30
Kimi
A long time ago
A long time ago
Kimi had never expected it to be easy, convincing Rahul to help her lose her virginity. But she hadn’t expected to hit a wall of such dogged determination either. One would think she had asked him to run his fingers (or even other long, tubular body parts) through a sugarcane juicer machine.
“I’m not going to ‘do it’ with you, Kimi.” If his words weren’t brutal enough, his utterly stern look finished the job spectacularly.
“Why?” Thankfully, being unfazed in the face of extreme hopelessness was her special skill.
“Because I can’t.”
“You can’t?” Her eyes must have reflected her shock because he gave her one of those arrogant looks she shouldn’t love so much but did. “You mean you won’t.”
“I mean I’m not having this conversation with you.” He looked around her room as though it were a cage and he’d forgotten how he got here.
“Why?” She wondered if she needed to lock the door.
He narrowed his eyes at the door she was staring at. “Because it doesn’t work like that.”
“By ‘it’ you mean making love?”
He cringed.
“So, you don’t like making love?”
“God, Kimi, can you stop calling it that?”
She looked at him, utterly confused. Although, in a perverse way, this was turning out to be more fun than she had expected. Rahul was never flustered by anything.
Maybe there was something else wrong. Maybe he thought she should be entirely unaware of these things and it bothered him that she wasn’t. She actually had a really good idea of the mechanics of the thing. She had read all the books, watched all the porn. She had read the entire Kama Sutra online. It was weirdly acrobatic, even bordering on unsavory, unless you were double-jointed. Thank the heavens above that romance novels didn’t bring horses and elephants into the thing!
He started pacing, as he was prone to do when faced with a challenge. She felt oddly comfortable talking to him about this, which pretty much summed up why she was doing it in the first place. She shot a quick glance at his, y’know, nether regions. Okay, so in this at least the novels were wrong. There wasn’t much movement. But she couldn’t be sure because it was a quick glance. It wasn’t like she could stare. Plus his shirt was covering things a bit. Evidently, not all men “became instantly hard as stone” when the woman of their dreams mentioned making love, which apparently wasn’t his favorite term. Good to know. She’d better find another term ASAP.
“Then tell me how it works?” she asked because he was sliding fast into his broody, silent space from his problem-solving, pacing space, which truth be told she should have been better prepared for. Well, no matter, she was prepared now. She could call it “fucking.” But yuck. Maybe “having sex.” Yes, that should fix the cringing.
“I don’t know,” he mumbled. Mumbling was a step away from silence. A step in the right direction. Good.
“You don’t know how it works?”
Again that arrogant expression, laced with that look he got when he knew exactly what she was up to, and when he didn’t know how to say no to her, didn’t know how not to give her what she wanted. It was the hottest bloody thing in the world.
She felt a warming in her own nether regions—very much like in the novels. And just like that she knew she would get her way.
But first he would try all he could to steer her away from her goal. The one she knew she was going to reach.
She played her ace. “I don’t want to die a virgin, Rahul.”
He groaned. Who would have thought making him blush would be so much fun? It was terrible of her, but she loved it. Like anything that was near impossible to do, doing it made her feel like a goddess.
She didn’t intend to die. Even so, the odds made it impossible to not give the option its due. The success rate for heart transplants was seventy-five percent.
“Are you not feeling well?” he asked, tenderness dilating his eyes, even though he usually was spot-on about how she was feeling. Even better than Mamma and Papa. He always saw. Maybe because it was so easy to let him see.
“Never better,” she said. This wasn’t exactly true, but her medications were doing their job. And her surgery seemed like it was going to happen. The donor was hooked up to machines in Hong Kong, and she was flying there next week to wait. Hence the need for speed.
“You’re my friend, Kimi.”
“Then you should care. You should care that I don’t die a virgin. Why can’t you help me? It’s even a thing—friends with benefits.”
“You watch far too many Hollywood movies.”
“And you don’t watch nearly enough, officer,” she said in her best American accent, trying to look petulant, but the tenderness in his eyes made it hard.
