Bollywood and the Beast (Bollywood Confidential) (6 page)

“She’s not a damn plant, Kamal.” He levered himself up slowly and then accepted Kamal’s arm for balance. “And even if she were, she shouldn’t grow here. It’s not her earth, not her air. Delhi’s climate is too dry for one such as her.”

He
was too dry for one such as her.
“You’re disgusting,”
she’d told him, and about that, she was entirely correct. For he could not look at her without thinking a hundred disgusting thoughts, beginning and ending with her spread naked beneath him. With him taking and taking and taking, until all her softness and splendor was nothing but a shell, a husk, a dead thing left to be swept aside.

“The sooner she and Ashu leave this place, the better,” he insisted as he settled into his chair. “They belong in the outside world. In Mumbai. On the movie screens. Running between the trees and tall grasses.”

The damnable man only smiled faintly, taking the gardening metaphor further still as he pushed Taj forth from the confines of his safe haven. “Do you fear they will grow roots,
Saab
?”

No. That was not his fear at all.

“My price is way too high for you.”

He was afraid that sweet Rocky was right…and afraid that his prophecy was spot-on as well. He would pay to make her his. Any cost. A thousand times over. Because she was the first lovely innocent to stumble into his lair in years. Because she challenged him and provoked him and made him
want
. And because he simply could not resist.

Chapter Nine

“You’re such a good boy, Ashraf,” she whispered, closing her red-tipped nails around his cock, stroking with scratches…scratching with strokes. “So strong,
na
? The perfect hero.”

Nausea roiled in his gut, but he couldn’t push her away. He needed her. He needed her influence. He steeled himself, forced the smile, the fawning words she wanted to hear…

Ashraf bolted upright in bed, barely untangling from the sheets and lurching into the attached bath before he was violently ill. He clung to the modern commode, heaving long after his stomach was emptied of its meager contents. Cold sweat dripped from his skin, and his throat was raw with bile. “
Bahenchod
.” He swore, trembling like a leaf in high winds. “
Saala-harami…kyu
? Why? Dammit, why?”

Months had gone by, and the nightmares were as vivid as if Nina still held his chain. He couldn’t free himself from them, from
her
. And to turn to someone else? It was impossible. How could he ever bear anyone else’s touch when hers had burned him to the bone? Who would want him after what she had made him do?

“You deserve it,” he could hear Taj saying. “Who told you to link up with that crazy bitch?”
You did. You told me to do anything to climb to the top, to show them all that our Khan name is as worthy as the others’
. “Win,” his big brother constantly whispered in his ear. “Don’t be weak, Ashu. Win at any cost.” Even the cost of his sleep, of his sanity.

Ashraf hunched on the cool tiles of the floor for an age, until he finally forced himself to stand and wash the illness from his mouth. But he couldn’t scrub it from his eyes, from his bones. Nina’s touch was like a tattoo, burrowed deep beneath his skin. And it was a mark everyone could see. Boy toy. Whore. Idiot. He read the scorn in their eyes daily. It didn’t matter that Rahul Anand had forgiven him, had let him keep the lead role in
Be-Izzati
. Even that was a condemnation wrapped in pretty paper:
be-izzat
, one without honor.

When he looked at his reflection in the glass, black rings of fatigue beneath his eyes and blood cracks within them, he saw it, too: Ashraf had no honor. Worse, he had no future.

It didn’t matter that he showed up on set and hit all his marks. It did not matter that he and Rocky made a beautiful young
jodi
, perfectly selling their budding modern love story. He wore his nightmares like a second skin. Ashraf couldn’t scrub them away under the hot spray of the shower. He could barely cover them in clothing. And he could not outrun them as he stumbled downstairs to meet Rocky and wait for the car to the city.

“God, Ashraf! You look terrible!” she didn’t hesitate to tell him, when other heroines might coo niceties and pretend ignorance. “Are you okay?”

Nahin
. He most certainly was not. But all he gave her was a bleary grunt and a promise that he would be better after a few strong cups of tea from the catering service. They were shooting outside the India Gate today, a magnet for political unrest and public outcry. Somehow, the bigwigs had secured the rights to film for a few hours. Why they could not use stock footage, he did not know.

