Chapter 9 #2
“We’re in the middle of a divorce, Kushal,” she snapped. “You can’t expect me to pretend like—”
“Ever heard of ‘time please’ back in school?” He interrupted her, walking close enough for her to catch the faint whiff of his cologne again. “In the middle of any game, when you say ‘time please’, all rules are temporarily suspended until you resume play.”
She shook her head, almost recalling.
“Let’s take a time please, Arundhati. Put a hold on our war for one night.”
“I’m not interested in playing any ‘time please’ with you. Just get out.”
He smirked. “Your uncle asked me to bring you down. I’m not leaving without you.”
She groaned, knowing she was really delaying everything, and she would have to try wearing the saree by herself without expecting to send more help from her uncle.
“Fine,” she snapped. “Then turn around.”
“Why?” he drawled, that devilish gleam in his eyes. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.”
Her eyes widened. That was a lie. They had never crossed that line.
“Don’t be disgusting,” she hissed. “When have you ever seen me in such a half-dressed state before?”
He tilted his head. “Wasn’t talking about this lifetime.”
She blinked, confused. “What?”
“In my dreams,” he clarified. “Wet dreams.”
Her breath caught again.
“You had dreams of me in such an undressed form?”
He stepped closer, and every step raised the temperature in the room. She could feel the heat from his body even before he reached her, and her fingers instinctively clenched tighter on the saree.
“We were living under one roof that time, happily married, Aru. I had every right to dream of my wife.”
She swallowed hard. He called her Aru again. Not Arundhati. Kushal was using all his lawyer techniques to defend himself, and she, despite being a lawyer too, had no counter-defence reply to that.
“Trust me,” he said, his gaze now flicking down her body, lingering at the edge of her bare skin. “The visuals of you like that in my dreams were quite... distracting.”
Her heart hammered in her chest. She hated the way her knees trembled. And most of all, she hated that it was him, who still had the power to unravel her like this.
“Are you drunk, Kushal?” she asked. “You don’t sound like... like the man I know.”
“Maybe,” he said, his tone dipping into something darker, more intimate. “Maybe I am drunk…”
But it wasn’t alcohol. It was her. It always had been.
The way she looked in a saree, how she looked now, reminded him of the first time they had kissed, back when they were newly married.
She had worn a saree then, too—maroon, elegant, devastatingly feminine.
That memory came rushing back uninvited, making his pulse pound harder.
And now… this. Even with all his arrogance, it was taking everything in him not to lose control.
His fingers brushed against hers as he took the edge of the saree she had fisted protectively against her chest.
He didn’t tug. He didn’t push.
“Time please,” he murmured. “Now hold still.”
Arundhati’s heart thudded against her ribcage, but she didn’t argue. Not when his fingers were already moving slowly to help her.
Kushal tried hard not to look at her, tried hard to keep his gaze focused on the fabric, but it was impossible not to feel her presence.
The warmth of her skin under his knuckles.
The subtle tremble of her breath. A faint scent of something floral that clung to her hair. He was already losing control.
He reached for the pallu, but hesitated, unsure of which way to pull.
“That goes to the left… not right,” she said, guiding him quietly.
He nodded without a word and corrected it. They stood too close now, closer than they had in months. And when he turned her around to bring the pleats across her waist, he was careful, cautious not to touch her injured arm. But even then, the intimacy was overwhelming.
She saw him swallow hard.
He saw her look away.
They both knew they were on the edge of something dangerous.
His fingers folded the pleats one by one. But when he finally tucked the fabric into the waistband of her petticoat, his knuckles brushed over her bare stomach, over the smooth curve of her navel.
She gasped, sharply, before clearing her throat in a weak attempt to mask the sound. Her body betrayed her. She hated that.
But Kushal didn’t retreat. If anything, his touch lingered. His knuckles grazed her skin again, slower this time, like he was memorising the feel of her. She sucked in her stomach instinctively and shot him a sharp and blazing look.
But he was smart. He didn’t meet her eyes, just smirked.
