[sakurasan]

Chapter 19 Closing Eyes — Part 4

He sat in the cold water with her wet panty in his hand. He could still see her ass moving away from him. He pushed his brief down under the water, wrapped her panty around his cock, and stroked. The cloth was wet and still warm from her. He closed his eyes and saw the dimples, the shaking cheeks, the gap between her thighs. He came in less than a minute, into her panty, and sat there breathing hard.

He rinsed the panty under the tap, wrung it out, and hung it on the towel rail. He dried off, tied a towel around his waist, and came out.

Isha was already dressed. She stood at the mirror in a fitted black strapless dress that ended at her knees. Padding stitched into the bodice pushed her breasts up, and the neckline sat so low that most of each breast was bare above the cloth. She was putting in an earring and watched him in the mirror.




“Where is my panty?”

He stopped in the middle of the room in his towel.

“I washed it.”

She looked at him in the mirror a moment longer. Then she smiled and put in the other earring.

“Your hand is on my ass in every single photo.”

Rohan kept his eyes on the road. The expressway ran down the ghat in long curves, and in the mirror the sun had already gone behind the hills. Isha sat sideways in the passenger seat with her bare feet up on the dashboard, swiping through her phone.




“Not every photo,” he said.

“Tiger’s Point.” She held the phone up near his face. The two of them stood at the railing with the valley behind them, and his hand sat on her ass like it had been stuck there with glue.




She swiped. “Bhushi Dam. Same hand.” She swiped again. “The chikki shop. Even with the chikki uncle in the frame.”

“He was busy with the chikki.”

“He gave us one packet extra, free. Do you know why?”

“Because I am a good customer.”

“Because he was watching your hand.”

Rohan laughed. “What could I do? Somebody went out without a panty.”

“Somebody washed my panty.”

“Somebody had four more in her bag.”

She swiped to the next photo instead of answering.

“And that dress,” he said. “Every time you climbed a step, it got caught in your ass. Somebody had to pull it out before the whole of Lonavala saw.”

“So it was public service.”

“Social service. Free of cost.”

All afternoon his hand had gone back there, a little bolder at every stop, and each time she had leaned into it.

She stopped swiping. “And this one.”

At the next straight stretch she turned the screen to him. He had lifted her off the ground with both hands under her ass, her legs locked around his waist, and his face was pressed to her breast above the dress, his teeth on the bare skin. Her head was thrown back and her eyes were squeezed shut.

He looked for one second and put his eyes back on the road. His ears went hot.

“I felt so shy,” she said. “That poor aunty only asked us to come closer for the photo. She did not ask you to eat me.”

“Don’t lie. You enjoyed it.”

“And her? She should be embarrassed by you.”

“She took four photos. She was not embarrassed. She was envying you.”

“You are becoming impossible.”

She zoomed into the corner of the photo. “And look at uncle.”

A few steps from the railing, the aunty’s husband stood holding her handbag and staring at the sky like he was counting clouds.

“Poor man,” Rohan said. “Thirty years of marriage, and he is holding her bag.”

“That will be you.”

“I will hold your bag.” He took one hand off the wheel and put it on her thigh. “And other things.”

She lifted his hand by the wrist and put it back on the wheel. “Both hands. I want to reach Pune alive.”

She put the phone face down in her lap. For a while they drove without talking, and the lights of the first Pune exits came up ahead.

“What was your best moment?” she asked. “The whole trip. Only one.”

“All of it.” He kept his eyes on the road. “These two days were like a dream. You were an angel, and you showed me heaven.”

“No. That is not an answer. Choose the best one.”

He glanced at her face and changed his answer. “The candles. My heart stopped.”

“Only your heart?”

He laughed. “And this morning.”

“That is two.”

“Then I am cheating. When I woke up, the sun was lying all over your body. For the first time in my life, I was jealous of the sun.”

“Then why didn’t you block it?”

“I tried. My face was not big enough.”

She laughed and hit his arm.

“What was yours?” he asked.

Her real answer was the big man’s second song last night, when she looked over his arm and saw Rohan possessive for her for the first time. She did not feel like saying it, because it would remind him of her in that man’s arms.

“Mine is midnight too. Your face when you saw the cakes. You forgot to breathe.”

“I remember breathing.”

“You forgot. I counted.” She pulled her feet down from the dashboard and tucked them under her. “And the tub. Before the names.”

“We were not even talking then.”

“That is why.”

She leaned her head on his shoulder. He drove into the city with one hand, and this time she let him.

“So how is campus?” Isha asked. “Still no vacation for you?”

They had stopped for dinner at a small Punjabi place ten minutes from her building. He could have dropped her first. He was not ready to.




“These two days were my vacation.” He smiled at her across the table.

“And now?”

He tore his naan in half. “Now work. Everything has piled up.”

“Like what?”

“The bridge courses are over, so there are no students. That part is easy.”

“Then you are alone on campus?”

“In our block, yes.” He dipped the naan in the dal. “I have to start on the syllabus changes.”

“You have more than a week.”

“It will not be enough.”

She stirred her lime soda with the straw. “I was planning to clean my lab anyway. Why don’t you take me with you? I can help you also.”

“It will be only you and me in the whole block.”

She looked up at him and smiled. “Sounds wonderful.”

He thought of the empty block, the long corridors with nobody in them, and her lab door that locked from the inside. He drank half his glass of water.

“Pass the pickle,” she said, as if she had asked for nothing at all.