Night in the studio (MB/RK ff!!!) complete - Page 3

Her eyes were dry, as if she had left them open in a dust storm. And her mouth felt odd.

A half grey light leaked into her world.

'Morning, Biwi!'

Madhu had no idea why she felt so sad, but that voice made all the connections that sleep had driven away. Everything came rushing back.

Her husband was standing in front of the dressing console, putting last touches to his carefully mussed hairdo.

She looked around in shock. She was lying in the bed in RK's vanity van in the studio car park.

Madhu go up so suddenly that it made her head swim. She saw she was no longer wearing the same clothes as yesterday. And sure enough, the trailing corpse of the ruined sari cried its shame from the coffee table.

The breath stilled in her.

'What happened, Biwi? Are you normally so quiet in the mornings? You should be happy, shouldn't you? Your dream of being my wife in private is now complete. You have done what billions dream of-- spent a night with RK!'

Madhu felt the powerful surge of blood under her skin, bathing her in a fiery blush of shame. The bedclothes around her were obscenely rumpled, mocking proof of her husband's words. Horror crawled over her with a thousand legs of revulsion.

Rat a tat tat!

There was a loud knocking on the vanity door.

RK smiled a devastating smile of mocking cruelty.

'And lo! Now you can prove your wifely status in public too!'

'Chief! Are you inside?' Bittu's voice came in a plaintive cry.

Still looking at her, RK moved towards the door.

'No, wait! RK!' Madhu jumped out of bed with a cry. She squealed in horror as she realised that she was wearing one of his shirts, which barely reached mid-thigh, and had been very cursorily buttoned.

Instinct caused her to shrink in shame, as she saw his slow appraising eyes trail lingeringly over her legs, luxuriating in her discomfort.

He raised an eyebrow in a blatant mockery of innocent enquiry.

'Why, Biwi? I have seen everything of interest in the long watches of the night, and, frankly, even in the harsh light of day you don't look half bad!' He continued to move to the door, where Bittu was still persisting with his inquiries.

'No!' Madhu reached out to stop him, uncaring of everything save the desperate need to confine her shame to within the walls of the trailer. And suddenly the floor of the trailer was moving at her at terrifying speed.

When she came to, RK held her in his arms, holding her captive against his hard chest. It felt like marble, even though she could feel the rhythm of his heart through the thin fabric of his shirt. His shirts, her wandering mind contributed. He had a heart. There it was, she thought, as her flailing senses, set adrift by her fever, confirmed the rhythm.

His arms felt like bands of steel around her, and her head felt almost too heavy to be supported by her neck.

'Bittuji, stop that racket!' RK shouted in her ear, bringing her gasping to full awareness. She raised her traitorous head from his chest. The knocking ceased.

'Biwi and I are spending some quality time together,' he said in an undertone, as she staggered against him.

Madhu struggled to push him away, but felt as weak as a kitten.

'Come on, Biwi!' and with no effort at all he had lifted her in his arms and deposited her pell-mell on the bed. Brain reeling from the turn of events, Madhu struggled to cover her modesty, even as his gaze burnt her with insistent and shameless scrutiny. Defeated, Madhu got under the covers again, to shield herself from his raking eyes.

'You're a feisty little thing, aren't you, Biwi?' RK breathed over her, so close that she could smell his body wash, his perfume. It made her throat constrict with loathing. It must be loathing.

'You know,' he said, trailing a burning finger over her collar bone, even as she shrank from his touch, the touch that made her feel strange and out of control. She looked up at him with defiant eyes, rage smouldering in their depths.

But he seemd entirely unaffected. 'If you wanted my love so badly,' he breathed, in that soft voice she had first heard in a darkened theatre in her last year of school, and which had done something to her then, so that she could think of nothing else except him and that voice for two whole months. She had almost failed her final exams because of those stolen three hours with Trishna. And now fantasy was colliding with reality, and she could barely comprehend the things that were happening to her.

Mesmerised, she looked into his monstrous face, so clinically beautiful and so perfectly misleading. How could such beauty hold such cruelty?

'All you had to do was ask, Biwi!' said that terrible, sneering voice, pitched at a level that raised bewildering responses in her being. ' What was the need to run away and make me chase after you?'

Madhu remembered herself, and with an effort, wrenched reality from furtive, long-forgotten daydreams that her fever had brought to the fore.

'Go away!' she cried, her voice throbbing with frustration. 'Just go away and let me get dressed!'

'Come now, Biwi!' he crooned, straightening up, and sitting down on the bed, striking ownership both of it and its occupant. 'Pushing me out of my own trailer? I paid a crore and a half for it, Biwi, which is why I was able to bring you here when the rains closed all the roads, and you were soaking wet and feverish. So, like a good husband, I brought you here and looked after you! Just because you spent one night in the bed of this trailer with me, does not give you the right to order me out of it, na Biwi?'

Madhu's anger flared bright and uncaring in her head. Her questing hands groped and found something on the nightstand and threw it at his mocking head. The cup crashed against the aluminium walls, but RK was clutching something else that had got caught up with the thrown missile.

He held up the article of clothing in fastidious fingers.

'La Perla? I really do provide well for you, don't I, Biwi? Not many spots in the world would be able to wear hundred dollar bras, would they?'

Fin

A lovely read.😃👏