The rain was merciless that night, hammering the windows of the old Lamba farmhouse like it wanted to break in and witness what we were about to do.

I was 18 he was 20.

Drunk on stolen whiskey and each other.The power had gone out an hour ago, leaving only the storm and the flicker of a single candle on the bedside table.

Reyansh stood at the foot of the bed, shirt already gone, rain-soaked hair falling into his storm-grey eyes, watching me like I was both his salvation and his sin.His chest rose and fell hard, muscles taut, the candlelight carving shadows across every line of his body.

He looked like a god who had decided to fall.

I sat on the edge of the bed in nothing but his black shirt, unbuttoned just enough to drive him insane.

My legs were crossed, but my heart was already open, bleeding for him.

He took one step closer.

“Aradhana,” he said, voice rough, low, dangerous. “If we do this… there’s no going back. You’ll be mine. Completely. Forever.”

I smiled, slow, defiant, already knowing I was lost.

“Then make me yours, Reyansh. Brand me so deep no one else can ever touch what belongs to you.”

He was on me in a heartbeat.

His hands in my hair, pulling my head back, mouth crashing into mine like a punishment and a prayer.

Teeth. Tongue. Hunger.

He tasted like whiskey and rain and the kind of obsession that destroys empires.

I bit his lower lip hard enough to draw blood.

He growled, flipped me onto my stomach, pinned my wrists above my head with one hand.

The other hand slid under the shirt, fingers tracing fire up my thigh, possessive, claiming.

“Say it,” he whispered against my ear, breath hot, body pressed against mine, hard and demanding.

I arched into him, voice shaking with need.

“I’m yours. Only yours.”

He didn’t wait.

The shirt was gone in one rip.

His mouth on my neck, my collarbone, lower—marking, biting, sucking until my skin was a map of his jealousy.

Every touch was a promise:

Mine. Mine. Mine.

When he finally took me, it wasn’t gentle.

It was raw.

It was ownership.

It was love so violent it felt like war.

I screamed his name into the storm.

He whispered mine like a curse.

After, we lay tangled in sheets that smelled of us, his arm locked around my waist, fingers tracing the bruises he’d left on my hips.

“Anyone else ever touches you,” he murmured against my skin, voice dark with possession, “and I’ll burn the world down.”

I turned in his arms, kissed the blood on his lip.

“Then burn it, Reyansh. Because I’d do the same for you.”

That was the night we became monsters for each other.

That was the night we promised forever.

That was the night before the bullet.

✦_______________________