Rakshasa (2 page)

“I was waiting for you, you know.” His strong hands gave me a gentle squeeze around my middle, pressing him against his body. He kissed at my neck and I tilted my head, giving him access to my bare skin. “It’s not polite to keep the Rakshasa waiting…”

I reached around behind, blindly finding his body, my hands exploring his hips. I touched his skin, warm and inviting, and closed my eyes. “I would have thought that was my line, now I’m one of us. I’ve been waiting you, Ishan, for my entire life.” I wiggled and squirmed, turning around to face him, and I looked into his eyes. They were just as I remember. Bright blue, the colour of the midday sky, and I slowly slid my hands around his strong shoulders.

He leaned forward, his breath washing over my face, and his lips found mine. I kissed at him, feeling heat rising up from my toes, little sparks of energy coursing up my body. I’d kissed boys before—the kind of awkward, shy kisses where nobody knows what they’re really doing—but I’d never, never felt anything like this. This was kissing in a raw, passionate sense, a kiss that wasn’t the release of sexual tension but something that escalated it, like a charge being passed through me.

I ran my hands along his arms, drawing them down to his side, pulling his body against mine. I pushed him over onto his back, falling with him onto the thick, bright green grass. I kissed at his chest, pressing my lips to his tan skin, my body rubbing incessantly against his.

Strong hands gripped my backside and I squirmed for him, emitting a soft moan. This person that I was, in this dream, wasn’t anything like who I was, but I
liked
her. I shifted my posture, pressing my groin against his and straddling his body, pinning his warm shaft down against his belly.

I’d had sexy dreams before but nothing,
nothing
like this. Always where I was the meek receiver, always where I didn’t have any control. I’d dream of entirely mundane things; of making out with a cute guy on my couch, or meeting the perfect stranger in the library where I worked. Silly things that seemed frivolous and petty in the light of this wonderful experience.

Instead, now, I was in control and I was making love on the crown of the world.

I eased forward, casually stroking my groin forward, teasing him with my bare flesh. I felt his girth slide beneath me, settling back. I arched my back, pushing out my breasts, closing my eyes as I felt him enter me.

The moment he did the wind picked up, silently whipping the grass around us into a frenzy as I began to move, rocking atop him, my whole body moving sensually, moving with the wind. My thighs dragged across Ishan’s flesh as I pushed him into me, this stranger whom I felt like I’d known for my entire life. White, puffy balls from the cottonwood trees floated all around me, carried on the wind as though a celebration of my raw, unleashed sexual power.

His hands explored me, but in a familiar sense, his strong fingers tracing their way up my sides, over my breasts, then down my belly to my hips. I worked at him, my hands gripping his chest, feeling the intense, powerful waves of pleasure wash over me. It wasn’t mere sexual pleasure—I’d played with myself before, I’d had an orgasm, I knew what to expect—this was more. This was a
connection
, a union physical and spiritual between two people, and this was the physical side of it being expressed in a raw, primal sense that didn’t seem to be able to keep itself within our bodies. All around us, nature began to respond; the wind howled, the grass writhed and thrashed underneath us and the tree bent almost to the ground as my pleasure grew and grew.

My fingernails dug into his chest, holding him close, and he pounded up at me, his groin thumping against mine in a rhythm; even, fluid, sensual… but needfully, too. He
wanted
me as much as I wanted him and I could feel that. And I wanted to pleasure him; I wanted him to take me, to exhaust himself within me, to complete the union that we had. I felt him move within me, his eager body driving against mine and I moaned; I sank my teeth into his shoulder, gripping him tightly, unwilling to let go, unwilling to let this pleasure end. This perfection.

The world grew dark as my pleasure mounted, the whole hill bathed in a crimson, dark blanket. I stopped, twisting around, looking over my shoulder. The sun above me was cast into shadow as the moon moved across it, blocking its light, darkening the whole of the world. I felt my weight drop and, looking below me, Ishan turned translucent and vanished before my eyes as the world grew darker and darker. There was a loud
crack
, the sound of a gun.

Right before the sun vanished completely I woke up, covered in sweat and alone in my apartment.

Chapter II

The Window

Stumbling out of bed, drenched in sweat, I followed the sound, coming from within my apartment, of high pitched squeaking. It sounded like a mechanical device that needed oiling, squeaking lightly but incessantly, but as I got closer I realised that it was the sound of meowing cats.

As in multiple.

I found Clinton inside my cupboard, along with three baby kittens, squeaking in incredibly high pitched voices. They had Clinton’s orange coat, but patches of black and white, too. My shoe collection, neatly arranged at the floor of the cupboard, were covered in blood and afterbirth.

It took a second for me to process this. Clinton wasn’t my special little man. ‘He’ was a female cat.

“I don’t believe it,” I muttered, regarding the three squealing little kittens as they nursed on Clinton’s teats, “Even my damn cat can get some easier than I can.” I crouched down beside the four cats, reaching out to give Clinton a pat. “How the hell did you manage this, huh? You live
inside
…”

It would remain a mystery. The mess grossed me out but I didn’t have the energy to clean it up right away (and didn’t want to disturb Clinton-ette any further) so I just left it there and wandered back out to the kitchen.

The dream stuck with me, though, wild and vivid and real. In my ‘just woken up’ sleep haze it seemed much more real to me than this moment, as though the world around me were the dream and making love on a mountaintop had been the reality.

“I’m probably just coming down with the flu,” I said to nobody, running my hands through my hair and trying to make sense of the situation. “I was out in the cold. That’s probably it.”

I sank into the chair next to my small kitchen table. There was the briefest of silences, then,

“Libby?”

I practically jumped out of my skin, shrieking and flailing my hands uselessly, knocking my purse off the table and scattering its contents all over the floor. I turned around, nearly snapping my neck.

