He hurried out of the elevator and looked up and down the long, red-and-gold-striped corridor. She snaked her arms around his neck and watched the determined expression on his face. Her Viky on a mission. He broke into a jog, turning the corner and going from door to door until he found a door marked
EMPLOYEES ONLY.
He turned the knob and the door swung open. He whooped in victory.
It was a storeroom of some sort with shelves on two sides lined with stacks of spotless white towels and the overpowering smell of detergent. He kicked the door shut behind them, put her down on the narrow table pushed against a wall, and shoved a utility cart against the door, his eyes never leaving hers. A heady combination of heat and laughter bubbled and spilled from her. He stole it from her lips. His fingers molded her scalp and pulled her impossibly close, held her impossibly tight, and stole whatever was left of her. Suddenly, all she could smell was him. All she could feel was him.
“Ria.” He placed a kiss behind her ear. She pushed into his lips. She loved the way he said her name too and he knew it.
A string of kisses trailed her jaw. “Ria. Ria. Ria.”
A nibble at the edge of her mouth. “Ria.”
How did he do that? Take her name and turn it into everything in his heart. She grabbed his face and found his lips. But he allowed her only a peck, savored it, then pulled away. His hungry gaze branded her, lingered on her parted mouth, mirrored the ache in her body. In one smooth motion he grabbed her ankles and shoved them up, his hands hot manacles pinning her feet to the table, pushing her knees out, and spreading her wide. Body and soul he cleaved her open. “No more dreaming, Ria. This. Is. Real.” The kaleidoscope of his eyes sparkled brilliant with challenge. Brutally insistent. Unbending.
A jagged bud of terror sprouted inside Ria and fought for footing in the all-consuming inferno. Vikram wedged his hips between her legs, thrusting himself into her silk-covered center, and the darkness fled. All thought fled. She scooted forward and clamped her knees around him.
“Viky, please,” she moaned into his mouth. “Please.”
“Please what?” He found the dent of her dimple and burrowed into it with the tip of his tongue, teasing it, making it dance in her cheek until she grabbed handfuls of his hair and jabbed her tongue into his mouth.
He sucked her in. His fingers tightened around her ankles, pressed them into her thighs, and stroked the sensitive apex of her legs. She gasped for air, twisted her fingers in his hair, and pushed into his hands.
Instead of increasing the pressure, his hands gentled. Every part of her clenched and throbbed. Slowly, deliberately, he rubbed the layers of silk into her burning flesh, dragging the cascading folds of her sari like a million feathers along the sensitive insides of her thighs. Her legs kicked out, muscles spasming in response to his touch, feet arching in an erotic stretch. “Please, Viky.” She wrapped her legs around him and locked her ankles at his waist.
“Please what?” His lips hot on hers, he reached behind him and grabbed her feet again, unlocking her legs from around him. “Tell me what you want, Ria.” His voice raw with hunger, he pushed her feet back on the table and pulled away.
She heard a sob break from her own throat. “Please, Viky. Don’t—” She pressed her face into his neck unable to finish.
His fingers stilled in the act of dragging the gilded hem of her sari up her legs. “You want me to stop?”
She bit his neck, hard. “Don’t you dare stop.”
He pushed his neck into her teeth and shoved the heavy fabric all the way up her thighs. She sucked on his skin, drawing in his heat, drawing a ragged moan from his lips. He increased the pressure of his fingers, caressing and kneading, moving up, then down her thighs until finally he found the lacey scrap of her panties on an indrawn breath.
He flitted over the swirling patterns, his touch tracing fire along the lacy petals and blooms, that barest caress creating enough friction to drive her into a frenzy.
“Viky,” she begged, pushing her hands into the table and lifting her hips, thrusting herself into him.
He groaned into her mouth, but he didn’t increase the pressure. His other hand moved to her breast, pulling the strapless blouse down and covering her aching flesh with his palm. Her nipple puckered into his touch, every nerve screamed. She might have screamed too. She didn’t care. She pressed into him, begging for more. Begging with her lips, begging with her hips, begging with every part of her being. “Viky, please.”
