Her pov
I didn't make it to the doorway.
I felt him before I fully registered it—the shift in the air, the sudden closeness—and then he was there, stepping in behind me, not touching, not stopping me outright, but close enough that I couldn't pretend he wasn't.
My steps faltered. I stepped back, and my back touched the counter beside the wall.
His hands came down on the counter, one on either side of me, quiet but certain. Not a trap—he wasn't holding me—but it felt like one anyway. Like the world had narrowed to the space between his arms, between his breath and mine.
I should have moved. I didn't. And then he leaned in.
The moment his head rested against my shoulder, everything in me stilled. His cheek brushed my neck—soft, unguarded—and it sent something sharp and unsteady through me. It wasn't forceful. It wasn't demanding. He had this slight beard that grazes on my skin.
That almost made it worse. Because it felt... natural.
Like this—him this close, his breath warm against my skin—was something my body recognized before my mind could catch up.
"Let me go," I said.
My voice sounded steady. I made sure of that.
But I could feel the lie of it in my own body—the tension in my shoulders, the way my breath wouldn't settle, the way I was hyper-aware of every inch of him without turning to face him.
He didn't move. Not immediately.
"Do you want me to," he asked, his voice low, softer than I'd ever heard it, "or do you just think you should?"
The words landed somewhere deeper than they should have.
And that was the problem. Because I didn't answer.
I couldn't.
My thoughts were too loud, too tangled—what I should do, what this meant, what I was letting happen—and underneath all of it, something quieter but far more dangerous:
The part of me that wasn't trying to leave at all. My breathing gave me away, uneven, no matter how hard I tried to control it.
When he lifted his head slightly, just enough to look at me, I felt it again—that shift, that pull. I didn't turn fully, but I didn't step away either.
And somehow, that felt like an answer. He looked with his catlike eyes straight into mine. For one moment, it felt like he was reading me. And knew about me more than I do.
I could feel his face coming closer. I could move, I know, but I didn't. He closed the distance slowly and deliberately until his breath fanned my earlobe.
"You don't like me giving attention to other women." His slow voice brought a sense of dizziness to my brain. I held the counter with my hands and tried to save myself from falling.
"Hn!" I managed to say this. I knew what he meant. But still that sound escaped me. I myself had written a letter to him and warned him not to go around with other women.
Instead of answering what I was asking. He just placed his head again where it was a moment ago. He moved his one hand over my thigh. That mere touch had done something to me.
My breaths were evident to both of us, and my knees grew weak, unable to support me. He kissed my neck slowly; I could feel his warmth over my neck.
"Stop!" The word escaped me unwillingly. I did not know if I really wanted him to stop.
"I have a lot of attention. I need to place it somewhere." My cheeks flushed as the movement my dizzy mind made sense of his words.
I felt the shift before I saw it.
The faint rustle of fabric, the subtle tightening of the space around me—and then his hand moved, gripping the lehnga right at the place he had placed his hand a while ago.
My breath caught.
Because now there was nowhere neutral left to look, nowhere untouched by him. One hand on the counter to my left, the other fisted in the lehnga on my thigh—every exit quietly closed, by presence.
And he still wasn't holding me.
That somehow made it harder to think.
My eyes flickered to his hand, to the way the fabric had bunched tightly in his grip, knuckles faintly tense like he was holding back more than just movement. Like he needed something to ground himself.
Or to stop himself.
I didn't know which unsettled me more. It made it hard for me to think, and just then I felt my lehnga gliding up... he was pulling it up.
What is he doing?
I lowered my gaze to steady my racing heart and gripped his right hand with my left. He lifted his head and gazed at me; sunlight was directly falling on his face from the window on my left. It was almost evening. I glanced at his features more closely— his almond-like skin glowed under coloured sunlight. His tall fit, not very broad, yet still distracting.
I remembered the day we met in the jungle—he had been exhausted from escaping me from the daldal, yet somehow still looked like that. His shoulder-length hair was half tied in a bun, the rest falling over his shoulders.
I forced my eyes open and looked at him; a few loose strands had fallen from the bun onto his face. And before I could process that, he freed his hand from my grip and fisted my wrist in his hand. Then he forced my hand to glide the lehnga upward until it reached my thigh.
I pressed my thighs together, and he freed my hand from his grip and grabbed the edge of the lehnga in one swift motion before it could fall again. I could feel my heart in my mouth. My hand landed on his biceps.
He pulled me closer to him, hooking his two fingers of his left hand in the lower hem of my blouse. My eyes met his. There was something in his eyes I could not understand. His fingers felt rough, hard, and warm against my skin.
"How did... You come inside?" My voice grew lazy and intimidated by his presence. The thoughts came late, and I mentally cursed myself for not asking this earlier.