Once they reached the trailers, he submitted to Wardrobe and Makeup’s ministrations, careful to school his flinches when Maria brushed too close or Aliya’s fingers lingered too long in his hair. They were no threat, their laughter innocently flirtatious and their caresses mostly accidental. If they thought him loose and available, they did not voice it.

It was only when he focused his gaze on yet another mirror that he noticed his misery reflected in Rocky’s eyes. She sat silent as her hair was tugged and tied into a sexy updo befitting a rich Delhi bombshell. It matched the stylish dress and cropped jeans jacket of her costume. Everything coordinated but the flat line of her glossed pink lips.

It was his turn to ask, “Are you okay?”

She waited ’til Aliya and her stylist, Varun, walked away. Her normally bubbly tone was popped. “Chatterjee sent his assistant in while I was changing. They think I sound terrible on the dailies. ‘Too
Amrikan
.’ Bullshit.” Her voice quavered, and she was struggling not to blink her mascara-heavy eyes. “I have been working on my diction for weeks. I might not know what I’m saying, but I know how I’m saying it.”

It all came so easy for her. The dancing, the blocking, the dialogues. She’d walked in off the street and picked up everything in less than two years. “Weeks” she said of her language retention. Ashu couldn’t fathom it. No one could. They blamed her father’s money for her heroine status. They credited her pretty face. He’d done the same, for sure. It was only after he’d met her that he understood how hard she worked. That her path to the cinema hall was different from his but no less difficult. The only true gulf between them was that she
wanted
to be here and he…he loathed every bit of it.

“
Bas
.
Chohro
.” He reached over and squeezed her arm. A far easier action now that they’d filmed together for a few days. “If you gave hundred percent before, you will just give hundred-ten today. I’ll help you. Copy me, born-and-bred Delhi boy. Right?”

She favored him with a smile. Her genuine smile. And when she said to him, “You’re such a good guy, Ashraf,” he choked back his instantly rising gorge and told her, “Thank you.”

He was not a good guy. Good guys were not cursed to be alone.

Almost two full weeks went by without incident. She even fell into a rhythm of sorts. Early breakfasts of banana and
chai
—down in the open dining room, now that Usha had stopped bringing her trays—a full day in the city proper for shooting, and then dinner with Ashu, Kamal and, sometimes, a grudging Taj. Usha whipped up all sorts of delights in her old-fashioned kitchen, hunkered over a coal stove or tending the two gas ranges. Rocky experienced everything from Pakistani dishes meant to remind Kamal of Lahore, traditional Punjabi food and the lighter
chapati
-and-veggies fare Usha made to cater to her shy American palate. As far as funny-looking vegetables went, thumbs-up on the
parwal
, thumbs-down on the
karela
.

It was all becoming familiar. Sometimes
too
familiar. As she passed Taj in the hallway and he slowed the wheels of his chair. As he turned to skewer her with that cocky single eye or flashed her a sharp smile. She grew to interpret more than just his growls and sneers. She learned his wicked suggestions, his lewd flirtations and his
I dare you
s. She sifted his condemnation from his healthy admiration…because the way his gaze lingered on her legs or her ass or her—God forbid—face couldn’t be anything but the latter.

But she got to know the area beyond the Beast’s castle, too. At least a little. The nearest village, a tiny off-the-map enclave called Rangpur, was three kilometers away. Easily a hike for someone who only really walked on a treadmill at the gym, but nothing at all to the two weathered, loincloth-clad men who brought fresh milk and eggs every morning. There had been water bearers, too, Ashraf told Rocky, before their great-grandfather arranged for indoor plumbing and fed pipes from the small river that supplied the village.

Though the
haveli
seemed, and felt, isolated, the Khans weren’t the only landowners in the area. A far more prosperous family—featuring a few local politicians and the magistrate—lived on the other side of Rangpur in a newly refurbished mansion that nearly dwarfed the tree line as they drove past to Delhi. “The Saxenas,” Ashraf confided during one drive. “They have enough money and influence to line pockets and buy the pockets also.”

