Chapter 19 Closing Eyes — Part 2
Rohan was lying in a valley between two white hills. The hills were warm. He pressed his palm into one slope, and it sank in and pushed his hand back out, and the whole hill wobbled for a long time after he let go. He laughed and stood up. The ground gave under his foot and tossed him up a little, and he floated down slowly, as if the air had decided to hold him. He took another step and went higher. Soon he was running, every step a spring, and both hills shook behind him each time he landed.
On top of each hill sat a round pink peak. He climbed the nearer one. It was softer than anything he had ever touched. He sat at the top, pushed off, and slid all the way down on his back, and the hill jiggled behind him until he reached the bottom and rolled to a stop in the valley.
The whole land smelled warm and sweet, a smell he knew. Birds sang in the trees on the ridge, and one of them whistled like a collegeboy calling his friend home. A small stream ran past his feet, and he followed it down the valley.
At the end of the stream stood a well with a low stone wall. He leaned over the edge. It was full to the brim with milk, white and still. He remembered what she had said about drinking all her milk and leaving none for the kids. He grinned, cupped his hands, and bent down to drink.
A ring came from somewhere past the hills, tring tring, tring tring.
He looked up at the ridge. None of the birds made that sound. He bent to the milk again. The ring came again, closer, and the milk shivered in the well. He tried to scoop it, and it ran through his fingers. The ring came a third time, so loud now that the hills shook with it, and the valley went pale around him.
Rohan opened his eyes. The honeymoon suite was in broad daylight. His face was pressed between her breasts. One arm was around her waist, and one leg lay across her thighs. He was holding her the way he held his pillow at home. The warm smell was her skin. Isha lay asleep with her arms around his head. Her hair was spread over the pillow, her lips were parted, and her breathing was slow and peaceful. To him she looked as beautiful as the most beautiful mermaid in the world.
The phone on the side table rang again.
He lifted her hands off his head, laid them on the sheet, and picked up the phone. He lay back with it at his ear, and she turned in her sleep and pressed her face into his chest.
“Good morning, sir. This is the reception. Your trek group is gathering at the garden gate. The walk starts in fifteen minutes.”
“Fifteen minutes. We will be there.”
He put the phone down. Isha had not moved. Her cheek was on his chest, and she was still asleep.
He slid down the bed until his face was level with her breasts. In her sleep her nipples had gone soft. He took the left one between his teeth and bit it.
She jerked. Her eyes stayed shut. She pushed his head away with one hand. “Go away.”
He bit the right one.
“Rohan.” She rolled onto her side and pulled the pillow over her head. “Let me sleep.”
“The trek starts in fifteen minutes.”
“Let it start. I will come for the next one.”
“We signed for it.”
“You signed. I only said yes.”
She pulled the sheet up to her chin. He tugged it down. She tugged it back. He slid his hand under the sheet and pinched her nipple, and she kicked at him without looking, laughing into the pillow.
He leaned over the pillow. “Who is lazy now?”
She went still under the pillow. On the balcony she had called him lazy for passing her to other men. Now he had thrown the word back at her, and she could hear the grin in his voice. She threw the pillow at his face.
“Fine. Ten minutes. And wipe that grin off your face.”
She went to her suitcase and took out her gym clothes and the sports bra she had packed with them. She looked across the room at Rohan, who was pulling on his shorts. She thought, yesterday you survived as a good boy, but today you are going to yield to me. I am going to tease you until you beg.
She pulled on a tight grey crop top with nothing under it. It ended above her navel and clung to her bare breasts, and her nipples, still tender from his teeth, showed through the cotton. She pulled on black capri track pants with white stripes down the sides. They hugged her hips and her ass. She tied her hair up high and turned around with the sports bra hanging from one finger.
“This bra is not right,” she said. “It pinches me here.” She ran a finger under her breast, through the top. “Should I just go like this?”
Rohan looked up from his laces and stopped. His eyes went to her chest and stayed there. Both nipples pressed clear points into the grey cotton. He could see their exact shape.
“Like this?”
She turned sideways to the mirror and touched the tips of two fingers to her nipples through the top. “It is not showing, right?”
It was showing. Anyone could see it from across a garden. He swallowed.
“It is not showing.”
“Good.” She tossed the bra onto the bed.
He had lied because he wanted to see her like this all day. But every man on that path would see it too, and that sat hot in his chest.
“The wind outside is cold,” he said at last.
“Then I will wear a hoodie.”
She took a navy zip-up hoodie from her bag, pulled it on, and zipped it to her chin. He did not know if he was relieved or disappointed. She smiled and walked out. He knew exactly what she was doing, and she was not even hiding it. His cock was hard before he reached the door. He pulled his t-shirt down over the front of his shorts and followed her to the lift.
About twenty people stood at the garden gate with water bottles. There were a few couples, a family with two teenagers, a group of five young men in caps, and the guide, a thin local man with a bamboo stick. None of the men who had felt her last night was there, and Isha felt at ease.
