Chapter 22
The soft click of the door closing behind me sounded like a gong in my head as I walked away feeling conflicted and discombobulated. The thought of crossing the dreaded threshold back into his arms terrified me, but that’s exactly where I wanted to be. I rushed back and rapped on the door. It flew open as if he had been waiting on the other side.
“I still want you, Sameer Rehani,” I cried and threw my arms around his neck.
“And I want you, all of you,” he said.
“But if we do this, there’s no going back. If you disappear again, it will destroy me. Do you understand?”
He nodded. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“I’m scared, but I’m trusting you, Sameer.”
“I know I haven’t given you many reasons for it, but I’m right here.”
I flung my bag on the floor and held his face in my hands. “Don’t say that.” I touched my forehead to his. “But you can’t change your mind again.”
“I’ve never changed my mind, Tara. It’s always been you.”
My heart gave out a flutter, and my knees quivered at those words. My entire body trembled. I pounced on his mouth so wildly, I almost knocked him off his feet.
He staggered but held on to my shoulders and steadied himself. “Easy, easy, baby.”
I knew I didn’t want to wait any longer. “Kiss me,” I rasped with need.
I watched his smile fade away as he stepped back. His strong gaze considered me for a moment, then he said, “Nah, I changed my mind.”
I felt myself turning to stone. My heart stopped for a second, then plummeted. One tear had already slipped out of my eye when his mouth turned up into a crooked smile. He leaned in and said, “Damn, Tara, that was way too easy!”
I swiftly wiped away the tear and pushed him to the couch. My dress rode up my thighs as I climbed on his lap and clutched his t-shirt in both my fists. “If you ever do that again, I’ll bite your dick off,” I growled against his lips.
Of course, he didn’t flinch at the threat. “That’s tough talk from a tear-shedder,” he said. But the tenderness in his eyes belied the smirk on his lips.
I sat back and waited. “Well?”
“Well?”
“I’m not going to kiss you. It’s your turn.”
As I shimmied my shoulders and leaned in, his eyes drifted to the generous cleavage peeking out of my neckline. He leaned in and brought his mouth upon mine.
The kiss, slow, deliberate, and intentional, was nothing I had expected. I was prepared for fireworks and pyrotechnics, I got cotton and clouds. His plush lips were soft, his body firm against my melting flesh. “I’ve missed you so much,” he said every time we broke for breath. His mouth moved gently across my jaw and neck, placing soft kisses where I had expected scratches and teeth marks.
“Oh, Sameer,” I cried breathlessly, and felt him harden against my thigh.
He wrapped his hands around my waist and showered tender kisses all over my face. Pausing at my left cheek, he regarded the scar cutting across my eyebrow. He traced it with the lightest touch of his finger, then kissed it as if he was afraid it still hurt. My heart squeezed. I could handle the fire and brimstone, but this tenderness was uncharted waters.
“Sameer, are you being gentle because of what I told you?”
He smiled and nuzzled his head in my neck. I kissed his cheek and whispered in his ear, “Because I still don’t do tender.”
He looked up with heartfelt laughter below teary eyes. I wiped them with my palms and dropped two gentle kisses on his eyelids. He straightened himself against the couch and sniffed.
“In that case…” As his breath shifted, the air became charged. The warmth from a moment ago turned to raging heat when he kissed me again. This kiss was different, and I knew how to respond. I brought my arms around his neck and kissed him back, lips, tongue, and teeth. The next instant, he lifted me and pressed me against the wall.
He clutched my earlobe between his teeth. Gone were the soft lips. His stubble scorched my skin. His hands found the zipper on my dress.
“Wait!” I cried, and he stopped. “Just one question before we do this.”
He nodded.
“Do you still have that Selfia in your office?”
He threw his head back in a silvery laugh. “No, I unloaded it on some other chump and made a tidy profit doing it.”
“Alright, I’m all yours.”
He swung me around, pushing my stomach against the wall, and slid down my zipper in a flash. Torturously sweet kisses landed on my neck and back as goosebumps rippled across my skin. Turning me around to face him, he flicked the dress off my shoulders. It slipped down without protest to pool around my feet, leaving me wearing nothing but a thin, white-lace bra and matching panties.
“Damn!”
“This is a coincidence, I promise! It’s the only white pair I brought here,” I said earnestly as he yanked off the clip holding my hair up. It tumbled down my back.
