The First Time (Love in No Time #1) (9 page)

I know I affected him but I can only feel what I feel and I feel a lot. It is all (un) settling in my stomach, knees, feet, and even the tips of the nails of my feet. I don’t have a clue as to what to do with myself. Maybe pleasuring myself will do it? But this would make sense only if I could forget the hands that traveled to different spots on my body. Damn! This is all so frustrating. Shower should do it. Yes, I need a hot/cold shower to deal. As I crawl into bed an hour later all red skin and warm, I pray for a dreamless night. But I know no prayers would stop my sub conscience from returning to him via my dreams. This would seem my way of requiting in a semi-conscious state what was left incomplete in a conscious one. His gift lies on my side table, catching a spot of the moonlight filtering in and the silver twinkles like a certain set of black eyes I know. I know I am smiling as I fall into an exhausted sleep.

Chapter Fifteen

The bracelets are the first things I see when I wake up the next morning. I smile and then pout. But what happened to “I want you as my present now?” No quid pro quo? He is no gentleman, we know. He knows how to hold, tug, bite, pull in all the right discrete places leading to indiscrete sensations.

Wait, how does he know to do all that? Or rather who has he been doing this to? An insidious thought has entered my mind, hooking into its flesh form. He cannot be reading about what to do to a woman and then using me as his experimental bitch? Now I am beyond curious. I need to know more. But I am not calling him to ask. I hope he will call so I can insert my query into the conversation then. And as if on cue and quite scaringly so, the phone starts ringing in the living room. It rings for the tenth time (yes, I am counting) when I reach it. As I breathe a hello into it, I glance at the clock on the wall. It says 9:30 a.m. I panic thinking that I am late for office again. And then realize its Saturday. And also realize that no one has countered my hello with their own. So I say another hello and of course it’s him—the mister of my sensation from my yesterday.

“Hi back. How are you?”

“Sorry, if I woke you. I waited an hour before calling just so I wasn’t cutting into your beauty sleep.”

“Uh-no, I am fine. Why are you calling, Mr.?”

“Why? Why do you think, Ms. Sharma? Was I the only one in the room yesterday?” His voice is tinged with surprise and hurt now, I think. I am rendered silent.

“So what are you up to today?” he asks as a way probably to distract me into finding my speech capabilities.

“Why? So you could come around and finish what you started?” I think I snap. Gosh! What is wrong with me? I am not starting on a good mood today.

“I would like to very much—come over and finish what we started yesterday.” His voice has dropped and become a little husky. Shit! Now what?

“Yes?” He prods quietly but urgently.

“Uh—I have plans today.”

“Cancel, please.”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because I am meeting a friend for lunch. I cannot postpone it anymore without offending her out of my life.”

“Hmmm, yes I guess we cannot offend friends but its okay to keep likely boyfriends from seeing you for every good reason in the world.”

“So how is tomorrow?” He asks without letting me respond to his attempt at sarcasm earlier.

“I don’t know. Why don’t you call me tomorrow and find out?” I challenge.

He laughs and accepts the challenge by saying, “Ok, I will call, Ms. Sharma. I guess this is how you want to play this. But know this—I am patient to a point but persistent. Yours is a losing battle against me because I do know that you like me and are willing. I just need to pursue the length of that willingness.”

Did he just say “length” of my willingness? Hmmmm!

“Sir, I am not playing with you. I am a simple girl trying to make a living in this hostile town.”

“Flirting are we Ms. Sharma?” “But keep this up and you know very well what is bound to happen sooner than later!” I can hear him smiling, the smug bastard.

“You have a good day, Sir.” I counter in my most acerbic voice.

“Oh! I will Ms. Sharma, I will. I will be spending it in my room with just thoughts of you invading my brain and everything I know I want to do to you when the opportunity arises!”

I drop the phone! It dangles next to my knees for a good thirty seconds before I pull it back up and up to my ear. He has hung up. Damn! I really have lost control of all this now. To the logical me, this is irritating. To my girly self, however, this feels strangely dangerous and exciting at the same time. Now what my brother or family would think about our clandestine trysts, I didn’t even want to know.