“Viky, please what? Say the words, Ria. Say them.”
“More, Viky. Harder, Viky.
Now, Viky.
” She ground her pelvis into his hand.
He took her lips again and increased the pressure between her legs, strummed and stroked, used the textured lace to drag sensation from every nerve, inside her, around her, over her. She danced on the edge of explosion, liquid molten pleasure flowing from her like lava. He kept her there, his tongue in her mouth, his hands relentless in their demand, pulling back and pushing forward over and over again until she thought she would die from it.
“Like this?” he asked, and she screamed for release, her legs trembling, her body stiffening and arching.
“Yes,” she sobbed. “Please.”
He dragged off the soaking piece of cloth and replaced it with his mouth. Pleasure stabbed through her. She convulsed and fisted the thick silk covering his muscled shoulders, unable to discern one peak from another. And still he didn’t stop. He kept going until she could take no more, go no further, and she sagged limp and consumed against the table. He pulled away, coming up to face her, his mouth glistening, his eyes drugged and ravenous and reached for his pants. This time she stopped him.
She slid off the table, her mind lost, her body unsteady with the cramping strength of her release. She fell against him, pushing him into the wall behind him. Fire radiated down her legs. She buckled. He held her up, his hands brands against her butt, his hard unspent length a raging throb against her.
She brushed his lips with her own and let her hands unknot the band of his pants. Then she left his mouth and the taste of her own pleasure, wrenching a raw sound from him as she slid down his body. Her trembling fingers rolled the silk down his legs, her mouth trailing in their wake. The contrasting feel of soft silk and hard muscle burned fire into her lips, her cheeks, her tongue. She devoured him, tasting every inch until she reached the taut stretch of him and tasted not just salt and skin, but him
.
A breath hissed from his lips. “Oh fuck, Ria.” Unsteady fingers entwined in her hair, shoving deeper, holding closer. But he couldn’t last. Pulling her away, he dropped to his knees in front of her and brought his mouth to hers, mingling their need, their hunger. Without letting her mouth go, he tugged at a pile of still-warm towels, scattered them on the floor.
Suddenly he stopped, his gaze hitching on her face. His fingers traced the rivulet of tears streaming from the edges of her eyes. The raging heat in his gaze darkened and solidified to something so intense it stole every last thing left inside her. She was gone. All of her dissolved in him. Gone. He laid her down as though she were made of spun sugar and dragged her sari up to her waist, his gentleness reverence, his gaze worship, his entrance total and utter surrender.
She felt every instant of the joining. Inch by alive inch, she filled up and fit around him. Sheathed deep within her, he stopped. He stopped moving, stopped time. Her senses jolted as if he had thrust into her with wild force. An animal sound rose in her throat. She wrapped her legs around him, tugging at him, driving into him, desperate for friction. Desperate for him.
“Shh, love. Not yet,” he whispered into her mouth. “Feel this.” He took her lips, his tongue touching places buried so deep, it was as though he’d stripped her down to her soul. Her senses ripped between the insane stillness stretching her and the frenzied plunder of his mouth. Pleasure built and mounted inside her again and then exploded with such unbearable force, pain wrenched her womb from her spine. She screamed into his mouth and consumed his stillness with crazed, noisy thrusts.
He let her feel her own hunger, her own power, goaded her until she drowned in it. Then he joined her, giving her everything she begged for and then soothing her and soothing her, with his mouth, his hands, his body as she sobbed and shuddered and clung to him with her every breath.
25
“F
or an Ice Princess you can be really loud, you know that?” Vikram’s chest rose and fell beneath Ria’s cheek as if he had sprinted a mile. She lay draped across him, her hair spilling in rivulets around his body. The room no longer smelled of detergent, but of them, their smells indiscernible from one another. She no longer smelled like herself, no longer felt like herself.