She knew what he was doing. He was teasing her, unrepentant, like he always was. Only this time, she didn’t know if she wanted to push him away or pull him closer.
Before she could decide, he did something unexpected.
He kneeled.
Right at her feet.
The sight of Kushal Nair, her soon-to-be ex-husband, the firm’s most arrogant legal star and her uncle’s golden boy, on his knees in front of her as he arranged the saree pleats was enough to scatter every coherent thought from her mind.
It should have been a simple gesture.
But it wasn’t.
Not when his hands brushed against her ankles. Not when his lips hovered a breath away from her midriff as he focused on setting the fabric just right. Not when he looked up at her with that dark and hungry expression.
“Is this okay?” he asked, voice gruff.
She didn’t answer.
She couldn’t.
Her fingers clenched at her sides, gripping the saree tight, because if she didn’t, they might betray her. They might find their way to his hair, to his shoulders, to the place where her desire burned beneath the ruins of their battles.
And that scared her more than anything.
Because she had never expected to feel this again.
Her lips parted slightly, trying to form some kind of protest, a coherent thought, anything that would stop this spiralling heat between them. But when his palm rested lightly on her hip, just to steady her, her words dissolved into silence again.
When he stood in front of her again, neither of them spoke. Her hand twitched at her side, tempted beyond logic to reach for his collar, to pull him that final inch closer and kiss him.
Kushal hadn’t come here for this.
He had walked into that party with one intention, to talk to her.
To finally clear the air, to explain things he should’ve said months ago.
But the moment he saw her upstairs, half-draped in that damn saree, frustration written on her face, vulnerability in her eyes, everything spiralled.
One look, and whatever rational words he’d prepared vanished like smoke.
And now here they were.
Inches away from kissing the hell out of each other.
His fingers brushed a strand of hair off her face, his knuckles grazing her jaw. The soft touch made her eyes flutter shut for just a second.
And that was enough.
He dipped his head. She felt it. The shift. His lips were just a breath away from hers, their foreheads nearly touching. Her pulse thundered in her ears. One more second… just one…
Knock knock.
They both froze.
The sound shattered the moment like glass hitting tile.
She stepped back, her breath catching as if she’d been yanked out of a dream, before rushing toward the door and opening it in one swift motion, only to find Sudha aunty standing there with a smile.
“I just wanted to check if you needed help, beta. Raj Sir said you’d asked for my help.”
Before she could utter a syllable, Kushal’s voice rang out from behind her.
“She doesn’t,” he said, appearing over her shoulder. “She’s done.”
Sudha’s gaze flickered between the two of them, before she smiled knowingly. “Alright then… I’ll see you both downstairs.”
And she left.
Arundhati stood there, mortified. Still breathless. Still reeling. Her fingers tightened around the doorframe. She didn’t dare turn to look at him again.
He stepped forward, reached around her, and pushed the door shut with one hand before pinning Arundhati to the door.
“We need to talk,” he said in a serious tone, but she didn’t let him continue.
“I’m not interested. Whatever you have to say, I’ve heard enough.”
She pushed him a bit, the ache in her left arm shooting again from her action, but she didn’t show it on her face. She swung the door open.
“And enough of your ‘time please’ proposition. I’m least interested in playing your little games.”
But the moment she opened the door, she froze again.
Raj Verma stood right outside, his hand half-raised as if he’d just been about to knock. He blinked, caught off-guard by the tension in the air and the flushed faces staring back at him.
“What’s going on here?” he asked, his eyes darting between the two of them. “What’s taking you both so long?”
Kushal straightened, his expression snapping back to his composed and arrogant self.
“We’re done,” he said flatly, stepping past Arundhati as if nothing had happened.
“Come down soon. Don’t keep everyone waiting.”
And then, he walked away, guiding Raj down the stairs like nothing in the last fifteen minutes had almost set both of them on fire.
Arundhati stood there, her fingers still curled around the edge of the door, her chest heaving, and the ghost of an almost-kiss burning on her lips.