He sat down on the bed next to her. He smelled of industrial-strength antibacterial soap—the smell of her life. But under that sharp medicinal tang she could smell him, the real him. His scent was surprisingly soft. Like sweet spices. Totally at odds with how he looked, like an outlaw who galloped on his stallion across mountains and ravines, meting out justice to peasants, rough-edged and vibrating with restless energy. His smell and his eyes were all that was soft in all that rugged armor. The combination had made her so breathless for so long, she had never had trouble believing those novels.
Those tender, melting-tar eyes searched her. “Tell me what’s happened.”
She didn’t want to talk about the surgery. It made all the heat gathering inside her freeze up.
“It’s me, Kimi.” He touched the edge of her sleeve, caressing it the way she wanted him to caress the rest of her.
“We found a donor match.”
His eyes widened before he closed them. Good thing because she couldn’t bear to see the fear that flared bright there. Then he was shaking. Again, just for an instant. She caught all his responses even though they flashed by in fractions of moments, like intense cloudbursts that condensed time. It was their dance. Him blanketing his reactions and her registering them before he did, and both of them not acknowledging the thin ice she stood on as the temperature continued to rise.
Yet again, he put it all away the way he always did with anything concerning her health. He was the only person in her life who made such a valiant effort to not burden her with her own brokenness, and she loved him for it.
“I’m going to Hong Kong next week. This person is in a coma and unresponsive to treatment. The doctors aren’t hopeful for a recovery. Once it happens, things will go fast, so I have to be there when the family makes the call to pull the plug.”
He reached out and plucked her fingers out of her lap where they fidgeted of their own accord. She grabbed his hand and placed it on her chest just below her collarbone. Her nipples peaked and pressed against her blouse at the touch. But what was hotter than the spark that zinged down her belly was the way his eyes darkened at the touch.
“They’re going to cut it out and replace it,” she said. “Dr. Girija says my chances are—”
“One hundred percent.” He cut her off. “You’re here for a reason, remember?”
It’s what she always said to him. I’m here for a reason.
“Yes, I’m here for a reason, and you are here for one too—so that your best friend does not die a virgin.”
“You are not going to die.”
“We don’t know that. All I know is that I’m not going anywhere until we do this.” She poked him in his chest. Anger surged through her. Because really, enough was enough!
He grabbed her finger off his chest. “Fine. Lay down and take off your clothes.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Well, you want to do this. Let’s do this.”
“Really?”
“Less talk, more action, Ms. Patil.” He stood, stepping back, as though making space for her to get on with the undressing.
“Why do I have to take off my clothes first?”
“Because you’re the one who wants this.”
She scowled and he tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear, his eyes softening again. “How will things ever be the same if we do this, Kimi?”
She grabbed his hand off her cheek and squeezed it. “I promise nothing will change.” How could things between them ever change? He was all that connected her to the world. What made the world outside exist. He was her constant.
And she was all that was unstable in his world.
Maybe it was unfair of her to ask this of him when there was a chance that she’d leave him with a lifetime of memories to haunt him.
She sagged into her disappointment. “It’s okay if you don’t want to. It’s okay if this is too much to ask.”
He laughed. One breath of a laugh whooshing out of him against her ear, because he had moved so close to her.
He wrapped both arms around her. “You always ask for too much, Kimi.”
She melted into him. Not in the hot, melty sort of way but in the way that was all theirs. Their world.
“You are too much.”
“Thank you.” She looked up at him. Her cheek rubbing against the denim of his shirt. His smell, his feel, the texture of the air around him so familiar it was home.
“For what?” Even his clove-scented breath was home.
“I know you don’t mean it as a compliment when you say I’m too much. But I love it.”
“Why?”
She couldn’t answer. She knew he was only asking because he wanted her to verbalize it. So he could refute her words and tell her that she was wrong, that she was all the things she wanted to be. That she was not less. That she was too much.
The best part was that he believed it. He had given her that. The belief in her wholeness. And because Rahul never lied and Rahul had more integrity than anyone she knew, that made it true.
