Chapter Ten
Chapter
Ten
Tejas pushed his empty plate away, rubbing his full stomach as he sat back in his seat at the hostel’s dining table. “Fuck. That was the best sandwich I’ve ever had.”
Aleksy took a bow, then gestured for Raziya to do the same. “Thank you,” she said, laughing.
Jonah’s eyes went to the empty seat beside Tejas’s. “I hope Naina liked breakfast too. I’ll be offended if she doesn’t like my boyfriend’s recipes.”
Tejas’s forehead knit. Naina had finished her sandwich in mere minutes and headed back to their room, claiming she had some work to finish. He hadn’t noticed it then, but in hindsight, she’d looked a little pale. “I’ll go check on her. See y’all soon,” Tejas said, his chair screeching as he stood.
The room was dark, the balcony curtains drawn, and there was silence except for the faint hum of the air-conditioning. Naina sat on the top bunk, fiddling with her ring finger. She barely looked his way when he cleared his throat. “Naina, are you okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” she said dimly.
He ran a hand through his hair in confusion and had just started toward Naina when his phone buzzed.
Rahul
hey, how’s Goa?
Tejas swallowed. Twiddling his thumbs, he regarded the text. Rahul didn’t seem to understand what needing space meant, and Tejas wouldn’t be the one to explain it to him. He deleted the text, then looked at Naina, who was still silent.
Stomach churning, he joined her on the top bunk, wondering what had upset her. Was it something he did? Did she regret sleeping with him? Had he hurt her, or pressured her into things she wasn’t ready for? He didn’t want to be the bad guy…but maybe he was.
Tejas leaned one arm against the wall and studied her. He opened his mouth, closed it, then let the words out with a shaky breath: “Did I step over the line at the rave when I kissed you? Did I make you feel pressured in any way to have sex when we came back to the room?”
Naina shook her head. “No, it’s not you. I wanted it as much as you did.” She flashed him a small smile. “But I’m still coming to terms with the fact that it even…happened.”
Tejas thought for a moment, then got down and held a hand out for Naina to join him. “Some fresh air will help. Trust me.”
She peered toward the small balcony, bathed in bright sunshine, then climbed down off the bunk.
Once they were on the balcony, Naina sighed and undid her bun, letting her long brown hair cascade down to her waist. Then she spoke, playing with her empty left ring finger.
“When I told my best friend we had sex, he was shocked. Even though kissing a complete stranger was on my list, neither he nor I thought I’d actually do it.
But now”—she let out a shaky breath—“two months after my engagement ended, I didn’t just kiss a random guy the very day I met him, but I also hooked up with him.
As much as I love adventure, I’ve never been a fling kind of girl. It just feels…different.”
Tejas bowed his head. He had feared right. She regretted their night together—and she regretted him. “I’m sorry, I had no idea you felt this way—”
“Well, you’re not just some random guy anymore,” she corrected herself, “and maybe different isn’t, um…a bad thing?”
He folded his arms and smiled, noting that her gaze went straight to the curve of his biceps. “I don’t think it’s a bad thing. But if you’d rather go back to just being roommates and working on the rest of your list, we can limit it to that.”
She licked her lips, her gaze now traveling along his shoulders and the slight V-cut above the waistband of his sweatpants.
Then it returned to his face, the hunger in her eyes evident.
Her chest flushed beneath her top, rising and falling with the intensity of her breaths.
Tejas felt the slightest tug in his pants, urging him to close the distance between them, but he didn’t do anything except stare back at her.
As much as he wanted this—wanted her—he couldn’t make the first move. Not after what she’d said.
Naina stepped forward, still eye-fucking him, her cold fingers running down his front until they settled along the pockets of his pants. “But I want it to be more than just that. The sex is, um, well…it’s something. Isn’t it?” She looked up at him expectantly, her mouth open just slightly.
He chuckled, wondering how she could doubt his attraction to her for even one second. He finally let himself touch her again, though it was just to brush her wavy hair away from her eyes. “It’s certainly something. And I want to do it again, if you’ll have me—”
She kissed him, shoving him against the balcony door, which clattered loudly.
Apologizing softly, she led the way back to the bunk bed.
Her lips didn’t leave his mouth until she moved to undress.
Tejas only got one perfect second to drink in the sight of her body before she pulled him back into her on the bed.
Their first time had been amazing, but in a rushed, urgent, have-to-have-you-now kind of way.
And Tejas didn’t want that again; he didn’t want a quickie before they got on with their day.
He wanted to savor every inch of her with every inch of him.
So he broke their kiss to trail a line down her lower body with his mouth, sucking on the skin beneath that eye tattoo, and she shuddered, her hips bucking when he got to the space between her legs.
“Is this okay—” he started, but she only breathed a soft “yes” before falling back on the pillow and letting him feel the way she writhed and shook beneath his lips as he tasted her.
Tejas had only hooked up with a couple of women his whole life, and honestly, the last time he went down on a woman must have been years ago.
He almost wondered for a second if he was doing it right, if he was pleasuring Naina in the way she deserved.
But her moans and gasps, coupled with the way she gripped his hair, urging him to keep going, told him enough.
Making her come with nothing but his lips and fingers was a hundred times more satisfying than last night, Tejas decided, when she purred in contentment as he kissed her again.
“My turn,” she breathed, her hands going to his waistband to undress him.
Naina wrapped her hand around him, her tongue flicking along the tip, and Tejas fell back against the pillows. Fuck, she was good at this, but the way she was teasing him…it was agonizing. “Naina, please,” he said, exhaling. “I—please—”
She paused to smirk at him. “Please what? Should I stop?”
“No,” he said, thrusting his hips closer to her. “God, no. Don’t stop. Ever.”
Naina hummed in approval and took him in, and the sight of her between his legs, her mouth all over him as her hair fell over her face, drove Tejas over the edge in minutes.
As he came, moaning out her name over and over until he crumpled into the bed and pulled her back over him, he only hoped the walls of their room were soundproof.