The First Time (Love in No Time #1) (8 page)

So I jump up and say, “I need a drink.” I refuse to look at him as I fix myself a Rum and Coke with three cubes of ice. I refuse to look at him as I return to the living room, drink in hand. Instead of sitting next to him on the sofa, I chose the floor cushions beside the sofa. Coward, yes, that was me. I began to guzzle my drink and then remembered that he just got back from Jaipur, my favorite and the most “pink” city in the world.

So I ask as a way of making conversation, “How was Jaipur?”

“Good,” he responds. I expect him to elaborate but he doesn’t.

I cock one eye brow, prompting him to say more. He does, “Lady do you really expect me to come all the way here to you apartment to talk about a usual, boring meeting that I rather forget about?”

“I am only making some conversation since you won’t. You are just sitting there and making googly eyes at me.” I retort like I am complaining. He laughs, a full-bellied laugh that echoes through the room.

“Googly eyes? You are using cricket terminology to describe my facial expressions for you? Wow, that is a first, I must say.” He is smiling with his voice and I throw him my dirtiest look. His smile broadens and now he is back to watching me like I was his favorite bowl of peanuts. I return to guzzling my drink.

I watch from the corner of my eye as he gets up from his perch, places his drink on the side table, and approaches me. In three steps he is towering over me. I look up with my mouth still on the glass rim. I watch him take my empty hand and pull me up to him from my residence. Now I am inches from his face and the heat from his body is flowing into mine.

I think he is about to kiss me and I can feel my lips tremble at the thought. But he smiles into my face and then turns me around. He walks me to the end of the living room. He keeps his hold on me as he uses his other hand to unclip his bag and rummages inside for something. I am not understanding. Instead of taking the opportunity to kiss me, he is instead rummaging into his workbag?!

Shit! Is he going to bring out a bag of condoms?

Did I make him completely misread the situation with me?

I was thinking harmless flirtation for the afternoon; a kiss here and there.

But sex? I hadn’t thought about how he might have thought about my invitation. I close my eyes thinking just how dire the situation could become.

And then I felt a whisper in my eye--“Open your eyes, lady.” I open my eyes and see pink tissue.

“I got you something from Jaipur. I know you love trinkets—all this junk jewelry you wear. So here.”

He is almost shy about giving me a present. Oh, my god! He got me a present! This meant he thought about me while in Jaipur. This means he made the effort to go out and find me something he thought I would like. This means he is thoughtful. Wow! This is an even better moment than I thought.

I open the folds of the tissue and nestled in there are two silver bracelets with the most exquisite filigree work in fluorescent green and blue. Dancing figures are shaped all around the circumference. It is just beautiful. He went there. He went for my weak spot. Bastard! I slip on the bracelets and my wrists immediately look delicately dressed. I move them forward and backward on my arm just to hear them clink. The sound is like honey. I am preening as I look up at him like a child with her favorite toy in hand.

But I find him not smiling. His face is still. His eyes have turned a darker shade of black. His mouth is slightly open as if he is exhaling all the extra breaths he has taken in the last few seconds. My smile freezes. I know that look from somewhere. I have read about it. But seeing it was nothing close to reading about it. My heart is no longer beating. It has plummeted to my stomach, leaving a gaping hole in my chest. Suddenly his lips are on mine and I have traversed into a parallel universe of some kind. He shifts his mouth ever so slightly to fit it better to the shape of mine. He begins sucking on my lower lip and then moves to give the same sucking attention to the upper one. He stays stuck to my upper lip so after a point my lip is completely suctioned into his mouth. I am inside his mouth! And then he delivers that bite! I am all sensation from head to toe. I feel like I am ready to sway into his body and fuse like our mouths. But for some strange reason we stay apart. Our bodies refuse to fuse as if doing that would somehow magnify what our mouths were doing and right now that magnification, or the potential of it, was being delayed. The exquisiteness of the delay was in its requisition later, much later. This means what was happening was unexpected in a delicious way. I need to breathe. So I pull back, abruptly ending our fusion. He had literally sucked all the oxygen out of my body. I was in danger of emotional strangulation. I leaned back as far as the dining chair to prevent further contact with him. My eyes I know were all round in my face while my lips felt like I had them plumped with Botox.