He ignored my question completely and said: "So you don't want me to share my rob with anyone." I nodded; no, my neck moved on its own. He pressed his lips to my ears and whispered: "Why?"
I don't know, I really don't know, but the mere thought of him doing that frustrates me. And just then, I felt his hand on my thigh move. His finger glided over to my inner thigh. My breath stuck. My eyes widened, and he smirked at that moment.
My hand fisted over his biceps. "Please" only a plead was a mere word I could form. And just then, he started gliding his hand upward. My body moved on its own. The sensation made me stand on my toes. And before I could process it, my hands came up to his chest, and I pushed him hard with whatever energy I had after this. "I said stop."
He stumbled back, and I fell on the floor with a loud thud. I don't know why I pushed him. I was not actually disliking that, whatever it was.
I looked up at him and ... and there was no one. I looked around the chamber, my gaze moving from one corner to another as though he might still be there, just hidden from sight, lingering in some quiet shadow I had yet to notice—but there was nothing. No trace of him. No movement, no presence, nothing to suggest that he had ever been there at all. The space felt hollow in a way that made my chest tighten.
And then reality struck.
The sharp pain in my knee returned all at once, cutting through whatever fragile illusion I had been clinging to, and before I could steady myself, my strength gave way beneath me. I sank to the floor, a small, unguarded cry escaping my lips before I could stop it.
The sound had barely faded when Gauri rushed into the chamber, her footsteps quick and urgent.
Heat rushed to my face immediately, a deep, burning embarrassment settling in as the truth settled just as quickly.
Of course.
It had only been a dream.
What was I doing, imagining him so vividly, as though he had truly been there?
Gauri dropped to her knees in front of me without hesitation, her eyes searching my face with alarm. "What happened?"
I looked at her, acutely aware of the warmth still lingering on my cheeks, certain that I must have looked flustered and foolish. I tried to speak, to form some simple explanation, but the words refused to come, tangling somewhere between thought and breath.
Her brows drew together, her concern sharpening as she leaned slightly closer. "Are you hurt?"
"I... I just fell," I managed at last, my voice quieter than I intended as I avoided meeting her eyes.
She studied me for a moment, clearly unconvinced, a faint frown forming. "How does one simply fall like that?"
I turned my face away, grasping at the first distraction I could find, anything that might pull attention away from me and the thoughts I refused to name. "Did you send the letter?"
She rose slightly as she helped me to my feet, steadying me with practiced ease, and when she finally answered, her tone had shifted—calmer, almost casual in contrast to the urgency from moments before.
"They refused to take it."
The question left my lips more sharply than I intended, still carrying the edge of the frustration that had been building within me since moments ago. "Why would they deny it?"
Gauri, however, did not react to my tone. With the same quiet steadiness, she guided me toward the couch, her hold firm yet gentle, as though my agitation did not unsettle her in the slightest. "You have been sending quite a few letters," she said calmly. "So, they just denied this one."
"I have not written that many," I replied quickly, almost defensively.
But even as the words left me, the truth surfaced.
I had been writing often.
Far more often than I had intended. It had begun with that single thought—one I had refused to examine too closely, one that lingered just beneath the surface, whispering that his attention might shift elsewhere if I did not hold it firmly enough. And in response to that quiet, persistent fear, I had written without restraint.
Two letters, sent in haste.
One carrying a warning I could not take back.
The other... empty, almost trivial, speaking of nothing more than the weather and my love for fritters as though the act of writing itself might be enough.
A faint unease settled in my chest as the realization took hold.
"Even so," I continued, unable to let it rest, "how can they simply deny a letter from a wife to her husband?"
Gauri's gaze shifted toward me, her expression unchanged, her voice even. "He is not your real husband."
"I am aware of that," I answered immediately, the response coming almost too fast. "But they are not."
The thought came back to me then—something Aditya had mentioned in passing, a detail I had not paid much attention to at the time. "They do allow letters from family," I said, more to confirm than to argue.
Gauri inclined her head slightly. "They do. But only two letters in each half-moon cycle."
I turned to look at her fully, the words taking a moment to settle. "Only two?"
She nodded again, more gently this time, her hand coming to rest lightly over my knee in a quiet, grounding gesture. "Two letters every fourteen days."
I leaned back slightly, my gaze drifting away as I began to calculate, the numbers forming slowly but with an unmistakable weight.
"That means only four letters in an entire month."
A soft hum of agreement left her.
"And you have already used yours," she added, her tone neither reproachful nor indulgent, merely stating what was. "You should not write so frequently."
I did not respond because there was nothing to argue.
She was right.
And now this letter had been returned.
I swallowed slowly, the weight of it settling far heavier than I had expected, pressing somewhere deep and difficult to ignore.
Write a comment ...