## Chapter Twelve: The Hotel Room
The door closed behind them, and for a moment neither of them moved.
The suite was larger than the apartment of one of Mira's college friends, which seemed an unreasonable amount of space for two people who had spent the last hour barely knowing where to put their hands. A separate sitting room opened toward wide windows overlooking the slope below, the lights of Shimla only beginning to appear beneath the fading evening sky. Beyond it was the bedroom, all pale linen, dark wood, and quiet, expensive restraint. Thick carpet absorbed their footsteps. Someone had already turned down the bed, replenished the water beside it, drawn one set of curtains halfway against the approaching dusk — the discreet perfection of a hotel accustomed to wealthy people expecting things to happen before they had to ask.
Kian seemed not to notice any of it. Of course he didn't. This was simply where he was staying.
He put her bag beside his suitcase. Mira noticed that before anything else — her bag beside his, such a small thing, and it shouldn't have felt as intimate as it did. All day there had been other people between them: the registrar, Vikram, Mehek, his manager, waiters, strangers passing on pavements. Now there was no one, and without all those other bodies and voices around them, Kian seemed to fill the room differently. Closer now. Larger somehow, without actually doing anything.
She became conscious of him in pieces — his height when he straightened after setting down her bag, the breadth of his shoulders beneath the shirt he'd worn to the registry, the quiet weight of his steps across the carpet, his scent, faintly unfamiliar because she had never been close enough for long enough to separate it from rain or coffee or cold mountain air.
She was still wearing her mother's blue saree. The mangalsutra rested lightly against her throat; every now and then she could feel it move when she breathed.
She looked toward the bedroom. Kian followed her gaze.
"I should warn you about something." He indicated the bed. "There is only one." When she waited, he added, "I hadn't exactly planned for—" and stopped.
Mira's mouth began to curve.
"That sounded considerably worse out loud," he said, closing his eyes briefly.
"A little."
"I can take the sofa."
Her smile disappeared. "Kian."
"Yes?"
"You're my husband."
"That has been legally established, yes."
"You are not sleeping on that." She looked pointedly toward the elegant sofa in the sitting room, which appeared perfectly suitable for decorative cushions and considerably less suitable for a man his height.
"I've slept in worse places."
"That isn't the point."
"I was giving you an option."
She looked back at the bed, then at him, heat touching her face despite herself. "It's a large bed."
Something flickered in his expression. "Yes."
"We can share it."
He said nothing, and her blush deepened under his silence.
"Don't look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like I said something shocking."
"You told me to get into bed with you approximately six hours after marrying me."
"I said we could share a bed."
"Ah. Entirely different."
Her eyes narrowed, though she was smiling now. "You can still have the sofa."
"No," he said immediately. "I accept the original terms."
She laughed softly and turned away before he could see quite how nervous she actually was. Doing something seemed safer than standing in the middle of the suite being newly married at each other.
"I should probably change."
"Probably."
Neither of them moved. She looked down at the blue silk. "There is a slight problem."
"What?"
"I can take it off. Putting six yards of silk back into something resembling a respectable fold is another matter."
His mouth twitched. "I have no useful experience to offer."
"I assumed."
"Unnecessarily cruel."
She laughed softly, and before going to change, opened her bag to find what she needed — a few folded clothes, her toiletries, her notebook, the sweater Mehek had insisted she take. Underneath them, wrapped carefully between two pieces of clothing, was the photograph of her parents.
Her fingers stopped. For a second the kitchen returned to her — Sunita's rigid back, the instruction to take a shawl, the radio continuing to play as though nothing in the house had changed. She lifted the photograph out. Kian had moved toward the windows, giving her privacy without making a ceremony of doing so, and she appreciated him for that.
She placed the frame on the bedside table. Her parents looked almost absurdly cheerful there, her father leaning toward the camera, her mother caught halfway through laughing. Some knot inside her loosened.
When she turned, Kian was looking at the photograph rather than at her. "Your parents?"
She nodded. He didn't ask anything else. That helped too.
Mira disappeared into the bathroom with the clothes she'd chosen, and when she emerged later, dressed simply and comfortably now, her hair loosened from the careful arrangement Mehek had made that morning, she was carrying the blue saree in both arms, the silk slipping slowly through her fingers despite her best efforts to control it.
Kian looked up from his phone. "That appears difficult."
"Thank you. Very useful."
"I could call someone."
Her eyes widened. "Absolutely not."
"Housekeeping folds things professionally."
"I am not handing my mother's saree to a stranger because I can't manage six yards of fabric."
