“When we are in public, you need to make it very clear that you are besotted with me.” She glared at him. “Why are you smiling?”
“Am I?” He set his mouth in a firm line. Tina was staking her claim. He liked it. He liked knowing that she was protecting what she felt was hers. She hadn’t done it that boldly before. Had he mistaken her silence for confidence instead of uncertainty? Did she think she didn’t have a right to make a claim? That he would have rejected it?
“I’m serious, Dev.” She crossed her arms and leaned forward. “You want to prove to your investors that you have a stable family life? Don’t let them think you’re having an extramarital affair.”
Dev rubbed his hand over his chin, hiding the smile that wanted to break through. Tina was going to be so angry when she discovered that there were no investors. That he had foreign investor groups who were clamoring to work with him since they had discovered Bollywood made billions.
“Do you think I’m going to respond to threats?” he asked silkily.
She rested her head on the wall and sighed as if the fight was leaving her. “Can you at least act like I was your one and only choice for a wife?”
“Yeah, I can do that,” he said in a husky whisper. He wished he had shown it earlier and more often. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have made Tina feel unwanted. “But I want something else in return.”
She looked at him with suspicion. “What?”
“Tell me where you went after you left me in Los Angeles.” He needed to know. He was sure he wasn’t going to like the answer, but the not knowing was killing him. “And who replaced me during those months?”
* * *
Tina hesitated. She didn’t have to tell him. She knew that Shreya wasn’t a threat to her marriage. That she never had been. It seemed incredible that the ingenue would choose another man over Dev.
Tina wanted to keep her secret. She was afraid to tell her husband where she had been. It could be used as ammunition.
“Why are you so quick to assume that I was with another man?” she asked. His accusation bothered her. Did he think she was like the bad girls she played on screen?
“Why were you so quick to think I’ve been with Shreya all this time?” he countered.
Tina flattened her hand against her chest. “I’m not the one with the playboy reputation. I’m not the one who’s been caught with photographic evidence. And I was a virgin when I met you.”
She saw the possessive gleam in his eye and it made her skin flush. He loved the fact that he was her first and made no secret about it. But now the idea that he may not be her only lover had shaken him.
“You may have been a virgin, but you were not innocent.” His gaze drifted to her mouth. He leaned forward and then stopped, catching himself before he kissed her. “You knew how to drive me wild that first time. And once you had a taste of pleasure, you were insatiable.”
She blushed. “So what?” She couldn’t let him know just how much his touch affected her. How she became almost obsessed with him and his body.
He clenched his jaw and a muscle bunched in his cheek. “There is no way you would have been celibate while we were apart,” he decided. “You are too sensual and too passionate to have slept alone.”