Chapter 20 #3
When he added a second finger, stretching her further, her breath hitched sharply.
He moved them in a slow, intimate rhythm, drawing breathless gasps from her lips.
Then his fingers curled, pressing deep inside her warmth, while his thumb found that sensitive, aching spot at her core. The pleasure was immediate. Intense.
Blinding heat flooded her veins, overwhelming her. She arched against him helplessly, chasing the pleasure he was building inside her. Her breaths came in ragged bursts as she clung to him, her nails digging into his shoulders.
The tension coiled tighter and tighter until it finally snapped. A sharp cry escaped her as her body convulsed around his fingers, pleasure crashing over her in powerful waves. She pulled him closer, capturing his mouth in a desperate, breathless kiss as the aftershocks rippled through her.
She was still trembling when she kissed him. She pulled him close, her mouth needing his with a desperate hunger. The kiss was messy, hot, and urgent.
He made a low sound against her lips, his hands tightening at her waist, but she didn’t wait for him to take control this time. She pushed him down on the mattress.
His eyes were dark, flushed with heat. He lifted himself up. “Shauna—
“Don’t,” she whispered. “I want more.”
Something fierce flickered in his eyes, and he flopped back down on the bed. She climbed over him without hesitation, straddling him, her hair spilling forward as she bent to kiss him again.
His hands slid up her thighs… and a loud crash shattered the moment.
Something heavy hit the floor outside, and Akash froze. Another sound ripped through the air. Closer this time.
“What the hell was that?” he said, already sitting up. He shifted her off him, quickly covering her up before buttoning his shirt. “Wait here. I’ll go and check what’s happening.”
Akash hurried down the stairs. She stayed in the room, waiting for her breathing to steady when she heard him yell. “Who’s that? Wait.”
Unable to sit still any longer, she rushed downstairs, her pulse roaring in her ears. The living room was in disarray. A tall lamp lay overturned, its shade crushed against the floor. A dining chair had been pushed to the side.
She followed the sound of fleeing footsteps and reached the sunroom. The terrace doors were open here. Beyond them, she could see Akash sprinting across the lawn, one of the security guards running just behind him, both of them in pursuit of a shadowy figure disappearing up ahead into the darkness.
She stood frozen as the shadowy figure darted toward the far end of the property and then vanished behind a line of tall hedges near the boundary wall, with Akash following close behind.
A few minutes later, Akash emerged from the darkness, walking back across the lawn with the security guard beside him. Relief flooded her instantly. He was talking to the guard, but even from the distance, she could see the tension in his shoulders.
She hurried toward him. “Where did he go? Did you see who it was?”
“No. He just disappeared.”
He turned toward the security cabin near the front gate. The second security guard on duty stood up immediately as they entered.
“I don’t know how he entered the house, sir,” the second guard said quickly, clearly shaken. “I was at the front gate the whole time.”
Akash ran a hand through his hair, exhaling slowly. “I may have left the main door open. The question is, how did he get onto the property? Show me the security footage from the last half hour.”
The guard nodded and turned to the small bank of monitors mounted against the wall. Muted, low-light feeds flickered across the screens—the front gate, the side boundary wall, the driveway, the garden, the rear hedges, some areas inside the ground floor of the house. He rewound the footage.
They watched in tense silence as the timestamp rolled backward. There was nothing. Just empty lawns, trees swaying in the night breeze. From every camera angle, it looked the same.
“There,” Akash said sharply as he pointed at one of the screens. “Stop. What’s that, on the wall behind the tree?”
The frame froze. On the monitor covering the boundary near the old neem tree, a shadow appeared above the wall.
For a second, all they could see was a pair of hands gripping one of the thick branches that extended inward over the property.
Then a leg swung into view. A man was slowly climbing down, his face obscured by a cap.
His movements weren’t quick, but they were steady, as if he knew what he was doing. As if he had done this before.
He descended and dropped onto the grass.
Rising, he looked around, scanning the lawns.
Then he began walking toward the house, keeping close to the boundary wall.
Spotting the main door open, he snuck inside.
The guard changed the footage to inside the living room, and there he was, standing just inside the doorway.
This time they could see him more clearly, but not clearly enough.
The man wore a dark cap pulled low over his head, the brim casting a shadow across most of his face.