He put the phone down. "All right. What do I do?"
She stared at him. "You?"
"You appear to require additional manpower."
That made her laugh. She gave him one end. "Hold this."
He took the edge carefully between both hands. "Like this?"
"Straight."
"It is straight."
"Your side is lower."
He looked along the impossible stretch of blue silk suspended between them. "I dispute that."
"Your side is definitely lower."
He lifted it. "Too high."
"This is a hostile process."
"My mother could fold one of these in about thirty seconds."
The words came out before she'd quite thought about them, and for a moment Mira went quiet. He didn't rush to fill it. She ran her fingers carefully along the silk, smoothing an old crease. "She used to make it look easy."
"You remember?"
"Everything." There was no self-pity in it. Just fact.
Kian looked down at the fabric between them. "Then you'll have to supervise."
"I'm supervising already."
"Aggressively."
Her smile returned, and between them, slowly and badly at first, they began folding the saree. He held one end while she walked toward him, aligning the borders, then backed away again when she decided they'd done it incorrectly. He obeyed instructions with an amount of seriousness wholly disproportionate to the task, though every few seconds she caught the beginning of amusement around his mouth.
On their second attempt, the silk sagged dramatically in the middle. Both of them lunged, and their hands met beneath the fabric, and stopped. The blue silk hung between their arms, half-folded and momentarily forgotten. Mira looked up. Kian was very close now, and for one strange second she was aware of everything at once — his hands beneath hers, the warmth of his body just beyond the silk, the quiet suite around them, the fact that her mother's saree was stretched between her and the man she had married that morning. His eyes dropped briefly to her mouth, then returned to hers.
"We are very bad at this," he said softly.
Her smile came slowly. "You are."
"Interesting. I seem to remember doing most of the holding."
"Exactly."
She laughed, and the strange suspended moment loosened. They finished folding it together. It wasn't perfect. She looked at the slightly uneven rectangle of blue silk in their hands and decided she didn't care, and they laid it carefully across the back of an armchair.
Kian stepped away. Mira stayed beside it another moment, smoothing the top fold with her palm, and when she turned, he was watching her. Not the saree. Her. And suddenly the suite felt very quiet again.
His jacket was off now, his shirt sleeves pushed to his elbows, and her eyes caught there before she could stop them. His forearms. Ridiculous — she had seen the man sign documents worth amounts she didn't particularly want to contemplate, had watched him argue with contractors and conduct calls that changed the expression of everyone standing around him, and apparently what her newly married brain found interesting was his forearms.
He caught her looking. She looked immediately somewhere else.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You were staring."
"I wasn't."
"Mira."
"I was thinking."
"About?"
"Nothing involving you."
"Convincing."
She bit back a smile, and then he came toward her — not quickly, which somehow made it worse. The space between them diminished until she could feel his presence before he touched her, the warmth of him, the shadow of his body partly across hers, the fact that she had to tip her head back slightly now to hold his gaze. The teasing disappeared from his expression.
"Can I kiss you?"
"You're asking me." She blinked. "After marrying me?"
"Yes."
Something about that answer touched her more deeply than she expected. Marriage had not become permission. Of course it hadn't. Not with him.
Her gaze dropped for one nervous second to his mouth and returned. "Yes."
His hand rose slowly to her face, warm palm against her cheek, thumb near her ear. Then his mouth touched hers.
She had imagined this. Not often. More often than she would ever admit. She had expected something dramatic simply because wanting it had become dramatic inside her head. Instead, the first thing she noticed was warmth. Then pressure. Then the strange, breathtaking fact that Kian — who seemed so certain about nearly everything — was being extraordinarily careful with her.
She smiled against his mouth without meaning to. He felt it. The second kiss changed — not wildly, not enough to frighten her, just warmer. Her fingers found the front of his shirt and curled lightly into the fabric; beneath it was the solid heat of his chest, so unmistakably male that awareness moved through her in one slow wave from fingertips to throat.
When they separated, neither moved very far. His forehead almost touched hers. She could feel his breath. Her own wasn't particularly steady either. For a second they simply looked at one another. Then, because embarrassment was beginning to catch up with her, she whispered, "Husband."
Kian's entire face changed. She stared.
"Oh." He recovered too late.
Her smile widened. "You liked that."
"I have no idea what you're talking about."
"You did."
"I didn't."
"Kian."
"You seem very pleased with yourself."
She was — quite suddenly, helplessly pleased. "Husband," she repeated.
He closed his eyes for half a second, and she laughed and slipped away from him before he could retaliate, the sound following her toward the window.
