Bazodee for my Best Friend's sister

Prologue

Debe, Trinidad. Six years ago.

The first time Zayn Rahaman really saw her not as Ravi’s little sister, not as the annoying teenager who used to blast soca on Saturday mornings and steal the last saheena—but as a woman… she was standing outside their gate in the pouring rain.

Her makeup had smudged. Her high-waisted jeans clung to her thighs, soaked through. The white crop top she wore stuck to her skin, revealing more than she probably intended. Her straight hair, now wet and dark, clung to her shoulders as she fumbled with a broken umbrella, lips pressed tight in frustration.

She didn’t know he was watching from the living room window.

Zayn’s gaze lingered. Against his better judgment.

She was twenty now. No longer that clingy little thing who asked too many questions and pouted when he ignored her. There was something about her now. Something different. Womanly. Real.

He didn’t like it.

He didn’t like the way his stomach tightened.

Or how her laugh still carried through the house like incense. It was sweet, familiar, addictive.

He reminded himself of all the reasons she was off limits.

She was Ravi’s baby sister. Eight years younger. Soft where he was hard. Dreamy where he was disciplined. Still figuring out her life while he’d already mapped his out.

He was thirty. An engineer with his own place under construction in San Fernando. A man with no space in his life for temptation.

And she?

She was just Kay.

But even then, even as he turned away and tried to shake it off, he knew deep down.

She’d already started to undo him.

And he hadn’t even touched her yet.