It's a fact that you can't help who you fall in love with. And for Rosaline Davenport and him, it definitely shouldn't have been each other.
Because, sometimes, love stories have blood on them.
[warning: this is the mother of all slow-burns]
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• might want to retouch on the first 1/4 of Chapter 24: Qismat, just the first few paragraphs where Zachary reflects on why he doesn't publicly retaliate when someone critcises him in the media or such •
【 45.
Forty-five
Maazi 】
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[ Maazi • past ]
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HE CAN’T BELIEVE he lost control.
Zachary can’t wrap his head around the last several minutes he spent pinning Rose to the wall and kissing her lips as if his life depended on it.
If not for the way she froze under him when his hands slipped underneath her dress and up her thighs, then how far would he have taken it? Would he have been able to stop with her mouth, or were there other parts of her body he’d have hungrily explored?
Zachary has spent so much energy and time in carefully sealing that box in his head whenever he’s had to reopen it during the several moments she got under his skin—but today... Today, Rose really did a number on him. From sliding her chest up his, to cupping the back of his neck, to gripping his hip, to whispering in his ear. She threw a grenade at that already-overflowing box, not knowing what she’s unleashing. And something in him snapped and broke wide open, driving him to take those wine-coloured lips into his own hungry ones.
But now that he pulled away and is meeting her eyes for the first time since the kiss, the words he was intending to say when he followed her up here get lost in his throat and so much else crowds at the tip of Zachary’s tongue.
Mehboob, his mind whispers as his vulnerability touches something brutally raw and primal in him. Something so profoundly soul-deep that his body’s first response is to switch to his native language—even if only for that first thought, even if only for that one word. But why is his soul calling her his lover before his lips can?
Rose, Rose, Rose, he wants to say. If magic has a flavour, it’s the taste of your lips against mine. It’s how your dark and scary parts play well with the madness in my soul. It’s how your demons and my demons croon the same song and dance in sync. That’s what magic is, and it’s there in the way we kiss. Because kissing you is swallowing the darkness that hides in your bones. Because kissing you is letting loose the insanity that I’m made of. Because kissing you is realising I’ve never felt passion like this. Because kissing you is seeing your heart and soul naked, seeing the ocean of passion waiting to be tapped into and all I want to do is feed all your desires over and over and over again until my name starts to sound like a prayer on your tongue. Because kissing you is wanting to believe in something bigger than us, wanting to treat your mouth as a confessional where I can spill and spill and spill. Because kissing you is being consumed by the heat of a thousand suns but feeling shivers running down my spine. It’s hearing tree trunks bend and break when you moan, feeling the dust rise and settle somewhere else when you pull my hair. It’s the oceans roaring when you kiss me back. Because kissing you is witnessing the earth shift. Because kissing you is not just sensual, it’s spiritual. Because kissing you is tasting gold buried under fallen empires, discovering treasures under old ruins. Because kissing you is the act of finding and being found after losing and being lost.
