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who did she love......did she love??
chapter . 01
It had been two years, maybe three, since rahul had gotten married. His wife bulbul was expecting their first child. Everyone had been invited to their mansion up in the country area of England for a house party that was to last ostensibly for over a month. Ridiculous extravagance, kanya thought, but then rahul nanda was an enormously wealthy man and could afford to be extravagant. kanya had inevitably been one of those invited - her family and rahul's had been lifelong friends, and though it had been a long time since kanya had last visited her family home up where rahul's was, she was still a part of them and thus it would have been an unpardonable insult not to invite her. And while no one would have been surprised had she politely declined the invitation, she was not about to run away and hide like some sniveling coward and lick her wounds. No, she was better than that. She would show them that she had not been hurt, that rahul's betrayal had not cut her straight through her heart...that she had not crumpled up and died.
And so, here she was, on the morning that the guests were to arrive, drinking her fifth fortifying cup of straight black coffee. She looked up as a thundering noise on the stairs indicated that her brother had come down. She smiled blearily at him. "Ready to go, harry?" she asked with false cheer, hoping he didn't notice her bloodshot eyes or shaking hands.
harry regarded his sister for a moment, taking in the lackluster hue of her beautiful black hair, the redness of her usually bright chocolate eyes. She'd lost the plumpness he remembered she'd had at her vulnerable age of nineteen, and while her new slenderness undoubtedly suited her, she looked small and fragile, and ever so vulnerable. He felt a stab of rage at the man who'd left her at the mandap, humiliated her, and broken her heart in front of the world, but quelled it quickly when he saw how weary she was. It would not do to cause a scene and besmirch her name further in any scandal - she would not be able to bear it. He forced a smile onto his face. "Shall we use my car or yours?"
They were all here, she thought, and wanted to cry. Every single one of them who had been at her wedding, who had watched her and her family wait, and wait in vain, and then cry, and flee from the mandir once she had finally accepted that rahul was simply not going to come. And then they had all subsequently gone to rahul's wedding, to watch him marry his chosen bride, the woman he loved, the woman he had always loved, and who had not been her,kanya.
She had wondered, sometimes, if rahul had ever felt any love, any tenderness for her at all. She had wondered during her engagement to him, and she had wondered after it had been broken. There had been times, when they were alone, and he had shown such love, such affection, she could have been in no doubt of his feelings. And yet, almost as soon as he saw her again, the next day or so, he would be like a polite stranger once again, dutiful, courteous, but distant. She had never understood it...even after the truth had come out and he had revealed his pining for bulbul, his childhood sweetheart.
"kanya." For a moment, she thought it was rahul coming towards her, and wanted to run. Then she realized that the hair was wrong, the expression was wrong, even the stance was wrong. It wasn't rahul- it was ranbir, his twin. ranbir, with the same sculpted body, the same wide, broad chest and expansive shoulders, same muscular thighs and legs and rippling arms. She smiled faintly. ranbir. She'd never liked him, and was quite certain her sentiments were returned, yet he had been strangely, her only support throughout her engagement with rahul - he'd been the one ally she had seemed to have within the walls of the wealthy, cold, and haughty nanda family. The lesser of two evils, so to speak. The nandas had all hated her - but ranbir's hate she could not fathom. He'd grown his hair long sometime in the duration that she had not seen him - he now wore his dark locks fashionably long and tied back in a que. rahul had short military style hair, and brushed them back of his forehead. ranbir's hooded, glittering hazel eyes were laughing mockingly as ever, the sensuous curve of his lips as sardonic as she remembered. His face was his brother's, and yet it was not.
It was not just the superficial differences, but those engraved onto the planes of his face. rahul had always been sober, pleasant, dutiful. ranbir, the older of the two was wry, cynical, always slightly mocking and a touch arrogant. Both were charming. Both were wealthy. But both were so very different.
"It has been a while." His voice was distant, cultured, with a touch of hauteur.
She nodded. "It has. Are you well?"
"I am very well. And you?" he regarded her new slenderness with a frown. "You have lost weight, I see."
"And glad of it," kanya quipped.
"I am not," he said abruptly. "You were perfect the way you were."
There was an awkward silence for a moment, and then rahul strode into the room, bulbul on his arm, and announced that lunch was ready.
After lunch, kanya found her way out to the old river, where she and rahul had used to sit, talk, and kiss sometimes. She sat for a while, lost in memories, and realized all of a sudden that while she was sad, and certainly mourned the days she had lost following a pointless dream, she was no longer bitter about rahul's betrayal. In a way, the only reason she had felt so hurt was that he could have been so careless as to humiliate her in front of so many. She knew that if she had married him, she would not have been able to love him for the rest of her life. It was that simple - she had been in love with him for a short time, perhaps, but she would not have been able to love him for life. If she were, she would still assuredly be in love with him, and she was not. No, she was most definitely not.
She consigned her love, and her hurt, to the past. It had happened. It was over. She was still alive. She would heal, completely, given time, and one day she would love again. There was no use fighting against what had happened. Better to accept it with good grace...and save her pride, in the meantime. It would always hurt, perhaps, but it did not hurt quite so much any longer.
"A penny for your thoughts?" a deep, masculine voice interrupted them.
kanya laughed. It was a strangely light, relieved sound. She felt no reticence at all towards him, strangely enough. "It will cost you a million pennies for these thoughts," she remarked.
ranbir smiled. "That profound, are they?"
"I was contemplating divinity and infinity."
"Again? Do you never tire of it?"
"Never," kanya smiled back at him. "How can one ever tire of it? It is a concept as such that the human mind can never grasp. It makes one's mind want to fold in on itself, simply trying to understand."
