#4 Ashlok Dark FF - My Ransacked Heart/ UPDATED/ Chapter 55/ (Pg-147) - Page 8

Chapter 40

The Last Atonement

I'm unbroken
The only one I know
The only trapped sprit
Trying to be free
So crush me
Be my love and
Break my heart
So I can be free
Don't think of it as cruel
Just think of it as helping me
Exposing me to the cruelties
Going on around me
Force me to see
When I'm blind
Make me hear
When I'm deaf
Make me live
When the world is gone

And though you think the world is at your feet ~ it can rise up and tread on you ~

Ian McEwan, Atonement

"Asthu that wasn't fair of you ", Kavya admonished her in a worried voice. "What wasn't fair of me?", Astha asked innocently although she knew what will be Kavya's next words. "To break poor Arjun's heart, it wasn't fair of you", she sighed. "Well he can find another girl soon, it's no big deal", she shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly and started turning the pages of her book. "It's no big deal, that you break someone's heart", Kavya asked her, disbelief was apparent from her face.

"I didn't ask him to run behind me", she defended herself vehemently. "No, you didn't ask him to do that, but you tagged along and gave false hopes to the poor boy", Kavya narrowed her eyes. "He needed to be taught a lesson for being a pest", she carelessly bit into the juicy apple she was holding in her left hand.

"So you should have told him to not bother you instead of spinning a web of lies, making him your boyfriend and then ditching him right away", Kavya shook her head regretfully. "I couldn't care less, he deserved it, the little isky pesky pest", Astha got up on her feet, swung the strap of her bag on her shoulder and headed towards her classroom...

The world is indeed round, every act you commit comes back to haunt you. Just the method or the situation may be different, but the fact remains the same. Your uncaring attitude hurts you the worst in future, when you need someone to care for you, to respect your needs then you don't get them and you realize that you were the one who destroyed your future with your own hands...

You betray someone's trust and someone else betrays your trust and the punishment you get is tripled the rate of your sins...

And Astha Kirloskar had gotten the worst of her punishment. Her self-respect , her arrogance, her trust and her last name on which she used to have pride were all stripped from her. And a gangster, a criminal was the one who had taught her the life's worst lesson.

She used to destroy innocent people's life so the innocence turned her back on her. Every emotion that she destroyed in others was taken from her too...

What you sow, so shall you reap...

And now she was an empty shell, a slave to someone's wishes, she thought as she prepared herself for sacrifice. She had signed the legal documents this afternoon. He hadn't bothered to come to her after this morning fiasco in that room, but had sent Seeta with the documents. She had read carefully every clause before she signed her name with a flourish...

She knew she had hammered the last nail in her coffin and it had clanged shut, engulfing her in the darkness, his darkness...

Shlok had sent her a white lace nightie too which Seeta had brought with her. What did he want to prove by sending this? That she was a bride or a virgin on her first night or was it to twist the knife deeper in her heart, she had smiled sardonically. Let him give me the pain, break me or twist me but in the end let me shock him with my undying spirit, she had put a hand to her heart and had vowed. A final tear had spilled from her eyes to land on the contract, signing her deal with the devil...

Now it was night, he would be coming to her to take her final surrender, she thought giving a last touch of mascara to her eyelashes. Red lipstick and white nightie. What a combination?, she thought satirically touching her reflection in the mirror. A perfect mistress, she rubbed her hand on the mirror to remove her reflection but it refused to budge. The mirror doesn't lie unlike her, she thought tiredly and her hand fell to her side...

The door opened behind her and the cool breeze wafted inside, announcing his presence to her. She shivered with cold and something else, may be anticipation. He didn't spoke a word just moved silently inside the room to stand closer behind her. She put the hairbrush back on the dressing table and hesitatingly raised her face to meet his gaze in the mirror.

He hadn't changed, but was still wearing the same black three piece suit of the morning. Without her high heels her diminutive height and tiny frame was looking fragile infront of his commanding height and powerful presence. White and black, angel and a devil, she thought looking into his mesmerizing black eyes. But the fact was he may be a devil but she wasn't an angel and he too knew that, she blushed as a knowing smile tugged at the corner of his lips...

