LOVELY BANNER BY MAVERICKMARTIN...š¤
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AND HEAVEN..š¤
Chapter 4 A MOTH'S DILEMMA..The ornate wrought iron gates opened slowly with a creak and apparently on their own as strangely enough there was no one to be seen. He walked down the driveway and the rhythmic crunching of the gravel underneath his footsteps made him frown in his sleep even as he willed himself to turn back before it was too late. He could see the familiar teak front door with it's shining brass knob very clearly now. Silently, the door opened to let him in and then everything started going horribly wrong. He knew what was going to happen, the air of desolate doom in the house told him so...The flight of stairs were in front of him and he tried to stop himself from taking them, but his feet had a mind of their own..
As the door to their bedroom loomed closer and closer, he tried to stop himself again. Strained his mind so hard that he felt his mind would explode but like all other doors, he didn't seem to have any control over this one either...
The door opened with a sudden jolt and with it, Arnav woke up from sleep and giving a half stifled, agonized cry sat up in bed. Bathed in perspiration, his heart pounded forcefully against his ribcage and he dazedly lifted his hands up and stared at them...
Yes, he hadn't been able to stop them in time..
Like always, as soon as realization struck him like a ton of bricks, he was doused with a fresh avalanche of misery...
Cold, unforgiving, unrelenting.
His breaths were harsh and raspy as he clenched his fists and closed his eyes to let that familiar feeling fade away slowly, to let his heart quieten down...
He knew the whole routine by heart.
Gradually his heartbeats calmed, his breaths became more even and he lay down in bed again, his eyes wide open, bereft of all vestiges of already elusive sleep.
Much to her annoyance, the first thought that Khushi had on waking up the next morning was of a pair of piercing gray eyes. Cursing herself under her breath, Khushi turned on her side, yet his all pervasive thoughts were refusing to leave her mind.
"I wonder how he was like before...that ...that ...happened".
An image of him smartly uniformed, shoulders adorned with decorations flashed before him, accompanied by a strange, inexplicable wave of sadness..
"What is he to you? Why should you care?, she vehemently admonished herself, getting off the bed angrily and in an attempt to divest her mind of his unwelcome, unwanted thoughts, tried to busy her mind with musings of a more mundane, safer nature.
"Apartment's rent is due tomorrow and I really need to do some grocery today", she thought walking towards the bathroom, sighing with relief as she felt she had finally got rid of the madness that seemed hell bent on posessing her mind.
However, later when she sat at the kitchen table doing sums over a piece of paper, his voice, without warning and quite rebelliously broke all barriers of her mind to come to the forefront.
"Your eyes have intoxicated me, they don't let me sleep, they haunt me everywhere I go".
"I told you that day, there's something about your eyes that first brought me to you and that keeps me coming to you..".
Dropping the pencil, Khushi raked her fingers agitatedly through her hair and sat with her head in her hands.
"Stop..Khushi...Stop", she whispered.
Men like him just want one thing from women like you, she desperately tried to reason with herself. He thought you were a wh**e like all others and that's what brought him to you in the first place. Now that he knows that you can't be bought with cash, he is trying to buy you with kind, with a few trite words that can make this thing seem just a little better than a cold transaction of bodies.
Those words didn't mean anything and still if you believe them, there isn't a greater fool in the world than you. Those words are lies just as that rose that you can't bring yourself to throw away is a lie.
Resolutely, she got up and walked over to her bedroom with her steps quick and determined. Bending over, she opened the bedside table drawer and whisked the withered, limp rose out. With ruthless, vicious movements, she ripped the petals one by one, then flung the stem on the floor too..
He might be a very good liar, but I'm not the naive fool I once were, she thought with a determined look in her eyes. And what do I even know about him? What little I do know should actually make me run in the opposite direction, he is a murderer, for God's sake!!
The City Library was a tall, imposing, limestone building built in the 1920s and at this particular time of the day, it was mostly vacant. Inspector Khan stood in a medium sized, dusty room tucked away in one of it's corners, the well-stocked but rarely used newspapers archives room.
