hand he brushed away her heavy silken hair, exposing her neck. Zoya's breathing became shallow and rapid as his lips touched her nape, then drifted tantalizingly toward her ear, while his hands began moving lazily over her midriff, sliding upward.
"Asad," Zoya protested inanely, "I"I'm not at all tired yet."
"Good," he whispered, while his tongue sensuously traced the folds of her ear. "Because it's going to be hours before I let you go to sleep."
"What I meant was"" Zoya gasped as his tongue plunged deeply into her ear, sending warmth spreading through her limbs. Weakly, she leaned back against him and felt the bold evidence of his rising passion pressing against her. "What I meant," she clarified shakily, "was that I'm not ready for... for bed yet."
His deep voice acted on Zoya like an aphrodisiac. "I've waited an eternity for you, Zoya. Don't ask me to wait any longer."
The meaning Zoya read into those words banished her last doubts about how deeply he really felt about her, and about the rightness of what she was doing. She made no move to stop him when his hands slipped under her top, but when he removed it and turned her in his arms to face him, her heart was racing like a mad thing.
"Look at me," Asad coaxed softly.
Zoya tried to lift her eyes to his and couldn't. She swallowed convulsively.
Sliding both hands into the sides of her hair, Asad turned her face up to his, his mesmerizing gray eyes gazing deeply into hers. "We're going to do this together," he said quietly. Taking her hand, he placed it against the front of his shirt. "Unbutton my shirt," he urged gently. Somewhere in the chaotic turbulence that was her mind, Zoya realized that Asad apparently thought she was hesitating because her other less experienced lovers hadn't taught her the proper preliminaries for lovemaking, and that he was now trying to coach her.
Zoya's curly lashes flickered down, casting shadows on her flushed cheeks as she did his bidding with fingers made clumsy by a mixture of panic and joy. He deftly unhooked her lacy bra, and she slowly undid each of his buttons, unknowingly heightening his excitement by her slowness.
Her fingers moved of their own volition, pushing his shirt open, exposing his muscular chest. He was so beautiful, and he was hers to touch, Zoya thought, so intoxicated with the knowledge that she scarcely noticed when he slipped her bra off her arms.
"Touch me," Asad ordered hoarsely.
She required no more urging and no more instruction. Guided by love and instinct, she slid her hands sensuously on his chest, and leaned forward to kiss his hard, muscular flesh. A shudder ran the length of his body at the first brush of her lips, and his free hand sank into the soft hair at her nape, tilting her face up to his. For a moment he just gazed at her, his eyes smoldering with the desire he was holding back, and then he bent his head.
His lips were warm and exquisitely gentle at first, tasting and shaping hers. And then they slowly parted, and his tongue began to explore her mouth with a languorous hunger that drove Zoya mad with pleasure.
She arched against him, her hands gliding over his bare chest, and he lifted his head. His flaming gray eyes burned into hers, seeing his own desire reflected in their blue depths. He drew a labored breath, visibly trying to slow his passion, and lost the battle. "God, I want you!" he said fiercely, and his demanding lips crushed down on hers, his tongue parting her lips and driving into her mouth in a kiss that sent fire exploding through her body.
Zoya moaned, molding herself to his hardened thighs, and his hands moved over her, sliding up the sides of her breasts, her back, then lower, forcing her hips tighter to the throbbing heat of his swollen manhood.
The world tilted as he swept her up into his arms, his mouth devouring hers while he moved her onto the bed, following her down and covering her with his body.
His hands cupped her naked breasts, arousing her nipples into aching tightness before his lips closed on them. His lips came back to hers, and he opened her mouth hungrily with his own, his knowledgeable hands exploring and exciting and tormenting her, bathing her senses in a fiercely erotic pleasures that sent hot need pulsing through every nerve in Zoya's throbbing body.
He shifted on top of her, and something wild and fierce stirred deep within her, ready to welcome him. But the moment his knee wedged its way between her legs to spread them apart, Zoya's entire body jerked into rigid, involuntary alarm. "Asad!" she gasped, clamping her legs together. "Asad, wait I""
He overruled her belated refusal with two hoarse words: "Don't, Zoya."
The ache in his voice shattered her resistance, and she wrapped her arms tightly around his broad shoulders, drawing him to her as her hips lifted to greet him. Asad plunged full-length into her, burying himself into her welcoming softness with a deftness that gave Zoya only an instant of pain, a pain that was forgotten as he began to move with tormenting slowness within her.