A hot blush burned her cheeks. “Oh no! You think someone heard us?”
“Sweetheart, I think they heard us in the wedding hall twenty floors below.” He ran his fingertips over the warmth of her flaming face. “Your blush is the exact color of your sari, you know that?” His eyes trailed his fingers as they traced her blush all the way down her neck to the swell of her breast.
“
Bloody Hell,
Viky, the wedding!” She sprang up, snapping out of her trance. How could she have forgotten about the wedding?
He didn’t seem to care. His hand kept moving lower. She clutched it in place. “We have to go. Now.” She tried to stand up, but couldn’t. Her sari had come undone and twisted itself into knots around her. They were both still clothed, but she had never felt so naked in her life.
“Shit. Shit.
Shit.
Uma Atya must have sent out a search party by now. What time is it? How am I ever going to get this thing draped again?” She pulled her blouse back in place. Vikram pulled it down again and dropped a kiss on her breast.
“Viky!”
“Mmm?” He started drawing swirls around her nipple with his thumb. He looked so blissful her heart squeezed. For a moment she lost her train of thought. But then the thought of Uma’s search party brought her back. She pulled his hand away and tried to look stern.
“Viky, focus!”
“I am focusing.” He stared at her breast with an absorbed, reverent sort of look and tried to put his hand back on it.
“We have to get back to the wedding. Oh shit, I hope Uma Atya hasn’t called nine-one-one.” Ria quickly pulled her blouse back on and stood up before he could peel it off again. “Are you crazy? Is it even possible to do it again so soon? After that?”
He stood up and gave her a slow, lingering kiss. “Why don’t we try to find out?”
“Viky. Please.”
“Okay. But stop saying my name like that, otherwise we’re not going anywhere.”
“Like what?”
“Like it makes you breathless to say it.”
That made her blush some more. “See, don’t do that either,” he said, leaning into her again.
“Viky—Vikram. Please. We
have
to get dressed.”
“Okay, great. You can say
Vikram
. You sound exactly like Uma when you say it. And that’s kind of scary.” He grinned as though he hadn’t a care in the world, and her heart gave another painful squeeze.
She unraveled what was left of her sari, chanting, “Vikram. Vikram. Vikram,” in her most Uma-like voice, and tried to smooth out the yards and yards of fabric. Thank God silk this heavy didn’t wrinkle easily.
He glanced lazily at his watch. “Relax, sweetheart, the endless ceremony isn’t even halfway done yet. Everyone’s probably zoned out and dreaming about lunch.”
She smiled, but her hands shook. The sari was a mess. The tassels were and tangled in the sequins on her blouse. She tried to untangle it, picked at it with her nails, but it wouldn’t come apart. Panic prickled in the pit of her stomach.
He reached over and unhooked each snarled sequin. His long fingers worked deftly to straighten and separate the tassels. Then he took the sari from her and shook it out and folded it as he watched her adjust her jewelry, her hair, her blouse.
When she took the sari from him and started to drape it around herself he stepped closer. “Here, let me help,” he said, and followed her lead, taking a neatly folded section from her and holding it out of her way as she evened out the pleats, then handing it back and forth, helping her twist, wrap and tuck. His hands lingered on her skin, his eyes followed her every movement as though the notes of a breathtaking melody were unfurling around him and moving him in ways he couldn’t comprehend.
He was lost. Lost in her.
The wisps of discomfort that had been edging at her insides curled into knots and twisted into a ball.
He dropped a kiss behind her ear. “Don’t freak out. But I just realized we forgot to use a condom.”
The free-flowing
pallu
she was trying to place on her shoulder slipped from her hands. He caught it, took the safety pin she was holding, and threaded it deftly through the sari and the blouse, pinning them together.
“You’re amazingly good at this,” she said before letting the words she really wanted to say out, because she couldn’t not say them anymore. “I have an IUD.”