Speaking of my brother, his birthday is tomorrow so I need to be home. Okay, that’s a good plan, I think to myself. Just get home and be with family. This might help me take stock of the situation from a different yet more personal location. I need to cancel with Jaya again but I am sure she will understand what I need to do and why I need to do this urgently. I call Jaya. She is of course not happy but of course she understands. She is Jaya. She is a good friend. I don’t call my mother about coming home. I leave it as surprise for her though I know she knows that I will get my ass home for my brother’s birthday. Otherwise there was hell to pay in the form of my mother never letting go of that one time when I did not show up for an important family event. She would never let me live it down.

So there I was at my brother’s birthday party that included only the four family members. But the cake my mother ordered, a layered one of chocolate and vanilla, was big enough for a party of fifteen! We might as well invite the neighbors and their families to the party so we can finish the cake. I can’t resist so I take a swipe of the icing with my index finger and put it in my mouth. I know its bad manners but I couldn’t resist and my mother knows it too and she couldn’t resist slapping my hand as her way of reprimanding me. I don’t care.

I take another swipe at the cake with my index finger before quickly turning away to get some plates and forks for everyone. And I run smack into a familiar chest. What the fuck? What is
he
doing here? This is a family thing. Since when did he become family? Of course! My brother invited him. The two cannot live without each other. He is at my parents’ place almost every evening! So it cannot be the cake that brought him here. Even though I could go anywhere and do anything to get a piece of this cake.

“Ms. Sharma, how nice to see you. I hardly ever see you anymore.” His hands are holding mine quite firmly and he has that smile on his face like he knows my most terrible secrets. (I just have one secret—him! But let’s not tell him that, the arrogant fool!).

“Good, thank you!” I say without meaning a word and then exaggeratedly shake off his hands to sidestep him. I need to get those plates and forks out before everyone just decides to eat the cake using their fingers. I need to keep my hands busy and my brain fucking functioning to solve the world’s hunger problem if I had any chance of surviving the evening with him in my parents’ home. Damn! Why is he here? Well, the “why” is inconsequential since he is here and he is not leaving with his pound or rather piece of cake. All my good intentions of coming home to re-evaluate my situation at Vasant Kunj vis-à-vis the man in question are now safely buried. By appearing in my safe space, the epitome of warm and fuzzy and familiar, he was making me feel nervous and tight in all manner of speaking—from my grey matter to my vagina. I don’t need to feel this way at home. It just doesn’t feel right. It feels wrong, even sacrilegious.

Really? My functioning brain mocks me. Okay, maybe I am a drama queen. I have of course masturbated in my room multiple times. So this talk of inappropriateness is a little hypocritical. So I tell myself to not go there. But pleasuring oneself leaves no tell tale sign. It is as if it doesn’t exist. But the presence of someone who wants to pleasure you under the threat of a family member finding this out comes with fear of penalties—of being reprimanded, even grounded. And I was afraid that he would push the boundaries in this forbidden/ forbidding zone to dangerous levels.

So I keep clear of his proximity. I just need to eat my cake and then excuse myself. Maybe I could get some writing done too. I have grabbed the plates and forks by now. I avoid his eyes as I return to the cake. Everyone sings the boy his song and then my mother proceeds to slice up sizeable portions of the cake for all present, including him. I again avoid his eyes as I hand him his plate of diabetic concoction.

I know his gaze has not wavered from me since he walked in. Damn him! I take my plate and mumble a quick “excuse me” before escaping upstairs to my room. I close the door, plonk on the bed, and heave a big sigh. I take a few more breaths all the while looking at my cake and how it would feel in my mouth once I can breathe normally.