"I've only been waiting a few days for you, but it feels like an eternity," he rasped, and began steadily increasing the tempo of his driving plunges, pushing her closer and closer to her peak, until Zoya's love and passion finally exploded into shuddering ecstasy. Asad tightened his arms around her and with one final plunge, he joined her in the wild, sweet oblivion where he had sent her...
Dreamily descending from the misty euphoria where she was floating, sated and happy, Zoya slowly became conscious of the warmth emanating from Asad's body beside her, and the weight of his hand resting atop her stomach. But as she lay there, a vague uneasiness slowly crept into her fogged mind. She tried to shut it out, to keep it from disturbing the bliss of the moment, but it was too late. She remembered that Asad had been holding her tightly in his arms, his body driving into hers when he had whispered, "I've only been waiting a few days for you, but it feels like an eternity."
Zoya's boneless contentment gave way to harsh reality. She had misinterpreted what Asad had meant when he told her he'd been waiting an eternity for her. What he meant was that the few days he'd had to wait to make love to her seemed like an eternity. It didn't change the way she felt about him, but it made her uneasy.
Had he noticed her virginity? How would he react? What if he asked her why she had decided to make love with him? She certainly couldn't tell him the truth yet"that she was in love with him, and she wanted him to love her.
Zoya decided she would have to avoid the subject altogether. Hesitantly she opened her eyes.
Asad was lying on his side, propped up on his elbow, gazing intently at her face. He looked puzzled, dubious, and distinctly amused...
He had noticed. And judging from his expression, he intended to discuss it.
Zoya rolled away from him and hastily sat up, keeping her back to him. Reaching for his discarded shirt at the foot of the bed, she plunged her arms into the sleeves in an effort to cover her nakedness. I'd love some coffee," she mumbled, seizing on that as an excuse to escape his questions. "I'll make it." She stood up and looked at him, then flushed as his warm gaze slid down her long, shapely bare legs before lifting to her face.
Never had she felt as self-conscious as she did at that moment standing there, stark naked under his lose shirt. "You... you don't mind sharing your shirt, do you?" she asked, fumbling with the buttons.
"I don't mind at all, Zoya," he solemnly replied, but with a gleam of laughter in his eyes. His amusement was so unnerving that Zoya's hands began to shake. Concentrating on rolling up the shirt cuffs, she asked, "How do you like it?"
"Exactly the way we did it."
Her gaze shot to his face and the blush on her cheeks deepened. "No," she corrected with a quick, nervous shake of her head. "I meant, how do you like your coffee?"
"Black."
"Do... do you want some?"
"Some what?" he asked suggestively, grinning wickedly at her.
"Some coffee!"
"Yes, thanks."
"For what?"
she quipped jauntily, then she pivoted on her heel and hastily left before he could reply.
Despite her bravado when she'd left the bedroom, she felt dangerously close to tears as she walked into the kitchen and turned on the lights. Asad was laughing at her, and she had never expected that sort of reaction from him. Had she been that inept, that amusingly inexperienced?
Behind her, she heard Asad walk into the kitchen, and she quickly busied herself spooning coffee into the percolator. "Why are these cupboards so empty? Except for what we ate tonight, there's no food."
"Because the house is being sold," Asad replied. His hands settled firmly on her waist, drawing her against him until the denim of his jeans pressed against the backs of her bare legs. "Why didn't you tell me?" he asked her quietly.
"Tell you what?" Zoya hedged.
"You know damned well what."
She stared out the window over the sink. "I forgot about it, actually."
"Wrong," Asad chuckled. "Try again."
"Because the subject never came up," she said with an indifferent shrug, "and because I didn't think you'd notice."
"The subject never came up," he said dryly, "because twenty-three-year-old virgins in this day and age are rare as hell. And twenty-three-year-old virgins who look like you, rarer still. As far as the rest"well, it was self-evident."
Zoya turned around to face him, her blue eyes searching his. "But before that... that point, you didn't realize that I hadn't... hadn't... before?"
"I had no idea that you were a virgin until it was too late to make any difference to either of us." Putting his arms around her, he added, "But you should have told me you were before we got into that bed."
"If I had told you, would you have changed your mind?" Zoya asked, loving the sound of his voice and the feel of his arms around her.
