“I do.”
And then she kissed him.
He froze for half a second, giving her room to pull away.
She didn’t.
His control snapped, and he kissed her back with a deep hunger.
When he pulled back, his eyes were darker.
“You should leave.”
“No.”
That was it.
He lifted her without another word and carried her to the bed.
This time, he didn’t hold himself apart.
Every touch was deliberate, intense.
She pulled him closer.
He let her.
Later, when the rain softened and the room grew quiet, she lay against his chest, listening to his slowly steadying heartbeat underneath.
“I’m never leaving,” she murmured.
CHAPTER 56
Yamini was inside a Jogra steel plant.
Sounds of steel, furnaces, and overhead conveyors ran in steady mechanical rhythms. And underneath it all, there was a low hum of several hundred people doing something they were good at.
Yamini walked the line with her camera, doing a final check on the last of the PR deliverables. She had been to this particular plant several times in recent months.
A supervisor she recognized from the Line 3 photographs nodded at her from across the floor. Two women in hard hats waved. A young engineer held a door open and called her Maharani with an eager smile.
She smiled and greeted everyone while she kept walking.
She was reviewing the last of the frames on her camera screen when she heard her name.
“Maharani!”
She turned.
It was Meena. Meena was one of the women from the exhibition photographs. Yamini noticed that Meena was walking toward her with something tucked under her arm.
“Maharani, my photo is in this!” Meena held it out with excitement.
It was a magazine. National circulation, thick pages, the kind that sat on coffee tables in corporate lobbies.
Yamini took it with a smile. “Yes. And you look beautiful in it.”
In the photo, Meena was wearing a hard hat with her face glowing from the furnace light.
