Silver Screen Dream (9 page)

They ate then started all over again. It was rougher that time, with hair pulling and buttock slapping and screams and roars and bodily fluids. It was more Djinn-like, but I still preferred reading the newspaper over actually watching them at it. I just peeked now and then just to check my master wasn’t in trouble.

The sun had started to sink in the sky before they even thought to pull apart.

“I have to go into work tomorrow,” she said with a sigh. “I’d better go home.”

“No, stay,” he said and pulled her back into his naked embrace. Neither of them had dressed, not for long, anyway. Only just enough not to scandalise the servers bringing them their meals.

“Rahul,” she gasped, “I don’t want to go but I need to be at work tomorrow. I need my uniform and that’s at my house.”

“What time do you have to go in?” he asked. He traced swirls on the back of her hand with his fingers.

“Ten o’clock,” she replied. “I’ve got to get in and do the stocktake and start the popcorn machine, and Mark isn’t going to be in for the next few days so I’ll get saddled with the sweets, too…”

“You can go in the morning,” he said. “Don’t leave me yet.”

He used the full power of his pout. It didn’t just work on the silver screen, it seemed to have an almost magical effect in real life, too. She almost resisted and I was almost impressed.

“Rahul, Rahul, Rahul, I want to stay—”

“Stay then.” He was not going to back down. Rahul was a stubborn bastard.

“It isn’t that simple. I need to wash, to change, to brush my teeth.”

“You can do all that here.”

“I don’t have my toothbrush.”

“I’ll get one for you.”

“My uniform isn’t here.”

“Get it in the morning.”

“How early am I going to have to get up to get home, get changed and get to work in time?”

“Roger, my driver, will take you. It’ll be fine.” He was pouting again. “But if you really want to go and leave me, then just go.”

It was a line straight from one of his insipid films.

She humphed.

“You know I don’t want to go. Okay, okay, you’ve worn me down, I’ll stay.”

“Really?”

“Really,” she smiled. “But don’t expect to always get your way so easily with me, Mr Khan. I am not that easy.”

“I’m not worrying about the future. Right now I just want you here with me.”

“God, Rahul, we’re starting to sound like a scene from one of your films.”

“We are a bit, aren’t we?” He laughed.

I returned my attention to the crossword. No doubt they were going to get back to it at any moment.

“Rahul?” she said after a little giggling, a little cooing and a few breathy gasps.

“Yes,
Jaanu
?”

“What are we going to do tomorrow?”

“Well, you have to work apparently, but we could meet up after that.”

“No, I didn’t mean it like that. I kind of meant tomorrow as in the future. We can’t just lock ourselves away in this hotel room forever.”

The conversation had got somewhat interesting. I gave up pondering five down and listened in.

“Maybe not forever, but I reckon we could do it for a pretty long time. We could go out now and then. I hear there’s a good Bollywood film showing right now.”

“Can you not be serious for a moment?” she gasped.

“No, I’m enjoying myself too much to be serious.”

“Oh, okay.” She didn’t sound happy.

I found myself all the more interested.

“I’m sorry,” Rahul apologised. That in itself was a rarity. “I don’t really look much to the future. I live in the now, it’s an actor thing.”

“Well, I’m happy to live in the now, but I’m not generally a fuck and go kind of girl. But this isn’t going to be much more than an extended one night stand, right?”

“Why is that a bad thing?” he asked.

She rolled away from him with a sigh.

“No, Laura, hang on a minute. Why is it a bad thing? We get to enjoy each other completely while it lasts. I’m going to move on eventually. I’m a Bollywood star, and, as much as I don’t want to, I’ll have to go back to India eventually. I don’t want to think forward to a time when I don’t have you lying next to me. I don’t, that hurts me too much. Can’t we just think of the now? The fun and the exciting now that I’m enjoying with all my heart?”

I raised a horny brow in surprise. Rahul was expressing true emotion. Whoa, I had not seen him do that for a very long time.

“Okay.” She rolled back over to face him. “I don’t want to think of a time when we’re not together, either. I’m glad you feel what I feel when we touch.”

“How could I not?” he answered. “I want to make you complex promises, I want to tell you things I’ve never told another woman before, not for real anyway, but I don’t want to offer you something I can’t really give you, you know?”