"This is going to become a problem," he said, behind her, and her smile stayed with her for several minutes.
Dinner was less an event than something they eventually remembered human beings were supposed to eat. They ordered almost without looking at the menu, and by the time it arrived Mira had curled one leg beneath herself in an armchair near the window while Kian stood by the desk finishing a call.
She had heard his work voice before — at the bookshop, or beside the road, it had belonged to another part of his life, something she watched him step into temporarily before returning to her. Now she heard it from six feet away while loosening her hair — short sentences, precise questions, numbers she didn't understand, a pause while somebody spoke rapidly on the other end.
"No," Kian said. "Don't move on that until counsel confirms the structure." Another pause. "Tomorrow is fine."
He looked over and found her watching him. Something softened instantly in his face. "I'll call you in the morning," he said, and disconnected.
She smiled.
"What?"
"Nothing."
"You've developed a concerning relationship with that word."
She tucked her hair behind one ear. "You sound very different when you're working."
"Better or worse?"
"Bossier."
He sat opposite her. "I prefer decisive."
"Of course you do."
His mouth curved, and there was no elaborate comedy around dinner after that. They ate because they were hungry. They talked. Sometimes they stopped talking, and Mira discovered that silence with him felt different when there was no expectation that one of them would eventually walk away. She noticed his watch lying beside his phone; he noticed the mangalsutra against her throat every time she leaned forward. Once she caught him looking, her fingers going unconsciously to the beads.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Now it was her turn to smile.
Halfway through eating, Mira remembered her phone charger and opened her bag. A textbook came out with it. She stared at the cover.
"What happened?" Kian asked.
"I have an exam tomorrow."
Silence.
"You have a what."
"An exam."
"Tomorrow."
"Nine o'clock."
His expression was extraordinary enough that she almost laughed. "You married me the day before an exam?"
"You proposed to me before an exam."
"That is an outrageous redistribution of responsibility."
Now she did laugh. He leaned back. "How many?"
"Two left. Tomorrow. And the last one the day after."
He stared at her. Her smile turned sheepish. "I've had other things happening."
"So I've noticed."
She pulled the book toward herself. He was quiet for several seconds, and then: "We're staying."
She looked up. "What?"
"In Shimla. Until you're finished."
"Kian, you were supposed to go back—"
"I was supposed to do several things this week. Apparently so were you."
"But your family—"
"Will survive two more days."
Something in her chest warmed. He said it without grandeur, as though two more days in Shimla were simply the obvious answer once he'd learned she needed them.
"You don't have to do that."
"I know." He held her gaze. "I want to."
There were moments when his confidence irritated her. Others when it made the whole world feel briefly less difficult. This was one of the latter.
"Okay," she said softly, and he nodded once, as though that settled it. Then he looked at the enormous molecular biology book.
"So."
She already disliked that tone. "What?"
"How bad is this exam?"
"Don't."
"I asked one question."
"You've already started planning."
"I have not."
"Your eyebrows did."
He seemed genuinely offended. "My eyebrows have never planned anything in their lives." She smiled and opened the book.
By eleven, Mira had read the same paragraph four times. Eventually she gave up and found Kian on the balcony.
Shimla had gone dark beneath them, lights scattered along the slopes, the night cool enough that she folded her arms instinctively against it. He moved aside when she joined him. He didn't touch her, but the space between their shoulders was narrow enough that she could feel his warmth anyway. For a while they looked outward. She liked that he didn't always make silence into something that needed fixing.
"I keep thinking someone's going to arrive," she said eventually, "and tell us there was some administrative mistake. Wrong signature. Wrong stamp. Wrong form."
"There wasn't."
"You sound very sure."
"I checked."
She turned her head. "You checked whether our marriage was valid?"
"Twice."
A laugh escaped her. "Why twice?"
"Once seemed irresponsible."
She shook her head, smiling, and the night settled again. "What did you think this would feel like?" she asked eventually.
He glanced at her. "Marriage?"
"Today."
He looked back toward the lights. "I don't think I really did."
"You proposed without thinking about it?"
"There was always another problem to solve."
"Like?"
His mouth shifted. "The major one? That Anil fellow arriving."
She turned completely toward him, then laughed. "So that spooked you."
"Wouldn't it? A man I'd never met was apparently arriving with everybody's approval to consider marrying you."
"He wasn't arriving with everybody's approval."
"He had your aunt's."
"That is not everybody."
"It was one person too many."
She laughed again, softer this time. "You'd known me two weeks."
"I was aware."
