𝔇𝔞𝔴𝔫 𝔱𝔬 𝔇𝔲𝔰𝔨: 𝔐𝔞𝔫𝔢 𝔄𝔡 𝔙𝔢𝔰𝔭𝔢𝔯𝔲𝔪
A man to save, a dynasty to break and a love to die for.
Come dive into a modern and desi retelling of a beloved classic, Beauty and the Beast, part two of 'The Legacy Duet', Taimoor's story.
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Taimoor
𝕿he sight of her arrested me.
She sat in the armchair, eyes exhausted, her normally wild wavy hair straightened into a sleek back curtain, feet curled up underneath. The hair tumbled around her shoulders and there was now a slight print from the fabric of the chair etched into the smooth skin of one high cheekbone. In her silk dress, she was soft and sleepy, completely in her zone.
Every cell in my body screamed with the need to claim her. To stamp myself into her skin and feel the imprint of her burned into mine. To have her to myself so completely, without the fear that somebody will one day take her from me.
The thing I'd been trying to ignore since I beheld her, reared in me.
It was primitive.
Something older and bigger than the universe we existed in. Something visceral. Beyond human comprehension.
This girl was seeping into my skin.
"Have you been sleeping well?"
Slipping her teeth over her bottom lip, she paused for a millisecond, her eyes flicking downwards. Sometimes I forgot just how young Daania was. Inexperienced. But at moments like this, she reminded me. This was her tell. Something she could not control.
She was about to lie.
"Yes."
"You're lying," I said as casually as I could manage, not wanting to pressure her but needing to know the answer. "What's keeping you up at night?"
She looked like she wanted to argue, but with a weary sigh, she let it go. "The nightmares won't go away."
The wedding must have triggered her anxiety and post-traumatic stress. Meeting a group of ravenous sharks and having to put up with them was quite an ask for someone like Daania. She wasn't a wallflower, as my mother had rightly pointed out hours ago, but she wasn't immune to the poison spewed inside these walls day in and day out.
"What nightmares?"
"The-" her throat bobbed as she twiddled with her fingers."The ones about that night."
The vestiges of fear in those eyes were my undoing. The panic of those moments rushed back. My body still remembered the adrenaline that had coursed through every vein and deployed to every vital organ when I had punched the ever-living shit out of that asshole. The image of Daania's swollen, discolored cheek and the black and blue bruises encircling her neck, covered with soot, and the marks from where that bastard tried to choke her, still haunted and tortured me. I reached for her, barely trusting myself, but needing her to know I would keep her safe. She relented, letting me pull her onto my lap and brush the long hair back over her shoulders and away from her face.
"It's all over, that's never going to happen again."