“I worked in a sweatshop in the Honduras for a while folding clothes.” He snapped the pin in place. “Why didn’t you tell me before? Although Drew’s wife Kayla actually got pregnant with an IUD. You remember Drew, right? My roommate in med school?”
The knotted-up ball of discomfort moved up to her heart, gathering terror as it went.
“They had to remove it surgically, but they saved McKenzie. And she’s the sweetest baby in the world too.” He stroked her neck. “I want one just like her. Actually, I want as many just like her as I can have.” His smile was pure pleasure.
The bubble exploded. Guilt burned through her veins like acid.
He patted down her
pallu.
“I can handle fabric with my eyes closed,” he said easily, as if he hadn’t noticed her stiffen. “You should see me make towel animals. This old Chinese guy at the factory in Guatemala, he was an origami master, he used to teach us at break time over drags of some good
ganj.
” He said the words easily, smiling as if it was of no consequence.
The guilt in her veins ruptured and flooded through her, destroying everything in its way.
He had been in a sweatshop, folding clothes. Because of her.
And he wanted babies. Lots of babies. That she couldn’t have.
Her stomach lurched. She felt dizzy and disoriented, as though she’d been thrown off a merry-go-round and she couldn’t stop spinning. These past two days with Vikram had been a dream. She had shut out every murmur of the fear and self-loathing that had congealed and calcified inside her all these years. Now it spun violently back to life inside her, growing so fast and so thick it choked her. In the space of one second, the dark niggling feelings she’d been ignoring swallowed her whole.
Vikram circled her waist, pulled her close, and rested his cheek against her head. “Ria, I didn’t say that to make you feel bad. I didn’t say any of that to make you do anything you don’t want to,” he whispered into her hair.
“I know.” Her chest rose and fell, but no air collected in her lungs.
“It wasn’t your fault, sweetheart. It was me. All me.”
It isn’t your fault, beta, none of this is your fault.
Baba had repeated those words over and over before he sent her away to boarding school straight from the hospital. He had never let her return to the house again. Even then Ria had known that you couldn’t feel this guilty about something if it wasn’t your fault.
“Ria, everything turned out right. I don’t regret any of it.”
“I know you don’t.” But it was her fault. She did that to him. Sent him to hell, took everything from him. And she was going to do it again. No matter what she did now, it was going to happen again.
She rubbed the barely visible scar on her shoulder—shaped like the ring of the creature’s teeth. The insanity lurking inside her took a step closer and wrapped its icy hands around her throat. Oh God, how was he going to survive it? How was she going to survive it? How could she have let this happen again? Suddenly, she didn’t have the strength to be standing here with his arms around her, holding her as if she were something precious.
The smell of sex and the smell of his skin melded into a searing mass inside her head. She took a deep breath, trying to brand it all into memory. All the places he had touched were still warm, still sore from pleasure. She sucked on the sensations like a leech, shamelessly hoarded them, clutching the sand tight in her fist, even as it slipped from between her fingers.
She pulled his hands from around her. Pain paralyzed her heart, tears burned behind her eyelids, but she would not break down. Her crying days were over. It was over. All of it.
He stiffened behind her. She knew she would see panic in his eyes if she dared to look into them. “We have to go,” she said, swallowing to keep it even. “By now the cops are probably looking for us.” Even to her own ears her voice sounded contrived and cold. She pushed the door open and stepped into the corridor. Before he could pull her back in, she started walking toward the elevators.
He was by her side in an instant. “Ria, what’s wrong?” She heard him fight to keep the panic out of his voice. “Did I do something?” He was trying to make eye contact, but she wouldn’t let him. “Listen, I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard back there. I’m sorry. Please don’t panic.”
They turned into the elevator lobby and Ria walked up to the mirror on the wall. She stared at herself, pretending to be absorbed in setting herself straight. She patted down her hair, rubbed at her smudged kohl, wiped at her swollen lips. She refused to look into her own eyes. She couldn’t bear to see the remnants of what they had shared. Not with him standing so close and watching her every move.
