The evening was to be a time of no events. Individuals were attending in groups in the hotel foyer or walking around the city. I was lonely, I felt a need for Danish's smoothness. I was about to go up to my room when I heard my name. "Zeenat! Wait up." It was Kabir. He was alone, his hands in his pockets, his brooding, his gloominess, smirched with something more like shyness than gloom. He said, "I was wondering," but didn't quite look me in the eye. "I was going to go to a cafe nearby for chai; not the chai in the hotel, but the real chai, the spicy chai, the roadside chai. Would you... would you like to join me?"
It was an invitation that was accepted. From a young man. To a roadside cafe.
Last month, a mere thought of such an idea would have made me flee. Now, I heard Danish's voice in my head, "Just be Zeenat. Feel what that's like." "Yes," I said, surprising myself. "I would like that very much."
The café was small and hot with a smell of boiling milk and cardamom. At a low, shaky table we sat. Kabir, on the other hand, was different in his life outside the classroom. He was clumsy, impassioned and very funny. He spoke of his ambition to be a poet.
He was studying me, really studying me, his eyes darting around my face like there was something fascinating. He sipped his chai and said, "You've got an old soul. But, your eyes... they're just beginning to see the world. His sense of sight was astounding. "What do you mean?" I asked. He replied, "I mean... you're not like the other teachers. You're not like Aisha. You're not like anyone. There's a story in you. A story you haven't told yet."
There was a chill in me, beyond the chill of the evening air. He saw it. He saw the secret. Not the details but the outline. The weight of it. Suddenly, I spoke with a defence and a confession, "I have a husband." He said, "I know. That's not something I'm asking for, I'm just saying, I want to read it someday." Then we strolled back to the hotel in the soothing quiet. The city lights were all fuzzy around us. He tried to grab my hand. He made no inappropriate comments. He only walked by my side, my companion that night. We had arrived at the lobby, and he looked at me. He was honest, "Thank you, Zeenat. For the chai, and the talk." I said to Kabir, "Thank you, Kabir."
I moved to my room, with a heart full of emotions. What was thrilling was being seen, really seen, by a mind that was attuned to my own. It was an intellectual closeness, a soulful bond that was thrilling and invigorating, and at the same time, deeply disturbing. I was sitting on the edge of my bed and had retrieved my phone. I had 1 message to read from Danish, "I hope you are learning something, Miss you." I looked at the words but could not see them clearly, there were tears in my eyes. I missed him in a physical way, I felt a sore in my body. My body, my heart my soul yearned for him. While I sat there, in my sterile hotel room, in the presence and echo of Kabir's perception, I knew with a terrible certainty that I had learned something. I had found out that the world was more than I had ever thought of, and that I could see it as an all on my own. I didn't know whether that would help me get closer to Danish or if it would be the first step in a journey that would make me drift further away.
Post the weekend event, when I return back home, Danish was already there. He leaned with his shoulder against the door of the kitchen, his hand resting on the knob, holding a tumbler of juice in his left hand. Her husband's brother - The man who watered her plants, who picked up her mail, and who kept the ghost of domesticity alive, while her husband building empires abroad.
"You have returned," he said. Not a greeting. A verdict. Zeenat dropped her suitcase. The sound was too loud, obscene in the quiet, She wore the travel-- rumpled linen, hair escaping her clasp. "I'm back," she gasped. Danish placed the glass on the table.
He made a three stride ride across the space. Zeenat didn't retreat. She ran into him, before attached his mouth with hers for heated smooch, while her back hit the fridge.
The cold metal pressed against her back was startling, delicious, a bite too hard against the heat of his body which was flush against her. He growled into her neck, "Fuck, you are mine. I couldn't...".
This weekend, I kept dreaming of you in the rooms of the hotel, with all the guys that wanted--" "Shut up." She gripped his hair and yanked his head back till her eyes met his. "No one. There was no one." He pushed his hand inside her clothes, quickly finding her breasts; thumbs sliding across her nipples which peaked immediately, and with great excitement. She arched shamelessly, grinding against the hard ridge of him straining through denim. She managed to say, "Bedroom," while he unbuttoned her, spreading her out there in the kitchen where the afternoon sun poured down and accused her. "Can't." He bit her collarbone, sucked the skin there till she knew it would bruise; it would mark, it would testify.
"Now is the time, can't wait; need to feel you now." He lifted her. Effortless. Her legs fit around his waist like that, like they were meant to fit; her shalwar flapping around her hips as she walked away with him, not to his bedroom, but to the dining table, which he swept clean with a single blow of his arm. Glass shattered somewhere.
Neither looked.
Like a feast, like an offering Danish laid her down, paused. Just for a moment. His eyes slitted her, his eyes crept down her, his eyes looked over her--wet now, already, slashed, panting, all the musk of betrayal and need on her. His fingers hooking in her underwear and ripping the lace with a sound of surrender.
Now, she sobbed, heels digging into his lower back, pulling him into the cradle of her thighs, "Fuck me now, Danish. I don't give a shit. I don't care about anything but this."