It was just
Katelyn, clad in her underwear and wearing a sleepy expression.

“Who are you talking to?”

“I…” My heart was beating fifty million beats a second. “Jesus, Katelyn, don’t scare me like that! Holy shit!”

She laughed, shaking her head. “Sorry, I just came over here after the storm last night. My roof collapsed and I didn’t know where to go. I tried calling you but your phone was off, so I thought I’d crash on your couch. I thought you’d be cool with it.”

My hands trembled slightly as I slowly began to calm down. “Okay, that’s fine. Sorry I shouted.” I remembered the broken window and put my head in my hands again. “Sorry about the glass too.”

“Glass?”

Strangely wide awake now that I’d been scared out of my skin, I pointed a finger to the window near my door. “Yeah, the window, I had to b-”

It was intact, a clear pane of glass exactly where the last one had been. There wasn’t a single hint of any glass on the floor, or anywhere.

“Libby?” asked Katelyn, moving to stand over beside me. “You okay?”

“T-The window,” I stammered, “I broke it last night. I broke it with my phone, because I’d dropped my keys…”

“Doesn’t look broken to me.”

It didn’t make any sense. I had a clear, vivid memory of being outside, freezing, and throwing my dead phone through the window. I remembered the shattering glass. I remembered gingerly reaching in to turn the handle. “No, I smashed it, I did. I had to, to get in.”

“But it looks just the way it always did. Hang on, look.” Katelyn skipped towards the window, tapping on it with a finger. “There’s scratches on this glass. Remember when you just got Clinton and that bird kept coming by the glass, and how Clinton would paw at it to try and get it? Those scratches are still here.”

“But I broke it with my iPhone. Last night.”

“Doesn’t look that way.”

I stared, dumbfounded, at the glass. Even from where I was sitting I could see that she was right—little tiny scratch marks, from a young kitten, all over it.

I remembered Clinton’s little surprise. “Speaking of kittens…”

Katelyn looked at me oddly. “I-… what?”

I grimaced slightly. “Sorry, I was just thinking out loud. Clinton—I’m not sure I can call her that anymore—had a bunch of kittens last night. I think they’re sleeping at the moment.”

“Huh? But Clinton’s male.”

“No, she’s actually… she’s female.”

Katelyn stared at me without saying anything.

I waved a hand down the hallway. “Check the cupboard down the hall. I have
no
idea how he—she—got knocked up, but…
God
.”

Katelyn continued to stare at me, slowly slipping into the seat beside me, reaching out and touching my knee. “Libby?”

“Umm. Yeah?”

She took a deep breath. “Look, um, I know things haven’t been going well for you recently, but you’re my best friend, okay? You know I’m always here for you. If the going out thing is starting to get to you, we can do something else on Friday night, okay? We don’t have to. I know this-”

I boggled. “I’m not crazy, okay?”

“Really? Because, like, you’re going on about breaking glass that isn’t broken, about losing your keys that aren’t lost, and about cats that turn from male to female and get pregnant. You’re sure
sounding
crazy.”

“Go check the hall!” I tilted my head. “And how did you know my keys aren’t lost?”

She pointed at my hip. “They’re in your pocket.”

They were, too, the black lanyard poking out. I pulled them out with a jingle and vaguely remembered putting them in there at the club. “Well,” I sighed, “At least I didn’t lose my keys.” I put them back in my pocket. “Anyway, where’s… Jack?”

“Who?”

I closed my eyes, shaking my head. “No, I didn’t imagine
that
. Last night, you picked up this guy, with the-”

“Oh! Jacques. Yeah, um, when he discovered my house had kind of collapsed he buggered off. I got his number, though.”

“Well that’s something, at least.” I pushed myself up to my feet. “Let’s go see these horrid little things.”

*****

“They are
so cute!”

I groaned as Katelyn continued to play with the sleepy kittens, alternating between patting them and patting Clintonette. “Yeah,” I murmured, “the vet bills are going to be so cute. Can you imagine how many shots these little squealers are going to need?”

“Oh, who cares. They’re adorable!”

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, you were saying about me becoming a cat lady? This. This is the day everything went horribly wrong.”

“I’ll adopt one, if you want,” Katelyn said, gently patting one of the kittens on the head.

“Okay, but only if you get it neutered first.”

She laughed and nodded, giggling inanely at the prospect. “Sure, sure. I’ll make sure.”

I wanted to say something but there was a polite knocking at the door. I shot Katelyn a confused look and then hopped up to answer it, making my way down the corridor to the entrance, putting my eye up against the peephole.

And I found myself looking right into a set of bright blue eyes.

It was him. It was the guy from the club—the guy from my dream. Ishan Kari. I still remembered his name. I gave a little squeak of surprise and fear.

“Hello?” He’d heard me.

“… hi! Just a second!”

I fumbled with the latch, pulling it back then opening the door wide open. “Hello?”

He smiled at me, a curious expression painted on his face. “Nice pyjamas?” he remarked.

I stared at him blankly. “Huh?”

“Your… um. Pyjamas. That you’re wearing.”

I hadn’t even got out of the pyjama top. “Oh. One moment.”

I sheepishly stepped back and eased the door closed. A mad scramble was made for clothes from the dirty clothes basket—a loose fitting T-shirt and an old, ill fitting bra— and I threw them on as quickly as I could. On the way back I stepped around Katelyn still fawning over the kittens, then I returned to the front door.

“So, um, hi.” My initial surprise faded and I realised that, aside from my dream, I had barely said two words to this man. Further, I realised in a sudden spike of panic that he was now
outside my door
. How had he found where I lived?

“Hi. I’m Ishan Kari. We met, briefly, last night at the Hole.”