"That's what makes it so tiring," ranbir said wryly. "One becomes weary of one's mind being folded in on itself over time. Its dreadfully difficult trying to straighten it out once again."
kanya laughed, and ranbir stared at her for a minute, transfixed by the light in her eyes, the lushness of her parted lips. He had never seen her so carefree, so happy. Her only warning was the strange gleam in his glittering eyes before he kissed her.
His mouth was pressed, hard, against her own. Startled into immobility, and more than a little fascinated, she stilled.
She gasped, pulled away. There was something curiously familiar about his kisses - no, terrifyingly so.
They were rahul's kisses.
During dinner, kanya, seated next to ranbir, could hardly bear to look at him. Her new found relief gone, she found in place of them, suddenly a million complications and problems. Wonderful, she thought to herself. Well done, kanya. Trade one twin for the other, so he could break your heart again. Heck, it would have been bad enough if they were simply brothers, but twins? My god, she'd be seeing rahul's face for the rest of her life!
"Could you pass the salt, please?"
kanya looked up. The salt was directly in front of them, a mere foot away from him. "Get it yourself!" she snapped, uncharacteristically rudely, then felt ashamed almost at once.
"My apologies," ranbir said smoothly. "I merely wished to distract you from your thoughts. They seem to be rather distressing."
His kisses were just like rahul's. But of course - they had the same lips, didn't they? Perhaps they kissed exactly alike. But even as she made the excuses, she knew they were feeble. Men did not kiss alike. To find, and kiss two that did was almost impossible. "How would you know?" she said waspishly. "You cannot read my thoughts."
His raised brow made her think that he could.
"You have been quiet all evening. Is there perhaps something wrong?"
"No," she almost snarled.
He smiled slightly. "Ah - is it perhaps that time of the month?"
He thought she had PMS! She wanted to scream. "No!" she said furiously. "Not that its any of your business. But since you seem so eager to talk about my menstruation cycle, I'll take leave to inform you that I'm not due for another three weeks."
There was a faint curve to his lips that she knew were signs of mockery. "But perhaps you are irregular? It has been shown that some women who have to face intense emotional distress do become irregular, if only for the duration of that distress. An influx of hormones, I believe is toted as the cause."
"I am not irregular!" she hissed, and because she knew that any more of conversation in this vein would cause her to tip the entire contents of the dining table on his lap she turned resolutely to her soup and pointedly ignored him for the rest of the evening.
It was dark out, but kanya was resolute. She needed a walk, and by god, she was going to take one. She had to think. She had to relieve the stress that was building up inside her.
She dragged on a robe, tied it up, and crept out into the hallway. She stopped and listened for a moment. Silence. All the other houseguests were asleep. harry was too, presumably, since she could hear nothing from his room, which was next to hers. Slowly, she began slinking down the hallway. Just as she reached the secluded, almost empty wing of the house where she thought the coast was clear and she could begin to walk normally, and quickly out of there, a door opened and she was dragged inside.
A blindfold was pulled over her eyes, tied with quick precision. Her wrists were clasped in powerful hands, and she suddenly found herself handcuffed, and pulled back against a powerful, muscular chest. A powerful, muscular bare chest if she was any judge. She was flung down onto the bed, her wrists restrained to the bedpost, and suddenly, quite helpless. It had all happened so quickly she had had no time to react, and even if she had, what could she have done? This part of the house had been built for privacy - almost living here for the duration of her engagement to rahul, she knew almost all its nuances and secrets. No one would hear her scream, and her captor was a powerful man - he would overpower any attempts at escape easily.
"Who are you?" she demanded, having struggled for a while and found that the only thing that accomplished was to scrape her wrists raw.
"I think you know," he said, and she could almost hear his smile. ranbir. Incredible. First he kisses her, now he abducts her. Was there something wrong with the world?
"What are you doing?" she said angrily. "Let me go at once!"
"No," he said simply, and kissed her.
She struggled. She really did, but after a while, could not seem to be bothered. His kisses were drugging, illicit, delicious. Even while she protested, she craved for more. She wrenched herself away.
"Let me go!"
"I have said already - no. I cannot. I must show you something."
He's insane, kanya thought wildly. I am in the clutches of a lunatic.
"I'll scream," she threatened shakily.
"Please do," he replied coolly. "It will be music to my ears."
"What are you, sadistic? Do you torture people just to hear them scream?"
"Not at all," he said, a laugh in his voice. He traced a finger down her face and left arm as he spoke, and a shiver coursed through her.
"You're going to rape me." It was not a question.
Over my dead body!"
Don't touch me.
To her surprise, and relief, he obliged. She felt his hands leave her . Her relief was short lived, however, for his mouth was suddenly on her's again.she could feel a pleasant sensation.
ranbir smiled in satisfaction and continued .
"Shall I stop?" he asked, lifting his head.
"Yes," she said reluctantly. She felt him shift, move, and knew not whether to be relieved, or disappointed.
and then suddenly she was in his arms.........ah," he said in satisfaction. "Music to my ears.
kanya woke to the sensation of warmth and being wrapped in a cocoon.she realized blearily, eyes still half closed.
Her eyes opened like a shot and she made to bolt upright only to feel two arms wrap around her again. "Hush, sweetheart," a voice murmured warmly in her ear. "teen saa tak intazaar kiya hai maine,tumhare liye. etni asaani se nahi jaane doonga.
The memories came flooding back in a rush and she smothered a whimper of mortification, remembering, the way she had responded. Her face went scarlet and she lay still, completely at a loss.
ranbir's' lips feathered over the back of her neck, and face.
"Don't hurt me," she said softly, her voice small and vulnerable.
ranbir's ' demeanor changed abruptly. "Never that," he said tenderly. "I'd never hurt you. Never." His hands slid over her neck to cup facel. "I want only to love you if you'll let me."
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