Chapter 48 #5
Hours of smiling and nodding and pretending she didn't feel Zaviyar's eyes tracking her from across the hall had left her dizzy.
She slipped past the ballroom, past the corridor lined with lights, and turned left to go to the balcony. Instead, an arm snaked around her waist and she was pulled sideways into darkness.
The door clicked shut behind them. A bedroom, a guest room... maybe. She couldn't tell, couldn't see because his mouth was already on hers. She was pinned against a door, her hands pinned above her, held tightly by a hand big enough while the other hand secured her waist..
" Mhmmmm-", she hummed in protest, her eyes widening as she tried to process what was going on. She had already guessed that it was Zaviyar.
He didn't let her finish. His lips sealed over hers, and the world tilted.
The music from the ballroom was a distant throb now, muffled by walls and desire and Safiya stopped thinking entirely.
Her hands found his shoulders, the crisp fabric of his coat, the heat underneath and she pulled him closer because she'd spent the entire evening pretending she didn't want exactly this.
He kissed her until her lungs burned, until she stopped thinking about the people outside. His mouth moved from her lips to the curve of her jaw, then lower and Safiya gasped, a sound she'd be embarrassed about later when his teeth grazed the sensitive skin of her neck.
"Zaviyar-", she tried to speak.
"Shh." His voice was rough against her throat. "They can hear the music. They can't hear you. And call me Avi. ", he said before his lips found the arch of her neck again.
His fingers found the dori at the back of her blouse the delicate lacing that held everything together and tugged.
Not enough to undo it completely, just enough that the fabric loosened, cool air kissing the exposed skin of her spine.
She shivered. He smiled against her neck.
She could feel it, that infuriating, knowing curve of his lips.
"You're-" She tried to form a sentence. His mouth found that spot just below her ear, the one that made her knees buckle and the sentence dissolved into a breathy, helpless sound that was absolutely not a moan.
" i fucking missed you so much. ", his lips found hers, " So fucking much ", he said, his lips touching hers as he spoke. He slammed his lips on her. Devouring her lips like he was a man starved for years.
His lips travelled to her jaw, down the column of her throat and she gasped, her head falling back against the surface behind her. The delicate dori at the back of her choli came undone under his fingers. He smiled against her skin, the bastard.
"Zaviyar," she breathed, her voice barely audible. "Someone could come in."
He pulled back just enough to look at her, his eyes dark and hungry in the faint light filtering through the curtains. "Locked the door," he murmured, his thumb tracing the line of her collarbone. "The moment I pulled you in."
Her heart hammered against her ribs. The rational part of her brain, the part that remembered they were at her parents anniversary, that they were supposed to be out there, posing-screamed at her to stop this madness.
But her hands betrayed her, sliding up to tangle in his hair, pulling him back to her.
"6 days," he whispered against her lips. "6 days of watching you through this stupid phone camera, pretending I don't know what you taste like, what you feel like. "
The accusation in his voice made her stomach clench with guilt and something hotter, something dangerous. She'd been the one to end it, to push him away after their last fight.
She had blocked him, only for a few hours. But it surely did, make him tense.
"You said you weren't coming," she whispered. He kissed her again and this time there was nothing gentle about it. This was pure desperation, his hand fisting in the silk of her dupatta, and Safiya kissed him back like she was drowning and he was the only air.
Her lipstick was ruined, she could feel it smearing, could taste the waxy sweetness of it mixing with the salt of his skin and she didn't care.
She didn't care about the mess, didn't care about the marks he was leaving on her neck, didn't care about anything except the way his body pressed against hers, solid and real and very hot.
His fingers worked the dori further, the laces slipping through his grip and the choli loosened another inch.
Cool air swept across her bare back andshe gasped, her skin prickling with goosebumps.
He didn't pull the fabric away, he never did, the tease, just let his fingers trace the newly exposed skin, feather-light, maddening.
"You're going to kill me," she whispered.
"Good." His mouth returned to her neck and this time there was nothing gentle about it. His teeth sank into the soft hollow where her pulse hammered and Safiya's knees gave out entirely.
She would have crumpled if his arms hadn't locked around her waist, holding her up against him and the sound that escaped her throat was so obscene that she clapped a hand over her own mouth.