I think my face conveys evidence of some kind of a sensual assault and he probably sees it. He leans into me but I drop my head to look at my feet. He tries to get me to look at him and I refuse. So he sighs and pulls the chair next to me, gently lowering me into it. I quickly turn my head away from him. I close my eyes to find my inner tranquility. I am not destined to find any. His hand has traveled to my face to tuck in a strand of my hair behind my ear as if to see better of one cheek. I think he thinks I am weepy and he is looking for tell tale signs. I am not ready to look at him yet so I jerk my face away one more time. His hand drops in confirmation of my unsaid request. I hear the chair next to mine pulled back and then he is seating himself down beside me now.

He is very close. As if to testify to his nearness he lands a palm on to my thigh spreading his fingers over the maximum expanse. I steal a glance at his shapely fingers with nicely trimmed pinkish nails at the ends. Nice! I don’t mind such nice hands on my thigh but that is exactly where I’d like them to stay for now. I need a second, possibly a couple more to breathe normally. I know he has not stopped looking at me all this while, measuring, assessing, tolerating all the visible signs of virgin panic. I can feel the heat emanating from him like a heater has been turned on somewhere in the house. I breathe deeply and turn to him. No words come out because they can’t. His mouth is on me again. In fact, his teeth have gripped my lower lip in a dangerous bite. I feel him bare his teeth as if to bite harder but instantly lets go, instead sucking on the same lip as if to soothe the bite. He is making loud noises as he sucks. My lower body is a pool of liquid.

Shit! Did I just come from a kiss? What is
that
? My eyes seem to ask him as he continues his sucking without a care in the world for anything else.

I am lost.

I have lost my existence.

And then he stops. He is up. I am confused.

No! Why are you stopping now? I scream in my head.

Take my existence.

Take it all.

I am ready to give it to you.

He smiles at me as if he can actually read everything in my head, in my face. It seems like he is leaving. But he brings us our drinks. I need it, thank you very much.

I drain it too fast, ending up coughing it all over the pink floral of the table cover. His hand is on my back rubbing me up and down to take away the whoop. I am mortified.

I escape to the bathroom to hide for a while so I can make sense of everything that is going on in my space—physical and between my ears. I am not long.

And when I come back to him he is not sitting at the table anymore. I hear music from the TV room. I glance in and see Peter Gabriel singing sledgehammer on MTV and him on the bed legs crossed at the ankles watching, sipping his vodka delicately as if he has all the time in the world. His back is to me so he doesn’t know I am watching him but then he suddenly turns his head and pins me with his gaze.

“Hi, you ok?” I nod.

“Sorry, I made myself comfortable. I needed to get off my feet. I have been on an eighteen hour shift since yesterday.” That’s his explanation for remaining seated on my double bed at 6:30 in the evening. There is nothing wrong with the explanation. It is a good one but in the context of what happened in the dining room, it serves an entirely different purpose for him and for me. I sidestep him and make my way to the bamboo chairs at the far end of the room. I sit and fix my eyes on the TV and all the psychedelic colors of MTV. And he knows that I am avoiding him because I hear him snicker. Bastard! He is lounging on my bed, watching my TV, drinking my vodka and he is snickering at me for what? And I suddenly feel him, his heat right next to me. God! He is stealthy. He can make a good stalker, I think to myself. It is kind of amusing yet deeply uncomfortable thought.

I refuse to look at him as I feel him crouching besides me. He reaches to turn my face to him and then turns my body in between his thighs. My face is now nestled between his palms. I still refuse to look at him. I keep my eyes tightly shut because all this freaking expertise in seduction, I feel unmatched against. I am helpless but crazily enough not freaked out by it. I want him to seduce me and maybe that is what I have been oh-not-so-innocently hinting at with my invites and demeanor. I can’t chicken out now that he has picked up the gauntlet that I have time and again thrown at his feet.

