Devika argued, bargained, and coaxed the trip with every ounce of strength she possessed. She tried blackmailing them, offered legendary negotiations and even promised absolute immunity from any future kitchen chores, but her tactical maneuvers failed completely. The trio feared their elder brother's icy wrath far more than her dramatic threats.
Realizing she had been thoroughly out-benched in her own palace, she let out one final, thunderous huff, and a slap on Jai's head. Defeated, she aggressively swallowed her sleeping medicine, grabbed the heavy blanket, and wrapped it securely around herself from head to toe, turning into a completely silent, stubborn burrito.
---
Rajveer's eyes burned with a fierce, localized exhaustion from staring at his phone screen for six hours straight. He had no choice. The digital display was his only immediate weapon against his own racing mind. He desperately needed a distraction to keep himself anchored.
He looked down at his lap. Devika was still sound asleep, her head resting against his chest, her soft breaths fanning his neck. His arms were securely locked around her waist, anchoring her to him.
Because of the heavy sedatives, she had been entirely dead weight since the afternoon. Rajveer had simply scooped her up into his arms at the palace, carried her all the way to the vehicle, and navigated the entire airport transfer without letting her feet touch the ground once.
Now, they were tucked away on a leather couch inside the private VIP lounge. He wasn't tired from carrying her—she was shockingly light, feeling even lighter than his leather corporate travel bag—but his sanity was completely frayed from the relentless, never-ending teasing of his siblings and the knowing, amused smirks of the entire Jodhpur airport staff.
'Can't these people just mind their own business for once?!' he groaned internally.
The sibling brigade's ammunition had multiplied tenfold this morning when the local and national daily newspapers hit the stands. Every major news channel and tabloid was running the exact same two photographs from the previous night's gala.
The first headline read, "The Protective Crown Prince: Rajveer Singh Rathore Refuses to Let His Princess Have a Single Sip of Alcohol," showcasing the exact moment he had confiscated her glass.
The second, of course, was a massive, high-definition snapshot of him carrying her across the floodlit parking lot, both of them wearing perfectly synchronized, radiant smiles for the lenses.
Thankfully, the relentless teasing had finally clipped off a few minutes ago. Not because his brothers and sisters were tired—damn it, those monsters never get tired!—but because they had committed a monumental blunder. Once again.
Vikram and Harsh had performed the exact logistical nightmare Devika had explicitly warned them against during their planning. They had accidentally booked the private charter slots for 6:00 AM instead of 6:00 PM, effectively causing the entire royal party to miss their flight windows.
Right now, the younger siblings were frantic, huddled in the far corner of the outer terminal, desperately trying to pull strings and pull off a miraculous re-booking for tonight. Their immediate, driving terror was simple: if this sleeping princess woke up and discovered they had messed up the tickets again, she would bypass any court martial and literally burn them all alive.
So, here he was. Completely alone in the quiet luxury of the VIP room with Devika, trying his absolute best to look at his phone to distract his senses from HER.
He didn't know what this woman had done to him. He didn't know if she had used some ancient, irresistible black magic on his soul, but having her body pressed flush against his for an entire afternoon was testing his legendary restraint to its absolute limits.
He had spent seven years in the most sophisticated cities of Europe, entirely untouchable and cold. No woman had ever possessed the raw power to drive him this thoroughly insane.
But this girl—she had been ruling his heart from the very first moment he laid eyes on her after his return. Her big, round eyes, her soft rosy lips, her cute habit of hopping and dancing around his strict borders, her lethal combat moves, her sharp wit... even the simple, steady cadence of her breathing was acting like a powerful magnet, pulling him down into her orbit.
Oh, how much he wanted to lean down right now. How much he craved to trace the curve of her jaw, to feel her warm skin under his fingers, to press his lips against hers and kiss her until she was entirely breathless and shivering against him.
But he forced his jaw to lock, his grip on his phone tightening as he deliberately stared at a corporate asset spreadsheet. He controlled his breathing, dragging his desires back behind his icy wall.
No, not like this.
He told himself he didn't deserve to impose his heavy desires onto her yet. Not after everything he had put her through. He had left her behind for seven long years, causing her to build a life in an empty bedroom, and there were still several wrongs he had committed—deep, silent, dirty secrets—that she didn't even know about yet.
Devika let out a tiny, soft whimper in her sleep, her nose scrunching slightly as she snuggled her face deeper into the crook of his neck, her fingers unconsciously gripping the collar of his suit. Rajveer's breath hitched completely. He let out a ragged, defeated sigh, abandoned his phone on the couch, and wrapped his arms even tighter around her.
---
When Devika's eyes finally fluttered open, she wasn't greeted by the familiar carved mahogany pillars of her palace bed. Instead, she found herself resting on a plush white mattress under an entirely unknown, curved ceiling.
She desperately tried to shake off the lingering, heavy drowsiness of the sedatives, blinking hard as she forced her vision to focus, until her eyes finally fell on the one familiar, grounding person in her universe.
Rajveer was sitting right beside her on the wide bed of the aircraft's luxury suite, casually flipping through a corporate magazine. Feeling her shift, he instantly looked down, his strict face melting into a warm, incredibly tender smile as he reached out to help her sit up against the pillows.
