Andy whirled Cadell around, unsure what the heck she was doing.
“Hey!” He stumbled into the dim room.
Andy kicked the door closed. The room darkened, but afternoon sunlight leaked through the horizontal blinds over the windows.
Cadell asked, “What are you doing?”
She locked the door and leaned against it. “That was a pretend date, right?”
“I’ve got to get back to Emily,” he said, running a hand through his hair to hold the shaggy strands back from his face. “It’s been almost an hour.”
Andy sucked in a deep breath, fortifying herself. “So aren’t you going to pretend to kiss me?”
He spun, and his dark eyes widened as he looked at her. “What?”
Trembling started in Andy’s hands, and she crossed her arms over her chest so he wouldn’t see. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what I’m doing. We should just go.”
Her body slumped in embarrassment, and she turned to unlock the door and leave.
As her hand closed on the doorknob, a larger hand covered hers.
Andy drew in a breath as Cadell took her arm and turned her to look at him again. “Until today, you wouldn’t even let me take you out for coffee, and now you’ve pulled me into a private room and told me to kiss you. I’ve known you for eight months. This isn’t like you.”
She licked her lips, and his gaze lowered to her mouth. “If it was a date, then you’re supposed to kiss me.”
Her voice sounded husky in her throat.
He said, “It was a pretend date.”
His voice sounded throaty, too.
Hormones associated with sexual arousal increased blood flow to the reproductive organs and the throat and oh my God she couldn’t find the next sentence in the pathway because he was touching her cheek.
He slid his fingers into her hair, and just his touch and the fact that he wasn’t making fun of her made her head spin like that one time that she’d had a martini at a party during undergrad.
She was doing her best to keep looking into his eyes, but she kept blinking, her eyes closing languidly, to feel his hand in her hair better. “So pretend to kiss me.”
“How am I supposed to do that?” he whispered. His other hand touched her waist, and he stepped closer to her.
“It was a pretend date because we didn’t really mean it. Kiss me, but don’t mean it.”
“Is that what you want?” The tightness in his voice sounded angry, but maybe the hormones associated with sexual arousal did that, too. She could barely breathe, and her skin turned more sensitive like she was wearing too many clothes. Warmth from his body rolled over her.
She said, “Just do it. You’re just pretending, anyway.”
“Right. I’m pretending.” He closed his eyes and bent.
She watched him bend down to her from his enormous height to her smallness, and his lips neared hers.
Oh, Lord. She was doing that stupid thing that virgins do in historical movies where they watch the guy swooping in to kiss them and end up staring cross-eyed at their own lips.
Stop it.
Andy closed her eyes and opened her lips just a little, not like an attacking duck but not like her frightened lips were retreating inside her mouth.
Cadell brushed his lips across hers, a gentle, subtle kiss, not like he was trying to tongue-poke her tonsils at all.
Andy touched his shoulders, her hands sliding up to the thick muscles there.
His lips opened above hers, and he sucked on her lower lip just a little, just drawing it closer to the inside of his mouth.
He was bending sideways, kissing her at an angle. He was so tall, and she rose up on her toes, trying to meet him. His hand slipped from her hair to beneath her jaw and lifted her head to meet his lips more fully.
The fear-tremor in her arms stilled, and her hands warmed where she was pressing them against his shoulders. She managed to take a breath, almost a gasp. The turbulence in her mind smoothed, and her consciousness focused on her mouth where Cadell brushed his lips across hers.
Her hands moved up, and she held on to the back of his neck as her legs weakened.
His mouth left hers for a moment. She opened her eyes, and her grip around Cadell’s neck loosened as he ducked away from her, his hand still on her waist.
“Don’t stop.” She could barely hear her own whimper.
Cadell reached out with one long leg and snagged the leg of a step stool over by the small kitchen countertop with his foot. The motorcycle boot he wore barely fit under the legs of the stool. He dragged it right over to her ankles and lifted her with his hands under her arms, kicking the riser under her feet.
Taller now, she settled her arms around his neck and pulled him down to kiss her again. Even with her standing on the step stool, he was still taller than she was, but she was closer. At least he wasn’t curled sideways into a C anymore.
He wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her body against his, his other hand deep in her hair again. Her breasts and tummy squished against the muscular hardness of him, and he sucked at her lips. She did her best to do what he was doing, opening her mouth like she was sucking the flesh off of a mango pit, and his tongue flicked into her mouth and caressed hers for an instant before it retreated.
She had thought it would be weird, maybe slimy or like a tentacle, but the smooth and intimate stroke of his tongue against hers flashed through her body, and she gasped against his mouth.
With her breath, an energy possessed his body, as if the sound had startled him. He shoved her back against the door, pressing her against it with the ripples of his stomach and the heavy muscles of his chest and his mouth opened on hers. His tongue was more insistent now, licking hers, and he gathered a handful of her hair in his fist and locked her head back against the door. He stepped toward her, one foot to the side of the footstool that she was standing on, and he used his weight to pin her to the door.
Everything about his sudden move should have terrified her, but her heartbeat thrumming in her ears and in her chest crowded out any fear. She twined her arms around his neck and kissed him back, slanting her head and opening her mouth.
Her breath rasped. Cadell broke off the kiss and swiveled around, his mouth finding the underside of her jaw. His teeth stung her neck over the pulse point, and a moan vibrated in her throat as he lipped her skin, soothing it. Her whole body felt alive, trembling with energy.
