“They do not hate you.”

“Let’s carry on.”

His eyes lit up as though he’d already convinced her. He seriously needed to learn the fine art of not jumping the gun.

“Gladly.” He stuck out his counting fingers again. “Three, you’re easy to talk to, Knightlina. I like talking to you. Talking to you is as much fun as having my thigh jacked—sorry, jilled—off upon.”

“Can I stop you there for one moment and mention that if you say ‘jill off’ one more time, I’m going to punch you?”

“See, you have no problem telling me exactly what you want. We communicate communicate communicate. Keep those channels open while we”—he wiggled his brows—“explore other channels.”

“Vansh! I do not believe you just said that.”

He blew on his knuckles. “I live to amuse you, m’lady. And the last one is the easiest. Four, sex is sex. We keep it separate from the rest of it.”

“And how, pray tell, do we do that?”

“Easy. We stay focused. We admit how badly we want each other. I mean, we already know this is about us not wanting to keep our hands off each other.” Their hands were inches apart on the bright yellow linen of the couch, and he was not wrong, the tug was a tidal force. “It’s already out there in the open. Nothing to hide, nothing to prove.”

Except nothing was ever that easy. How could anything possibly be as easy as it felt with him?

This was Vansh. Vansh.

“How old were you at Nisha’s wedding?” Those were the first words that popped into her head. The only response that felt like it might derail him, shut off where her own brain was going.

It made her withdraw into herself and pull away from him.

His hand followed hers as she pulled away. How does it matter? That was the question in his eyes, but he didn’t ask it. “Sixteen,” he said simply.

I don’t remember you at all, she wanted to say. Because she didn’t. All she remembered from back then was anger. Rage. The constant sense that she wanted to break something but didn’t know how to.

“I don’t even remember being sixteen. Actually, that’s a lie. I do remember. When I was sixteen my father sat me down and let me know that I was not permitted to date. Not ever. That no daughter of his would be a whore. That as soon as I had a degree, I’d be getting married. That was the first time I told him I was only interested in Yash.”

Every time she mentioned his brother, she had the urge to search his face. How could it feel this irrelevant that Yash was his brother? It wasn’t irrelevant. It couldn’t be.