23
T
he choice was between sleeping in his childhood nursery and the threadbare couch in the living room. It was a no-brainer. Mili took the nursery and Samir took the couch. It was hard to fit his body on the tiny thing but he didn’t expect to sleep much anyway. All he wanted to do was get through this night, get through tomorrow morning, then drop Mili off and go back to his life, to his family and his work. All the things he himself had built, not the lot that had been shoved down his throat.
He didn’t expect it to but sleep did come.
And with it came the nightmare.
The dark, bottomless well, darker than any darkness. He dangled over it. His feet cycling the air desperately, his grandfather’s fingers fisted in his shirt his only lifeline. The collar choked him, made it hard to breathe, to beg.
Don’t let me go. Please, Dadaji, don’t let me go.
His stomach catapulted into his throat and he fell without end.
He sat up on the couch, panting. Water flooded his lungs, burning fire up his nose and into his head. Sobs echoed around him, bouncing off stone walls.
He wiped his forehead against his sleeve.
It’s okay, Chintu, I’m here. Stop struggling, I’m here.
Bhai had jumped in after him, carried him for hours on his shoulders, until Baiji pulled them out. Bhai had put him in the bucket first, let Baiji pull him out first. But the darkness of those hours had blinded Samir for days afterward. Even in the harshest Rajasthan sunlight the darkness had stayed with him. It wasn’t just the slashing belt but that darkness that had woken him screaming every night of his childhood.
And now again. Here.
The old bastard might have been the one to throw him in that well, to shred his back, but it was the woman in this house who was really responsible for it. And now she wanted him to somehow absolve her, to be a son? Everything she had said twisted around his throat in a noose. The labored breathing that had fueled her words pulled it tight. Mili’s face with her bleeding heart gave it the final tug.
He never wanted to see Mili’s face again. He hadn’t felt so helpless, so desperately lost, ever. And given the kind of wimpy, pathetic child he’d been, that was saying something. He was in hell. And Mili was responsible.
He pushed himself off the couch. He needed air. How had that woman wanted him to take
his
nursery for the night? It was the creepiest fucking thing he had ever heard. The idea of Mili in there was sick enough. Tucked under the quilts that had done nothing to keep out the brutal cold of his childhood in this house. He slammed his fist into the rickety screen door and stepped into the night. The humid summer air hit his face but he couldn’t pull it all the way into his lungs.
He found a swing on the back porch and sank into it. The din of frogs calling to their mates was deafening. Despite the horny frogs, despite the sparkling fireflies, the night felt dead. This place felt like the end of the earth; there was nowhere to go from here. He hopped off the swing, so on edge his skin felt too tight around him. The nightmare had left his T-shirt damp. The sultry air glued it to his body. He grabbed the edge of the shirt, pulled it over his head and dropped it on the porch before stepping onto the damp grass. The yard was overgrown and deep, edged with thick, looming woods. His bare feet began to eat the grassy earth. The breeze hit his chest but did nothing to cool him down. The faster he walked the more restless it made him. Soon he was faced with the thicket of trees. One step and he’d be inside the unending darkness, be inside the well again. This time he wouldn’t be afraid.
The woman had actually reached for him. She had expected him to let her take him in her arms. She had expected him to let her look at him that way. With a mother’s eyes, heavy with hope, expectation, pride. And he’d let her. He felt soiled. Only one woman could look at him like that—only his mother, and she wasn’t here. She was eight fucking thousand miles away, terrified of losing him to this, this dark place, the way she had lost her husband.
He moved to step into the darkness and heard a gasp behind him.
He spun around. Mili’s slight form stood a few feet from him. The oversized white T-shirt Kim had given her caught the moonlight and slid down one shoulder like a Grecian toga. Her mass of curls exploded from a band at the top of her head. She wrapped her arms around herself. Even in this heat she was trembling.
“Please don’t go in there, Samir. It’s too dark. I don’t want to go in there.” Her eyes were pools of moonlight.
“Then don’t.”
“I can’t let you go in there alone.” Her look was classic Mili. Fierce with sincerity. Everything out there in the open.