“So you’ll do it?”
He stroked her back and in his eyes was the answer before he spoke it. “I have a few conditions.”
“Oh, Rahul, thank you!” She squeezed her arms around him. Like a little girl. Definitely not sexy. Naturally, he pushed her away.
“But not right now. I need to talk to the doctor first and make sure it’s okay.”
She laughed. “Quite full of ourselves, aren’t we? I already talked to Girija Auntie. I’m stable, my medications are working, I’m good to go. We can’t get too acrobatic, that’s all.”
His cheeks took on that incredibly hot deep red again. Who would have thought just talking about it would make her always stoic IPS officer blush? “You told her you were going to ask me to have sex with you?”
“No, I asked her if I could have sex. Period.”
“So she basically knows. Because who else would you ask?”
She smacked him. “That is not true. I could actually ask any number of people!”
More of that smugness oozed from his smile. “Okay.” He split the word in two the way he always did when he meant the opposite of it.
“I could! I could call someone. There are escort services and stuff, y’know. You aren’t my only option.”
“I’m honored. I think.”
She giggled.
“And now I’m totally turned on. Because who can resist a girl who picked him over—did you say escort services?”
“If you keep making me laugh, how are we going to do it?”
“You actually mean right now, don’t you?”
“I leave next week.”
He pulled her close. “Wow, you really know how to seduce a guy.” But he was holding her very tightly.
She looked up at him, the back of her neck crinkling with the effort. The sight of his lips and eyes ignited that heat inside her again, pushing away all the other things that the fear in his embrace was bringing to the surface. She went up on her toes. Finally, she was going to kiss him.
He put a finger on her lips. She’d been so wrong—the heat from a minute ago was nothing. She felt his finger everywhere. “No kissing.”
What?
He caressed her cheek. The rough pad of his thumb turning her soft. “No getting angry. My rules.”
“How can we make love without kissing?”
“No calling it that either. You want to do it. We’re going to do it.”
“You make it sound like a hardship. I thought making . . . doing it . . . was supposed to be enjoyable.”
He smiled, but for an instant he let all the things inside him loose in his eyes. “I’ll make it good for you, I promise. But, Kimi, I can’t, I have to . . .”
“I know. Don’t say anything more. Please.” This might be their last memory together. He had to protect himself. He who had never forsaken the girl who came with the inevitability of loss.
He tipped her chin up until she met his eyes. “Hey, the other rule is to tell me if you don’t like something.” He kissed her forehead and something vagrantly sexy flared through her, opening her up so fast and fierce, she wanted to wrap herself around him. Wanted to touch him with her entire body.
“I like it. I’ll like everything.”
He smiled against her forehead. “Go slow, tigress. We haven’t even started yet.” He dropped kisses on her lids, his breath turning her brows so erogenous she moaned.
“I thought we weren’t kissing.”
“Oh, there will be kissing. Just not on the mouth.”
He got right to it. Her ears, her throat. Slow at first, tentative, then his breathing sped up, gathering up a storm. His lips dragged over her shirt, leaving wet heat on her skin. She was dying. She snuck a look at him. His eyes were closed, his face tight with something. Control? She didn’t care. This was Rahul, her Rahul, and that’s all that mattered. The only damn thing in the world that had any meaning at all.
His fingers grasped her buttons, then pulled away. “Also, we’re going to leave our clothes on.”
Wait, what?
But his mouth touched her breasts and she lost her ability to think, to talk, to breathe. He could do this through metal armor and she wouldn’t care. “Just don’t stop,” she tried to say, but it came out gibberish and he smiled into her nipple. Seriously, like smiled around a part of her body that wanted to shove itself down his throat, and there was so much sensation, she might pass out from it. She grabbed his hair with both hands.
He tried to pull away. “Kimi, you have to calm down. Breathe.”
She panted. Nodded. Pulled him back.
“I’m trying to go slow here.”
Slow?
He’d just tried to ingest her nipple whole. That was going slow on which planet?
