The Benefit Season (13 page)

I look across at her, and
I know that from now on I will have to play it carefully, for both
our sakes. For now there is another person I am accountable to, and
I promise myself to take it easy from here on.

But nothing happens as we
plan, as the next few days show me.

ϖ

Neither had I expected
Lele to offer to split the dinner bill with me, nor does he
surprise me, even though it was for his girl that I had it
arranged, on his behalf. But I’d owed them both a huge treat for
taking care of me thus far, so I dismiss the thoughts of the
expense. But Aarti Khosla, of fine bean-counting stock, is in no
mood to waive the overheads. It is with a marked chill that she
waves the limp wrist, with cold lips the faint kisses she blows in
the thick air, at my two roommates who strut off with the cadeau
d’anniversaire, arranged for by the courtesy of The Taj, and paid
for by the beneficence of mine.

She shrinks in the far
corner away from me, as we ride home on the last course of our
Jaguar Meal. Her pointy knees clasp tightly together, shutting out
my wandering hand and lusty eye. With an ache in her heart and a
tear in her curvy eyelash, she keeps twisting my ring on her
finger, as if she were struggling with the choice of tossing it out
of the purple Jag, or simply chucking it in my happy face- aglow in
her warm nearness and blank in its oblivion.

That Ms. Khosla cared
little for the hand that gives freely and grows richer, I already
knew: it is the clumsy allusion to my rise in the ranks- courtesy
the glad eye of the much-married Monal, that appears to have shaken
her rock solid faith in a match made in heaven. Prone to defending
empirical facts and figures, her precise mind is wrought in the
frenzy of totaling the buxom Lilys and lissome Monals that are
likely to come into a collision trajectory with my career flight
path.

‘
If every careless remarks
that flies your way is going to affect you, I’m afraid I’ll have a
hard time lighting your fire, baby. Show me some love honey, touch
me, don’t hurt me’.

‘
I hate her, she’s so
pretty’, she chokes.

‘
Who? Monal? Or
Lily?’

She cranks up the war
machines and fidgets for an answer. ‘Both. All of them! I can’t
share you’, she says and firmly pushes the ring up her finger and
covers it protectively with her long slim fingers. She bunches her
shoulders and snuggles up to the window. I slide across the ample
backseat and slide a wary arm over her shoulder. She doesn’t throw
herself out the running car so I become bold enough to nuzzle at
the hollow of her neck. I cup her chin in my hand and gently turn
it towards me.

‘
How can I be shared; you
take up all of me. You are all of me and I am all of you. None of
me is left. That’s how it was and that’s how it will
be.’

‘
I don’t care what they
say. I can handle all the Lilys of this firmament, but I don’t want
to lose you to the wily ways of that crazy scheming Monal. She is
evil- I saw it in her eyes’.

‘
All bosses are evil and
all men are fools and all girls are right. So can we lick this tear
like this and sip at these swollen lips…’ I reach across and with a
thirsty tongue dive deep into her quavering soul.

Aarti is no cold-blooded,
frostbitten polar queen. When I call out and appeal nicely to her
mating instincts, she does not turn ice-cold and blow bleak winds
of the North Atlantic in my nostrils; her resistance thaws and the
bellows pump out a strong blast of warm air to bring to a blazing
life the red-hot embers in the loins. What she lacks in cleavage,
she more than makes up for in the burning fires in her heaving
bosom. When god substituted plump and bouncy fun-bags with
athletic, no-nonsense front-trim for Aarti, he had a divine purpose
in mind. When, as a junior athlete she clasped a carbon fiber pole
close and vaulted easily with it over a four-meter high cross bar,
he was making sure no unwieldy body parts came in her way. Though
petite, her breasts are firm and round and her hard nipples arch up
towards me through her blouse mocking me to bite hard and swing
from them with my teeth till she sucks in her breath and begs me to
release. She spreads her pointy knees wide and lets my hand slide
up the moist thighs, part her meaty flaps, and glide to and fro her
mushy cove. Her musky smells fill up the air in the car as her eyes
roll up and her lips part in an intense, unavoidable urge to
release in my hand. In one final heave, she overarches and then
collapses in a heap in the seat, moaning softly, trying to squirm
her hips out of the reach of my unrelenting hand. She grabs my hair
and pulls my face out of her tits and crushes my lips on hers. She
reaches out for my zip and pulls out my bald-headed yoghurt-slinger
and yanks cruelly, unforgivingly at it till it bursts forth and
casts the life-giving seed amongst the slimy pink thighs and the
purple upholstery.