Her heart started hammering as he slowly brushed her hair aside from her nape and bent his head to kiss the smooth flesh. Her hands twisted the corner of her nightie in anticipation for his kiss but it never came, just his hot breath skimmed across the surface for a moment, before he lifted his head away. A soft moan of distress left her throat...

What kind of game he was playing?, she thought looking into his reflection. He raised one eyebrow in inquiry at her distressed glance. Devilish lights were glinting in his eyes but his face was smooth, expressionless...

He didn't look the man of one day before, no hint of arousal was obvious from his touch...

Mesmerized, she saw his large and hairy hands moving across her arms, her shoulders and then across her collar bone, in a practiced motion, before they went downwards, skimming across her pebbled nipples. She gasped as he cupped her breasts from beneath, her tiny hands instinctively lifting to cover his huge and masculine ones. Her hands looked so pale in comparison with his tanned ones, and his broad shoulders seemed to engulf her tiny stature...

Shlok squeezed her breasts once, eliciting a tiny moan from her throat before leaving his hold on them to move a little back. In one quick movement he shrugged out of his coat, wrenched off his tie and removed his belt while Astha stood rooted on the same spot in front of the mirror, her widened eyes taking in his removal process. A hectic color was beginning to flare across her cheekbones and neck. He came back to her without removing his shirt and trousers and drew her closer into his chest...

With one smooth motion he drew the straps of her nightie down from her shoulders and it fell from her body, pooling around her feet, leaving her in a pair of silk panties and bra. She gasped with shock, her hands moving reflexively to clutch at his hands. But he shrugged out of her hold and with a practiced flick of his calloused fingers unhooked her bra and ripped off her panties, when they refused to be budge...

"No what are you doing", she gasped with shock when he pulled her out of her removed dress, kicking it aside. She wrapped her arms around her chest trying to cover her chest. Shlok hooked a foot around the leg of a nearby feeling dizzy chair and dragged it closer to them. Her teeth were beginning to chatter with shock and cold. He was giving her no space, no time to think while all the time he was in complete control of his gestures.

"Shhh", he whispered in her ear, caressing her throat in a soothing gesture as if someone would calm a skittish mare. Astha swallowed, feeling a wave of uneasiness sweeping across her, his touch was too practiced, it was like with his every movement, every gesture, he was laying claim to her body, asserting a certain dominance over her...

It was still sensual, no doubt on that, but it had tripled in intensity, no longer the touch of a lover but of a master to a slave. A commanding and controlling touch...

Shlok slid his hands across her naked breasts, his fingers kneading at the warm flesh making darts of pleasure shoot across skin. "Look at us princess", he whispered hotly in her ear and her lips parted at her naked reflection. She looked like the rubai of Omer Khayyam offering the splendor of her naked form to her master , bewitched and abandoned in his arms...

"Nooo", she moaned, too helpless in the grip of that intense feeling that was taking over her. What was she thinking when she signed that contract, what had she done?, she thought horrified. She was no match to his seductive routine. He was a practiced player while she was a novice and now he was punishing her for her puny effort at seduction...

At making him surrender to her...

She had made him surrender and now he wanted her surrender...

Shlok hooked an arm around her thigh and lifting it he placed her foot on the chair. "Wh...whaa", she began to protest, but he wrapped one of his arm tightly around her waist, balancing her so she wouldn't fall. "What are you doing", shocked she started to struggle when she heard the sibilant hiss of a zipper being drawn. Her widened eyes caught the brilliancy of his dark gaze in the mirror and a warning flashed across her mind as something predatory streaked across his face, making her insides sink...

She felt herself standing at the edge of the cliff about to be pushed. She opened her mouth to scream but it was too late he lifted her a little and impaled her in one swift stroke. Her breath caught in her throat as the scream never left her throat, the earth was being wrenched off her feet and she fell in the abyss, her mouth falling opening in a soundless gasp.

She watched her reflection with horrified eyes as her back arched back in a slow motion in his arms, her leg which was placed on the chair, trembled and her big toe curled in the soft satin...