Quicky getting rid of denim, he met her one blow of his hard dick into her wet pussy. No prelude. No gentleness. They've lost their patience months ago in their stolen moments and in their almost touches. This was the result. As he stroked, Zeenat shrieked with her head thrown back exposing her throat and making it vulnerable.
Zeenat scratching her fingernails caused bloody furrow in his back through his shirt.
He grabbed her jaw, pushed her eyes open, "Look at me." And she did. God, she did. As her husband's face turned more and more into mist with every piston of his hips and each of his grinding pelvises against her swollen clit, she began to feel a sense of longing. She was unravelling, falling apart around him, her body grasping his cock in rhythmical convulsions.
Well again, he growled, not slowing, not sparing her. She came this time, back bowing off the table, heels pounding on his ass, waves of delight washing away thought, morality, memory. Only sensation remained. Only him. With a kiss that was so hot, so endless, so wrong, Danish crushed her mouth. Afterward, they didn't speak. He took her to the shower, to wash off their committed sin although, and kissed her, sealing an agreement.
A week later, the staff room was adorned with an announcement. A senior secondary level physics teacher was required for the most prestigious co-educational academy in the city -- The DP School. It was a high-profile appointment, with its modern and liberal approach and its hard curriculum. It was all that my current school wasn't. I used to see it and turn a blind eye to it. Physics was a subject I excelled at university and had put on the back-burner in favour of the more "acceptable" subject of literature. It would have been debilitating to think about teaching teenage boys, sitting in a mixed classroom every day. But I was not that woman any more.
I took the notice off the board. I took it out to Danish that night. TV was on but off, and we were in the living room. He read it, then his eyes slightly opened. His voice was surprised, "Physics?" I hadn't realised that you still had an interest. I reluctantly agreed. His face lit up as a slow, proud smile crossed his face as he looked back at the paper. "Zeenat, that's a big thing. They have a debate team that wins at the national level, their science labs are better than the university's."
"Are you scared?" I asked. He placed his hand on my own in a serious manner. He was firm, his voice, "I'm afraid for you, it's a whole new world, boys will be... boys, they'll test you, some of the other teachers might talk, it won't be like this."
"I know," I said, my heart pounding a mix of fear and excitement. "That's why I need to do it," I said.
He leaned in toward me, and kissed me, a deep slow kiss of faith. If we need to get you ready then let's do that, he whispered.
For the next couple of weeks, it was a hectic period of preparation. I got myself a coach in the form of Danish. After dinner in the evening, we would all be sitting at the dining table and he would grill me. He got me to explain complicated quantum mechanics in layman's terms. He conducted mock job interviews and had some challenging questions for me on my teaching philosophy and classroom management.
One night he said, teasingly, "imagine a boy, let's call him Rohan 2.0. He's cute, he's clever, and he's just trying a personal question to you, right in the middle of a class on thermodynamics. What would you do?"
I laughed, and the memory of the real Rohan a sweet, distant ache. I would reply, "Rohan, you have a great question, let's look at the second law of thermodynamics -- disorder in an isolated system always increases, let's now put some order back into this classroom and discuss your question after class." He couldn't help but laugh out loud, with admiration in his eyes. That's great, you're just like that.
He wasn't only assisting me with a job; he was assisting me to construct the brand-new version of me brick by brick. He was teaching me that he not only loved the woman he'd saved, but he loved the woman she was becoming.
For the interview at DP School, I wore a white shirt and well-tailored grey pants. When I gazed at my own reflection in the mirror, I found a stranger's eyes staring back at me, his eyes and gaze were steady and confident, a professional woman. I saw a Physics teacher.
The panel of interviewers consisted of three members: the stern looking principal, a friendly head of the science department and a young man who was introduced as Mr Singh, the senior student representative and the captain of the debate team. They inquired me for my curriculum, my experience, how to do practical experiments. I was cool and ready.
After that, the principal came close to his desk. Ms. Parveen, it's a very different place than your old school -- our seniors especially are smart, opinionated, and not afraid to stand up to others. What would you do in a co-ed classroom, at a time when hormones and distractions are at their peak? I was hoping for that question. I remembered the mock interview by Danish, the perception of Kabir, the respect of Vikram. "I would do that by treating them as young adults," I said, my voice firm and clear. I would not say there were will be no distractions, but I would say that I would acknowledge them, I would channel them; I would teach physics by teaching them physics of the world they lived in. I would leave room for debate, collaboration, and even a bit of controlled chaos--after all, that's where real learning happens."
When I finished, there was a silence. The student representative, Mr. Singh, was leaning forward with a glint in his eyes that I could see in a flash -- intellectual curiosity. The principal's frown had been replaced with a grudging smile. A week later, I was called.
The job was mine.
That night celebration was not expressed by words but by action of love inside the room of Danish. He stripped me like a sacred treasure, his fingers tracing every inch of skin that he uncovered. The shirt rustled and slipped from my shoulders and pant dropped smoothly at my feet.
