This Chapter is dedicated to Aaliyah, who's birthday makes us all..Euphoric!...Many happy returns, my dear Euphoria!..Navin
CHAPTER 38
The savagery with with Arnav Singh Raizada stormed into Payal Raizada's room and wrenched a startled Khushi to her feet rendered both sisters completely numb with shock. Taking advantage of his frozen adversaries, Arnav half dragged, half carried his wife across the landing, and into their bedroom. He was immediately followed by Payal, but he slammed his bedroom door shut in her face, and Payal found herself outside the locked door, having recovered from the shock of his rage too late to do anything about it.
Khushi was thrown onto the bed, her husband's body crashing down on top of her mere moments later...too swiftly to allow her to take a breath, to speak or even cry out. She was winded, her head swimming, her arms twisted awkwardly and trapped beneath her body as Arnav almost mindlessly sank his teeth into her arched throat. He bit her throat and neck, the deep sucking bites forming a necklace of purple marks around her pale neck.
Pain lanced through her, both from his bites and from his hands that were kneading her soft shoulders, holding her still. Waves of heat, like roiling pillars of flame seemed to emanate from the heavy body pinning her to the bed, causing goosebumps to erupt in protest all over her skin. As she started gasping for air, Khushi's lungs filled with Arnav's own breaths, his scent invaded her nostrils, as his mouth moved to her own, covering her parted lips with a ruthless, cruel force.
His rage was like a simmering force of nature, his anger a palpable thing that was turning the simple act of kissing into a punishing, brutal lesson in domination, in control. Panic started to swamp her, as this experience and her wedding night merged into one cataclysmic event. It was as if she was drugged by his rage. His desire and passion was uncontrolled by softness and it seemed to be coming down on to her, vibrating from the heavy man on top of her body.
Khushi wrenched away her mouth, tossing her head from side to side as Arnav grabbed her chin with strong fingers and forced her to submit her mouth to his own again and again. His lips bit and sucked on hers, the force of his mouth now bruising her lips. Khushi gasped again, reaching for air as Arnav's tongue dove into her mouth, stilling her protests, stealing her breaths. She tried to move, to wriggle away, but his limbs had become a weight that would never move --that pinioned her to the bed. She was falling, he was dragging her down, down, down where the fears lay waiting, where his brute strength would take her over, where she would lose herself to him, and have no say or choice or control over any of it.
With one final, almost despairing surge of strength, Khushi brought her knees up to her hips, and struck back, kicking out against the enemy trying to overpower her into submission.
Arnav grunted and reared back as he was kneed in the stomach, rolling to the side instinctively to protect much more delicate body parts than his abdomen, which had received the punishing blow. Dragging a deep swallow of air, Khushi screamed, and immediately, he reacted-- she was suddenly freed from the weight above her. Mindless, shaken, she sprinted up and of the bed, panting, and rushed out of the window, and out to the poolside.
Only one thought seemed to flicker through her oxygen starved brain, like a lightbulb flaring and dimming alternately in its death throes--escape.
Before she could take one step towards the steps that led upstairs, and towards safety, she felt an arm snake around her waist, as a hand clapped down over her mouth. Before she could scream again, before she could kick back against the hard body that had trapped her, Khushi was lifted and swiftly carried backwards, and the final thought that grabbed her mind before pure instinct took over was--fight..fight this, and, this time, fight to win.
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From the second he had seen Khushi laughing and cheerfully blabbering on about Lukhnow in Payal's room, until this moment, Arnav had been possessed. There was no other word for the insane rage, the almost homicidal panic that had been in operation within him. She was laughing, talking about leaving him. While a part of him knew she wasn't really abandoning him, that was, in essence, what it felt like--what she was physically doing. Leaving him. going away, and planning to do it all behind his back. She was thinking of going to Lukhnow, when she knew--she KNEW--that he would not be able to deal with her absence, or control his worry for her safety.
She would have been gone, tonight, before he had come home. He would have not known anything, until it was too late. She would have left with NK, and done so knowing that her husband would have stopped her had he been told her plans. She would have been underhanded about it all.
But for one text message, he would again be alone, he would again spend countless nights wondering about her, trying to reach her, trying to hold on to her.He would again spend sleepless nights wondering about his own sanity in needing another human being so much that his chest constricted with despair and longing. She could not go. She would not be allowed to go. It was simple, really. She needed to know he didn't let go of what was his. She needed to acknowledge, through her body, her words, her actions, that she was his. She would know that he had her, and she was his if it was the last thing he made her understand. He would brand her, lose her within himself. She would fight him, but he would win, and she would stay. The only way to keep her was to KEEP her--in his room, chained to his side, before his eyes.
Only when she had screamed her anguish, hitting out at him blindly, did sense, and cold reason suddenly return. As the red haze of rage and obsession filtered away, he saw his wife as she really was--terrified, and fleeing his very presence. As if he was the threat, and the danger in her life--not Shyam, but him. He had thought that it was fear that had fueled his instantaneous reaction as he had grabbed her just outside their room, carrying her back in before she could flee. But it was only now, as he placed her before him, that he felt real fear--he had Khushi physically before him..but where was she ?
