Dhaagey: The Ties that Bind Us

50. pushing boundaries

Author's Note: Your mom will probably yell at you if she catches you reading this chapter...so if you're not old enough to sign a lease/have a bank card...bye! 

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The door clicked shut behind Meerab with a quiet finality, sealing off the sound of laughter that still lingered in the halls. Somewhere down the corridor, Rumi's voice rose in protest, something about Maryam stealing her hair clip, followed by a chorus of giggles and the low thrum of music from someone's phone speaker.

It had been hours of chatter, food, teasing, and indulgence. Rumi, in her usual force-of-nature way, had declared a mandatory post-dinner "girls-only restoration hour," dragging Meerab and Maryam into her room for what she called pampering and what Meerab suspected had actually been a covert excuse to interrogate her about "what exactly happened in that car."

There had been face masks – cucumber-scented, sticky – and hot towels and a lot of yelling when Rumi spilled toner on Maryam's dupatta. Meerab had laughed until her sides hurt. Until she forgot, for a little while, the rest of the world.

But just like that, it was quiet.

Meerab stood at the threshold of the bedroom for a long moment, her feet rooted, her breath just the slightest bit unsteady. Nothing had changed, not really. The curtains fluttered softly in the breeze, the familiar scent of tuberose drifted in from the courtyard by the pool, and the bed... the bed was exactly where it had always been.

But her gaze lingered.

Too long.

On the mess of pillows, the freshly changed sheets, the quiet invitation of it all.

She could see it, suddenly, vividly, in a way she hadn't let herself in the past few weeks.

Not as memory, but as a possibility vibrating just beneath the skin.

Herself tangled in those sheets. Murtasim's body curved around hers. Their skin bare and flushed and moving. His mouth at her throat, her fingers digging into his back, the soft sound of her name as it slipped from his lips like worship. Her thighs around his hips. Her hands in his hair. His weight over her, around her, inside –

She blinked.

Once.

Twice.

Too late. The images had taken root, unfurling in vines behind her eyes.

Damn Rumi.

She could still hear her best friend's cackling voice, teasing her in that singsong tone only Rumi could master. "Did you two do anything in the car again?" followed by that ridiculous wink. Meerab had rolled her eyes and threatened to throw a slipper at her, and now she regretted letting Rumi put the thought in her head at all.

Because all of it came rushing back again.

That first time – her straddling him in the car under the cloaked anonymity of night, the windows fogged and breathless, hips grinding with a hunger neither of them had named yet. Tongues tangled in a kiss that stole thought and reason, his hands holding her, hers lost in the unruly mess of his hair. Her body had shivered, tightened, come undone for the first time, her first unraveling, the moment seared into the very marrow of her.

And the last time. Ah. She had been sprawled across the cold marble of the penthouse kitchen counter, the surface hard beneath her back, her legs spread for him. His voice, low and wrecked, had whispered things into her skin she could still feel, kisses trailing down her throat like a prayer half-said, half-sinned. She had been helpless under him, wild and writhing and wrecked, her name rasped from his lips like it cost him to say it and gave him life in the same breath.