She tried not to react when he blew cold air against her damp skin from her neck to the valley of her breasts which was earlier hidden by the dupatta.
He bit again, lower. Then again, marking a trail down to the curve where her cleavage started, each one sharper than the last, each one drawing a sound from her that she'd deny to her dying breath.
Her lipstick was everywhere. It wss on his mouth, on her chin, on his jaw, on the white of his collar, and somewhere in the back of her mind she registered that she would have to redo everything
But then his mouth found that spot again, and thinking became impossible.
The dori hung loose down her spine now, the strings dangling, and she was in a compromising, intimate situation at her parents anniversary, and she had never been more hot and bothered.
When he finally lifted his head, his lips were swollen and red-stained, and his eyes held that particular kind of satisfied darkness that made her want to hit him and kiss him in equal measure.
"You," she panted, "are the worst person I have ever-"
"Met? Loved? Couldn't stop thinking about since the past few days?"
He finished her sentence the way he always did, with that infuriating half-smile and then he was scooping her up.
Actually scooping her up, one arm under her knees and the other around her back and carrying her through the room like she weighed nothing.
"Zaviyar, put me down, I can walk-"
"You couldn't stand thirty seconds ago."
"That was your fault!"
"Exactly."
He pushed open a door she hadn't even noticed. It hwas a bathroom, small and dimly lit, the kind of en-suite attached to a guest bedroom. He set her down on the edge of the marble counter and stepped back, leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, watching.
Safiya caught her reflection in the mirror and nearly screamed.
Her hair, the elegant updo that had taken her mother's stylist an hour to perfect was half-unpinned, curls tumbling around her face in wild disarray.
Her lipstick was destroyed, smeared across her mouth, across her chin, a streak of deep red along her jaw where his stubble had scraped it sideways. And her neck...
God, her neck was a constellation of bruises in varying shades of pink and red, each one a perfect trail of teeth marks.
"You animal," she hissed, grabbing a tissue from the counter and dabbing furiously at her mouth. "Look at me. Look at what you did."
He didn't look at her. He looked at her in the mirror and that was worse, somehow, the way his gaze tracked her every movement through the glass, dark and unrepentant and still hungry.
She could see the outline of her lipstick on his jaw, a smear of red along his cheekbone, and the white collar of his shirt was a disaster of smudged color and creased fabric.
She rummaged through the pockets in her lehenga, and brought out all the necessary products. She threw a cleansing wipe, at him and said, " Fix yourself. "
"Forty-five minutes," she said, dabbing concealer over the worst of the marks.
"Forty-five minutes I spent on this lipstick. Do you know how many layers? Do you know how many times I had to blot?", she said, her frustration building up.
"You looked beautiful before," he said, still watching her through the mirror. "But you look more beautiful now."
"That's not the point." She pressed powder over the concealer, then reached for the lipstick in her clutch.
"The point is that you ruined a perfectly good matte finish and now I have to reapply from scratch because you have the self-control of a-"
"Of a man who hasn't touched his wife in 6 days?", he finished for her.
She froze, the lipstick hovering mid-air. The word wife hung between them. She turned to him, snatching the wipe before she rubbed it on his neck.
" Others are waiting, I'll go first. You come after sometime. I don't want them to have the wrong idea. "
" We are married, i don't care what they think. Even if I kiss my wife, nobody should have a problem with it. ", Safiya stepped back, when he cornered her against the counter.
" Zaviyar, stay back. ", his steps stopped at once.
" You're the only one I'm rightfully allowed to be intimate with, jaan. ", He said placing a soft peck against her temple, " With your permission of course. "
She closed her eyes, savoring the gesture before she turned around, ready to leave but stopped when she felt her dupatta stuck.
Last time, she had thought it was Zaviyar but turned out it was a plant. This time she won't do the same mistake. She thought and turned to free the stuck dupatta only to see that it was indeed Zaviyar who had it wrapped around her hand.
" Not a plant this time jaan. ", he smirked.
" Ab kya hua? ", she asked seeing him grin at her.
( What happened now )
" Ab aap ese baheer touh nhi Jaa sakti. ", Zaviyar closed the distance between them in one step, her body sandwiched between him and the counter.
( Now you can't go out like, can you? )