CHAPTER 18 #2
Her throat made him still for a moment. The bruise was the precise shape of a forearm. Someone had pressed their weight against her airway.
He looked at it for long enough that she reached up and covered his hand with hers.
"I can breathe," she said quietly.
"I know." He turned his hand and held hers. "I know you can."
Bruno appeared in the doorway—had followed them upstairs in the elevator, still with rust-brown marks on his fur that Nimisha hadn't been able to look at directly.
"Come here," Samarth said.
The dog approached and sat.
Samarth looked at him—really looked at him. At the marks on his coat that were evidence of what he'd done for the woman sitting beside Samarth on this bed.
"You protected her," he said.
Bruno's dark eyes met his with the steadiness of an animal who understood duty in a way that required no translation.
Of course. She's ours.
"Thank you." The words felt inadequate. He said them anyway.
Bruno's tail moved once—not the dismissive huff he usually offered in response to sentiment, but something more deliberate. Accepted.
Samarth stood. "I'm going to clean him up. Stay here."
"I want to help."
"Nimisha—"
"Please." She stood, and he saw the effort it took. "I need to do something. I can't just sit here."
He understood that. He'd felt it himself—the desperate need to act after helplessness.
"Alright," he said. "Come."
They took Bruno to the large bathroom off the master bedroom. It was, objectively, a ridiculous situation—a Cane Corso in a luxury bathroom with Nimisha kneeling on the marble to reach his fur and Samarth working from the other side with a handheld showerhead set to warm.
Bruno bore the entire process with immense dignity.
"You scared me," Nimisha told him quietly, working her fingers through his coat. "When I heard you—I didn't know what it was at first. And then you were just there."
Bruno turned his head and looked at her steadily.
Where else would I be?
"You followed me every day," she said.
Bruno's ear flicked.
"You absolute ridiculous creature." Her voice broke on the last word, not from distress this time, but something softer.
She pressed her forehead against the side of his massive head for a moment, eyes closed.
Samarth watched his wife and his dog, and felt the love he hadn't yet said out loud pressing against the inside of his chest like something that needed to be released before it broke him.
That Night - Master Bedroom, 2:23 AM
She'd slept for two hours.
Then the nightmares had found her.
She didn't scream—Nimisha's distress never made that much noise. It was the change in her breathing that woke him, the way her body went rigid against his, the small sounds she made that were somehow worse than screaming.
"Nimisha." He turned toward her, his hand on her face. "Nimisha, you're home. You're safe."
Her eyes opened. She looked at him without recognizing him for a moment—still somewhere in the bookstore, still being dragged toward a van—and then awareness returned, and with it, such a visible flood of relief that something in his chest cracked cleanly in two.
"Hey." He kept his voice low, his hand gentle on her cheek. "It's me. You're safe."
She exhaled, a full-body shudder. "I keep seeing the van."
"I know."
"I keep feeling his arm—"
"I know." He pulled her closer. "I know."
"I don't want to go back to sleep."
He pressed his lips to her forehead. "Then don't. Stay here. Talk to me."
"About what?"
"Anything." He settled against the headboard and brought her with him, her head against his chest. "Tell me about your book. The jewelry chapter."
She laughed softly—surprised by the request. "Right now?"
"Right now."
She talked. About the Zaveri Bazaar books she'd been researching. About the Mughal influence on contemporary jewelry design. About a particular motif she wanted to use in her heroine's wedding set.
He listened. Asked questions when she paused. Let the ordinary, beautiful normalcy of her voice doing what it loved best fill the room.
Her breathing steadied.
Her body softened against his.
"Make me forget," she said finally, after a long quiet.
"Nimisha—"
"Not because I want to pretend today didn't happen." She looked up at him. "Because I need to feel something other than scared. I need to feel—" She stopped. "You. I need to feel you."
He looked at her face—the bruise at her throat, the shadows under her eyes, the absolute openness of her expression asking him for something she'd never asked for directly.
"Okay," he said softly. "Come here."
He moved over her slowly, carefully, his weight braced on his arms. He kissed her forehead. Her temples. The arch of each cheekbone.
"You're safe," he murmured against her skin. "I've got you. Nothing is going to touch you."
"Don't leave me tonight."
"Never." The word came without deliberation. A promise, genuine and complete. "I'm not going anywhere."
He kissed her mouth, soft and unhurried. No urgency. No demand. Just warmth, and presence, and the quiet message of a man trying to replace fear with something else.
She sighed against his lips and her hands moved to his face, holding him there.
He undressed her with the care he should have shown her from the beginning—attention to each small revealed thing, his mouth following his hands. The slope of her shoulder. The inside of her wrist, avoiding the bruise, kissing above it instead. The curve of her waist.
"You're beautiful," he said against her stomach, and meant it as something beyond aesthetics—meant her courage and her grace and the way she'd fought even when she was terrified, even when it was hopeless, even with a hand over her mouth.
"Samarth." His name in her voice was a whole conversation.
He moved back up her body and entered her slowly, with the deliberateness of someone who understood he was being trusted with something precious.
She exhaled—long, shuddering, relieved—her arms wrapping around him and pulling him closer.
"You're safe," he said again, moving.
"I know." Her lips found his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his mouth. "I know I am. With you."
They moved together without urgency, without performance. Just two people in a dark room finding their way back to each other after something that had shaken them both.
When she came, it was with her face pressed into his neck and his name on her lips like something holy.
He followed her, his arms tightening until there was no space between them, her name the only coherent thought in his head.
Afterward, he didn't move. Stayed exactly where he was, her weight against his chest, her breathing slowing toward sleep.
"Don't go," she murmured, already more than halfway gone.
"I'm here." His hand moved in slow circles on her back. "Sleep, Nimisha. I'm here."
He stayed awake long after she fell asleep, her breathing deep and even against him.
Bruno was across the foot of the bed, his eyes occasionally opening to check the room before closing again. A sentinel even in sleep.
Samarth stared at the ceiling.
Kabir Malhotra had planned to take his wife.
Had prepared a location. Had paid men. Had thought, with the staggering arrogance of someone who'd always bought his way out of consequences, that he could reach into Samarth Ranawat's life and take something that belonged there.
Samarth looked down at Nimisha's face, peaceful finally, turned toward him in sleep the way flowers turned toward light.
Tomorrow, he thought.
Tomorrow, Kabir would understand what the word consequence actually meant.