CHAPTER 30! POSSESIVE MUCH
Aadhira's lower lip trembled, the weight of his grip on her chin keeping her anchored right in the path of his dark, unblinking stare.
She couldn't answer.
The truth was, she had always known he would come-she had just been terrified of the monster he would have to become to save her.
"Now..." She swallowed hard, her voice barely a thread as she forced herself to look away from his hypnotic gaze down to his bleeding temple.
"Let's go to the hospital.
Please, Aryav."
Aryav didn't move.
His thumb slowly stroked the line of her jaw, leaving a faint, sickening smear of someone else's dried blood against her pale skin.
It was an intentional marking.
A reminder of what he had done.
"A hospital," he echoed, the word tasting foreign on his tongue.
A small, humorless tilt amused his lips.
"If you are this consumed by concern, Aadhira... treat it yourself."
"No, Aryav, look at it," she pleaded, her hands coming up to hover near his chest, too intimidated to fully touch him.
"The glass piece-it's still stuck inside your skin. It's too deep. I'm going to ruin you if I try to touch it. Your shoulder is going to get infected..."
"This?" He looked down at the blood staining his shirt, his tone entirely void of color.
"It'll heal."
He dropped his hand from her face as if she had suddenly bored him and turned back toward the balcony railing, taking a slow, dismissed breath of the night air.
"Go to sleep."
The sheer indifference in his voice hit her harder than his rage.
He would let himself bleed, let his body pieces rot under the weight of his own cold stubbornness, just to punish her with the absolute guilt of it.
"No," she whispered.
Aadhira practically fled back into the bedroom, her hands shaking so violently she could barely grip the handle of the master bathroom door.
She grabbed the heavy, wooden first-aid kit, her chest heaving as she hurried back out to the terrace.
Aryav hadn't moved.
He stood like a shadow carved into the moonlight.
"Inside," she murmured, her voice cracking.
"Please.
Come inside."
To her surprise, he didn't argue.
He walked back into the bedroom with slow, deliberate grace, sitting down on the edge of the expansive mattress.
He didn't offer to help her.
He simply sat, completely still, tracking her every movement with the unnerving patience of an executioner studying ropes.
Aadhira dropped to her knees on the floor between his parted legs, setting the kit down.
Her tears were still flowing, hot and silent.
"Your shirt," she whispered, looking up through her eyelashes.
"You need to remove this."
Aryav didn't move.
He sat back against the mattress and looked at her.
Waiting.
Understanding hit her a second later.
He wasn't going to remove it.
He expected her to.
With trembling, clumsy fingers, Aadhira reached out and began undoing the buttons of his immaculate, dark dress shirt.
Every time her knuckles brushed the warm, solid skin of his chest, a visible shiver ran through her.
He was analyzing every sob that caught in her throat.
She slid the fabric off his broad shoulders, gasping softly at the sight.
The wound wasn't the first thing she noticed.
It was the scars.
Thin white lines.
Old bullet marks.
A vicious slash disappearing beneath his shoulder.
Evidence of a life measured in violence rather than years.
For a moment, she simply stared.
Aryav followed her gaze. "Finished?"
She nodded quickly, her breath catching.
"Those are the ones that failed." His expression never changed. "Or did you finally realize what kind of man came for you?"
The gash near his shoulder was jagged, angry, and weeping fresh crimson around a glinting, translucent shard of glass.
Mending the Monster.
Aadhira opened the kit, pulling out a pair of silver tweezers and an antiseptic solution.
Her tears splashed onto the back of her own hand.
"Stop crying," Aryav commanded softly.
"The hand holding the blade shouldn't shake. You wanted this duty, Aadhira. Own it."
She let out a ragged breath, nodding frantically. She wiped her eyes with her shoulder, gripping the tweezers.
As she leaned in, her proximity brought the scent of iron, expensive cologne, and tobacco directly into her senses.
Carefully, meticulously, she aligned the tweezers with the edge of the glass shard.
Her heart hammered against her ribs, so loud she was certain he could hear it.
With a slow, steady pull, she extracted the glass.
The shard slid free.
Blood followed.
Aryav's expression never changed. He wasn't enduring the pain-he simply wasn't acknowledging it.
Her instinct overrode her fear.
Leaning forward, she gently blew a soft, cool breath over the raw wound, trying to soothe the sting she was certain he was hiding.
Aryav's breath caught.
His gaze settled on her face.
Unmoving. Intent.
A sudden, tentative knock rattled the bedroom door.
