The Empress was dead.
Buried with opulence and silence in the royal tombs. Anaya had not wept—but she had *bowed*. And then returned to the living with more hunger than ever.
Power, it turned out, had not dulled her senses.
It had only sharpened her appetites.
---
It began innocently.
A market in Jaipur. No guards. No advisors. Just the queen in oversized sunglasses and Aryan beside her in rolled-up sleeves, pretending to be a regular man with a wife too magnetic to ignore.
They sampled fruit. Bargained for bangles. Laughed quietly over jalebis so syrupy they left sugar on her lips.
And Aryan licked it off without asking.
---
Later, in the quiet of their personal kitchen in the Rathore haveli, Anaya cooked.
Yes—*cooked.*
Dressed in a simple kurti with flour on her fingers and bare feet on cool stone. Aryan watched from across the room, leaning against the fridge, shirt unbuttoned, mouth curved into something dark.
"You know this isn't fair," he said.
She raised a brow while kneading dough. "What?"
"You. Like this."
"Like what?"
"Soft."
She smirked. "Don't mistake soft for sweet."
He was beside her in three steps, arms caging her against the counter. Her hands were dusted with flour; his lips found her throat.
"I never do."
---
They didn't make it to the bedroom.
He lifted her onto the kitchen island, her thighs bare under the cotton, fingers still dusted with spice and power. His hands slid beneath her kurti as if it belonged to *him*.
She gasped as he traced her slick heat through soaked silk. "Right here?"
He bit her earlobe. "This is mine."
And when he entered her—slow, deliberate, so deep she forgot her own name—she cried out, one hand digging into his shoulder, the other gripping the edge of the spice rack.
It smelled of cinnamon, cumin, *her*.
And when they climaxed, it wasn't fast or messy.
It was *beautiful*.
A claiming made again. And again. And again.
---
Later, naked in the aftermath, her legs still wrapped around his waist, she whispered, "You still look at me like I'm your weapon."
Aryan kissed her temple.
"You're more than that," he said. "You're my fire."