🍂Husn-e-Ishq🍂

Dilruba |2|

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"Dilruba," he sat beside her gently caressing her hair.

She raised her head slowly just to look at his face.

"Yes Monster?"

A silent chuckle sparked his eyes. And then he changed his sitting position, laying his leg freely and leaning on the wall.

"Please take the bath."

"I'll never bath in my life you see it," she retorted briskly.

He scratched his nose and ran his hands through his hair and began, "even if you don't take this bath I can marry you."

"Like really? I wonder the one who can't even make me bath can make me his wife," she turned and barked at him. "At least look before you leap," she added.

"You see how I'm giving a huge portion of my significance to small thing and marriage is a..." he was cut by her in the middle.

"Filthy rich people like you think taking a girl's consent for ritual bath is equal is to taking her consent for marriage. Are these both things equal in your eyes? If this is so then I pity you the type of king you're."

He listened to her words without returning her the same treatment. He crossed his hands and turned to her and began like an intimate friend, "Dilruba, only if you're ready to listen to me and understand the chronology of the events you'll understand what has exactly happened and what made me villain in your eyes while I'm not so."

"My my! How cleverly you're trying to make me ready to accept the chain of lies you're going to vomit now," she said standing up immediately.

He too stood up following her, "will you listen to me first... then, then I'm sure you'll take this bath happily and merrily give me your consent for marriage."

She knitted her eyebrows irritatingly and spoke, "how messy, Babar Khan, how messy will you turn this situation into? Listen to me and get it clear that you're no one to me and hence I won't listen to or follow your commands even if you coerce me to do it. I will not eat anything that you provide me with and never allow your maids to make me bath in this hell, let alone marrying you! Forget it!"

"Okay... okay..." he said nodding his head. "Will you never bath in your whole life apart from this one?"

"My lord... after today I'll only bath for my funeral rituals..." she could've proceeded using more torturing contents in her statement when Babar packed her mouth with his hand holding her arm posessively with the other hand.

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Back to the end of previous flashback scene.

Worlds change when eyes meet.

Dilruba wasn't conscious enough that time to make face over tasting bitter sandalwood. She was astonished to see Babar, an intruder in front of her that also when she was bathing in just a piece of cloth around her body. Still none of them looked anything other than each other's eyes for another two minutes as if critically hypnotized.

It was she who blinked first when both of them came back to earth. Then with his hands still packing her mouth he, put his index finger on his lips to give her a hint not to freak out seeing which Dilruba nodded in affirmation.

But s soon as he removed his palm from her mouth she screamed her heart out so loudly that it began to echo in the valley alarmingly and didn't subdue without repeating itself for more than five times.

All the soldiers got alerted and began to look here and there in confusion and caution. They couldn't find anyone around even after using their binoculars. In not more than five minutes they left the spot climbing uphill thinking the sound belonged to some animal.

When they were nowhere to be found, emerged out of the river two bodies glued to each other, Dilruba and Babar, breathing profusely with their lips parted and eyes bulged out.

"You pervert! How dare you approach me in my privacy?" she looked at him as if unable to believe his presence.

"You're misunderstanding me... Miss," he tried to explain her but she reacted the she felt severely offended by him.

"I'm very well understanding you... you're someone from nobility na? You've come her to take me as your gambling trophy that you played with my father! Or he had just sold me to you to meet his filthy requirement for alcohol and gambling. I knew this. Some day it had to happen," she broke into tears and Babar was dumbfounded hearing this. He didn't speak for the rest of the time as she herself bothered to continue her story out of emotional misery.

"I tried all hard not to reach home today... I engaged myself with my mates and friends but this has to happen... I've to get sold to you, I'm sure my father must've sent you here to take me away while he is drinking somewhere with the cursed money you exchanged me with."

"No, no, no... wait, wait, you got me wrong. Firstly I'm not of some noblemen, I'm superior to them. I'm the ruler of Bahawalpur, and I've not gone into any contract with your father okay? What rubbish are you just speaking huh?" he scolded her for those accusations but calmed down soon keeping her sorrowful words into his mind, "by the way, what wrong has happened with your father? May I ask?"

He spoke softly bending his head a little forward to look into her face which was already bent forward with her hands covering it.

"Mohtarma?" he tried to bring her back to his attention.

He could then hear her sobs and found it to be a grave matter. Although Balochistan was not a part of his territory but he could no longer resist taking her case into his hand.

"Please tell me what's bothering you."

She kept quiet and allowed only her sobs to escape her mouth. She looked pretty pitiable before him and he was unable to tolerate her woes.

Hardly did they spent two more minutes together, sun became almost invisible leaving the sky without light. Both of them shivered as they were completely wet and chilly winds started acting cruel to them.

There was a complete silence between both of them when Babar opened his outer suit and hanged it on a branch. While doing so he saw her trembling in coldness. Without saying anything he made her wear his suit and asked her to sit on a rock.

When she sat, he maintained a proper distance and asked her, "don't you want to go to your home?"

She again gathered some tears into her eyes before saying, "I've nothing called home or family. "

Her words hit Babar in the heart. He again asked in a softer voice, "what's your name, if you're comfortable in telling."

"Dilruba."

That word, her name, healed pain that her previous words caused in his heart.

Dilruba, his lips synced.

She was sitting there clueless as for how to go anywhere without clothes and she couldn't even go back her home for her father's cruelty was waiting for her who was cheap enough to sell her on per day's rate.

Babar was not in a mood to leave her there as heard her sad story that gave her a place in his heart. And also he was feeling an urge to go back to his people who had been seeking him up in the hill.

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Continued in the next part from same the end.