CherriesOnTheCake - Ishqbaaz One Shots

2. Yuvraj

Set in the past. Not quite sure when. Maybe either during (or just before) the time of the Persian empire — it doesn't really matter.

"Badla lehna koi aap se seekhe," Raja Tej Singh Oberoi said proudly as he surveilled the trembling woman in his nephew's arms. "An eye for an eye. A vaisha for a vaisha. I like the way you think."

"Let me go," the woman pleaded. Tears streamed down her face. "Please Kuvarji," she clutched his nephew's arms which made them both smirk. "My brother needs me. He's only a child, barely five years old, please let me go to him. Please. Please."

"I will have Jhanvi open up a gulabi ghar for you. You chose well. This woman will make a fine choice for your first mistress. Lets hope she whets your appetite to make further additions in due course." Tej Singh smirked even as Yuvraj Shivaay Singh Oberoi adjusted the reigns of his horse in his hands, wrapping them so tightly his skin turned even whiter than it usually was.

"That will not be necessary," Shivaay said imperiously. "She will stay in the palace with me. As my wife."

With one glance the mounted guards surrounding Tej Singh's horse cantered back by ten paces.

"Be reminded you that you are my heir," His eyes glinted, "and my heirs do not marry captured women."

"You may find that difficult to enforce, your highness, considering I control your army."

"Shivaay!"

"An eye for an eye, a patni for a patni, and a child for a child." Shivaay smirked even as the woman turned hysterical in his arms. "Ye badla nahin mera huq hain."

-/-

Unlike his father or brothers Shivaay was never interested in women. He married Tia when he was thirteen and then hadn't so much as noticed another woman until she after ran away twenty years later.

Shivaay only even noticed this woman, the one he found hiding inside the ornate chest he beheaded Tia's lover on, because she was different.

Her hair was black instead of the various shades of brown he was used to and as unbound as a child's as she blinked up at him with wide eyes the same shade as the bark on the trees in his garden. Her skin was darker than he preferred and glistened like streaks of watery mud after a heavy storm. Her face was less beautiful; her body was unattractively taller and both firmer and softer than any woman he had ever seen.

The woman was as far from Tia as it was possible to get but when Shivaay found out how she was related to the man who took everything away from him, he couldn't keep his eyes off her.

But Shivaay had not just looked at her. He had snatched her, and now here they were in his palace. In his rooms. His sindoor was smeared thickly and messily through her black hair, his mangalsutra was tight around her mud coloured throat, and his gold was around her arms and wrists and inside her nose and ears. Soon she would have him inside her too and for the first time in his life he anticipated the act less for its outcome and more for its enjoyment.

Perhaps it was the thrill of vengence, of possessing something that belonged to the rival who took everything from him, but it excited him to watch her through the flower garlands hanging over their nuptial bed. It excited him knowing she now belonged to him and that soon he would obliterate whatever tenuous connection she might have had to Tia's lover.

By claiming this woman, by consumating their marriage he would finally win. He would finally put an end to Tia's betrayal. The same Tia who, at the end, had chosen to run away instead of accepting Shivaay's offer to return home with him. They had been married for twenty years; it might have taken time but he would have forgiven her eventually. Tia had betrayed him a second time by not even considering it.