Page 222 of Claimed By the Maharaja
The room was warm. Outside the windows, the mountains shone under the moonlight.
She slowly closed her eyes. But sleep didn't come. Her mind was too active.
She turned onto her side. She turned on her back. Then her side again.
The bed felt too big, and the room was too quiet.
She let out an exhale.
She missed him.
She missed the weight of his arm across her waist, the way it tightened without him waking when she shifted.
She missed the low sound of his voice in the dark, the commands that made her burn.
She missed his mouth, the steady, controlled heat of him beside her.
She also missed talking to him in the dark, and the way he listened without interrupting while she told him about her day.
She had spent a month in a narrow bed above a pharmacy, telling herself she didn't need any of it.
But she was wrong.
She opened her eyes. The clock on the nightstand ticked toward midnight.
She watched the minutes change. Eleven fifty. Eleven fifty-five.
At midnight, somewhere in the palace, a clock began to chime.
She counted them, the way she always did now. One. Two. Three.
By the seventh chime, she was sitting up.
By the tenth, she was out of bed.
The twelfth chime was still fading when she reached the connecting door.And then, pushed it open.
His room was dim, lit only by the pale wash of moonlight off the snow outside. The bed was empty, the covers barely disturbed.
Bharat stood at the tall windows, his back to her, one hand braced against the frame. He'd changed out of his shirt; his shoulders were bare, lit silver along one edge by the moon. He was looking out at the mountains the way he had looked at them a hundred times before, still, unreadable, alone with whatever he was thinking.
He had heard her come in, but didn’t move.
She had stood in his studio surrounded by twenty-two years of evidence that he was never as unreadable as he appeared. She didn't make the same mistake of reading his stillness as indifference.
She went towards him.
He turned.
For a moment, neither of them said anything. The room was cold where the window let in the night air, and warm everywhere else, and Yamini crossed the distance between them.
She stopped in front of him, close enough to feel the warmth of his skin before she touched him.
She placed both palms flat against his bare chest.
His body went rigid under her hands. His breath caught, audible in the quiet.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said. His voice was low, careful, the same voice he'd used at the start of the evening when she'd first come through this door uninvited.