"Beautiful," he said. Then he was touching me, not like before, but like this, like worshipful. He ran his hands down my arms, causing my skin to tingle, until they reached my waist. He clasped me between his chest and his own skin and his heart was thumping in my chest, solid and strong. Oh, your mouth," he whispered, and kissed me slow, deep, endless. His tongue danced with mine. One hand rested on the back of my head as the other followed the curve of my spine, dropping towards my ass, down, down, until his fingers traced the crack in my ass with maddening delicacy. I complained to his mouth and he swallowed what I had to say, and he gave me some to swallow, too.
He led me to the bed, and he laid me down; like to place something precious on an altar. I was painted by the lights of room as he knelt between my thighs -- not to take but to adore. He began at the bottom of my leg near my ankle. There a kiss, gentle as a breath. Then my calf, his lazy tongue made my toes curl. Gentle bites to the inside of my knee, more intimate than anything we'd done before. Slowly, gently, poking and prodding at my thighs, inch by inch, he worked his way up. I arched, "Danish," I breathed, when his mouth finally met the crease where thigh met hip.
"Please--" I spoke to him in a whisper. "Shh," his cool breath on my hot flesh. "Let me, I've always wanted this to happen. Let me taste you, I've always wanted this to happen." His tongue finally traced through my pussy folds, and his slow, broad strokes of tongue had me clutching at the sheets, my hips rolling helplessly towards his mouth.
He didn't rush. He checked every fold, every secret, how he whirled my clit around with the tip of his tongue till I was panting, till my thighs shook with either side of his head, till I was sobbing out his name like a benediction. He inserted both fingers into me, curling them like a knife and his mouth kept at work tenderly. I came like that--softly, deeply, my body undulating in waves that seemed to last forever, my hands buried in his hair, holding him to me even as the pleasure became too much, not enough, everything.
Danish explored my body with his lips, his hands, and his tongue, and he kissed me everywhere from my navel to my breasts; sweet, soft sucks on my nipples, they lifted straight to my core, his hands pulled me to my throat, my jaw, before finally he pushed his weight between my legs, I couldn't want him more. I could feel the head of his cock pressing against the entrance of my pussy, it was still pulsing and sensitive, "Look at me," he whispered. "Calm down, Zeenat." Slowly, he brought himself into me. So slowly. Slowly, inch by torturous inch, letting me feel every vein and every ridge, every heat he gave me I could never have imagined, filling me and stretching me and possessing me and making me complete.
He stopped, leaning his forehead on mine, breathing together, our hearts thumping in tandem. He said, "I love you." Simply. Devastatingly. I know I shouldn't but I do. I held his waist and hugged his shoulders, and pulled him in even deeper. I whispered, "Show me. "Show me how much." He started moving, slow, rolling thrusts that stretched and massaged me every place that was tender within me. It was so exquisite torture, layer after layer of it, until I writhed under him, my nails digging into his back, my mouth on his shoulder, his throat, anywhere I could get some of his skin into my mouth.
However, there's a limit to how tender it can be. There is a breaking point to desire. I bit hard at the neck and shoulder of his neck and there was something in him that snapped. He growled, "Fuck" and the beat shifted.
His hips rocked more and more heavily, the softness of the movement giving way to the primal and fierce. He lifted my legs over his shoulders and angled it so that he hit that point that made me see stars, forget how to breathe. "Is that what you want?" he demanded, his voice now guttural, his thrusts brutal, punishing; the bed slamming against the wall, in a deafening rhythm. "Do you want me to do you a favor and destroy you? To fuck you so tight that you aren't going to feel him again?"
"Yes," I shouted, wrestling with him, rolling off the bed, my breasts bouncing with his force. "Yes, Danish--ruin me--break me--" He suddenly turned me around, and, with one jerk, my hips were off the ground and my face was flat against the mattress, my ass in the air. When he came at me one blow, it was a hard one, it drove the breath from my lungs, his hands pressed me hard in the flesh of my hips and he drove into me. It mirrored everything -- my mouth open, a silent scream; my hair a wild tangle; Danish muscles corded with effort, his face a mask of possession and love and lust so intense, it seemed like pain. He reached down around my clit and found it with rough fingers and started to circle it mercilessly and kept driving into me, the sound of the bodies meeting was wet and obscene, and how it fit was perfect.
With his voice cracking, he shouted, "Come for me!" He shouted with a broken voice, "Come for me! Come on my cock, Zeenat." Now. I shattered. I was rocketing through my orgasm, he was holding on to me and my body was clamping down on him in rhythmic spasms that felt like it had no end, and I was screaming his name out of a hoarse throat. Danish came in seconds behind, smashing into me just like a balloon coming to an end, with a cracking noise that was as close as it could get to the word "Dan," and as much of a prayer and a curse as I could manage. He fell on top of me, his weight crushing me against the mattress, his cock continuing to twitch in my depths, our bodies drenched in sweat and pleasure.
"Mine," he whispered again, kissing me on my shoulder. "Whatever happens tomorrow. Tonight, you're mine." I turned my head to his mouth, and kissed him deep, slow, long. So much more did we have to worship and so much more did we have to ruin.
....to be continued....