“Sort of,” she replied. “I just need to know I’m not just another conquest.”

Rahul shook his head. “No,
pyar
, no. Not just that. Do you think I’d have called you at such a ridiculous hour if that was all you were? Do you think I’d have convinced you to spend the whole day with me if I thought of you as just another fuck?”

“I guess not.”

I could see tears splashed across her cheeks. When I looked at Rahul, his eyes were watery, too. No, it couldn’t be, could it?

“Okay. Are we all right now?” he asked.

She never answered, but as thirty seconds later they were kissing and caressing and getting down and dirty again, I imagined they were indeed fine once more. I had seen a glimpse of something in Rahul, a glimpse that worried me. I saw truth, I saw affection and I was pretty sure I’d seen love.

I went back to the crossword and ignored the grunts, moans and exclamations from the bed area of the room.

“Laura, I want to give you something.”

Rahul’s voice lifted my eyes from the last crossword clue before me. He reached across to the bedside table and picked up his amulet. Well, my amulet, really.

“I sent this to you to prove it was me who had sent Roger. I want you to have it, to keep it so that every time you look at it, every time you hold it, you’ll think of me.”

She gasped. “Oh, Rahul, it’s beautiful, but I can’t accept it.”

Too right,
I thought.
That’s my second home he’s dangling from his fingers.

“It’s been in my family for several generations and it always brings luck to the wearer.”

“Rahul, it’s yours, it’s your inheritance. I can’t take it away from you.”

I liked Laura more and more by the minute.

“All right.” He sighed. “You’re a stubborn woman. Well, keep it safe for me, then. I’ll give it to you to look after until we meet again. This amulet will stay with you as a reminder that I will be back for you, okay? Whatever happens, I’ll be back for you.”

She simply nodded and he placed the necklace over her head so my home from home nestled snugly between her boobs. I was not a happy bunny, my property should not be given away willy-nilly, but I was touched by Rahul’s grand gesture. It was a gesture that seemed to mean something, too. Maybe it was even some form of love. I hoped he’d have time to snatch the necklace back before he got carted off to India and his wedding.

As things went, though, he didn’t have time to take it back.

Laura was in the shower the next morning when the two large and stocky Asians barged into the room with nary an introduction.

“You’re coming with us,” they said in deep, thick Hindi.

“I am not,” he replied. He had just slipped into some jeans, getting ready to take the limo back with Laura. It seemed he wanted to spend as much time with her as he could. “Who the fuck are you? I’m calling security.”

“Don’t even think of it.” The tall one with the cheek scar whipped a gun out of his inside coat pocket.

I’m not an expert, but it looked pretty real and it had one of those tubey bits on the end. I’d seen enough crime dramas to know it was a silencer.

“Now come with us, you have a wedding to attend.”

For a moment, I thought Rahul was going to resist. Then his gaze darted in the direction of the bathroom. It didn’t linger there long but he just nodded. I was glad the stereo was blaring loud enough to cover the sound of the running water. Rahul walked forwards with his hands up in front of himself in a sign of surrender.

“Johnny,” he hissed as he stepped past my kettle, “I wish you would rescue me.”

“No can do,” I said as I appeared, for his eyes only, beside him in a puff of Djinn magic.

“Why the fuck not?” he growled.

“These good gents are here to take you to marry Malati. My prime directive was to make sure you married that girl. I can’t go against the direct wish of your father.”

Rahul glared at me as one of the brutes grabbed his arm and shoved him out of the door. I followed them down the back stairs and out to their battered up rust bucket of a van. I sat in the back of it with Rahul.

“I can’t believe you’d betray me like this.” He shook his head. The guys had bound his wrists together with some scratchy looking old rope, and he sat on the floor of the van with his elbows resting on his knees, his face in his hands.

“Oh, come on, I can’t do anything else, I’m just—”

“Obeying orders, yes, I know,” he snapped. “But have you once stopped to think about this? I don’t want to marry Malati and I can tell you she doesn’t want to marry me, either.”

“How do you know that?” I questioned.

“None of your business, arsehole. I’ve been in contact with Malati a time or two since childhood, and she has been very emphatic about not wanting to marry me.”