His heart did an awful squeeze.
“I can’t go back in that house.” His voice came out a whisper.
She came to him then. Before he could move away, her arms went around his waist and pulled tight. She pressed her face into his chest, exactly where his heart throbbed out its painful beat. He wanted to untangle her arms from around him and push her away, but he stood there rooted, paralyzed, as she clung to him. For a long time he didn’t do anything, he couldn’t feel anything. Then the warm wetness on his skin seeped through his numb haze and burned a hole right in the center of his frozen chest, right where her cheek was pressed against his heart.
His heart began to pound; hot thrumming gushed through his veins. He lifted both hands and did what he hadn’t stopped craving since that first time he’d done it. He grabbed fistfuls of her curls as they spilled to her waist. Silken softness tightened between his fingers. He tugged her head back and turned her face up to his. Her face was wet. Silver moonlight bounced against her tears—against her onyx eyes, against her spiked midnight lashes, against her lips, her cheeks. She was all soaked and soft and yielding. He leaned over and pressed his face into the wetness.
Mili sucked in a breath. For a few moments neither one of them moved, their wet faces pressed together. Samir was trembling in her arms, the pain inside him too much to bear. She stroked his back, his arms, the tight cords of his neck. She tried to make soothing sounds, but his name was all that came to her lips. “Samir.”
He pressed his lips into her cheek and dragged sweet fire across her skin, her forehead, her eyelids, the bridge of her nose. Until finally, finally he found her lips. Hunger exploded in her chest. She dug her fingers into his hair, clutched the heavy strands, and tugged him closer.
He moaned her name. “Mili.” The crazy beat of his heart slammed against her breasts, stinging sadness in every beat. She wanted it gone, she wanted to suck it out of his heart, wanted to grind down every harsh edge jabbing into him. She pushed apart his lips, and reached into his pain. The world went soft and hot. Everything inside her melted and slid down her body and pooled in the ravenous space between her legs.
His hands molded the globes of her butt. He yanked her up, straightening to his full height and lifting her molten body high against his. She flowed over him, draping herself around him. The entire length of her arms wrapped around his head. She devoured his mouth, nipped, licked, sucked. His taste so familiar it stole her breath. She dived into it, inhaling every sensation like it was her last. It was. It had to be. Her legs wrapped around him, flattening her wet heat against the solid muscle of his belly. All her blood, every fiber of awareness that held her together rushed to where their bodies met.
A raw moan rumbled in his chest as he slid her down his body until turgid hardness fit itself against aching softness. “Mili,” he moaned against her lips. “God, Mili.”
She pushed closer. “It’s okay, Samir. It’s going to be okay.” She locked her feet around him. “I promise.”
He spun with her in his arms and pushed her against the tree, shielding her back from the trunk with his arms. But he let nothing shield her body from his. Every inch of him pressed into every inch of her as he swallowed her moans, and shoved his own into the heat of her mouth. There was such desperation in his lips, in his hands, such hunger, it was as if he wanted to drown in her. Their hearts slammed against each other and found the same beat.
How had she lived without this? How had she lived without him? How had she ever dreamed of another man? Samir was part of her, wrapped around her like blazing sunshine and pouring rain, her breath and her blood, her every thought.
His lips traced her throat and found her collarbones on an indrawn breath. He dragged fire across her flesh, taking her to the edge of a chasm, pushing her toward it. His mouth dipped lower. Through the bunched-up cotton, he captured the peak of her breast. She screamed into the night, reeling over the chasm. He pulled away, and she whimpered a desperate plea. “Samir. Please.” She clamped his head closer and pushed herself into his mouth.
His response was fierce. Teeth and tongue, he gathered her up, consumed her, tender one minute, ruthless the next, until she forgot his pain, forgot her own and sobbed for more, crazed, mad with hunger. From the very deepest part of her soul, she threw herself open, her arms, her legs, every last part of her open. Exposed. His.
