Adultery Who Watches The Watchmen (continued)

[samgreenvalley]

The conversation shifted after that. Lighter. Easier. Prakash told her about the ship, about the ports they'd visited, about the time Ayan had tried to flush his shoe down the toilet. Menaka laughed until her stomach hurt, until the cyber cafe owner shushed her, until she almost forgot where she was and who she'd become.
 
But when the call ended—when Prakash had to go because the ship was docking and he had duties to attend to—the emptiness rushed back in.
 
She sat in the chair for a long moment, staring at the blank screen, her body humming with unspent energy. The conversation had stirred something in her. All those memories, all those confessions, all those details—they'd lit a fire that now burned through her veins with nowhere to go.
 
The cyber cafe owner was watching her again. He wasn't bad looking, she realized. Mid-thirties, lean, with dark eyes and a wedding ring that glinted under the fluorescent lights. If she wanted to, she could walk up to his desk, lean over, let her salwar kameez gape open at the neckline. He'd take the hint. Men always took the hint.
 
She imagined it: his hands on her hips, pushing her against the wall, fumbling with the drawstring of her salwar. The smell of printer ink and old newspapers. The scratch of his stubble against her neck. Quick, anonymous, wrong in all the ways that made her wet.
 
For a moment, she almost did it. Her body was already leaning toward his desk, her lips already parting to form the words.
 
Then she stopped.
 
No.
 
This wasn't who she wanted to be. Not anymore. Not after everything she'd told Prakash about missing the old Dara, about craving the danger, about wanting to be consumed rather than serviced. A quick fuck with a cyber cafe owner wouldn't satisfy that hunger. It would just make it worse.
 
She needed Dara. The real Dara. The one who grabbed and took and commanded. Not the soft, respectful, promoted head watchman who asked permission to go down on his wife.
 
She paid for her hour, walked out of the cyber cafe, and headed back toward the quarter.
 
---
 
But when she got there, the quarter was empty.
 
Dara's uniform was gone from the hook by the door. His shoes were missing from the mat. The bed was made—he'd started making the bed every morning, another new habit she didn't recognize—and the kitchen was clean, the dishes washed and stacked.
 
Menaka stood in the doorway, her body still burning, her mind still racing, and felt something inside her crack.
 
He wasn't there.
 
He was supposed to be there. It was his day off. They'd talked about it at breakfast—how they'd spend the afternoon together, how she'd cook him that mushroom curry he liked, how maybe they'd try that new position she'd read about online. He'd agreed. He'd promised.
 
But he wasn't there.
 
She walked to the bed and sat down heavily, her hands trembling. The heat in her veins had turned to something else now—something colder, sharper. Betrayal? No, that wasn't the right word. Dara hadn't betrayed her. He'd just... left. Without telling her. Without a note, a text, a fucking message.
 
Maybe he was at the gate. Maybe there'd been an emergency. Maybe—
 
She pulled out her phone and called him. It rang three times, then hung up. She called again. And again. And again.
 
"Fuck," she whispered, and the word tasted foreign in her mouth. She didn't swear. Not usually. But she was so angry. And so horny. And so completely, utterly alone in this cramped quarter with its wobbling fan and its sagging mattress and its silence that pressed against her ears like water.
 
---
 
She lay back on the bed and stared at the ceiling.
 
Her body was screaming for release. She could feel it in her clit, in her nipples, in the slickness between her legs that had been building since the Skype call with Prakash. She could touch herself—she should touch herself—but somehow that felt like surrender. Like admitting that Dara wasn't necessary, that any hand would do, that the hunger could be satisfied with her own fingers.
 
But that wasn't true. The hunger couldn't be satisfied. That was the whole point.
 
She thought about Holika Dahan. About the generator shed. About Sharma and Mehta and Gupta and Singh and the young one, Karthik, with his knowing eyes and his careful hands. Five men. Five cocks. Five different ways to be filled.
 
She hadn't told Dara about the gangbang. Not really. She'd hinted at it, that night after the promotion, when he'd asked her what she wanted and she'd confessed, I want to be their slut. But she hadn't given him details. Hadn't told him about the planning, the plotting.
 
Part of her wanted to keep it secret. Part of her wanted to show up at the generator shed on Holika Dahan night without telling anyone, let the men do what they'd planned, and come home to Dara afterward with their cum still dripping down her thighs. That was the old Dara's fantasy, wasn't it? The Dara who'd bent her over the water tank and called her his dhanno? The Dara who'd made her suck his dick in front of Banke, who'd spanked her in the shack, who'd treated her like a possession rather than a person?
 
But the new Dara—the promoted head watchman, the respectful husband, the man who said "please" and "thank you"—he wouldn't understand. He'd be hurt. He'd feel betrayed. He might even leave her, and then where would she be? Alone in Delhi, with no husband, no lover, no one to satisfy the hunger that was eating her alive.
 
She couldn't tell him. She shouldn't tell him. But if she didn't tell him, and he found out afterward—
 
The thoughts circled in her head like vultures, each one uglier than the last. She pressed her palms against her eyes until she saw stars.