A young maid stood at the threshold, holding a fresh pitcher of water. "S-Sir, I brought-"
As she turned to leave, her eyes wandered for the briefest heartbeat.
Over the broad planes of his bare chest.
The faded bullet scars.
The fresh bandage.
The blood.
She froze.
Then, realizing what she'd done, she hurriedly looked away.
Aryav didn't even turn his head. He didn't speak. He simply directed his dark, glacial stare toward the doorway.
"S-Sorry, Saab," she whispered, her jaw trembling.
She immediately backed away before fleeing down the corridor, leaving the door slightly ajar.
The complete, unspoken authority of his silence hung heavy in the room.
Aadhira stared at the door for a long second.
Something hot and unfamiliar twisted inside her chest.
Without thinking, she picked up Aryav's discarded black shirt from the bed.
She gently draped it over his shoulders, covering the scars and bare skin before returning to the bandage.
Aryav didn't stop her.
Didn't ask why.
Didn't say a word.
He simply watched her through lowered lashes.
Slowly...
The faintest smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth.
Barely visible.
Gone before anyone else would have noticed.
Aadhira, too busy adjusting the shirt over his shoulder, never saw it.
But Aryav had.
Every possessive little instinct she didn't yet realize she possessed.
"Does it hurt?" Aadhira whispered, her voice thick with tears as she saturated a cotton pad with antiseptic, trying to ground herself.
"Pain doesn't interest me, Aadhira," he murmured, his voice dropping an octave as his eyes locked onto hers. "Absence does."
She pressed the antiseptic to the wound. A soft sob escaped her lips at the stark contrast of her fragility against his brutal mass.
She kept blowing gentle, desperate breaths against his shoulder, her fingers lightly resting on his uninjured collarbone to steady herself.
"The next time you keep something from me..." He looked at her with chilling tenderness. "Don't tell me who did it. I'll figure it out."
The threat hung in the air, heavy and suffocating.
"I won't," she choked out, the promise tearing from her throat.
Aryav's gaze dropped to her mouth, his hand applying just enough deliberate pressure against her jaw to force her lips apart.
"Good. Now I know you'll remember."
He didn't kiss her. Instead, his hand slid down to rest against her collarbone, his thumb tracking the rapid rhythm beneath the skin.
"Finish it."
With hands that still trembled, Aadhira reached back into the kit and picked up the white bandage roll.
She stepped closer, moving directly into the narrow space between his knees until her thighs brushed against his slacks.
To wrap the bandage around his broad shoulder, she had to lean entirely into him.
She looped the fabric around his back. The heat radiating off his bare skin was immense.
As she reached around him, her chest pressed flush against his uninjured side. She heard the slight, sudden hitch in his respiration.
"You're too close," he warned, though his long, blood-stained fingers gripped her hip, anchoring her firmly against him.
"I have to reach," she whispered against the crook of his neck, dizzy from the rich scent of tobacco and sharp iron.
"You are doing this on purpose?" His lips brushed near her ear, cold and calculating. "Aren't you?"
"No," she lied, her voice a breathless gasp.
The final strip of bandage settled into place beneath her trembling fingers.
Aadhira stared at the clean white dressing for a long moment, as though willing it to erase everything that had happened.
Then, without thinking... she didn't move away.
Instead, she slowly rested her forehead against the centre of his bare chest.
Aryav remained perfectly still.
He let her cry.
Not because he knew how to comfort her, but because he had never learned how.
A warm tear landed against the old bullet scar beneath his collarbone.
Aryav's eyes flickered downward.
He had forgotten what it felt like when someone cried for his wounds instead of causing them.
Her fingers curled weakly into the fabric of his trousers as silent tears soaked into his skin.
"I never wanted anyone to get hurt," she whispered, the words breaking apart between uneven breaths. "Still... you got hurt because of me."
Another tear slipped free. "I'm sorry."
The room fell completely silent.
His heartbeat never changed.
Hers refused to slow. Somehow, that frightened her more.
Aryav looked down at the crown of her head. For several long seconds, he said nothing.
Then his hand rose-not to comfort her, but to settle heavily against the back of her head, holding her exactly where she was.
"Meri taraf dekho."
She didn't.
His hand tightened just enough.
"Aadhira."
Slowly, she lifted her tear-filled eyes. Aryav's expression remained unreadable.
"Stop apologising for wounds I chose." His thumb brushed away a tear that had escaped onto her cheek.
"The injury isn't the problem. The problem... is that you believed you had to face danger without me."