"I think you should stop being so mean to me, Zahed."
"Why would I ever do that?"
Aryan grins, a bright, wicked thing.
"Because I kiss you like this."
•
Mira Zahed and Aryan Shankar are at war.
When her best friend and his cousin decide to fall in...
sexually explicit content warning for this entire damn chapter i'm sorry but also i'm not absolutely zero plot points will be missed if you choose skip for whatever reason <33
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♥ ♥ ♥
THE RISE AND FALL OF A CHEST UNDER ME is the first thing I note as consciousness drifts over me. I shift, feeling the soft thud of a heartbeat against my collar and the wrap-around scent of a lavender bath bomb. I'm warm, overly warm, like I'm hugging a furnace, but I don't feel any covers clinging to my body. I inhale, my face pressed close to skin. It's only when that skin dips and bobs slowly, a vein dancing, that I realise I'm nuzzling him, face buried in his neck like an absolute freak.
My eyes snap open then.
I see sunlight on skin, desert honey and gleaming topaz. I lift my gaze, the sound of his breathing, his heartbeat flooding around me, coaxing me awake more than streaming daylight against my eyelids ever could.
Slowly raising my head, I observe his head, tipped back before me, his dark hair spilt like ink, the column of his throat bared for me to rest my head between his left shoulder and the side of his neck, nuzzling him like I had been. I'm on top of him. Literally.
His bare chest is my mattress, his skin my pillow and I'm lying on top of him. The black graphic tee I think I might've accidentally picked up from a Men's Section because of how loose and large it fits is the only barrier against the seeping warmth of his skin and even that isn't enough because I can feel his warmth down to my very bones. One of my palms is plastered to his chest, the other errant beside his head. My legs are curled on either side of him, thighs cradling his hips, knees pressed close to his sides. This shouldn't be comfortable at all. For either of us. And yet, I'm slow to move.
The scent of my shampoo clings to him like a second skin, like me. My heart thunders just like it had every second I'd had my hands in his hair last night. I'd shampooed his hair and we'd talked— well, traded insults—lavender and rose between, us for what could've been hours. And that was it. I remember his stretching yawns from the barn and my own weariness when I dried off from the tub but the fact that it all led to us falling asleep and waking up likethis, clinging to one another on a Sunday morning,feels alarmingly intimate.
All my weary muscles and achy joints seem to be forgotten though, as I lay close to him. Alarming.
Before I know what I'm doing, I'm peeling my legs away from him, shifting along the definite, hard lines of his chest and torso, raising my head and about to lift my arms to pull myself off him, only for heat to swallow me whole. I freeze. How did I miss his arms?
His arms, previously thrown over me as I slept atop him, tighten around me all of a sudden, tugging me right back down. One arm slips up over my shoulder blades, right to my head. His fingers splay into my hair, freshly dried after yesterday's bath, soft in his hold. He levels my head back down onto his chest. His other hand shifts from the small of my back, skimming straight past the cotton barrier t-shirt that has ridden well past my thighs, right down onto my ass.
