Chapter 4
" I think it means you should get me out of this car before I say something we both regret," Bani admitted tightly feeling volatile emotions rise dangerously close to the surface.
Jai slung her a knowing look redolent of a male who knew women and prided himself on the fact. " You never forget your first love…"
" Or what a bas***d he was…" The assurance was out before Bani could stop it.
He was incredulous. " How can you say that to me?"
" Because being married to you was the worst experience of my life," Bani informed him.
" I beg your pardon?"
" And believe me, I didn't require a financial bribe to persuade me into a quick exit. You were domineering, selfish and completely insensitive to what I was going through," Bani condemned in a shaking voice that steadily crept up in volume in spite of her attempt to control it. " You left me at the mercy of your totally monstrous family and allowed them to treat me like dirt! You stopped talking to me but that did not stop you using my body whenever you felt like it!"
Jai was transfixed. There was no other word for his reaction. The Bani he had married would never have criticized him. In those days Bani had crept around being quiet and apologetic, adoring him no matter what treatment he handed out. Jai had accepted the adoration as his right.
" In fact you went into a 3 month long sulk the same day that you married me. And the minute that your obnoxious family saw how you were behaving they all jumped on the same bandwagon. I didn't just have one person making my life a living hell I had a whole crowd! And I don't care how any of you felt, I was 17 and I was pregnant and I did not deserve that kind of punishment."
Bani fell silent then. She was genuinely shattered by the bitterness that had surged up in her and overflowed. Until now she had not appreciated how deep her bitterness ran. But then she had not had an opportunity to vent those feelings before. Within 48 hours of her miscarriage, Uday Walia had presented her with divorce papers. And sick to the heart from all that she had already undergone, and Jai's cruel indifference, she had signed without a word of argument.
" So when you took the money and ran you thought it was your due," Jai opined grittily.
" I despised you for what you did, and to listen to you now abusing my family makes me very angry."
" I doubt if I'll lose any sleep over that" Bani retorted. She had said her piece. She had waited 13 years to say it and there wasn't a single word of it which she could honestly have taken back. When she had discovered that her miscarriage had not been quite what it had appeared she hadn't dreamt of bothering Jai or his family with what would have been very bad news in their opinion. Instead loving Jai as she had, she had felt positively heroic protecting him from such an unwelcome announcement. He had wanted neither her nor their child, so she had taken care of the problem. She had kept her mouth shut, let the divorce proceed without interruption and brought her baby into the world alone. Jai owed her!! He had been able to get on with his life again, unhampered by all the many adult responsibilities that had become hers at far too young an age.
The limo had stopped. Bani hadn't noticed. She gazed at the elegant homes nestled among manicured lawns and simply knew she could not bear another single minute in Jai's company. There was too much pain and confusion biting at her.
" I'm going to catch a cab back to the office and say you cancelled," Bani told him abruptly.
" I don't think your boss would swallow that story" Jai said shrewdly.
" I don't care!" Bani said defiantly.
" So you still make stupid decisions on the spur of the moment."
Colour ran up like a hot betraying flush beneath her fine skin. She knew exactly what he was getting at." Shut up" she hissed back.
" And you still blush like a furnace around me…inspite of your advanced years. And inspite of my advanced years, you still turn me on hard and fast. Now isn't that fascinating?"
Bani couldn't believe he had said that." Is this your idea of a joke.." she said unevenly.
Jai surveyed her with a slumberous intensity and drawled " Don't be pious. You're feeling the same thing I'm feeling right now."
And Bani was shocked to feel the old but never forgotten excitement creeping over her. The whole atmosphere had a wild electric charge. Her heartbeat was thundering and her whole body seemed stretched and tight with every nerve ending ready to snap.
" Curiosity and excitement," Jai said with purring softness.
" Stop it.." she muttered shakily.
" I can't. I like to live dangerously now and again." Jai revealed huskily.
" I don't.." but the tingling awareness seeping through her was too easily read by him.
" How would you feel about an afternoon of immoral, erotic rediscovery? Jai murmured thickly his eyes seeming to burn with intensity." I'll take you to a hotel. For a few stolen hours we can leave the anger and the bitterness behind and relive the passion.."
Bani was stunned and on another level she was recalling the end of that long ago party when Jai had finally deigned to speak to her and make the smoothest pass she had ever encountered. She had been stunned by his brazen disregard of what she had naively seen as normal courting rituals. He had planted a drink in her hand and had asked her to go to bed with him that night. She had slapped his face.
He had grinned. " Tomorrow night?' he had asked with unconcealed amusement in his eyes and she should have known that it would take more than one slap to dent that ego.
" Bani…' Jai breathed.
This time she came back to the present with a sense of intense pain." I don't want to relive the passion. Yes you were quite incredible in bed but I wouldn't let you use me like that again. Once was enough. That's one advantage of being a grown up. I can see the writing on the wall."
" I cannot believe I am even having this conversation with you!!" Jai gritted with ferocious abruptness.
" I suppose its comforting to know that you haven't changed. You're still a two timing, oversexed, immoral rat. And its really pathetic to be shooting the same lines at your age!" she put in for good measure.
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