"Happy Married Life, Shivya Pathak" I weakly smiled seeing my condition, mangalsutra dangling in my neck, vermilion in hair and both hands filled with gold bangles.
"Come out quickly or do you want me to break the gate," my husband knocked again...
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"I want you to kiss my lips."
If there was a single sentence capable of shaking an entire world in a matter of seconds, then for Vedant Singh Raizada, it was this one. Seven words, Twenty letters.
And somehow enough to leave him completely speechless. For a moment, he simply stared at her. Surely he had heard her correctly.
Then again, how could he have heard wrong? Whenever Shivya spoke, she had his complete attention. The rest of the world could be falling apart around him, and he would still hear every word that left her mouth.
"Sona..." he began, only for the rest of the sentence to disappear somewhere between his heart and his throat.
For perhaps the first time in a long while, Vedant found himself at a loss for words. Her words had caught him completely off guard. A thousand thoughts crashed into each other inside his mind like restless waves against a shore.
"Are you sure?" he asked quietly, searching her face as though the answer might be written there. "Think about it again. I don't want you to regret anything later."
"I will not regret it." The certainty in her answer stole what little composure he had left. His hand slowly slipped away from her face as he tried to gather his thoughts.
She was sure.
The problem was that he wasn't.
All this time, he had convinced himself that if they ever reached a moment like this, Shivya would be the one who became nervous, the one who stepped back, the one who needed reassurance.
Instead, fate had chosen to play one of its favorite jokes. Here she stood, looking at him with steady eyes and quiet certainty. And here he stood, feeling as though someone had suddenly forgotten to explain how breathing worked.
A nervous chuckle almost escaped him, he had always known that one day they would learn how to cross the distance that had existed between them from the beginning.
What he hadn't expected was that when the moment finally arrived, it would be him who panicked.
Because somewhere along the way, without even realizing it, Shivya had become the one person whose heart he feared hurting. That fear now stood taller than his own desires, casting a shadow over every reckless impulse that tried to take hold of him.
And yet she was waiting. She was actually waiting for him to make the next move. For several seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then, slowly, as though approaching something precious, Vedant lifted both hands and cupped her face. His palms settled against her cheeks with surprising gentleness, and he tilted her head upward.
A small gasp escaped her before she could stop it, his gaze remained fixed on her face as he lowered his own, closing the distance little by little.
Shivya's breath caught in her throat, she could feel the warmth of his breath drifting across her skin like the first touch of a summer breeze before a storm. It whispered against her face, telling her what she already knew that he was close.