She climbed onto him, straddling his lap, and pushed him back on the bed.
“That’s not going slow, Kimi.”
“It’s slow, it’s slow,” she tried to say, but she was kissing his jaw so it basically came out as “Mphh miplmph.”
A laugh started in his chest, but her teeth found a tendon in his neck and a shudder went through him. He rolled her over on her back and reached for her jeans. So, change of plans. Change of speed.
“Breathe,” he said, cupping her down there.
She bucked off the bed. Breathe? What was that?
He looked like he was in pain, but he didn’t stop. His hands shook as he unbuttoned her jeans and slid them off.
“I thought we weren’t removing clothing.” She lifted her hips for him.
“I’m not a magician, Kimi.”
“Oh, yes you are,” she wanted to tell him, but her jeans were off and his tongue was inside her—omurgodabove—navel. And things were exploding between her legs. Where he went next.
As in really went.
Okay, her heart definitely could not survive this.
Could. Not.
He licked her. One long, lapping lick. Then he went to work until she was thrashing her head like a crazed person and pulling out his hair. And making half-sobbing half-screaming sounds she couldn’t recognize as her own. A pulse was beating—with the force her stupid heart could never seem to muster—right between her legs. Where all her being had gathered and lit up like a bonfire. Her clitoris, her vagina, her entire darned reproductive system was saying hello to her. Hello! Here we are. Right here! Where were you all our lives?
When she looked down at him he was smiling against her underwear. He looked almost as happy as her vagina, which kept on beating like wedding drums.
“Who wears underwear with lollipops on it?”
How could he talk?
“Don’t be rude to that underwear. I’m framing it and putting it on my nightstand.”
His smile widened. But by the time he had brought himself up to eye level, the laughter was gone from his eyes, intensity and arousal rising in its place. He stared at her lips. She’d never seen him like this before. So much hunger, so much pleasure and pain. Not the kind of pain she’d put him through so many times. This pain was new. This pleasure was new. The beating body parts, definitely new.
I’ll make it up to you, she wanted to say. If she came home she would make it up to him every day of her life. For putting him through this. For giving her this.
She sat up, her nether regions so aware and awake they clenched. He sat up too and she grabbed his face in her hands. She had never wanted anything as badly as she wanted to kiss him, and she had a rather spectacular list of things she wanted really badly. Like wanting to live. Right now wanting to kiss him was giving the wanting to live a run for its money. But she had promised.
He pushed away from her. She grabbed his sleeve. His sleeve! She seriously needed to start acting like a grown-up.
“Where are you going?”
“We’re done, aren’t we?”
“No, we’re not. You promised.”
“You enjoyed that, didn’t you?”
“You did not promise me enjoyment. You promised to have sex with me.”
“That was definitely sex, Kimi.”
She stuck her finger in his face. “Don’t patronize me, Rahul. I had an orgasm. It was spectacular. Better than anything I’ve ever given myself. But we are not done here.”
He sank back into the bed, his eyes suddenly hot again. “You give yourself orgasms?”
All by itself her voice dropped to a whisper. “Yes. Do you want me to tell you how?”
He groaned, and she reached for his belt. Something about the way he groaned gave her the courage to unhook it.
She expected him to pull away, but he just swallowed.
“Stop being old-fashioned, Rahul. We’re both adults. You’re not taking my honor. My honor is not buried in my crotch. And if it were, you just made it explode out of there. It’s probably splattered across the ceiling.” She started unzipping his pants. “I want this and you promised.”
He smiled. “Keep talking.” He removed her hands from his pants and kissed them. “But keep these up here.” He put her hands on his shoulders.
“Are you saying my talking doesn’t turn you on?”
“Most definitely.” He removed his jeans, then pulled off her underwear. His breathing changed.
They lay back down on the bed, side by side.
“That’s you not turned on?” she asked, looking down at him, and he dropped a kiss on her forehead and smiled again.
“Say something about women’s rights or art or science.” He reached down and cupped her again, his fingers warm against her bare skin, and she would’ve given him anything.