He began walking slowly around the living room, looking left and right. Then something shifted in his posture. His shoulders stiffened. He grabbed the tall lamp and shoved it hard. It crashed to the floor. The sudden violence made Shauna flinch.
“What is he doing?” she asked as they watched him knock down the dining chair.
“It feels like he’s… angry?” Akash shook his head. “It doesn’t make sense.”
The man turned abruptly toward the corridor that led to the sunroom, his cap still obscuring most of his features, and disappeared from the camera’s frame.
The footage ended there.
Shauna turned to him. “Where’s the rest of the footage?”
Akash’s jaw tightened. “I was supposed to install cameras inside the sunroom and on the trees outside.” He exhaled slowly. “With everything that’s been happening recently, I forgot.” He faced the security guard. “Show me whatever footage we have from outside.”
The guard tapped a few buttons, and they watched as the man burst onto the lawns, running now.
Akash appeared seconds after him in pursuit, the security guard following him.
There was a brief pause where the man turned fully toward the camera before he ran toward the neem tree.
Reaching it, he grabbed the inward-leaning branch and climbed with surprising speed.
He hauled himself up, balanced briefly along the thick limb that stretched over the wall, and disappeared the way he had come.
“That was… strange,” Shauna said.
Akash didn’t respond.
She turned toward him. The color had drained from his face. He pointed at the screen, his hand shaking. “Rewind a few seconds back, to where he’s looking into the camera.”
The guard did as told.
“There,” Akash said, pointing at the image on the screen. “Fuck.”
“What?” Shauna asked. “Who is it? Do you know him?”
Akash didn’t reply. He was still staring at the screen, his jaw tight, his posture rigid. He looked like he’d seen a ghost.
She reached for his arm. “Akash, what’s wrong?”
“It can’t be…” he muttered. He swallowed. “That looks like my… my father.”
“Your father?” Shauna gasped.
“How can it be?” he said, shaking his head. “Honestly, we never knew what happened to him. He just left us with our grandfather and disappeared. But I’m certain it was him.”
He exhaled slowly, then straightened. The turmoil she had glimpsed moments ago on his face was carefully hidden now, locked behind a calm, deliberate expression.
Only the tightness in his jaw betrayed him.
He instructed the security to send him the image and all the footage before asking her to wait there while he locked up the house.
Upon his return, he climbed inside the car with her.
“I’ve made a few calls,” he said, starting the engine. “Janak’s asked me to come to his house. Kabier will be there too. Do you mind if we go there?”
“Not at all.”
The gates opened slowly, and the car rolled out into the dark street.
She watched his profile as the passing streetlights cut across his face in fleeting shadows. His expression was still. Controlled. But his shoulders were stiff, his fingers were curled tightly around the steering wheel, and his jaw was still rigid.
Akash was trying to hide how deeply seeing his father’s image had shaken him. But she knew, without a doubt, that he wasn’t unaffected. She wondered how he’d dealt with his father’s abandonment at such a young age. She wondered what he was feeling now.
Her grandfather had told her the bare bones of Akash’s childhood. Coming from a loving, stable, and secure family background herself, she couldn’t fathom the trauma he must have experienced at the hands of this man. And now, suddenly out of the blue, this man—his father—was back.
She studied his profile, her heart aching for him in a way she hadn’t expected. She wanted to reach across the seat and wrap her arms around him. Pull him close. Tell him he wasn’t alone. That whatever this was, he didn’t have to face it by himself.
But she didn’t know how. She had never been in a relationship before.
Never learned how to show up for someone without the words feeling awkward or misplaced.
Their dynamic had always been ice and friction, and more recently heat and want.
There had been nothing in between. How did one move from all that to this?
Her fingers tightened in her lap. She was used to knowing exactly what to say.
But suddenly, she didn’t. This tenderness, this sudden urge to protect him, felt unfamiliar, unsteady, and so damn confusing.
And yet, the longer she watched him in the dim wash of passing streetlights, the stronger the pull became.
She was his fiancée, yet she didn’t know what exactly she was to him.
She didn’t know what they were becoming. But she knew one thing with terrifying certainty. She didn’t want him to hurt alone.
And she had no idea how to tell him that.