“But Malati has ordered these brutes over here to get you?”

“I doubt it,” he scoffed. “It will be her father’s doing, I bet. Though how he knew exactly where to find me, I don’t know.”

I knew. Panya. She hadn’t wasted any time in exacting her revenge.

“What do you know, Johnny?” Rahul looked at me inquisitively.

“I don’t know nothing.”

“Double negative, mate, you know something. What’ve you done?”

“Followed orders.”

“Fuck, Johnny, that is wearing really thin, now. What is going to happen to Laura? She’ll panic, maybe she’ll even go to the police and who will they arrest? Her, because she is in my hotel room wearing my amulet and she will tell them truthfully she has no idea where I am?”

I shrugged. “I can protect Laura if you wish it.”

“No thanks, pal. I have your fucking protection, and look where it has got me. I don’t want you anywhere near her. You’re a fucking curse, that’s what you are. You seemingly give me all I want, but it’s all lies and distractions and insubstantial bullshit.”

“Well, if that’s how you feel, release me, then.”

“No,” Rahul growled. “If I’m going to be imprisoned for the rest of my life, I don’t see why I should let you off the hook.”

“It won’t be that bad.” I shrugged. “Malati is a pretty young woman.”

“Yes, she is.” Rahul pulled at his bonds with his teeth for a moment then made a face and stopped. “She’s very pretty but I don’t love her and she doesn’t love me.”

“So?” Stupid human, didn’t he know marriage and love are not necessarily the same thing?

“When I marry, I want to marry for love. I want to marry the woman who makes me laugh. I want to marry the woman who turns me on with the gentlest kiss. I want to marry the woman who cares for me, who puts my wishes before her own. I want to marry the woman I cherish, the woman I never want to hurt. I want to marry my soul mate. I want to marry my true love. I want to marry Laura.”

He stared hard at me after his outburst. His chest heaved up and down and his cheeks were flushed with emotion.

“Pardon?” I had heard perfectly well exactly what he had said. I just hadn’t had time to process it.

“Oh you idiotic, fucking Djinn. I love Laura. I love her. I’ve never felt like this before about someone. I don’t want to be parted from her for even a moment and sitting here, bound and speeding away from her, is breaking me in two. It has to be love. It has to be. I’ve never experienced anything so beautiful before in all my life.”

He stared at me and I stared at him. I stared into the depths of those nauseatingly blue eyes and I saw it. I saw the flash of flame, the flickering of a fire that once lit can never be quenched.

“Shit.” I exclaimed. “Well, this throws a fucking spanner in the works.”

“So, does that mean you’re going to help me?”

“I don’t have much choice,” I muttered. “True flipping love. Why couldn’t you have told me that earlier?”

Rahul sighed. “I didn’t know until now.”

“Bloody humans, you’re so slow. So what are we going to do now?”

“You’re supposed to be the one with the answers.” Rahul elbowed me in the vicinity of my ribs. “I don’t know what to do next. Can I just wish my way out of this?”

“Long story short, no. The whole true love thing only works when the two halves are together. So I am currently still bound by my promise to your father. I’m not going to do anything to actively help out the two goons who are kidnapping you, but I can’t just poof you out of here, either.”

“Can you smack one of them while I head butt the other?”

“No,” I replied emphatically.

“Because you’re bound by Dad’s wish?”

“No, because I might break a nail and that’d make me cranky.”

“Really?” he scoffed.

“Really. And violence isn’t ever the right answer.”

“But what about that time when—”

“Oh hush. I’m not going to take them on because I won’t need to,” I interjected. “I’ve just come up with a plan.”

“What’s that?” Rahul asked, an eager twinkle in his eyes.

“I’m going to go and get Laura to come and rescue you.”

“I know she can be a bit feisty, but I’m not sure she can take on those two slabs of meat on her own.”

“Oh, come off it, genius, that’s not what I meant.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“Look, I don’t have time to tell you it in depth, but just trust me. Go with the brothers grim and get ready for your wedding. Laura and I will save you.”

“So, I’m just going to have to trust you?”

“Yes, basically.”

“I’m doomed.” He sighed dramatically as the van came to a halt and the engine noise abruptly ended.