“The longest recorded male orgasm went on for ten seconds. The longest female orgasm lasted forty-five seconds.”
“Thank you,” he said, and there it was again, that smile in his voice.
“Only forty-five percent of women who are virgins experience pain during their first intercourse.”
“This might hurt.” He rubbed a finger against her opening and she gasped. “I’m sorry.”
“Just don’t stop,” she said, pressing into his hand. “I don’t think I’m in the forty-five percent.”
He kissed her cheek, that smile nudging at her as his finger nudged elsewhere. She clenched without meaning to and his jaw worked. “You’re one of a kind, Kimi.”
Pleasure was coursing through her, and joy. Seconds ago she had wanted to laugh. Now she wanted to cry, and then he touched his thumb to her clitoris and it all turned to sensation. Dear lord above! Another orgasm danced beneath his fingers. Two strokes and it exploded through her, completely without her permission.
“Relax, sweetheart. Shh.” He removed his finger, leaving her bereft. “Please tell me you have condoms.”
She leapt at the side table, almost knocking him off the bed. The bed started to shake. He was laughing. Right now he could guffaw like a hyena and she’d grab on to him and never let him go. She extracted a box. Her fingers were shaking so much she couldn’t get the blasted things to work. He took the box from her, heat and laughter dancing in his eyes. He extracted one and slid it on in a matter of seconds.
She hadn’t seen too many penises that weren’t on a computer screen (okay she had seen none), but his was beautiful. Like, seriously beautiful. She reached for it. But he caught her hand. “You have to relax, Kimi. Please.”
Relax? How could he use that word? She was panting. He pushed her back on the bed, and she grabbed him and wrapped her legs around him in a death grip as he slid into her. The fit so tight and slick and so bloody hot she couldn’t breathe.
“Tell me what to do,” she said. “Tell me what you need.”
But he had no instructions to give. His entire face was flushed, the furrow between his brows deeper than she’d ever seen it.
“God, Kimi,” he said and then he was pumping into her. And she had no idea what pain was or pleasure. She had no bloody idea what anything was. Because everything inside her was soft and wet and clenching around him. She held on to his arms, his back, her fingers digging into rock-hard muscle and keeping her in place.
Every inch of her turned to exhilarating, maddening tightness. Filled-up. Whole. Engulfed. She fell into herself, fell into him in another gush of pleasure. Not the hot blast from before but sparkling echoes of that explosion, reaching every cell that held her together as she held on and watched him come apart in long uncontrolled thrusts.
He threw back his head and the sound that escaped him unraveled him entirely. A sob, a moan, a wild scream of release. His buttocks clenched and unclenched beneath her ankles, over and over until he sagged into her with such relief she pulled him to her, stroking him, his hair, his back, as sore, consuming pleasure throbbed where they joined.
She wanted to go on holding him as though forever existed. In all the times that she had believed she didn’t care if she went on living there had been defeat and frustration. In this moment there was a belief that she was alive and, no matter what happened to her, this mattered. She mattered.
He lifted his face off the crook of her neck where she knew she would find skin marked by his mouth. Where even as he pulled away, he left behind the pinpricks of razor burn. He didn’t meet her eyes, just extracted himself from her and moved away so fast it made her glad to have the cover of her blouse. He sat at the edge of the bed, his back to her, his head in his hands, his breathing labored. Despite his still buttoned shirt, he looked entirely naked, exposed to his bones.
The silence between them labored to breathe too. She reached for her underwear and pulled it on. He reached for the tissue box and held it out to her, still not looking at her. “You okay?” he said finally, his voice hollow and full at once.
She made a sound, envying him his ability to not look at her. She couldn’t take her eyes off him, couldn’t move again without throwing herself back in his arms, couldn’t speak without telling him everything in her heart.
This heart had better be the real thing. Because she could not leave him this way. Could not let all the precious feelings inside her go unsaid. She could not give him up.
“I have to go,” he said, pulling on his jeans as though the effort took everything he had left. “I’ll see you at the airport.”
And with that he walked away from her.