Page 48

The city centre of Arezzo was as charming as Tuscany’s sunlit rolls of hills. It was evening and the sun was mild, tilting towards the horizon. But dared if the people of Arezzo slowed!

Avantika walked down Piazza Grande, the beaming city square with sloped roads.

Medieval Medici structures surrounded the square, ancient stone towers now teeming with cafes, ristorantes and luxury boutiques.

It was her haven. She was a once-in-a-while-kinda shopper.

But when that once-in-a-while arrived, she was a serial shopper and could put Kresha and her mother together to shame!

Her left hand heavy with bags, her right hand busy pushing the gelato cone close to her face to swipe as much as she could before it began to melt, Avantika balanced herself on her kitten heels on the cobblestone alleyway under the arched porch of a complex.

Being a princess was a full-time job now, wasn’t it?

Especially when one was a princess in love.

“Ouch!” She flailed as her toe caught in a groove. Before she could go lunging into the nearest pillar or shopper — whoever was unlucky enough, her arm was caught in a strong, tight hold.

“Easy,” Samarth came around to hold her bodily up. She found her balance and stared at his face, tinted with her brown glasses.

“You are early?” She smiled. “What does the MRI say?”

“There’s something in my heart.”

“Huh?”

“A wobbly girl,” he grinned. She snorted — the grumpy kind, and took a swipe of her gelato. He reached down and tried to take a swipe too but she pulled it away.

“Hey! I haven’t even recharged!”

“Get your own.”

“Should I?” He smirked, looking at her mouth. His mouth began to descend.

“Push my glasses up!” She commanded. He laughed, pushing those glasses up and into her hair.

She didn’t even get a good look at Samarth in Arezzo’s evening light before his mouth was on hers.

His tongue, warm and skilled, tangled with her cold one.

It was like kissing the boy she always knew and yet somebody she didn’t know.

His hand reached out to cup, not her cheek but her jaw, his thumb moving up the line of her jaw. That was new. And so stimulating.

She began to change the angle but he was faster, tuned into her, or aware of their old rhythm as he cocked his head and swiped his tongue back into her mouth. She felt warm everywhere. All over. Except, for her wrist. Her wrist?

“Fuck fuck fuck!” She screamed in his mouth and pushed off, only to find her gelato melted in a rivulet down her forearm.

“Oh no,” she went to find a corner to put her bags down but he was faster.

He tugged her bags out of her hand, pulled her arm close to his mouth and took a mouthful of the gelato at her wrist. Her chest contracted.

“I was going to find a tissue,” she panted.

“You have one right here,” he half-grinned, moving down, closing his mouth and getting the rivulet cleaned. “Delicious.”

“Should I be worried about where you learned all this from?”

“You should be.”

“Samarth.”

“Papa.”

“Eww! Don’t tell me he behaves like this with the whacko…”

“Language, Ava. It’s not going to look good if you can’t even be civil while referring to Maarani.

And no, please, I didn’t mean the actions.

I meant the behaviour.” He pushed her hair off her face like he used to, even though her bangs were no more ‘in-her-face’ anymore.

“From the day Maarani stepped into our palace, Papa has been completely zeroed in on her. It’s in how dedicated he is to her needs, her moods, her cravings.

When Sharan was to be born, things were tense.

But I never saw his eyes veer from her when she was in a room. ”

Avantika listened to it all and hated the whacko more. Samarth’s father was such a good man. What kind of a woman got that and then did this?

“I am now allowed to be that to you,” he said, and took her attention away from anything remotely negative.

She smirked, snaking her free hand up his chest and into the collar of his winning T-shirt, to the hair at the nape of his neck.

His skin pebbled. She pushed him back and into a pillar. His eyes widened, as did his mouth.

“Did you forget something?” She asked.

“What?”

“I owed you four kisses.”

“Four hundred.”

“Four hundred ? You did hit your head hard.”

“That was 10 years ago. Inflation has worked its magic.”

“Inflation?”

“I am now a businessman Gujarati,” he showed his teeth.

“This is a trap!” She beamed. Then pulled him by the collar of his sweaty, bloody T-shirt and pressed her mouth to his. His lips opened and she pushed her tongue in. One down, three ninety-nine to go.

————————————————————

“Here,” she pulled the large sourdough Margherita slice and deposited it on his plate. The sun was slowly downing and they had settled at the outdoor seating of a ristorante to eat before heading to the hotel to get him clean.