His hand stole around to her backside and caressed her butt, and he ran his hand farther down her thigh to her knee and lifted her leg, wrapping it around his hips.
She felt like she wanted to climb him, to wrap her arms and legs around him and squeeze hard.
He leaned into her, the hardness in his jeans rubbing between her legs and against the plushness of her flesh.
A spark of pleasure zipped through her, unexpected, and she panicked. Too fast, too much. He was going to take her. “No, Cadell. No.”
He dropped her leg and wrapped his arms around her instead, his head right beside hers. “Isn’t this what you wanted, a dirty fuck with a rock star right before you get married?”
“No,” she said. Her heart was quivering like a rabbit’s in her chest, and she couldn’t seem to draw a breath.
Shortness of breath.
Heart attack.
Yep, heart attack.
He said, “Engaged women break into my hotel room all the time, looking for one last wild night with a dirty rocker before they settle down, something to look back on when their husbands don’t measure up.”
“It’s not like that.” Andy was resting her head against his shoulder. If he moved, her legs would collapse and she would fall, so she clung to him.
“Don’t fuck around with me. I haven’t touched a woman in eight months. I can barely see right now.” His hand on her hip tightened, digging his strong fingers into her flesh just a little.
“I’m not teasing you. I didn’t mean to promise anything. I just wanted to see what it was like.”
“If you love this guy enough to marry him, why would you want to fuck around?”
“I didn’t want to ‘fuck around,’ and I don’t love him. I’ve only met him twice.”
Cadell went shock-still in her arms. “What?”
“It’s an arranged marriage. My parents had friends who knew of another family looking to arrange their son. He was the right caste, the right sub-caste, the right gotra. He is a vice-president at a pharmaceutical company, and his astrology was a good match for mine. His family wanted him to marry a girl with an advanced degree, a traditional girl with the right astrology and family, who could speak Tamil and Hindi, and not too tall.” She was still panting against his shoulder. His neck smelled like cloves and other sweet spices. She turned her head and pressed her lips to his skin. His warmth filled her with longing. “If I wanted to marry the wrong person, my parents would disown me. I would never see them or my cousins or my friends again.”
He shoved her backward and held her shoulders at arm’s length. His arms were really long. “You’ve only met him twice?”
“His family is very traditional. They didn’t want us to meet at all before the ceremony, but I insisted. I wanted to see him to make sure that they were telling me the truth.”
“This is insane, you know. No one arranges marriages anymore. Not in America.”
“It happens all the time. Most of my friends made arranged marriages. Only two have made a love match, and one of them is already divorced.” Her friend’s family had disowned her before the wedding because the boy was of the wrong caste, and now she had no one. Andy had to meet with her secretly because her parents had disapproved so much.
He pulled back from her. He was still breathing heavily, too, and he searched her eyes, his hands gripping her shoulders. “Are they forcing you to marry him? I can help you. I can find someplace for you to hide. I can take you on tour with me. I can find a place for you to live in some other city.”
“No, no. It’s not like that. They asked me before they arranged it.”
Torment widened his eyes. “I don’t get it, then. If you want to marry some guy that you’ve never met—”
“I’ve met him twice,” she corrected him.
“—then why did we do this?” His voice rose in frustration.
“I just wanted to see what it was like.”
“To fuck around before you got married, or to see if the internet rumors about me are true?”
“I just wanted to kiss a man. And I like you. You’re so good with Emily, and you’re nice, and you listen, and you’re considerate, and I want to touch you every time I see you. I just wanted to kiss someone that I liked, once, before I marry him.”
Cadell staggered back a step, breaking her arms’ hold around his neck. His horrified eyes flared wider. “Does that mean that you had never kissed a guy before?”
“Um, yeah.” Her legs trembled so hard that she started to fall straight down, but Cadell’s arms slid underneath her armpits. He eased them both down to the floor.
He said, “You’ve never been kissed.”
“Never,” she said, reaching her arms around him, trying to seek out that hint of spice and something darker on his neck again.
His eyes widened. “Then you’ve never—”
She shook her head. Her hair fell around her face, the strands snarling into a mess.
“You’re twenty-six!” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “You’re a doctor. You’ve been through college and medical school and more stuff, and you live in New York City.”
She shook her head again because a lump had lodged in her throat.
“I thought you wanted one last fuck before you got married. I was going to screw you against the door, here.” He slapped his hand against it, probably startling anyone in the hallway outside.
“I just wanted to kiss you,” she said. “I just wanted to see what it was like.”
He ran his hand through his hair, pulling it back from his eyes. “I don’t know what to say. If I had known it was your first kiss—”
“Don’t. Whatever you’re going to say, don’t. It was perfect. I don’t want to know if it wasn’t.”
He squinted his eyes as he looked around the break room, at the threadbare couches and flat pillows on the bunkbeds, and his voice rose in distress. “I would have taken you out to dinner first. I would have taken you someplace special, not kissed you in a flop room in a hospital. It smells like farts in here.”
“That’s Chen’s fish and cabbage in the fridge. He eats it every day.”
He stroked one hand down her jaw line. “I would have made it better.”
“It was perfect,” she said. “I wouldn’t have wanted anything different.”
He held her, practically rocking her in his arms, until she was all right again. She brushed her hair out with a hairbrush that she kept in a drawer in the bathroom, and they walked down the hall to see Emily, staying about a foot apart, not touching.