An old newspaper with yellowed paged mounted in a sturdy leather jacket lay open in front of him, atop a high, teak reading table.
Arnav's black and white picture smiled from the delicate page. He looked much younger with his features relaxed and a small lopsided smile playing on his lips. Looking stately and dignified in his uniform, he had his arm casually thrown around the shoulders of a beautiful girl, his wife. Khan's intent eyes were however, focussed on the headline above it, which was heartrendingly at odds with the picture of marital bliss, juxtaposed directly below it. Khan painstakingly scanned through the very first sensational headlines followed by the details, the nitty gritty of the long drawn out trial, the army physician's testimony, the overwhelming public support for Raizada..
Few hours later while he climbed down the wide stairs that were at the front of the library, there was a grim, serious look in his eyes.
As Khushi applied make up on with a careless hand, she could hear the clouds rumbling outdoors. It was sure to rain tonight, she thought, already worrying about her impending, journey back home, later in the night. She wished that she had enough money to be able to afford a cab, but with bills piling up and just her scanty wages to take care of them, it would be extremely foolhardy to splurge her money like that.
Well, isn't that a classic case of being caught between a rock and a hard place, she mused, her quinessentially black humor coming into play.
"My fate seems to be asking me, "What would you prefer, Madam? Getting strangled by a stalker or thrown out of your apartment?", she thought to herself.
"Death or homelessness?, she mused dryly, putting cheap, brandless, blood red lipstick on.
Putting the lipstick down, she stared at her reflection in the cracked mirror in front of her. Her eyes looked large and vulnerable, stripped bare of all bravado and slowly she looked down at the broad, red satin over plastic bracelet, she always wore on her left wrist.
Caressing the smoothness of the fabric slowly, her eyes became suffused with immense hopelessness.
She was dressed in a bottle green, sleeveles long dress that had a long slit on one side and today the color green made her hazel eyes shimmer and sparkle like never before. As she opened the door to head out for her performance, a thought defiantly escaped the sturdy roadblocks she had painstakingly arranged in her mind.
"I wonder if he's going to be here tonight...".
The object of her reluctant musings was standing right outside the door giving all appearance of patiently waiting for her. Hands in pockets, black blazer over a white, open collared shirt, he looked up, hearing the door open and as their eyes met, Khushi was totally unprepared for the sudden, fierce acceleration of her heartbeats.
Taking a couple of steps towards her, the corner of his mouth lifted almost imperceptibly and he said huskily, "Hi..".
"Hi", she replied, thinking dazedly that with their history of a series of crazy, almost surreal encounters, how strange this normal exchange of 'hi-s' sounded to her ears.
Taking another step forward, he was definitely encroaching on her personal space now and Khushi looked up at him with her eyes mesmerized, her senses invaded by his smell, his warmth and all her resolutions fast dissipating into nothingness.
She started when he raised a hand to lightly caress her cheek with the back of his fingers.
"You look nice", he said seriously before adding, "Despite all that cheap make up, you've plastered on your face".
Breaking her eyes away, she swallowed and said, "I'm getting late for my performance".
Squeezing herself from between him and the wall behind her, she tried to slide out only to have him put one hand on the wall to stop her.
"I will drop you to your place after the performance..".
"I'll see", she said noncommittally without meeting his gaze, "I really have to go now...".
As he dropped his arm, Khushi suddenly looked up at him and gasped inaudibly seeing the naked desire in his eyes. Mingled with something else, which she was unable to decipher as yet.
"See you after the performance", he said with his gray eyes flickering, before turning around and walking down the dimlit corridor. Gazing at his broad shoulders, she thought apropos of nothing, just how comforting and reassuring his arms had felt around her.
She hadn't felt so safe in years.
Lily's voice snapped her put of her reverie.
"What are you doing, Khushi? Everyone's waiting for you...".