Samarth did not wait. He grabbed his slice and bit into the gooey cheese stringing from the surface. She grabbed a slice for herself and bit into it, closing her eyes at how earthy and wholesome the bread tasted. She had eaten her share of sourdoughs all over the world but this one…

“This is the sourdough of all sourdoughs,” she remarked with a mouth full.

“Hmm?” He looked up from his slice, now only crust. Avantika chortled, reaching forward to wipe the sauce stuck at the corner of his lip — “How hungry are you?”

“Famished. I usually down three bananas, a seasonal fruit smoothie and one hot snack after a match.”

“Your chef will be missing you.”

“I am not missing him though,” he held up another slice of the pizza and lowered it into his waiting open mouth. She loved that sight. The boy. Her boy from Saraswati Crest.

“I’m calling for a pasta… bringoli? Or pappa al pomodoro?” She asked, reading from the ‘Day Specials’ chalk menu on the board at the entrance.

“I’ll eat anything. Italian food is good everywhere in Italy.”

Avantika looked at the hungry stud and ordered both. Plus a side salad.

As she had predicted, all three dishes were polished off in no time and Mr. I-bring-my-Chef-along ordered dessert too. Two of them — Baldino, which was a moist, gooey cake with decadent chocolate glaze, plus a mini raspberry-apple pie because he wanted her to see the colour .

Stuffed and exhausted, they held onto each other as they trudged their way to their hotel. His team and staff were staying at Villa a Sesta, which meant no familiar faces in the streets of Arezzo or the hotel district.

“Samarth?” She asked as he IDed her keycard and pushed her door open.

“Hmm?”

“Are we going to announce to everybody that we are together?”

“That’s the predecessor to getting married,” he snarked, pushing her into the room and following her with her shopping bags.

“If you wish, we can do the arranged marriage thing too. Papa has been jumping out of his shoes for me to hint at it. I’ll just say I am impressed by the Kumari of Gwalior and he will be at your doorstep with nariyal and sawa rupya. ”

“After the anti-marriage songs I have sung to my parents, my mother will never swallow that I said yes to some arranged marriage rishta,” she fell back on the bed, sweaty clothes and all.

He fell over her, making her scream until the last moment when he landed on his palms on either side of her head.

“Samarth!” She whacked his shoulder.

“ Some arranged marriage rishta?”

She nodded, giving him her best nose-squeeze. His smile was so adoring, his eyes softening until nothing but two rivers remained, flowing out of those deep pits. He reached down and pecked the edge of her eyebrow, then her eyelid which dropped of its own accord.

“How about we live some first?” He asked.

“Yes!” She slapped her hands over his shoulders. “I was about to say this! Let’s have a sordid, secret affair!”

His body rumbled — “I didn’t mean that. I meant let this year pass. Papa is going to Antarctica in February. Let him finish that. Or he will cancel it and rush us to the mandap.”

“Sordid, secret affair it is!” She pulled him down for a tight squeeze, and his throaty laugh reverberated into her skin, his mouth pressing into her hair. Then, just as her legs began to open to settle him in, he pushed back and jumped to his feet.

“Where?”

“To shower.”

“You can go later…” she tried to nudge him back with her toe.

He laughed, dodging away — “I don’t trust your intentions with me, Kumari.”

“I solemnly swear I am up to no good, neither are my intentions,” she leered at him.

He gave her a show, reaching down to pull his polo shirt off.

Her mouth ran dry. He was… so good. There weren’t abs-abs but faint lines hinting at them.

His chest and torso were lightly roughened with hair, dipping down to the waist of his white breeches that sat snug just under this navel.

“I feel violated now,” his hands went to his belt.

“Because you have a Havasi Kumari right here.”

He guffawed, unbuckling the belt and pulling it off.

“Come back…” she altered her tone, trying to sound sultry and royally butchering it. “Samarth!” She yelled when that didn’t work. “Samarth!” She mock-cried when he still didn’t relent, winding his belt and setting it on her bedside table.

“I will come there, huh!” She threatened.

“Come.”

She perked up. Avantika jumped up and dashed to him but he dashed inside the bathroom and locked it shut.

“Samarth!!!” She rattled the door. Nothing but laughter from the other side.

————————————————————

She was half-asleep by the time he came out of her bathroom. Avantika scratched her head, clawing her hair back from her face as she squinted at the man in a towel.

“Sleep in there,” she muttered groggily. Her body felt like a limp noodle after the hot shower she had had in his bathroom.