We soon reach my new flat,
where after showing her around her future station of work, worship
and play, like good kids I intend heading us back to our respective
homes. If she lets us, that is. In the lift she plants her palms
firmly on the wall behind me on both sides of my face, and starts
from where she’d left off in the car, suckling at my chafed lips
and grinding her body into mine, pinning me against the
wall.

Her sudden aggression and possessiveness, no
doubt stirred awake by the unwanted appearance at the doorstep of a
predator in the person of Monal, is both endearing and a
trifle…amusing.

Both being of minimalistic
flesh, our bones grind and grate against the aluminum trim. One of
us has to put on some weight otherwise it will be like two
skeletons rattling between the sheets. She is one demanding woman,
and she wants to have it all. When we reach our floor I lift her
and carry her to my apartment, as she won’t release her hold. And
like that I dig out the keys and kick the door in. Once in she
looks around in frenzy for the bedroom and drags me on top of her
on the bed. I try to rise and break away because I have saved this
moment for the old fashioned wedding night; but she wants to hit
the home run now and she’s not taking no for an answer.

Who am I to contest god’s
will; I take it as it comes. If she wants to get mounted, ride her
I will, gallop hard till one of us begs to stop. She’s such a
whirlwind of hands and knees and lips that she won’t even let me
wriggle out of my pants and turn the joystick out.

‘
Hey I can’t do it with my
pants on’, I whisper.

‘
Ok, but hurry up’, she
says, still clutching at my collar as if I might slip away. As soon
as my trousers slide off she clasps her knees around me, locks me
in and starts thrusting with her hips.

When I manage to pull my lips out of her
mouth I say, ‘ I need yours off too’.

‘
Ok’, she says, ‘but hurry
up’, and starts wriggling her hips, arching up and sideways
urgently. It almost seems funny.

‘
And I have no
protection’, I warn her, after I finally manage to drag the skirt
and panties off her buttery legs. I want time out to admire her
gorgeous form in its naked splendor, but the ref’s in no mood to
delay the goal.

‘
You are my protection!
Why do you talk so much?’ She says and impatiently arches her hips
up at me. ‘Why are you loitering at the gates Mr. Pasricha, come
right in.’

She starts giggling
nervously, feeling suddenly shy, now that we are at the point of
the act proper. ‘And be nice’, she whispers.

So, politely I fold her
legs, kiss her knees, grasp her silky thighs, and guide my long
love shaft into the muzzle end of her birth cannon. She winces and
bites her lip as I tear through the meaty flap and say ‘Bye
Felicia’ to the virgin fairy. We heave as one, relishing the
bounties of succulent flesh and roused senses. I wait long for her
to shudder and peak, before I ease myself out and lie by her side.
She slides a slim sweaty leg over me and keeps shaking as wave
after wave of spasms wash over her spent body. She finds and
strokes with her knee my love mast that once again has its sails
full with strong, gusty winds, and then she swings her juicy
buttocks and lowers herself on me. She’s awkward to begin with but
soon finds her rhythm, and we salsa to the same music, which only
the two of us can hear. With tingling nerve ends, this time she’s
quicker at discovering her crests, and collapses on my chest,
shaking uncontrollably. I hold her near and let her ride the waves.
When she’s done, I roll her over and enter her again. This time I
leave my manners at home and slap into her body till she’s rippling
like a belly dancer. She whimpers loudly, keeping pace with my
strokes, trying to rise and snap at my nipples with bared teeth. I
grab her shoulders and shove her down on the bed, while she shakes
her head, trying to break free and come back on top of me. When I’m
about to come, I take my Meat Popsicle out and start slapping it
hard on her wet belly. But she grabs it and shoves it back inside
of her, shouting, ‘no no, inside, inside’. I explode with great
violence somewhere inside the dark innards of her belly, and she
grabs my buttocks, pinching them hard, and won’t let me withdraw
and roll over till the last millionth soldier has been sucked and
safely tucked inside her slushy gates.