He was surprisingly forthcoming about all kinds of things and happily answered her questions about the area, the customs and even dialect quirks. He was game as long as she didn’t stray too far into the personal. But there was one thing she couldn’t resist asking. One thing she could only broach when she had a captive audience, and Ashraf’s only means of escape would be tossing himself out onto the open road.

Because his brother had planted the seed, and it had grown and grown in the back of her mind, twisting around like a vine. Like a
penis-shaped
vine. “How much mobility does Taj actually have?
Can
he walk?” On some level, Rocky knew what she was actually asking—
“Perhaps I am half a man in more ways than one”
—but she didn’t dare say any of that aloud. It was too embarrassing. Too intimate.

Ashraf’s suddenly thunderous expression made her think he wasn’t going to answer. Or, worse, that he was going to tell her off for being so nosy. But, after a few seconds of what must’ve been one hell of an internal debate, he just sighed and dragged a hand through his hair. “There was no spinal cord injury. Only very broken legs. Kamal came to help him with medicine and also physical therapy.
Can
he walk? Yes.
Will
he? I don’t know.
Bhaiya
’s secrets are his own. His cage is different from mine.”

The description was a cue she couldn’t ignore. Like the way his mouth tightened and his dark eyes grew even more shuttered. “You have a cage, Ashu? What do you mean?”

Then he
did
opt for silence, instead making a show of glancing out the window. After a few moments, he made some inane comment about the lack of a cavalcade of stalkers trailing them.

But the paparazzi and peril she was supposed to take so much care in avoiding didn’t seem to be an issue at all. No cars followed them to the set. Their locations only had the standard circles of gawkers and assorted photogs. Everything felt…
normal
.

Until the phone started ringing.

It was the house’s landline, connected to ancient rotary phones set up all over the house, and the harsh
brrrrrrr
-ringing was enough to scare anyone used to a mobile on vibrate right out of their skin. Whenever anyone picked up, all they got was a dial tone. Taj swore like a trucker the few times it happened to him. Kamal, who Rocky caught with the phone once, simply sighed deeply, set the heavy receiver back in its cradle and walked away.

After
her
third hang-up call in a row, Rocky stopped frowning at the phone like it was an offending object and went in search of Usha. The older woman wore what Rocky was beginning to think of as her standard uniform—a plain, pastel sari with a solid border—as she bustled around between the two stove burners and the island heaped with diced vegetables and cookware.

“
Kya hain
, Rocky
Mem
?” Usha spoke slowly, already used to her lack of Hindi proficiency.

Rocky sighed, trying to figure out how to phrase the question with her limited vocabulary. It took a combination of gestures, hilarious mispronunciation and a good deal of encouragement on Usha’s part to get the job done. “
Haan
,
Mem
,” the housekeeper confirmed, telling her that strange calls had been coming in ever since the “
Chote Saab
”, Ashraf, had returned home with her in tow.

“Weird. Something’s definitely going on, and I don’t like it.” She wrinkled her nose, leaning against the edge of the island. “Thanks, Usha Auntie.”

“Welcome, Rocky
Mem
.” And, after a pause, the housekeeper smiled—with both her mouth and her eyes. A rarity around the Khan estate, at least when it came to the men. “Welcome home.”

Chapter Ten

As always, the panic struck easily. Like a match catching on the side of the box.

Fire raced up his legs, dancing up to his shoulder and licking his face with phantom tongues. The pain reduced him to blind flailing and fumbling as he reached for his pills on the night table. Then the bottle cap rebelled against him for minutes, making his fingers thick and unwieldy. “Shit. Goddammit.” When he finally tapped out two tablets and swallowed them dry, the worst of the shakes were already fading, leaving him with only the black-and-white memory of being trapped in the cramped Ferrari.

The memory he lived with daily. Hourly. Reflected in every mirror he’d had torn from the walls, every window glass that he didn’t look into. And her eyes. Of course, he saw it in her eyes.