“God, I’m a mess,” she said, not giving a damn what she looked like.
“You’re beautiful,” he said, taking a step toward her. But she took a quick step away.
“The elevator. I think the elevator is here.” She tried not to think about their last trip in the elevator. She prayed there would be other people in there.
For once her prayers were answered. An old couple all spiffily dressed for dinner smiled widely at them when the elevator doors opened. The smell of her flowery perfume and his expensive aftershave filled the space. It flooded through Ria and washed away the other smell from her brain. The old lady was leaning on a walker, one of those four-legged devices. It took up most of the elevator. Ria quickly moved to the far corner, squeezing past the walker, pretending to get out of the way.
Vikram followed her and stood all the way across from her, too polite to ask the lady to move and let him pass. Ria refused to look at him. She would never look him in the eye again.
The lady said something nice about Ria’s sari and Ria thanked her profusely, clutching at straws to keep from drowning. The lady chattered away about her visit to Chicago. They were out to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. They were from Ann Arbor. They had been here for four days. The children had paid for everything.
When they stepped out of the elevator, she gave Ria a hug. “Good luck to you both, darling, you make such a lovely couple,” she said.
“You too.” A raw sob constricted Ria’s throat and she swallowed it and waved good-bye as they walked away side by side, the old man’s gnarled hand resting on the small of his wife’s back.
“Okay, Ria, what’s going on?” Vikram reached out and held her arm, stopping her before she could make her escape.
“Where on earth have you been?” A loud authoritative voice said from behind them. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”
Both Vikram and Ria turned around at the sound of the voice.
“Ma? When did you get here?” Vikram let go of Ria and hugged his mother.
Chitra Jathar reached around her son and squeezed him, her flawless angel’s face glowing as she beamed up at him. She hadn’t changed one bit. Not a line, not a gray hair. She was exactly as she had been ten years ago.
They had identical eyes, Vikram and his mother. At least the color and shape were an exact match. But on Chitra they were sharp and calculating instead of warm and vulnerable. Her skin was also the exact same color as his. Only, hers was pale and anemic from staying militantly out of the sun to preserve the lightness, where Vikram’s was toasted bronze from never being indoors for too long. But unlike her son, Chitra was a small person. All of five feet tall and possibly ninety pounds. When Vikram hugged her she disappeared into his hug like a cloth doll.
A look of such possessive affection suffused her face when she kissed his cheek that for a moment Ria saw her as a loving mother and not the heartless monster she was.
“Where is Ravi?” Vikram asked, looking around.
Chitra gave him a reprimanding look and slapped him fondly on his arm. “Your
father,
” she said, “is with Nikhil and that girl he’s marrying. The garland exchange is about to start. Where were you?”
Suddenly she seemed to remember that Ria was standing next to them. She turned to her with the warmest smile Ria had ever received from her. Ria shifted uncomfortably and cursed herself for not making her escape when she’d had the chance. Vikram seemed to sense her thoughts and moved so that she was trapped between them and the elevators.
“So, this is Mira then?” Chitra said. “Hello,
beta.
It’s lovely to meet you.” Her smile was so openly fond and welcoming that Ria was tempted to pretend to be Mira, just for one moment. The pretending was starting to feel good again.
“No, Ma, it’s Ria. You remember Ria?” Her name was a caress on Vikram’s lips.
Chitra’s eyes iced over, one liquid crystal at a time.
Ria had seen Vikram’s eyes do that exact same thing so many times when she had first arrived that it was like going back in time. Only it didn’t feel like twelve days, it felt like twelve lifetimes. Twelve of the happiest, most heartbreaking lifetimes anyone could ever live.
“Hi, Chitra Atya.” Ria struggled to keep her voice even, her eyes dry. She could not get herself to lean over and touch the woman’s feet like she should have. Chitra’s eyes hardened even more.