Cherish Hard
Page 16

Sailor was standing on the grass across which Ísa had just run, watching the entire process with a frown she could see from here. What if he decided to come over? Ísa’s heart pounded as Nayna pulled out and zoomed them down the drive. Her friend had turned the vehicle around at some point during her hiding and now they just had to go straight.
Until they were outside the gate and on the road.
“Oh thank God,” they both said in unison.
Ísa looked at Nayna.
Nayna looked at her before returning her attention to the road. “You first.”
“No, you,” Ísa replied, needing time to unscramble the thoughts in her head. “Why were you hiding?” Worry and anger had her spine going steely. “Did that Raj guy do something?”
Nayna huffed out a breath, another. Hands tight on the steering wheel, she said, “It was fine at first. We were talking, flirting. Then… um…”
“I can see your smudged lipstick.” She decided not to mention the marks on her friend’s neck. Nibble marks.
The kind of marks Ísa might’ve had if the other skinny-dippers hadn’t interrupted her and Sailor.
Nayna groaned. “I’m going to have to come up to your apartment to fix it before I head home. My dad will wait up until I get in.”
“You need to move out.”
“I will, when I get married.” Nayna’s voice was glum.
“You don’t sound happy about it.”
“Why do you keep going to board meetings?”
“Low blow,” Ísa muttered, scowling at the best friend who knew her far too well. “So you and Raj snuck out and kissed?” That, at least, was an encouraging sign.
“We made out like hormone-crazed teenagers,” Nayna admitted, her skin flushing. “In a shadowy corner of the garden. He had his hands on parts of me that no one else has ever touched.”
This was sounding extremely promising. But Nayna’s expression was less than ecstatic. “What went wrong?” Ísa asked, worried. “Did he get rough? Wanted to go further than you were ready for?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.” Nayna swallowed hard. “He started talking.”
“What?”
“I’m going to have an arranged marriage, Ísa. I’ve agreed to that with my family. My father’s set up meetings with prospective grooms.” She pulled over to park on a quiet part of the street, the ocean crashing to shore on their right and large old trees arching their gnarled branches over the car from the left. “I have a voice, but I only get to choose from the men they’ve already vetted.”
Despite her difficulty in accepting Nayna’s decision, Ísa knew why her friend had made it, knew that Nayna was trying to mend her family’s broken heart by shattering her own. Hurting for her closest friend, she said, “Raj talking changed that?”
“I just wanted to have this one crazy night, to be the woman I dream about being when I’m lying awake at midnight, a woman who doesn’t care anything about the world and does exactly as she wants,” Nayna said softly. “Raj fit the fantasy. Hard-bodied hot guy who wanted to do dirty things to me. Then he began talking, and he was saying things that made him sound smart.”
Ísa just listened.
“I didn’t want to know him.” Nayna was almost crying. “I didn’t want to find out that he’s not just a good-looking hunk. I didn’t want to know that he likes rock-climbing and that he was thinking about going to an exhibition on Egyptian art. He invited me.” Her voice shook. “And I…”
“What, Nayna?” Ísa reached out to close her hand over her friend’s. “What happened?”
“I told him to be quiet. That I wanted his body and nothing else.”
Ísa’s mouth fell open. “You said that?” It came out a squeak. “Really?”
Nayna threw her hands over her face as she nodded. “I had my hand inside his half-open shirt at the time. His hand was… Let’s just say he didn’t take it well,” she whispered through her fingers. “He turned to ice so fast it was like I was in Antarctica.”
Finally dropping her hands, she banged her head against the back of the driver’s seat. “When he turned around to swear at the night, I slipped off my shoes and ran away.”
“Did he come after you?”
“I don’t know.” Biting down on her lower lip, Nayna folded her arms across her middle, as if hugging in the tearing confusion of her emotions. “The music was pretty loud by then, even out in the garden, so he probably didn’t even know I was gone until he turned back around.”
Ísa blew out a long breath. “Do you want to go back?” she asked, even though that was the last thing she wanted. For Nayna, she’d face even that nightmare. “Try to explain?”
“How can I possibly explain being that much of a bitch?” Her voice trembled. “Hi, Raj, I just wanted to use your body, then forget all about you, because sometime in the next twelve months, I’m planning to marry a man I don’t love and probably won’t even really desire.”
She shook her head so hard that it sent the silky strands of her hair flying to stick to her cheeks. “Somehow I don’t think that would go over well.” A shuddering exhale. “Please tell me you had a better time.” Pleading eyes. “I need at least one of us to have had a successful night of debauchery.”
“Technically,” Ísa said, “you did get in the debauchery before it all turned to custard. Was his chest nice?”
Nayna laughed wetly. “Oh my God, Ísa. I didn’t know it could be so much fun to just…” She wiggled her fingers as if digging them into a man’s pecs. “And the way he smelled… I wanted to bury my nose in his throat while I rubbed myself all over him.”
Ísa nodded. “I did rub myself all over Sailor. Naked.”
Nayna actually eeped before pausing to look carefully at Ísa’s face. “That’s not a happy-sexy-times face,” she said, her tone morose. “Was he an ass?”
Shaking her head, Ísa confessed the truth. “He was wonderful. I knew he was a mistake, but I couldn’t help myself from starting to fall.” It was her turn to become agitated, her hands flying to thrust through her hair without her conscious volition.
“So what happened?” Nayna frowned. “I saw him with you before you two left the party. He was eating you up with his eyes.”
“He was there that night… with the Slimeball.” Ísa felt her stomach lurch as the horrible memory roared to the forefront of her mind all over again.
Nayna’s eyes widened. “One of Cody’s friends?”
“I guess so,” Ísa muttered, hands fisting. “It was Cody’s party after all.” Nayna hadn’t been able to come that night, her parents far stricter than Ísa’s had ever been; often, as a teen, Ísa had wished for parents who actually cared about her whereabouts.
“Are you bothered because he saw what happened that night?”
“My ritual humiliation?” Face hot, Ísa told herself it was over, in the past. “No, why would I be bothered that a man I want to be naked with saw someone call me a tub of lard?” Her skin felt like fire.