"No, but I would have been more gentle with you." Leaning back, he stared at her in genuine puzzlement. "Why should I have changed my mind?"
"I don't know," Zoya mumbled uneasily. "I thought you might have some, well, reservations about... about..."
"About what?" he mocked tolerantly. "About 'stealing' something that belongs to your future husband? Don't be ridiculous. He won't expect you to be a virgin; men don't prize virginity anymore. We don't want or expect a woman to be inexperienced. We're liberated too, you know. You have the same physical desires I do, Zoya, and you have the right to satisfy them with whomever you wish."
Zoya cautiously lowered her eyes then stared back at him and asked, "Have you ever cared, really cared, for any of the women in your life?"
"Some of them, yes."
"And you didn't mind if they'd had sexual relationships with lots of other men?"
"Of course not."
"That seems like a very... coldblooded...attitude."
His lids flickered down, his glance lingering on the tantalizing mounds of her breasts. "If I've given you the impression that I'm coldblooded, I think it's time we go back into that bedroom."
Zoya wondered if he was deliberately misinterpreting her use of the word because he wanted to avoid the issue. If he had really cared for those other women, shouldn't he have felt more possessive about them? If he really cared for her, shouldn't he be pleased that he was the only man she'd let make love to her? Zoya raised her troubled blue eyes to his. "Asad?"
He looked down at the delicate young beauty in his arms. Her face was framed in tousled waves of hair, her mouth was soft and generous, and her full breasts were pressed enticingly against his bare chest. His arms tightened around her, and he bent his head. "What?" he murmured, but his mouth opened on hers in a deep, drugging kiss that silenced her voice.
Sometime after dawn, Zoya rolled over and saw Asad's head on the pillow beside her. With a dreamy smile of satisfaction, she closed her eyes and sank back into the deep slumber of blissful exhaustion. She did not awaken again until Asad put a cup of coffee on the night table beside her and sat down on the bed.
"Good morning," she said, her smile fading as she realized that he had already showered, shaved and dressed in tailored gray slacks and an open-necked gray shirt. "Is something wrong?" she asked, clutching the sheet to her breasts as she struggled up against the pillows. She felt awkward being stark naked when he was dressed, but Asad seemed unaware of her discomfort. For that matter, he seemed unaware of her nakedness.
"Zoya, I'm afraid we're going to have to cut today short. A... a business associate of mine phoned this morning and will be here in an hour. I'll find another ride back to the city."
Zoya was terribly disappointed, but forty minutes later, as Asad walked her out to her car, her disappointment had grown into confused alarm. Gone was her passionate, seductive lover of the night before. Today Asad was friendly but impersonal, treating her as if they'd spent a pleasant but meaningless night playing cards instead of making love. Or was this the way men always acted afterward? She was probably being oversensitive, Zoya decided, stopping at her car and turning toward him.
She hoped he would take her in his arms and kiss her goodbye. Instead he put his hands in his pockets, looked at her levelly and said, "Zoya, did you take any precautions against the possible consequences of last night?"
Pregnancy! Zoya's face felt as if it was on fire as she shook her head.
She sensed that her answer irritated him, but his voice was calmly unemotional. "If there should be any consequences, I want you to let me know. Don't try to face it alone. Will you promise to let me know?"
Zoya was too embarrassed to speak. She nodded, and he opened the car door for her. By the time she put the car into reverse, he was already striding back into the house.
Zoya glanced at the clock on the dashboard as she drove through the long road. "If there should be any consequences, I want you to let me know." Let me know ... The last three words revolved continuously in her brain.
Why had he made it sound as if they wouldn't be talking to each other unless she needed to reach him to tell him she was pregnant?
In a way Zoya felt like something that had been used and then thrown away. They had laughed together and gotten to know each other; she felt so close to him"surely he felt close to her too. Surely he couldn't intend to just walk away and forget about her.
She loved Asad, and she knew he liked her. Perhaps he had already begun to love her... Perhaps that was why he had become so withdrawn and impersonal this morning! After thirty-four years of independence, and after being shunned by his own mother, Asad wouldn't like feeling dependent on a woman for his happiness. The more he felt himself caring, the more he would probably fight it, Zoya decided.
The sky was streaked with a pink sunrise as Zoya drove. She was weary, but optimistic. Asad will surely call her.
Arjun
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