Rebel Hard (Hard Play #2) Read online

  “If he’s not taken by that woman,” Ísa murmured, undaunted, “and my instincts say he’s not, then I think you’ve got a good shot.” Warm encouragement in Ísa’s tone, but then, Ísa had always been on Nayna’s side. “He was just staring at you.”

  Nayna wanted to dig a hole and crawl in it. “Probably wondering what a nerd like me is doing in this den of freakily good-looking people.” She grabbed her friend’s arm. “Come on, let’s at least go see some skinny-dipping.”

  Sadly, it turned out Tara’s words had been premature. Everyone was still decent. “We’ll be the skinny-dippers,” Nayna said wildly, clenching her gut to control the butterflies yet dancing in there—that gorgeous man was not for her, and silly fantasies about him would just lead to torment. “After the lights are off and everyone’s gone home.”

  Ísa’s laugh was warm, lighting up her big, gray-green eyes. “Deal.”

  A waiter paused next to them, flutes of champagne on his tray and a “go on” look on his black-goateed face.

  Deciding she deserved a glass of bubbles even if she was going to welch on the dare, Nayna reached for a flute. “You want one?” she asked Ísa, and when her friend nodded, she handed it over. She was about to take one for herself when her fingers collided with a big, warm hand. “Oh, I’m so sorr—”

  Nayna froze.

  It was him.

  The beautiful man. The genuine hunk with the jaw he hadn’t bothered to shave and the jeans that had a slight tear on the thigh. Not an artistic these-jeans-cost-five-hundred-dollars tear. No, the rest of his jeans were well loved but whole. It was simply that one spot that was worn away to the point that it had torn.

  Why was that so sexy?

  “Here.” He gave her a flute of champagne with a moment of intense eye contact that had her butterflies swooning. “I’m Raj.”

  She shot Ísa a desperate look, but her traitorous best friend just gave her a small nod and a grin before melting back into the crowd. And that quickly, Nayna was alone with the hunk. She almost begged the waiter to stay, but he was moving off and then someone else slid past her, bumping her in the back.

  Raj’s arm came around her. “You won’t be bumped here.” Before she knew it, he’d moved her so her back was to a wall.

  Dropping his hand from her back, he kept enough distance between them that she didn’t feel boxed in. Except he had wide shoulders and he’d angled his body in a way that meant she couldn’t be bumped by anyone else—or easily approached.

  Like a lion cutting his prey out of the herd.

  5

  Deliciously Bad Decisions in the Moonlight

  Nayna’s thighs squeezed together.

  She should’ve worn panties. Definitely. Things could get embarrassing if he kept on speaking to her and sending out those male pheromones that were playing havoc with her whimpering body. But of course he wouldn’t keep on talking to her. Whatever had caused him to decide to approach her, he’d figure out soon enough that she was no sophisticated and experienced partier—even if she was faking it in this dress.

  “What’s your name?” His voice was like deep water cascading over her, caressing her in all sorts of impossible places.

  “Nayna,” she managed to get out past her bone-dry throat. “I’m an accountant.” OH GOD, NAYNA! She winced inwardly at that silent scream from the part of her that wanted to clamber onto Raj and rub herself all over his extraordinarily gorgeous self. She might as well stamp NERD on her forehead.

  That witch Suzanne had written the exact word in permanent marker on her forehead during a school camp—an act through which Nayna and Ísa had both somehow slept. Probably because they’d been exhausted by the compulsory hiking followed by obstacle course runs that ended with a scramble up a rope fence. As if all teenagers were superheroes who chewed steel for breakfast.

  But instead of backing off in distaste or confusion, Raj nodded. “Have you done that test you have to do to become chartered? That’s the word, right?”

  Nayna blinked at the question that sounded far too serious for a casual party conversation—but at least he wasn’t running away. “Yes,” she said, and it was more air than sound. “Still so new I’m shiny.” She was staring at his mouth, his lower lip fuller than his upper, so she saw that mouth curve.

  Just a little. As if he wasn’t a man who smiled much. Which made her want to crack his shell until his grin creased his cheeks. He’d go from gorgeous to flat-out heartbreaking, of that she was sure. Maybe he didn’t smile on purpose. Must be hard to continuously move swooning women out of his path.

  Skin heating when she got caught staring, she looked down… and got hooked on the pecs defined by his tee. “What about you? What kind of work do you do?”

  “Construction,” he answered shortly but didn’t move away.

  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.

  But he bit lightly at her lower lip as he continued to walk her back until her butt gently hit a wall. Cornering her again. And oh, it felt good. His body was so hot and hard against her own, and he was so overwhelmingly big and strong. As for his mouth—serious, intense Raj knew exactly how to use his mouth to make her embarrassingly wet.

  When he ran his hand up her body to close over her breast, she didn’t protest.

  But he stopped, his hand in her hair, and said, “You with me, Nayna?”

  Endorphins flooded her system at the sound of her name on his lips. Licking her lips, she nodded. “Yes. Please don’t stop.”

  Dark eyes flashing, he pressed his mouth to hers once more, the bristles on his jaw scraping at her skin all over again and sending prickles of sensation all through her. More strokes of her body, his hands assured and holding a raw heat. His palms snagged at times on the fabric of her dress, his calluses hard from physical labor. All Nayna could think of each time it happened was what those hardworking and gifted hands would feel like on her naked skin.

  She ran her own palms down his chest and up over his arms. Smooth skin and firm muscle, there was nothing about Raj’s body she didn’t like. And his scent… Nayna wanted to nuzzle and just breathe in, kiss his throat, lick him into her own bloodstream.

  Hot breaths, hearts beating faster, bodies pressed closer.

