Circle of Trust

Chapter 9

His teeth scraped against the pulse at the base of her neck, and she struggled to hold a coherent thought in her head.

“Ria….” She remembered, and he turned her around to face him.

Her knees buckled at the desire she saw in his eyes. His arms around her held her up to his chest. Smiling at her, he pressed his lips to hers and quickly withdrew.

“Ria is bathed, clothed, fed, and is presently at school,” he informed his wife, proudly.

“She is?” Naina was shocked. He had never done that before in all these years.

“Yes, so quit worrying. So, where were we?” he asked, his fingers already reaching for the buttons on his shirt she wore.

“Raj…” she called in an attempt to make him lift his eyes up to her face. “Look at me,” she insisted.

“I am.”

She smacked his hands that were halfway through their job. “Up here!” she said, amused.

“Hmm…I’m listening. Keep talking, sweetheart.” His eyes stayed glued to his task at hand.

“Raj…”

“Almost…there…Yes!” he yelped, trying to shrug the shirt off her shoulders. She snatched them closed and crossed her arms.

He met her stormy eyes. Finally.

“Not fair,” he sulked, imitating a classic girly pout and she burst out laughing.

She threw her hands around his neck and pressed close to him. “Thank you,” she mouthed, and he smiled. A genuine smile.

“If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t have slept through a blaring alarm clock. By the way, that is too freaking loud and it’s a nasty ringtone.”

“It is meant to wake me up not lull me back to sleep.”

“There is that.” He lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around his hips. “Shower before or after? During is fine by me.” He wiggled his brows, and he looked damn funny doing it.

Naina giggled, but quickly shut up at the seriousness in his eyes. “After,” she breathed and locked lips with the man who ruled her heart’s every wish.

The kiss heated things between them faster than they could march to their bed so they ended up making love against the bathroom wall.

“I love this part of you that wants me so bad. I can see it in your eyes. You practically killed me these three months when you didn’t even look at me,” he confessed for the first time, toweling himself dry after their shower together. When was the last time they had done something like that…something so random and impulsive.

“Come on, Raj. Ofcourse I wanted you. I missed you, I might not have showed it but I did. I was just too caught up with so many things and it wasn’t like you weren’t busy with the new project at work.” She squeezed the water out of her hair and reached for a fresh towel.

“I wasn’t busy busy. Not at the beginning anyways.” He wrapped the towel around his hips and stood in front of the mirror. “It’s when you kept…rejecting my…advances,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “I thought maybe you know…” He looked at his wife in the mirror.

Naina laughed and shook her head. “You thought what? That I lost my sex drive at 30?”

Varun smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No, never that.” He laughed nervously. “You love sex like you love vodka, or chocolates. You just don’t lose interest in something you love.”

Naina detected the seriousness in his tone and her hands clutched the towel to her chest. “Then what?”

Nervousness must be contagious for the look in his eyes was making her lose her nerves completely right now. “You thought I was having too much fun making out with my characters? So much that I didn’t need you?”

She tried to laugh it off but her sixth sense warned her not to fool around.

When he kept searching for something in her eyes that was beyond her comprehension, she caught his arm and forced him to face her. She wanted to believe she had misread his expression in the mirror.

“Raj…say something. You’re scaring me right now.”

Varun plastered a smile on his face and shook his head. “It’s nothing.” He tried to pull her into a hug, but she stepped back.

“It’s not nothing. That expression I just saw on your face wasn’t nothing.” Fear bubbled inside her. “What did you think I was upto Raj? I was writing 15 hours a day to get that book ready for publishing. I didn’t have time to even think about anything else. I had to do it Raj. I had a deadline to meet.”

“I know.”

“I just needed to write the book in time for…”

“I know damn it. I said I know…it must be something really important to you.”

“But you still doubted it.” And there it was - the truth staring at her through the guilt in his eyes. “You thought I was having an affair,”  she whispered. It sounded weird and nasty to her ears.

She blinked back the tears and rushed out. She didn’t have the courage to stand there and face the fact that they were back to square one. After all these years. What would it take for her to regain his trust in her? Did he ever trust her to begin with?

“Naina…please look at me.” She ignored him and continued to dress. “I never said I did. Those are your words.”

She whirled around. “I wish you had, Raj. I wish you had the guts to say it aloud to me when that doubt first popped in your head. We agreed you would.”

Hands on his hips, head hung low, he stood shaking his head every few seconds. Naina stared at him, her breath quickening with every passing second of his silence.

“He called.”

She sucked in a breath and took a hasty step back. He didn’t need to specify who.

“How is that my fault?” she bit out through clenched teeth.

“He called your number.” He looked at her pointedly.

Naina was shocked on several counts. First that he had called at all, that he had called her, and what shocked her the most was that her husband was checking her phone.

“Is that an accusation?” she spoke through the lump in her throat. “Because from here, it looks like you are admitting to keeping tabs on my phone.”

“Damn it, Naina. I don’t check your phone.”

“Then how did you know that he had called, which I would know if I knew his freaking number or if you had just asked me the minute you saw it.”

“Do you have any idea what it does to me to know he contacted you when I made it clear…”

“What does it do to you, Raj,” she interrupted softly, throwing him off. “Infact, ask yourself why it does what it does to you. After eight years, if you still cannot let it go, we need to rethink what we have.”

She wouldn’t cry. Not after everything they have been through to get to where they were.

But, where were they?

“Don’t make this about me, Naina. We wouldn’t be in this place if you…”

“Finish that sentence and we’re done,” she warned and walked out of their room with a heavy heart.  

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Neeru <3