“A perfect coincidence,” his needy voice rasped in my ear as he took his hands to my bottom, setting it on fire. He grabbed the soft flesh popping out of the cheeky panties, before planting two surprisingly well-placed spanks, sending shivers up my body.
“I’m so going to enjoy digging my teeth into them,” he said. I wrapped my hand around him and grazed along his sculpted back, then traveled from his butt to the front of his jeans. He jumped slightly as I pushed my greedy fingers into the waistband.
“Mmm, is that what you want?”
I moaned. “So bad.”
“Yeah?” He pulled my hands out. “But you’ll have to wait. There’s something else we need to do first.”
I moaned as his kisses turned into bites, his grip loosened, and I pushed my hands into his luxurious hair. But he was on to me. “What’s cooking in that brain of yours, babe?”
I returned my hands to his jeans while attempting a quick descent to my knees. But he was faster. In a flash, he pulled me up and pinned me to the wall with my hands above my head. When he nudged his leg between my thighs, I bent into a squat to rub my core against him. With a loud moan, I pushed my breasts into his chest, my palm rubbing the front of his thick denim. “I can’t wait any longer.”
He kissed the swell of my breasts and whispered against my skin, “Tara…babe…today’s game is pleasure. And to achieve it, you need to give up some control and a little bit of power. Today is not about outdoing me. We’re both winning, my love.” He placed a firm kiss on my lips. “So, are you going to behave?”
I bit my lower lip and nodded.
“No mischief.” He held up an index finger. I bobbed my head again.
He kneeled and began kissing my stomach. A touch, a graze, a tease. My ticklish body wiggled. Holding my hips in place, he looked up at me. “Relax.”
My hands gripped his shoulders. I breathed deeply and let him travel further down, kissing my hips, thighs, and the lace of my panties. Electric shivers fizzed across my skin.
Hooking two fingers in the band of my panties, he slid them down. “This is new,” he said and kissed my soft, waxed skin. My face felt hot as he came up to kiss me while his fingers continued to caress the tender skin. “I love it,” he said, and I savored the sound of his breathy, greedy words in my ear.
He propped up my right leg on the wooden console and knelt again. His soft lips took over from where his determined fingers had left off, kissing me right to my core. Pleasure, he had said, was the game. Does pleasure have a superlative, I wondered. And would I be able to make it to that peak without unraveling? In response, he pushed my legs open and ran a firm, warm tongue along my wetness. I came so undone, my head banged on the wall behind me.
His head snapped up at the sound. “Are you alright?”
“Yes, don’t stop,” I cried.
I flashed back to his apartment in Baroda, his clean-shaven face wedged between my thighs. “Keep them open,” he had insisted. I tried, and my body began levitating off the bed, suspended to his playful strokes. I remembered clutching the bedsheet in my fists, begging it to ground me, but he drove me higher and higher, like the kite I used to fly every Uttarayan day. I soared in open skies, uninhibited, strung only to his mouth, which kept tugging me along closer to the light. Then, when I thought I could fly no more, that golden light exploded into a thousand shards of white, brilliant sparks flying everywhere. I had struggled to breathe. But he was right there to catch me, reviving me with slow, loving kisses, and I was reborn in his arms.
I wanted what my nineteen-year-old self had found that night. I dragged my fingers through his hair and held on to him. This time I knew what I wanted, and I let my hands guide him. I felt the hot burn of his stubble on my inner thighs and on my swollen lips as he chased me nearer to the edge. He pushed me open wider and took charge. The tender licks and light flicks had given way to an intense, rhythmic sucking.
My breasts felt heavy and flushed with heat. A storm was already gathering below my stomach, rising steadily, threatening to wash me away. When he pushed a finger in, I cried out his name, softly at first, then as I approached devastation, my insides exploded in a deafening scream. I trembled in his mouth, and my foot slipped off the console. He caught it in his hand and kept going, but my shaky knees became too weak to support me. He held me in his arms and gently placed me on the rug. My insides spasmed, and the tremors refused to quell.
“Please don’t stop,” I begged with clenched eyes.
He covered my mouth with his and pushed two fingers in. His thumb rubbed my clit in tight, perfect circles as he carried me through another violent squall to the other side. My hips thrust up as I clamped down on his fingers, and he fought against me to keep going. It felt interminable. Exhilarating, exhausting, before the calm finally washed over me. I panted in his mouth. He smiled into mine.
This was the only way I wanted to feel powerless to him.