I pick up my fork and there is a knock on my door. Shit! I know it is him even though I don’t know for a fact. I know he has followed me upstairs. Maybe, I decide, if I keep really still he will leave me alone. I think for thirty seconds I even stopped breathing to make sure that any uninvited guest left exactly in that state. I think I could have waited for another thirty seconds before digging into my cake. The steel spoon against the ceramic plate was the giveaway sound. The knock returned. It was louder this time, tinged possibly with some degree of impatience. I have to open the door before the knocking alerts my family and one or more come investigating the source. I leave my piece of heaven on the bed and nervously smoothen out the crease on my bed linen. I am stalling. I walk slowly to the door, cracking it open hoping that it is my dog buddy wanting in. But it is him. He is holding his cake in one hand and his other hand is resting casually against the doorframe. Of course he is smiling—when doesn’t he? My instinct is to bang the door on his face, enough to wipe away his smugness. But he preempts me and lodges his Nike sneakered foot between the door and its frame. I squeeze out of sheer perversity, seeing him wince without letting go of either his smile or his foot in the door frame. I immediately feel like a bitch and release the door. He immediately takes advantage and cracks the door open wider to walk in first and then casually lay himself down on my bed! I don’t know whether to shut the door to my room or to let it remain open. I don't which would make me look and feel less guilty. But him lying on my bed like it is his undercuts the logic of deciding between a closed and an open bedroom door. It looks bad either way. Nevertheless, I shut the door. I couldn’t trust him to keep his hands to himself and I couldn’t trust my family to keep to themselves and let us be. I knew that someone would come snooping at some point. In a party of six, two missing party-attenders are not hard to miss. I wanted to know why he is here in my parents’ house for a private family-only birthday party, especially if my brother didn’t invite him.

I decided on an offense so I asked in my most serious tone—“what are you doing here and
here
?” pointing abstractedly to the house and my bedroom.

Instead of replying, he takes my hand pulls me on to the bed and by his reclining side. With our faces inches away from each other and him staring me down like he is memorizing the lines on my face, I can only manage to look at his jean clad thighs. His thighs look good in denim is all I can think of at the moment before he tilts my chin up and plants a soft kiss at the corner of my mouth while also licking away at some errant drop of frosting there. He does the exact same thing with the other end of my mouth and then does this exaggerated smacking of his lips as if he just tasted something heavenly. I was surviving on the air remnants in my lungs. None was getting in through my nose at this point.

“You need to go,” is all I could manage.

“Why, Ms. Sharma? Why would you want me to go? I am just sitting here eating my delicious slice of cake though I prefer the one around your delicious mouth. It just tastes better.” Ok. So what am I supposed to say to that!

So like a broken record I say again—“Why are you here? You seriously did not come to eat a birthday cake? Did Sabadoh invite you?”

“Well, he did mention it and I thought what better opportunity to see you again, to taste you, so here I am and I am so glad to be here.”

God! This man knows how to use words to ignite every single fiber in my being. Where is he learning all this seduction stuff from? Who is he practicing on before me or am I the practice field of some sort? I just cannot find a way to trust him with his words and his actions.

He is no novice—a fumbling, unsure, pathetic Indian male who is forever condemned to adolescence because his mother will not allow him, her precious son to become his own person—deciding, desiring, doing everything for his own sake and not as a service to his clinging parents who see everything through him and do everything for him. He doesn’t seem to be a prisoner of such culture, for one, he is acting like he is at the behest of no one. His is a private desire, privately acknowledged and selectively unleashed. In other words, I didn’t seem to be repelled by him like I am by every Indian boy just because they don’t seem know how to be around women forget about talking to them and least of all cherishing them. They are pathetic and perpetual fumblers when it comes to women but he was not. His blatant and brazen pursuit of me was pleasing, not off-putting.

I like a man to take charge but without being obvious. I like a man to take the reins of my buggy and direct its course but while listening to me good, never deciding without knowing what I want/desire/need. And right now my desire for him had perked like my nipples. It was obvious. I saw him reach out and slowly circle the contour of my left nipple like it was the most fascinating protrusion he had ever encountered. With his index finger he skirted the middle button of my shirt and hooked it so his finger was now touching my breast and he pulls me again to his waiting lips. This time he bites, sucks, sucks again in varying degree of savoring noises, inserting his tongue through the contours of my lips in order to taste the inner recesses of my mouth. His tongue swirls around the walls of my mouth, replicating as if the feeling of a penis wedged into the tight walls of a vagina. His tongue is desperately licking away at the moisture in my mouth as if this is the only source of water in a desert. And then suddenly his teeth pull at my bottom lip with enough force that my lip felt elongated by an extra inch!