“You’re a force of nature,” she said. He was. And he’d get better and better. Because he would never stop trying. Already at twenty-six he was way ahead of where she’d been. The urge to be there for it was unbearable. But she knew it changed nothing for her.

“We are a force of nature,” he said, and kissed her long and hard. Exactly the way she needed to be kissed in this moment. She had this moment. They had this moment.

“We are,” she said. “But I’m not sleeping with you in your brother’s home.”

He jumped off the couch. “Then we’d better hurry and get to your place.”

She followed him without a thought. All she could do was be honest with herself about what was possible. And I’ve been honest with him.

But the voice inside her that told her the crash was coming kept getting louder.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Vansh couldn’t tell if Naina had become progressively more withdrawn since that disastrous day in the boardroom or if his own need for her had become harder to control.

What was wrong with him? She was inside him, inside his head, his heart, all the time. All the damn time.

Don’t think about the arrangement.

Don’t think about what will happen when the arrangement ends.

A year? Tops?

What the hell had he been thinking?

At least she wasn’t withdrawn with him when they made love. He’d never thought of sex as making love, but nothing else fit. It was the kind of intimacy Vansh had never experienced. It threw him wide open, made him more himself than he’d ever been. She made him exactly who he wanted to be, in bed and out of it.

How was he ever going to live without it?

When he touched her, when he was inside her, there was no distance between them. No part of her held apart. They were one. Body and soul.

He wanted that all the time. All the damn time.

And the work! The work they were doing was magic. All his life Vansh had done only what made him feel alive. But he’d needed it to be seen, to be on his family’s radar. He’d gathered their approval like a child with a giant empty pillowcase on Halloween. Knowing only too well that they’d throw approval into his bag irrespective of what he did to earn it. Their approval had been their support and guilt. It hadn’t been approval at all.

I’m proud of you too.

At least HRH had done him the favor of making his approval unattainable.

How can one of my children be stupid?

Well, Dad, stupid people didn’t find a way to fund solutions to problems others only complained about.