Placing his hands on her hipbones, his fingers digging cruelly in her flesh he dragged himself back. The separation was agony, it was death. In a frantic motion she arched her arms back and around his neck, her hands finding purchase in the thick pelt of his hair...

With a powerful thrust he glided back in, like a warm knife through butter and a distressed whimper left her throat. Her muscles rippled along his length. It felt heaven, as his hardness hit a particularly sensitive spot. For how many minutes, hours, days or years that he pounded relentlessly inside her, she didn't know but when the tension became unbearable she turned her face, yanking at his hair to crush his mouth with her own.

Shlok gave a soft laugh and moved his face aside, so her kiss caught the side of his jaw. What kind of game was he playing? By bringing her closer to her climax and then denying her, her final pleasure.

A desperate moan caught in her throat when he removed himself away from her, muscles clenching painfully in one last desperate attempt to hold him inside her. "Why", she asked hoarsely. His one arm was still curled loosely around her slick abdomen but it was not trembling at all. Wasn't it painful for him to deny himself that final pleasure too, was that man even a human, she thought desperately...

"You don't understand princess, remember you told me that you would surrender", he whispered in her ear. "But I did surrender what else you want me to do?", she swallowed painfully. He removed a stray curl of her hair from her sweaty forehead. "You didn't beg", he whispered in a calm voice. His voice had finality in it. Panic's monster began to caress its claws along her skin but she refused to give in it to it. "No way", she shook her stubborn head in negation.

"Then you'll get this princess", he smiled darkly, entering inside her again but remaining stock still while she arched herself in his embrace, needing him to move inside her. "No way princess, you have no idea about my self-control I can remain like this for half a century", he laughed devilishly.

He had turned the tables on her by playing her own game on her...

Her game his rules...

"And what if I beg?", her voice seemed to be coming out of a well. "Then you'll get all", he began to move inside her. Astha closed her eyes and moaned as he strung hot kisses along her neck. "You know what princess as there is a thin line between love and hate so is between pain and pleasure, you wrung out the pleasure, and it becomes pain blurring the lines between pain and pleasure", he closed his fingers around her throat and squeezed, at the same time he shoved himself inside her until he touched her womb...

She whimpered as the combined pain and pleasure made her go a little insane. He was shredding her control to pieces, destroying her mind in the process...

"Asthu please, I love you don't leave me I am begging you give me another chance", Arjun was pleading on his knees infront of her. "Huh, what did you say, love, look at you, why would I love you a pest like you", she snorted. "But you told me yourself that I was your boyfriend and you loved me", he asked in a bewildered tone.

"Yeah so what, you were being a pest and I strung you along to teach you a lesson, now you no longer would be chasing me after this", she answered scornfully.

"You should have refused me for the first time, what was the purpose of making me fall in love with you", he cried. "I didn't ask you to fall in love with me", she shook her head scornfully and turned to leave...

"I pray Asthau that someday someone would make you beg then you'll remember what the pain of heartbreak is", he cursed while sobbing...

"Beg me princess", Shlok whispered in her ear and his voice blurred with Arjun's voice echoing in her mind...

"Say please princess and I'll give you all", Shlok gave a soft laugh. "Please Asthu", Arjun's voice seemed to be coming out of a tunnel. Her head ached as it would burst out of her skull and her body screamed for the pleasurable agony to end. Her teasing of her classfellows, her torturing of animals, her laughter, her enjoyment all flashed across her mind and she went slack in his arms...

"Please", she pleaded in a defeated voice. His triumphant laughter rang in her ears, striked across her heart and it caught fire...

"Well done princess, told you, that you would beg", his voice was brimming with triumph...

"Asthu someday, someone would made you beg", Arjun's voice again echoed in her ears like bad static and she shut her eyes, surrendering all. Let Shlok Agnihotri think that she begged because of him, let him remain in his euphoric state, savoring his victory over her, unknown to the fact that she begged not because of him, but for her atonement...

Yes surrendering to him was her atonement...

Life gives you a chance for atonement, be it bad or good and sometimes you are not even offered a good choice, so you choose the bad one for yourself...