"And already terrified of Anil."
"I wouldn't say terrified."
"Spooked?"
He considered. "I disliked his existence."
She covered her smile with one hand. "He hadn't even arrived."
"Exactly. Highly suspicious."
There was something so boyish beneath the arrogance that she couldn't help it — she leaned her shoulder lightly against his arm. He went quiet. Not because he stiffened, exactly, but because he became very still. She stayed there, and after a moment his hand turned on the railing, palm upward. She slipped her fingers into it.
"What did it feel like?" she asked. "When I actually came toward you."
His expression changed. For once he didn't reach for a clever answer. "I don't know how to explain it."
"Try."
He looked down at their joined hands. "Like I'd spent days trying to get somewhere and only realized when I saw you that I'd already arrived."
Her heart stumbled. He looked faintly annoyed with himself. "That sounded better in my head."
"No." She squeezed his fingers. "It was nice."
He looked at her, and her voice softened. "I used to think getting married would just... happen to me. Aunt Sunita would find someone. Everyone would discuss whether he was suitable. Uncle would worry. I'd say yes eventually because saying no forever would become exhausting." Her thumb moved absently over his knuckle. "I never imagined the day itself."
"Why?"
"Because I didn't think it would really belong to me." The admission sat quietly between them. Then she looked up at him. "But today did. This morning was mine. Even the frightening parts. I chose it."
"You chose me."
"Yes."
That was enough. He bent and kissed her, and this time she met him halfway. The kiss deepened slowly, without the nervous carefulness of the first one — her hands found his chest, his settled at her waist, and the sensation of being held by him was startling in ways she had not anticipated. Not merely touch. Weight. Heat. Strength contained rather than used. His hand spanning the side of her waist, his body close enough that she could feel the rise of his breathing beneath her palms, the rougher texture of his jaw when her cheek brushed it. Something warm and unfamiliar gathered low in her stomach, and she kissed him again before she could become embarrassed by it. That seemed to undo part of Kian's restraint. Not all of it. Enough.
Somewhere between balcony and sofa she lost track of exactly how they'd moved there. She only knew that his mouth was against hers and one of her hands had found the back of his neck and everything in her felt beautifully, frighteningly awake.
Then Kian stopped. Not abruptly — he simply drew back enough to breathe.
"What?"
"You have an exam at nine."
She stared at him. "I just married you."
"Yes."
"And this is what you're thinking about?"
"Unfortunately."
She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a protest. His thumb moved once against her waist. "We have time." His voice dropped slightly. "Tonight isn't going anywhere either. It's just going to involve considerably more sleep than I'd otherwise choose."
It took her half a second. Then heat swept all the way up her neck, and her eyes dropped immediately.
His mouth curved. "Don't."
"I didn't say anything."
"You're smiling."
"I am sitting here completely respectfully."
"That is not a respectful face."
His grin widened, and she pushed lightly at his shoulder, mortified and laughing at the same time. "You are horrible."
"Apparently you married me anyway."
She couldn't think of an answer to that which wouldn't make her blush worse, so she kissed him once, quickly, to shut him up. It did not work. But it helped.
The bed was much stranger than the sofa. Once the lights were off, Mira became acutely aware of every inch between them. Kian lay on his back on one side; she lay on hers on the other. There was perhaps a foot of empty mattress separating them, and it felt like an entire geographical region. Every time he shifted, the mattress moved beneath her. Every time he exhaled, she heard it.
She had never slept beside a man before — never heard the quiet rhythm of male breathing in darkness, never known how much heat another body could give off without touching hers, never been conscious of another person's size simply because the bed registered his weight.
"Kian?"
"Mira."
"Why are you whispering?"
"You whispered first."
"Oh."
Silence. Then: "Are you comfortable?"
"Yes."
"You don't sound comfortable."
"Neither do you."
"I have excellent posture under pressure."
She laughed into the pillow. "In bed too?"
"I walked into that."
"You did."
The silence after that was easier. They talked a little — nothing important enough to survive daylight. A teacher she'd hated in first year. Kian admitting he'd once been thrown out of a school debate for telling the moderator the format was inefficient. She laughed so hard at that she had to bury her face in the pillow.
Gradually the distance between them became less formal. Not because either planned it. She turned toward him sometime later; he turned too. Their hands met accidentally between them, and neither pulled away, his fingers closing loosely around hers. That was all.
When she woke once in the middle of the night, she was closer to him than she'd been when she fell asleep, her forehead near his shoulder, his hand resting lightly over hers on the mattress. She stayed exactly where she was.