He tilts my head back with his index finger, forcing me to open my eyes and finally look into his face. He is smiling that knowing smile while his vodka breath is leaving these tiny beads of moisture on my face. I fully expect him to assault my lower lip again but the assault never comes. Then his hands are in my hair. He is tilting my head sideways, his lips find the vein throbbing in my neck that he proceeds to kiss quite wetly. Then he breathes over the wetness. His warm breath cools the wetness and I shiver. He grazes his teeth along the corner of my ear lobe down to my clavicle. I shudder. Now his perfectly manicured beard is making short round circles across the same sensitized space. I am horribly wet now. I feel like I have peed all over myself.

“Lady, open your eyes.” He breathes close to my lips.

“Open your eyes, please.” He repeats with some degree of vocal force. I don’t. I can’t seem to open my eyes.

“Now, Lady.” There is no brooking argument with what sounds more like a threat, less like a command. I open my eyes and his lips immediately cover mine in a hard kiss quickly, forcefully. And once its done, we sit there looking at each other as if this is our first time, our only time.

And suddenly he stands up and says the most bizarre thing in that moment, “Sorry, baby, I have to go. You have had enough fun for the evening.” He smirks!

“You are going?” I croak. What was all this seduction game then? The seduction is not complete—or did he not write the same memo to himself? I am just getting started in all sorts of ways and he is going!!

“Why, Ms. Sharma, are you asking me to stay albeit in an oblique way?”

That is the question, isn’t it? Do I want him to stay? Yes! But only scream this in my head. But my scared irrational-rational part is not so sure, which in other words means I want him to decide for us. So “I don’t know” is all I can manage to spout in my confused state.

“Well, if you don’t know then I mustn’t either and leave you to figure it all out for us. And I sincerely hope that you will figure it all out for our sake. And be warned too, Ms. Sharma, when and if you decide in our favor and consequently call me back to your lovely home, I hope you will be prepared for what is to happen. I will not promise gentlemanly behavior then. Every seduction has a goal and a conclusion. I hope we can find ours.” And delivers all this with a degree of intensity that infuses a deep truth into his threat-promise.

He pats my cheek in this avuncular way that belies his previous delivery of and about hot stuff. He hauls himself to his feet using my thighs as a squeezable leverage. How freaking convenient and hot at the same time! And now he just stands there, looking down at me. After a few hundred beats (of my heart against my ribs), he holds out his hand. I take it and he pulls me up holding my body close to his—finally we make contact of the substantial kind. I can feel a bulge at my abdomen. And as I stand enclosed in his body, the bulge seems to grow. I step back involuntarily. He chuckles! He actually chuckles at my reaction knowing exactly what he is doing to me. He continues to hold my hand as he leads me through to the living room. He buckles up his bag all the while holding me with the other.

He pulls me with him to the front door as if he is intending to take me with him to wherever he is going. At the door, he turns around, kisses my mouth hard, then kisses the hand he is still holding in his, turns around, unlocks the door and without another glance lets himself out. I lock the door behind him and then rush to the living room to see him kick-start his scooter. He wears his helmet and all the while I watch him watching the glass doors as if fully expecting me to be watching him leave. I think I can see a small smirk play on his lips. And then in a filigree of black exhaust smoke he is gone. I am suddenly aware of other things—bird chatter in the Neem tree across the street, the heaviness of the heat in the darkness that is descending into the evening, a car horn here and there, some undecipherable chatter of nearby neighbors, a dog barking in the distance. This tells me how oblivious to everything I become in his presence and that is a scary thing, forget the good or the bad. As I walk back to the bedroom where the TV is still on, I feel my whole body uncoil. I breathe in and out to let go of the muscle tension. I hear Madhuri Dixit sing about her wildly beating heart, almost bursting through her barely together stringed blouse. I feel the same. Even if it is not my heart that is trying to bust through, some new emotion certainly is.