Draupadi blinked her eyes open with much difficulty. Her long lashes were stuck together in the peaceful hold of a slumber, which refused to let go of her completely. She stretched languidly, her svelte form cracked with an almost delectable ache as the reminders of the night prior's activities burnt over the expanse of her exquisite dark skin, memorably.

Her hair was spread open like a tumultuous river of an inky swathe, disheveled and proud over her naked body. It created a beautiful contrast with the ivory silks pressed beneath her frame. She stifled a yawn with the back of her dainty red painted hand and finally turned over to look at her companion.

 It was a well-known and much articulated fact that Arjuna was a handsome man. 

But Draupadi was almost embarrassingly smug at the knowledge that none of those erudite people singing the praises of his rakish good looks will ever have the privilege of seeing her husband this way.

Gudakesha, they called him, yet had no idea how beautiful he looked sleep soft and illuminated by the early morning sunlight. His curly raven hair, thick and silky spread like a halo befitting his quite otherworldly visage, on the dove white pillows. The sharp features of his chiselled face, aglow in the flush of love which had spread over the muscled expanse his chest. 

Draupadi noted with a blush of her own how her sindoor seemed to have smeared almost greedily over the bridge of his nose and the apple of his cheekbone. It continued its salatious journey down the ridges of that hard abdomen. Those short yet thick eyelashes kissed his cheeks gently as his long arms laid sprawled in a spectacular spread under her and on the other side. 

The bedspread had tangled amidst their bare legs, feeling like sea weed around underwater coral reefs. She was perversely proud of the almost bluish marks she had left almost possessively all over his swarthy skin, which he knew he'll feel more intensely as the day would pass. 

Arjuna had always seemed somewhat of an enigma to her. Someone she will never have fully. Like a pinnacle unreachable. Like his destiny was too big, too great for her to try and fit herself inside the perilous yet glorious tapestry of his illustrious story. But those confused yearnings were saved for daylight as the nights bespoke of a different man altogether. 

Draupadi could taste the lightning under his skin, the sharp tang of ozone mixed with the metallic taste of copper as she kissed down the innumerable scars littering his naked frame, each trying to tell her a story of their own. A story bathed in glory, duty, love, and blood. 

She couldn't get enough of him. 

Her third husband who was supposed to be her only. The first man she had loved and will always probably love a little bit more than the others. 

He was a man who had shown her that he could love as ferociously as he fought.

His lips crashed onto hers with a fervor that lit her skin in a fire that could scortch the one she had been carved out of. His fingers played her body like a fine-tuned instrument, making her sing just the way he desires. Handling her like he would his precious rudra veena and sometimes like he would, the Gandhiva itself. Power and love, a fierce battle of dominance as one tried to outshine the other. She may have left gorges on his back with her fingernails. Yet the man was relentless. 

Draupadi had no idea what it would feel being the sole focus of the great Savyasachi's bird's eye vision, the one trait so perfect, so infallible that it had turned the Kuru prince into a living legend. 

A contradiction of cosmic proportions her husband was. 

A man who could wipe his enemy off the face of the earth with hilarious ease, a warrior who has defeated the stalwarts of mighty empires, invincible warriors, the Gods, the Gandharvas, the Yakshas, the Asuras, the Nagas, and uncountable demons, sprites and all types of unholy creatures. 

Here was a man, his valor unmatched, his skill uncounterable, unconquered in battle - yet his heart softer than lotus petals. 

His kindness and vulnerability towards the ones he loves is so fierce that it is near miraculous. It is this emotional intensity that attracted everyone towards the third Pandava Prince like bees towards nectar. And seldom would the same people realise that they have been given an inordinate amount of power over him.

Arjuna has given them the power to truly hurt him.

And hurt him they do. 

Even if he never quite shows it clearly. 

But she... she knows. 

She gets to know it. 

Every time. 

Krishnaa snuggled closer to her husband's warmth and rested her cool cheek against his chest. His arms wrapped around her willowy waist as if on cue and their legs entangled gently. 

Vijaya's fragrance of petrichor, sandalwood, and dusky saffron wafted to entangle with Agnisutaa's blue lotuses, jasmines, and dark honey creating an aphrodisiac which made the Queen of the Pandavas feel dizzy with pleasure. 

Draupadi pressed her slightly swollen lips into a gentle kiss on the hollow of Arjuna's throat as the melody of the early riser birds chirped in blissful harmony in Indraprastha's gardens below.  

She can't wield the Gandhiva, but she can at least try to shield her beloved prince from the inevitable hurt that the world keeps bestowing on him. 

What did Draupadi know of the future anyway?

All she could try to do is make the present brighter and better.