"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...
there's some sexual content at the start of this chapter— very brief but it's there so if you're uncomfortable or underage, here's your warning to close your eyes and pretend you do not see <33
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♥ ♥ ♥
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MIRA ZAHED IS A DANGEROUS THING to wake up next to.
Especially when she sleeps like that— clinging, all arms and legs twisted around me, the soft tickle of her breathing on my shoulder, the dark furrow of her brow, the tangle of her hair twisting over my chest. The covers are gone, kicked away to half-cascade off the edge of the mattress, and I have no idea which one of us decided in slumber to choose one another's warmth over something as trivial as a blanket. She's got one hand pressed against my sternum, fingers just shy of the slow pulse of my heart, and an entire bare leg thrown over my hips, her other leg lying flat beside mine, our height difference observable in the way her feet don't reach the end of my bed. My bed.
Zahed is a dangerous thing to wake up next to in my bed.
I have zero complaints towards this entire situation but that it makes the entire idea of getting up, untangling our limbs and pulling her hand off my heart very unappealing to me on this fine Tuesday morning.
Still, my watch sits dauntingly across the room on top of my desk and it's going to start its violent hell-song any minute with my alarm, the very one that I'd managed to train myself to wake up before it goes off just so I wouldn't have to be rudely awakened by that insidious, blaring noise. And if I don't get up soon, it'll rudely awaken both of us. Plus, there's practice this morning and if the alarm doesn't annoy me first, it'll be Raf, knuckles banging on my door.
My eyes flutter and then I slip a hand through her hair, lightly cradling her head, as I reluctantly and carefully shift from under her. I gently drop her head onto my pillow and with one last fleeting look, I step away from my bed, grab the watch, debate sending it straight through the slender glass wall near my desk that overlooks the beach and letting it sink into the deep blue. I ruefully decide against it, silence the incoming alarm in its tracks and head past Mira's sleeping form to the bathroom.