As they hurried towards the performance area, Lily gave her a speculative look and said, "I would be careful of that man, if I were you. No matter how much he offers..".
"Lily, I had told you I don't do that...Never have and never will...", Khushi said in a protesting voice.
Lily just rolled her eyes in a disbelieving manner and with an underlying contempt for what she considered as her 'holier than thou' attitude.
"Never say never, darling. Life has a nasty habit of bringing girls like us to their knees...".
All through her performance, she was excruciatingly aware of him as he sat at his usual seat, eyes fixed unwaveringly on her dancing form. Summoning all her strength, she willed herself to not look at him yet the pull, she felt towards him was almost, magnetic, almost surreal in nature. She knew it was dangerous, she knew it was foolish yet the attraction seemed to be overpowering her senses with every passing second.
"It's like playing with fire", a hysterical, panicked voice inside her admonished...
But tonight she felt like a helpless moth, intoxicated by the lure of fire, wanting to come closer and closer to it, unmoved and unperturbed by the surety of it's fate...
Getting burnt.
Just for tonight, she wanted to believe in all his lies.
Just for tonight, she wanted to live her life...
With a strange, uncharacteristic recklessness taking possession of her mind, she was surprised to find herself doing the unthinkable.
Hoping..
Just for once, she allowed herself to bring all those long buried yearnings, all those ruthlessly strangled dreams to the surface again...
"What if he wasn't lying?
"What if he was really interested in me as a person too and not just my body...?
"What if he is different from all other men?
"What if they both were meant to be...?
Lost in thoughts, she just stood with her eyes blank, not even realizing that the performance was long over and she was surrounded by leering men offering to pick her up.
A hand tightly gripping her wrist and leading her away from them, made her look up in surprise.
It was Arnav and his profile was impassive, unreadable as usual.
Still holding her hand, he led her toward the bar counter and reaching them, leaned against it to look at her.
"Can I buy you a drink?, he said studying her face with a speculative, assessing look in his gray eyes.
"I don't drink..", she said, licking her suddenly dry lips nervously.
"Soft drink?, he said, still holding her wrist with one hand.
Shaking her head quietly, she had a sudden agonized thought which made her cheeks grow warm in embarrassment.
"I did make clear to him that I'm not..a wh..Hope he believed me. What a slap it would be in my face if he tries to talk about money...".
To her relief, he didn't.
"It's raining outside, so it would be better if we waited for a little while", he said, caressing the satin bracelet on her wrist with his thumb.
"Why do you always wear that?, he asked suddenly, looking up at her.
Averting her eyes, she smiled a little, then said, "It's a new fad, it's called cowardice bracelet".
"Cowardice bracelet?, he repeated with a brow raised but then shrugging in a bored manner, he changed the topic.
"Looks like the rain is slowing down", he said, glancing at the row of glass windows on the whole front wall of the bar.
"I'll go change.."
"I'm coming with you", he said huskily, causing her heartbeats to turn erratic.
Soon they walked down the dark corridor towards the changing room listening to the patter of rain on the roof, the sound of car wheels splashing over puddles of rain water and the relentless pounding of their hearts..
Coming near the door of her changing room, Arnav turned towards her and with an impatient movement pulled her flush against him. While one hand urgently ran down the length of her backside, trying to mold her soft contours against his hard body, the other caught hold of her curls to tilting her head back..
With a reckless fire igniting deep inside her and a frisson of excitement surging through her veins, she threw her arms around his neck and pressed her body even closer against his hardness. Pushing her against the wall, he swooped down and his lips met her waiting ones in a passionate, hungry kiss...
Chapter 5
https://www.indiaforums.com/forum/post/95667665
Hey friends,
I know there are a lot of questions swirling in your minds...and they will all be answered soon. Please share your thoughts with me and do try to leave comments as I especially need feedback for this particular story..:) And yes, can you guys interpret Arnav's nightmare or not?
Next Chapter on Sunday : Scarred..
Looking forward to reading your feedback...:)
Love you all,
Jenny :)
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