  Raj tugged down the wonderfully stretchy fabric of her dress. Her breasts popped out. She would’ve been mortified that he was seeing the pitiful mounds except that Raj had one hand over her left breast while he’d dropped his mouth to her right one. She whimpered at the first touch, biting back a cry of disappointment when he drew back.

  “You’re short without the heels,” he muttered and scooped her up like she weighed nothing.

  Nayna’s inner core clenched while her hands gripped at his shoulders. Never in her life had she dreamed she’d be with a man this strong.

  Wrapping her legs around his waist was instinctive, his body heavy and solid between her quivering thighs as he pinned her to the wall in a dark corner of a moon-kissed garden. The position pushed up her dress indecently farther, until she was a mere inch or two away from total exposure.

  A burst of shyness threatened to strangle her.

  “That’s better,” Raj said roughly before she could surrender to the emotion, and then, one hand spread on her lower back, arched her toward him. He licked her nipple once, paused.

  Whimpering, Nayna fisted her hands in his hair and tugged.

  He gave her what she wanted, sucking her nipple and part of her breast into his mouth. He scraped his teeth over her flesh. Nayna’s head fell back, her breathing ragged. She’d imagined what it might be like, but this… “Raj.”

  Releasing her breast, he came to her mouth. One hand still on her back, he fisted the other in the straight strands of her hair, gripping it tight. His chest crushed hers as he kissed her deep and demanding, her nipples rubbing against his T-shirt. That he was fully clothed while her dress was crumpled around her waist just amplified the wetness between her thighs.

  Nayna kissed him back without finesse, driven by need.

  He moved the hand on her back past her hip and to her thigh. Cupping her thigh from below, he stroked her skin as he kissed her like she’d always wanted to be kissed.

  “You taste so good,” she blurted out when they came up for air, and wanted to wince at her lack of sophistication.

  But Raj kissed her again, as if in reward for her confession. His bristly jaw continued to be rough against her skin, his hand even tighter in her hair. The small tugs sent pulses right to her clit, the tiny bundle of nerves aching for his touch.

  Though if he did go there, Nayna wasn’t sure she’d survive it.

  The next time Raj broke the kiss, he moved his hand back up to her breast, squeezing and petting it while he held her gaze. “I like how tight and firm you are,” he murmured. “Like biting into a just-ripe peach.”

  Her skin flushed, her throat dry.

  “What do you want?” A rough rumble of a question as he ran the pad of his thumb over her engorged nipple.

  Her toes curled, her breath catching. “Take off your T-shirt.”

  He rubbed the pad of his thumb over her nipple again. It was a jolt through her entire system each and every time. Eyes hooded, he watched himself touch her, distracted from her request by the visual eroticism.

  So Nayna, bad girl to the core tonight, pulled at his T-shirt.

  He got the hint, kissing her hard one more time before he reached down to tear off the T-shirt and drop it to the grass—while keeping her exactly where she was using the pressure of his body. Then she was skin-to-skin with him and he was kissing her throat while making rumbling sounds in his chest, and Nayna decided this was it. He was it.

  The man to whom she’d give her virginity.

  Never, never had she thought she’d find a man who made her forget to be self-conscious and just enjoy herself. Yet here she was, half-naked and with no panties and she was ready to keep going as long as he kept touching her.

  It felt like she’d been thirsty all this time and he was the rain.

  Nibbling his way up her throat, he used his grip on her hair to angle her head to claim another kiss. Nayna wasn’t about to resist. For Raj, she was easy. When he stopped and nipped lightly at her lower lip, she opened her eyes to find his looking into hers.

  Her breath caught, her gaze his prisoner.

  6

  Reason #1 Why All Naynas Should Invest in Running Shoes

  Bracing one hand against the wall beside her head, Raj squeezed her breast as if he had every right to fondle her.

  Nayna shivered, unable to look away from the penetrating darkness of his eyes. He was the one who looked down… to focus on his hand on her breast. Teeth sinking into her lower lip, she followed his gaze and her thighs cl
enched around him.

  His hand was marked by multiple nicks and scars, his nails cut bluntly. Veins stood out on the back of his hand and along his arm, and she had never seen anything sexier than Raj’s hand on her breast. She watched, barely able to breathe, as he rotated the pad of his thumb over her suddenly excruciatingly sensitive nipple.

  She dug her nails into his shoulder.

  Lashes rising, he leaned in closer and said, “Do you like rock climbing?”

  Dazed and aroused, Nayna had to decode the roughly spoken words one by one. “I’ve never been rock climbing.” It was surreal having this conversation while he was fondling her breast and she was petting his chest like it was her most favorite thing on the planet. “You must be good at it. You’re so strong.”

  “Climbing’s not just about strength, it’s about strategy too.” Serious words followed by a line of suckling kisses down her throat, complete with a light graze of teeth. “Like this,” he said after kissing his way back to her mouth. “To please you properly will take time. I’ll have to learn what you like. You don’t build a house on faulty foundations.”

  Nayna was caught by the blazing intelligence in his eyes as he spoke. She’d known from their first minute together that he was no vacuous hunk; there were too many layers to him, his unsmiling shell hard and armored and fascinating beyond compare. This was not a man you could get to know in a single night, or even in a single year.

  Raj was a mystery a woman would only solve if he decided to let her.

  Nayna wanted him to let her.

  A second after that thought passed through her mind, she mentally shook it away in panicked desperation. If Raj was smart as well as gorgeous and sexy, she might not be able to walk away, and she had to walk away. Her parents were looking for a “suitable” boy for her. So far, that had meant two other accountants, one lawyer, one high school teacher, and one financial advisor. Clean-cut. Besuited. Strictly white collar.

  Construction workers need not apply.