Page 60 of Claimed By the Maharaja
Her cheeks heated more.
She walked back and dropped onto the edge of the large bed and stared at the connecting door.
What does this even mean?
She knew their contract marriage was to be a business deal rather than a conventional marriage. But she had assumed they would at least share a bedroom.
How else am I going to have a child?
Then slowly it came to her.
He had no intention of touching her. He intended to use IVF to get his heir.
Heat rushed to her cheeks at the realization.
Bharat Jogra wasn’t attracted to her. He didn’t even like touching her. But she was the perfect candidate to use an incubator to carry his perfect little heir.
In his mind, she had the right bloodlines. And she was a disgraced princess who would be grateful to marry someone like him. Unlike any other woman, she wouldn’t demand his time or affection.
Her heart thudded in realization and anger.
She lay back against the pillows and stared at the carved ceiling, fury sitting hot and tight in her chest.
She thought briefly of her first marriage. In the initial years, when physical intimacy lasted barely a few minutes, she had to fake fulfillment. She had never once climaxed during sex and told herself it hadn't mattered. He had stopped coming to her, and she had stopped asking.
She had convinced herself that physical intimacy didn’t matter to her.
But she wanted children. That had always been her dream. She wanted children in a safe, loving environment.
And now, she was going to have them in a clinical room with a man who was utterly indifferent to her.
Bharat Jogra didn't want a wife. He wanted a transaction. Managed coldly like everything else in his ordered life.
And she had signed a contract giving him exactly that.
???
Yamini lay awake long after the palace fell silent.
Somewhere deep in the palace, a clock began to chime.
One. Two. Three.
She counted without meaning to, each strike slow and deliberate in the quiet.
Twelve.
Midnight.
The silk nightclothes she'd borrowed from the closet were soft, the bed wide and perfect. But sleep refused to come. She turned from one side to the other, staring at the ceiling, then the windows, then the faint outline of the mountains beyond the glass.
Married.
Her mind kept circling the same thoughts. The contract. The locked door. The separate bedrooms.
She closed her eyes.You proposed, she reminded herself.You signed the damn contract.
It didn't help.
