Beautiful Girl

Part Eighteen

She is apprehensive about opening the door, but they can't ignore the world by hiding themselves behind closed doors.
And also, he's itching to punch the shit out of Shashi Gupta and Madhumati's nephew.
He comes from behind her and wraps his arms around. She slowly relaxes into his hold.
"I am scared, Arnav," She confesses in a soft whisper.
"I won't let anything happen to you, sweetheart," He murmurs against the side of her head.
The minty smell of her shampoo teases his senses and he has to remind himself that he is supposed to offer comfort, not seek it right now.
"I don't wanna let you go."
It's an admission borne out of sheer desperation, and her voice breaks at the last word.
He turns her, so that he can see her face.
She is crying.
He takes her hands in his and bunches them together to form a fist.
"I won't ever let you go," He vows. "No one and nothing can take you away from me, sweetheart."
"Can you hug me, please?" She asks in a voice so small that his heart hurts a little.
Wordlessly, he lets go of her hand and opens his wide, and she comes in his embrace like she wants to crawl into him and hide.
"It's gonna be okay, Khushi," He assures her. "We're married after all, aren't we?"
The lie doesn't even feel like a lie when she nods, wiping her tears on his T-shirt.
"We will watch Iron Man kick ass after we clear the trash. Cool?"
She laughs so sweetly, her eyes still a little red. He's never gonna have enough of her.
She steps away from him, choosing to hold his hand instead when he moves to open the door.

~~

"We're married," He starts without a preamble, before giving the chance to the party assembled on their doorstep to move inside.
"May we come in?" Sam's father enquires politely, but the question is not aimed at him.
Khushi gently squeezes their joined fingers and he prepares to step aside but then his gaze falls at Shashi Gupta, his wife, sister and nephew.
"Sweetheart, do you want them inside too?" He points at the Guptas and Madhumati Gupta is about to protest before Khushi tugs at their joined hands.
"Come on, darling," She chides him gently and something electric runs down his spine. "Let's be better people than they were."
He has to smile at that and he follows when she leads them to the sofas they were occupying before.
But she doesn't ask them to sit.
He knows what the scene looks like.
His laptop discarded on the table, Khushi in a tank and her shortest shorts, he in his softest T-shirt and bermudas.
It's a scene that he couldn't have staged better himself, and it's all thanks to the shortest shorts Khushi owns, the ones he was cursing out before in his head.
It looks like they were about to get into something sexual which is the farthest thing from the truth, but their visitors don't need to know that do they?
And maybe, that's why Sam's parents are glaring at him disapprovingly.
Well, they can glare all they want. She's his.
"Darling, would you mind entertaining for a bit," She drawls, "I am gonna go change into something people appropriate..."
He stares at her and...she has read him as perfectly as he is reading her. So, he lets his eyes look a little longer, lets them stray from the top of her nose to her lush mouth, and then to the hollow of her throat. And then his eyes fall at the strap of her tank that's just about to slide off her shoulders.
One... Two... Three...
He counts the steps in his head as he takes them before his fingers are grazing her soft skin as he pulls up the strap.
"Do you really need to change?" He whines a little, voice a husky thing that hints at seduction, even pouting for the effect.
Her eyes go wide and a little unfocused.
"Darling... behave, please," She whispers to him and she's not even acting now.
She pushes against his chest a little and he lets go.
She races up the stairs like a comet and even from here, he can see the tip of her red ears.
He turns to face his audience and they all look decidedly uncomfortable.
"I would invite you all to sit, but Khushi and I, we were kinda in the middle of something," He insinuates and watches in glee as Madhumati's nephew glares thunderously at him, and other people are reduced to coughing and throat clearing.
They all stand there akwardly and he chooses to park himself at the sofa where he was sitting earlier.
It is few minutes before Khushi comes down and she... replaced her short shorts with the cutoffs that make her legs look miles longer and...his Harvard sweatshirt.
So, that's where it went, he thinks absently.
She has apparently been raiding his closet for clothes and that soothes something in him...her desire to wear his clothes.
His rings glint on her finger and he's aware that no one misses the sparkle the sapphire throws in the glow of the ceiling lights she switches on.
"I was looking for the sweatshirt," He comments when she comes closer and she just rolls her eyes at him before turning to Sam's parents with a smile on her face that looks a little like ones she secretly practices in the front of her mirrors that she thinks he doesn't know about.
"You're looking dapper, Uncle Raaj," She tells the man who shifts a little and can't meet her eyes.
"Aunty Natasha, the Saree is gorgeous." The woman reaches forward and envelops Khushi's hand in her own.
"Your guardians tell us you ran away from home, bacchha."
Khushi shrugs off her hold, and steps away at once, the pretense of the smile falling from her lips.
This won't do.
These people don't get to come here and make Khushi miserable in her own home.
He unfolds his form langurously from the couch, a predator shedding the trappings of unassuming mildness.
"I would be very careful with my words if I were you," He delivers softly as he reaches out to pull Khushi to him in one tug. "I hate it when people make my wife sad."
Nobody misses the way she snuggles into him, with an ease that speaks of familiarity.
He can't lose her.
If he lets her go, he's probably gonna go insane.
And these people will kill all the things that make Khushi, Khushi.
"We are married. She's of an age where she can consent. I don't understand why you people are here."
"She is a ward of the state," Sam's father states and Shyam aims a nasty smile in his direction. "So, she doesn't get to make her decisions till she's twenty one. She's going to have to come with her guardians, or we will have to call the police."
"No," She turns like a snake and screams it out. "I won't go. I won't leave Arnav."
Then she pivots to face him again, her eyes wild and brimming with tears.
"You promised," She whispers to him. "You promised you won't ever let anyone part us. You told me I won't have to go back to those vile people. You promised, Arnav..."