The woman who thrashed wildly in his arms as Arnav reached his bedroom was not Khushi Singh Raizada, or Khushi Kumari Gupta. It was not a Khushi he had ever met. This registered in Arnav's mind seconds before he realized he had made a huge mistake, caused himself an almost irreparable harm. He has reacted without reason, without giving her a chance to explain, to tell him her plans. She had been acting in her usual reckless manner. That was not new. But what about his own actions? What about them? He had acted in his usual unpardonable, criminally cruel way.
His need to control her, to possess her body and soul, to suck her very thoughts out of her mind, and into his--all this would leave him with an empty shell, with a broken doll he could play with, but without the essence of Khushi..without what made her human.
The woman before him right now was a hunted creature at bay, and like any creature that had been cornered once too often, she had turned. The feral eyes that peered through the damp fringe on her forehead, the twisted grimace on her face...putting her down to the ground before him, Arnav slowly raised his hands up to his shoulders, palms facing her, the universal sign of surrender.
He tried to still his bellowing breaths. He tried to still the ricocheting alarm that pulsed through his body at the almost manic glint in her eyes...Those eyes-- the expression in those opaque hazel rocks seemed distant, almost glazed---those eyes caused his own clothes to cling to his back with damp sweat.
He was suddenly terrified, as he avoided making any sudden movements, backing away from the creature before him slowly and gently. He could not lose her, to her rage, or to his stupid panicked folly. He could not lose what made Khushi...Khushi. But right now, it looked as if he was close to losing that woman altogether.
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They circled each other---one trying to look as un-threatening as his six foot two inch frame could make him---the other breathing in short gasps, her hands curled into clawed fists, her eyes wild and burning with remembered fears, her heart beats throbbing with actual maniacal rage.
"Hit me.."
Khushi hissed at him, only it was not Khushi, this guttural voice, this wounded creature.
"What? No! Khushi! What are you saying? No! are you crazy!?!" Arnav stammered, thrown by the demand, choked by the vehemence in her tone, terrified by whatever had made her voice it.
"No, you have to hit me. You do everything else. Hit me now.I want to feel my face burn from the imprint of your hand, I want my lips to smear with blood, from you fist. Hit me you bas***d!"
Her voice, started out soft, and ended up on a keening wail, as Khushi suddenly attacked, arms flailing, teeth bared. He received the whirlwind with open arms, standing passive and unresisting as she lashed out with fingers and teeth and nails at his body. His shirt ripped apart under her hands, her hands encountering his flesh as she raked her nails into his skin, scoring deep red grooves into his chest. Arnav stood still, without a single movement to defend himself. She screamed, yanking his tattered shirt off of his body, her rage giving her unreal strength replacing the frail woman with the raging virago before him.
"Why wont you hit me? Why won't you hurt me more than you already do? Why is that taboo, when attacking me and trying to f**k me into submission isn't off the table? What makes that wrong, but makes terrifying me into submitting to you alright? Hit me!"
"Khushi please...Forgive me, forgive me..I'm sorry...I'm sorry..I cannot just let you leave me, rush off without me like this, but I didn't mean to frighten you...Please, I'm sorry!!!" Arnav chanted his sorrow, his eyes raining tears brought not from the pain within his flesh, but from the pain he could see in hers. But this had been, somehow, the final straw. His litany of pleas fell on deaf ears as Khushi had already screamed her anger out, her hoarse voice failing her.
Khushi came back to her body, but this was someone new, someone different than the woman he had carried into his room from Payal's bedroom an hour back. It was as if she had suddenly aged, and he watched her with dawning horror, knowing instinctively of some big calamity. He already knew that some big mistake had happened even as she stopped her attacks, even as she turned away from him and walked stiffly to their wardrobe.
He could only watch, mutely, as her eyes lost their glazed expression and something darker, something much less wholesome took their place. Reaching into the wardrobe, she brought out a Samsonite suitcase, clearly his own luggage. The gleaming silver case was thrown to the ground before him, and it burst open, revealing packed clothes, his toiletries, a backup charger for a laptop. His own traveling kit. Packed by his wife. As he stared in horror at the split luggage, and then back up into Khushi's face, Arnav barely heard her last words over the rushing sound of his own blood rampaging through his veins.
As Khushi fixed her rumpled sari with economical tugs and unlatched the door, her voice came to him, softly, just before she stepped out to the corridor.
"I had packed your clothes already, so you could go with NK and me to Lukhnow without a moment's delay this evening. We would have had to sneak out carefully, since Di is also going to Lukhnow to visit her cousin, and she shouldn't know about our plans to go there too. She is going to Sheesh Mahal so I thought we'd go and stay at Parveznagar, at Happy Singh's home there.
NK wanted to leave right away but I convinced him to wait until you got home, so we could also take you. I was going to tell you tonight, after you got back home, that Shyam's activities at Parveznagar was something that you and I and NK could go and look into together, while Jiji and Akash Jiju covered the Delhi investigations.
I had thought we'd go there together, back to where we met, back to where it all started. If you had let me speak before you attacked me, I would have told you this, I would have asked for your company. I would have given you proof that I would never have left you, and gone away, alone. I would not hurt you, Arnav-ji. I would not hurt you."
The door of their bedroom closed with a click behind her.
Edited by napstermonster - 13 years ago
Hui Ghum Yaadein
15