I forget how many times we made love that
night. But I do remember that our Jaguar chauffer did call up once,
around dawn, asking when we were going to get down.

‘
Tell him to go away’, she
said.

‘
What about your aunt?
Won’t she be waiting?’

‘
No. I told her I won’t be
coming home tonight’.

‘
What do you mean? Where
did you say you were sleeping at?’

‘
She knows I’m spending
the night with you. And she can probably guess what I’m doing too’,
she laughed, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. ‘And I knew
I’ll have to stay back to do the bed sheets. I was told it would
happen the first time. You don’t want your maid scandalized do
you?’ She laughed merrily, and nuzzling her head on my chest,
promptly went off to sleep.

Conscience briefly tugs at
my sleeve, for having caused the devirginisation of my own bride,
but briefly and fleetingly only. I didn’t want to ask her who’d
told her the bed sheets would sully the first time. I think I knew,
as I slipped an arm under her head and drifted into my
dreams.

We spend the weekend at
the apartment itself, drifting in and out of intense lovemaking.
Aarti feels threatened by what Lily has told her, about Monal
having the glad eye for me, and she’s not able to put these
needless fears and suspicions behind her, nor can she talk about
them to me, since she thinks it would show her as a jealous,
possessive and control freak, which would probably turn me off. Her
usual spontaneity and cheer are gone, and a brooding silence and
forced smile have taken their place. She forces herself on me all
the time, as if someone is going to snatch me away from her, and
doesn’t want to return to her aunt’s place. No girl has ever come
between us like this, and shaken her confidence this badly. I am
hurt that she’s hurt, and that it’s because of an insensitive
remark by a friend, and because she won’t discuss it however hard I
cajole and beg her. She wants to devour me as if I’m a soldier
about to return to the raging front.

‘
Can I have the old Aarti
back’, I ask her, while braiding her hair. We are seated on the
floor, and she is sitting between my legs. I learnt braiding from
my mom, and Aarti once caught me doing it, and now makes me do it
for her all the time.

‘
I’m still around. I’m not
going anywhere even if you tried very hard’.

I laugh and pass my arms
around her tummy, hugging her close, and kiss the hollow of her
long neck. ‘Promise?’

‘
You can take it in
writing if you like’.

‘
Your word is good enough
for me’.

‘
Is it about what Lily
said?’

‘
It’s about what you let
others say about you, Arjun. You did not protest’.

‘
Because she was drunk
silly. I’m not supposed to react to office gossip. When you do
well, people are bound to pass comments. And I thought you would
never stop believing in me. I thought you and I were rock solid
together as we’ve always been. It’s a lie about Monal- she’s just
someone who pushes people to get her way. There’s nothing more to
it. And you should see her husband- he’s a Casanova. Why would she
have a roving eye? What is it that I can do to make you stop
thinking about it?’

‘
Nothing’, she says
stubbornly,’ because I’m not thinking about it’.

‘
Do you want me to quit?
Without your happiness all this is meaningless to me’.

‘
Will you quit if I ask
you to?’

‘
I will quit even if you
don’t ask. I cannot bear your hurt’.

A practical lassie, she
ponders for a minute. ‘What will you do then? Where will you
stay?’

‘
I have saved some. I
could put up at a B&B till I find a job.’

‘
And what would papa say?
What about the wedding?’

‘
Your papa will always
think I’m not good enough for his prize daughter, no matter what.
So let’s forget him. The wedding- now we’re talking. How about
right now?’

‘
Really?’