Devika looked around the spacious cabin, rubbing her eyes with her fingers. "Hum aeroplane mein hain? Hume to yaad bhi nahi kab aaye?" she asked absentmindedly, her voice still raspy from sleep.
Rajveer didn't say a word about how he had carried her in his arms for ten hours straight. He simply caught the eye of a nearby air hostess and requested a glass of warm water.
Outside the open partition of the suite, the siblings were scattered across their respective leather recliners. They were lazily clicking on their TV remotes or scrolling through their phones, looking thoroughly and completely bored out of their minds.
Devika let out a soft, sharp whistle to grab their attention, taking a slow sip of the water Rajveer handed her while using her free hand to comb through the wavy flecks of her hair. The familiar sound acted like an electric shock in the cabin. The entire sibling brigade snapped their heads around and practically jumped out of their seats, swarming into her suite with explosive excitement.
Devika smiled back at their enthusiasm, but Rajveer immediately raised a strict, warning hand, silently ordering them to stay back and give her space. The siblings shot him an synchronized, angry glare for being a killjoy, then instantly pivoted back to Devika.
"Bhabhi, aap uth gaye!!!" Jai asked happily, leaning over the armrest.
"Nahi mere bhai, so rahe hain!!" she replied at once, her signature sharp wit returning in a flash.
"Bhabhi, aapko pata hai kya hua tha aaj!!" Avani started instantly, throwing dark, highly amusing glances toward both Vikram and Harsh, who were currently standing in the back, practically begging their sister with folded hands to forgive them.
Devika glanced at the duo's terrified faces, then took another casual sip of water. "Kya hua tha? Dono ne phir se flight gadbad kar di?" she asked absentmindedly, assuming it was a joke.
A suffocating, dead silence fell over the cabin. Every single sibling—and even Rajveer—stared at her in absolute, unadulterated shock.
"Aapko kaise pata?!" Harsh blurted out, his jaw dropping.
The immediate reaction changed Devika's expression in an instant. Her eyes went wide, and her protective big-sister persona transformed into pure menace. "Sachmuch gadbad kar di?! Hey Shiv Ji, kya karein hum in gadhon ka!!" she yelled out, her bubbly mood vanishing as she frantically looked around the bed for a pillow, a magazine, or literally anything she could launch at them.
Recognizing the dangerous operational shift of the sleeping princess, Vikram and Harsh didn't waste a single millisecond. They violently ducked themselves deep into their leather seats, pulling their blankets up to their chins as they began apologizing at the top of their lungs, while Rajveer quickly grabbed Devika's wrist to restrain her, a massive, uncontrollable smile breaking across his face at the beautiful, chaotic circus of his family.
---
The aeroplane chased the rising sun across the sky, the long hours of the flight melting away into effortless warmth. The initial tension of the day had entirely dissolved, replaced by a cozy comfort that filled the luxury cabin.
At the absolute center of it all was a remarkably confident, talkative four-year-old toddler from the adjoining VIP lounge. The little boy had developed an immediate, fierce crush on Devika, leaning heavily against the side of her leather seat and tossing hilariously smooth lines at her while she giggled happily, her cheeks finally retaining a lively, flushing pink.
"Madam ji, aapki shaadi ho gayi?" he asked, tilting his tiny head and staring up at her with big, intensely serious eyes.
"Haan ji, behat dukh ke saath kehna pad raha hai ki ho gayi!!" Devika replied with a comically dramatic sigh. She rested her chin on her palm, deliberately leaning forward to enjoy the instant, narrow-eyed, icy look that Rajveer shot her from beside her.
The little toddler was completely undeterred, dismissing her husband's existence with a casual wave of his tiny hand. "Koi baat nahi. Mujhe chalega! Apne pati ko chhor ke humare saath bhaag chaliye! Raani bana ke rakhunga, Raani!!" he proclaimed, exaggeratedly throwing his small hands wide into the air to emphasize the grand scale of his promise.
The sibling brigade broke into a shameless, roaring fit of laughter. Jai practically choked on his soda, and even Rajveer—despite trying his absolute best to maintain his strict, commanding persona—couldn't control a genuine, brilliant smile at the young boy's ridiculously expressive face.
"Theek hai, jaaneman!" Devika replied in an equally dramatic, flirty tone, her eyes sparkling with pure, unadulterated mischief. "Jab humara apne 'unse' jhagra hoga na, to aa jayenge aapke paas, dorte, dorte!!"
Rajveer's smile instantly deepened into a dark, highly captivated smirk. He casually closed his magazine, leaned his broad frame forward across the table, and fixed his intense, dark gaze squarely on his wife.
"Try kar ke dekh lijiye, humare changul se koi itni aasani se nahi nikalta," Rajveer's deep, raspy voice cut through the laughter, low and full of a quiet, possessive warmth that made her breath hitch.
He reached across the small distance, his long fingers gently but firmly trapping hers, locking them securely against the leather. Then, with absolute, unbothered calmness, he used his other hand to reopen his magazine, returning to his reading.
Devika tried to pull her hand back, her bold tongue failing her in a single millisecond. She was utterly defenseless against the soft, consuming fire in his eyes and the steady, solid heat of his hand over hers.
"Ooooo!" Jai and Sugandha chanted loudly in the background, clapping their hands as they thoroughly enjoyed the sudden romantic breakdown of their fierce Bhabhi.
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