“Good morning,” the guide said. “This is an easy trek, family level. Even uncles and aunties come back smiling. If anyone wants night treks or rappelling down the fort walls, take my number after the walk. Through the hotel it costs double. With me, it is half. And no leopard has been seen here for two years.”
One of the young men, in a red cap, raised his hand. “And if he comes in the third year?”
“Then you run.”
“Faster than the leopard?”
“No. Faster than your friends.”
The whole group laughed. Rohan laughed too.
The path left the gate and went into the trees. The ground was red earth packed hard, with roots running across it, and the morning was cool and green. Ten minutes in, the hotel roofs were gone behind the trees. Isha stopped, unzipped the hoodie, and pulled it off.
She held it out to him. “Carry this. I am hot.”
He tied it around his hips. Her nipples stood hard against the cotton, and the heat in his groin rose. Seeing them inside four walls, with only the two of them in the room, was one thing. Out here, anyone on the path could see them, and that made it far more intense. When she shifted her weight, her whole breast moved, not just the nipple, and the short top showed every bounce above her bare stomach. She saw sweat on his face in that cold wind. She was turning him on, and it made her happy. She turned and walked on.
Soon the path tipped up into a slope of rough stone steps. Isha went up ahead of him to tease him with her ass, and Rohan was left looking at it. With the hoodie gone, the thin black pants hid almost nothing. They clung so tight they looked painted on, and the seam ran up between her cheeks. With each step up the stones, one cheek lifted and tightened while the other dropped and shook. He wished he could record it. He would have watched it every night.
The five young men in caps were a few steps ahead of her. The one in the red cap turned to say something to his friend, and his eyes landed on her chest. Her breasts were bouncing with every step. He turned back and whispered to the others. One by one they slowed until they had fallen back on either side of her, two on one side and three on the other, and the narrow steps had no room left for a sixth man. Rohan climbed faster, but he could not get past them. He was stuck a few steps behind, and from there he could see everything.
The red cap looked at her for a moment. “Sorry. Have I seen you somewhere?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I am sure I have. Some ad, maybe?”
She laughed. “I teach.”
“Where?”
“At Pune University.”
While she smiled at the red cap, the boy on her left leaned forward a little and looked past her arm at the side of her breast.
“No way,” the red cap said. “We are at Deccan college of Management. MBA, final year.” He shook his head. “Thank god you are not in our college.”
“Why?”
“We would have been sitting in your class instead of cutting it for movies.”
Isha laughed with her eyes on him. Behind her, the tall one in the white cap dropped half a step back to look at her ass. He caught a friend’s eye and raised his eyebrows. Rohan saw how it worked. Whoever was talking kept her eyes on his face, and the rest of them looked wherever they liked. Isha had no idea.
“It would be tough to call you ma’am, looking like that,” the white cap said.
She turned to him, and the moment she did, the red cap’s eyes dropped to her breasts.
“Try,” she said.
He straightened up like a boy caught by the head of department. “Good morning, ma’am.”
The other four burst out laughing. One of them pressed a hand to his heart behind her back, and the rest had to swallow their laughs. Rohan’s cock stood fully hard, and he tugged the hoodie lower around his hips.
“Very good,” she said. “Now walk.”
Isha glanced back once. Rohan’s eyes were on her, and the hoodie around his hips was doing a poor job. That was the only look she had dressed for.
The red cap followed her glance to Rohan. “Ma’am, the gentleman behind us. Brother?”
“Fiancé.” She lifted her left hand and turned it so the ring caught the sun.
The five of them looked at the ring, then at Rohan, then at each other. Their shoulders dropped together, like a team that had lost the match in the last over.
The red cap recovered first. “Now I remember where I saw you, ma’am. The jewellery ad. Engagement collection.”
Isha burst out laughing.
He turned and called back to Rohan. “Congratulations, sir. You have ruined five careers.”
Rohan laughed before he could stop himself. Inside, he was laughing for a different reason. Five young men had been trying their best lines on her, and she had lifted his ring to them without even looking back at him. Warmth spread through his chest, and he walked a little taller.
“Eyes on the path, all of you,” she said. “If one of you breaks a leg, my fiancé is not carrying anybody.”
They laughed and walked on beside her, and this time their eyes stayed on the path.
The path ran down to a stream. Flat stones crossed the water in a crooked line. The boy in the red cap stepped onto the first stone and held out his hand.
“Allow me. Those stones look slippery.”
Rohan stepped past him and took her hand himself.
While she balanced on the first stone, he pinched her ass hard through the pants. She squealed and nearly went into the water.
“Rohan!”
“Balance,” he said.
The young men laughed. He wanted them to see it.
On the far bank he put his arm around her and rested his hand on her ribs, right under her breast, his thumb against the lower curve. When the guide stopped to point at a grey hornbill in a tree, Rohan kissed her temple. When the young men caught up again, he bent and bit the side of her neck.
“What has got into you?” she whispered.
“Nothing.”
She knew what it was. He was showing every man on that path that she was his. She liked it more than she would ever tell him, and with his thumb under her breast, her nipples stood harder against the top.