Samir came up for air. It flooded into his lungs, her smell, her taste, her very essence flooded into him. She tore through everything he knew, everything he was feeling. She was a dagger that slammed into his heart and cleaved him in half, and settled at the very center of his being as if he was exactly where she belonged.
Except he wasn’t. He wasn’t ready to have her pour life into him. There was too much anger inside him and years of deadness. She started trailing kisses down his jaw, her panting breath fanning the sweet wetness her lips left on his skin. Her fingers clutched his hair, the trust in her hold kicked him in the gut. He’d already violated it beyond redemption. He pulled away from her mouth, away from the impossibly hard nubs of her breasts pushing into his chest, the taste of them imprinted on his tongue. She moaned and tried to pull his mouth back to hers.
“Mili,” he said against her lips, “go back into the house. Go back now while I can still let you go.”
Her dazed eyes heated with purpose. She wrapped her hands around his face and speared him with her burning onyx eyes. “No.”
He searched through their wide-open depths, but there wasn’t one shred of doubt inside her. “Mili, if you don’t go now, I won’t be able to hold myself back. I’m just not that strong.” But, God, he’d crumble to dust if she left him.
“Don’t,” she whispered, pushing her soft, pliant body into his. “Don’t hold anything back.” She closed her eyes, threw back her head, and offered him everything. “Please.”
All that kept him sane flew out of his head.
He found her lips again and shoved his tongue into her mouth, not seductive, not artful, but as clumsy as a teenager, every movement a movement he had to make. His hands searched her body, finding their way under her shirt, learning, touching, breathing her in skin to skin. The keys of her spine, the silken softness of her skin, the lush weight of her breasts. She pushed into his hands. Every inch of her screamed for more. Her mouth chanted his name.
Samir, Samir, Samir,
over and over as he kneaded and circled and stroked.
His mouth nipped at hers; he couldn’t let go of her lips.
“Samir, please,” she moaned. “Please.”
He reached down between their tightly pressed bodies meaning to give her the release she craved. But his fingers touched soaking wet cotton hot against swollen flesh and the very last thought exploded in his mind and disappeared with a blinding bang. He had to have her around him, now. The cotton bunched in his hands as he ripped it off her legs. He wanted to trail kisses up her legs, down her belly, but all he could do was yank down his zipper and lunge for her mouth as he pulled down his pants. She grabbed his shoulders and squeezed her thighs around him, her groan so fierce the inferno inside him flared, consuming every tenderness. He backed her into the tree and pushed himself into her.
She was too tight, too slight for how much his hunger had engorged him. He tried to stop, tried to slow, tried to ease into her. She whimpered and pushed into him. Her hot slickness clenched with need and he lost all semblance of control and drove into her like a crazed beast.
And for the first time in his life came up against a barrier.
Panic gripped his throat, an almost unbearable rush of tenderness burst in his heart. He tried to pull away, but she made a wild sound, tightened her legs around him and clawed his shoulders. It was more than he could take. One hard thrust and he ripped past the resistance. This time her cry was laced with pain. She went rigid in his arms.
“
Shh,
sweetheart. I’m sorry. It’s going to be fine. Trust me.”
“I trust you, Samir,” she said through a sob.
He slid his tongue into her mouth, stroking her in the deepest kiss, shaking with the effort to hold still inside her. The tension melted from her body; she loosened against him and wiggled closer. That was it. He lost his mind, plunging and plunging until she sobbed into his mouth, and pulsed and squeezed around him. He slammed into her, mindless frantic thrusts until he exploded, and exploded and exploded without end.
When he found his mind again, Mili sagged limp in his arms, slick with sweat, and shaking. Her arms were still locked around his neck. Her face was pressed into his chest. Where their bodies joined, hot sticky sweetness glued them together. Her legs started sliding off him. He pushed them back up, spun around, and pushed his own back into the tree trunk.
He had just taken her standing up against a tree, out in the open. And this had been her first time. Every complication separating them, all the lies and deceptions, all the reasons why this was the very last thing he should’ve done came crashing down on him. “Shit, Mili. That was terrible. That should never have happened.”