[sakurasan]

Chapter 1 — 90s Love

Doctoral convocations at the university in Pune were usually quiet affairs, held in a smaller auditorium with only guides, examiners, and a thin row of guests. Tonight was different. The hall was packed. Research scholars filled the front rows under the stage lights, but behind them sat crowd after crowd of students who had come for one reason. Their favourite lecturer was receiving his doctorate. Every few minutes another candidate walked up, received a handshake, and returned with a new doctoral hood resting on their shoulders. The students waited through each name with restless patience, whispering, shifting, watching the side entrance.

Near the front, a young woman in a simple cream saree sat with her hands folded in her lap. Her face was quiet, almost composed, but her eyes kept drifting toward the side entrance of the hall. She too was waiting for one name.

The dean stepped back to the microphone.

“And now,” he said, smiling as the hall settled, “we have a special mention. At twenty-seven, he becomes the youngest person ever to receive a PhD from this university. A new institutional record. He was once our top-ranking student, joined us later as a lecturer, completed his research with distinction, and today he makes history. Please welcome Mr. Rohan.”

Applause rose at once.

From the side aisle, a smart-looking young lecturer walked in. His formal shirt sat neat on his shoulders. His steps were steady, almost shy under the sudden attention, yet there was a quiet pride in the way he carried himself. He climbed the stage, bowed his head slightly as the doctoral hood was placed on him, and accepted the certificate with both hands.

Cameras flashed. Professors smiled with real respect.

Rohan turned toward the audience to acknowledge the applause. For a second his eyes searched the front row.

They found her.

Isha was already on her feet, clapping hard, her cream saree catching the light. Their eyes met across the stage, and something soft passed between them. In that look there was pride and affection, quiet and sure. Rohan’s mouth curved into a small smile meant only for her. Then he turned back to thank the dean.

One after another, senior faculty came forward to shake his hand. He thanked each of them quietly, his face calm under the praise. When the last handshake ended, the crowd began to break into smaller groups. Conversations rose. More cameras flashed.

Rohan stepped down from the stage and walked toward the side aisle where Isha was standing.

She was still smiling when he stopped in front of her. Up close, her face looked brighter than usual, eyes fixed only on him.

“Congratulations,” she said, her voice warm and a little unsteady with pride. “You made history today.”

“Thank you,” Rohan said. He held her gaze a moment longer. “And thank you for being here. It meant everything that you came.”

Around them the hall stayed busy with talk and cameras. Rohan glanced once at the crowd, then back at her. His voice lowered.

“Come with me,” he said quietly. “Just for a minute, outside.”

He guided her gently toward the exit, his hand light at her elbow, careful and serious. They left the noise of the auditorium behind and stepped into the quieter corridor near the doors. A few people passed at a distance. For a moment the space between them felt private enough to hold what he had carried for years.

Rohan stood facing her. He rubbed his thumb against his own palm, searching for the right place to begin.

“I have been circling this for a long time,” he said softly. “Looking for the right words. Waiting for a day that felt steady enough to carry them.”

Isha nodded, listening with her whole face.

“I kept telling myself there would be a right time,” he went on. “A time when I could look at you and speak about a life. About a home. About mornings that belong to us. About growing old with the same person who already knows my heart.”

His breath caught. He smiled, shy and earnest.

“I think that time is here,” he said. “I think it’s time. Let’s get married.”

For a second Isha only stared at him. Then joy broke across her face so fully that her eyes filled at once. She had waited for this day the way one waits for rain after a long dry season. In quiet moments she had imagined this question. Now it stood in front of her in his own voice, and happiness rose so high she could barely hold it.

“Yes,” she whispered. Then louder, laughing through the tears, “Yes, Rohan. Yes.”

He let out a breath that sounded like relief and wonder mixed together. She took his hands, holding them tightly, and he held hers back as if the whole future lived in that simple clasp.

“I have dreamed of this,” she said, her voice soft and shining. “I hoped one day you would ask. I hoped I would be ready to say yes without looking away.”

“You were always the answer I wanted,” Rohan said. “Even when courage sat heavy on my tongue and I could barely get the words out.”

She laughed again, quiet and full. “And you were always the boy who made ordinary days feel like forever had already begun.”

He drew her into a mild hug, careful and warm. In the open corridor the hug felt free, and she stayed in his arms with her face turned fully into his shoulder, still and sure. It was the first time they hugged like this openly on campus. She rested her cheek against his shoulder for a breath, then leaned up and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. When they eased apart, their hands found each other again.

They stood like that for a long, bright stretch of silence, smiling at each other, letting the joy stay. Isha’s heart kept repeating yes, yes, yes. She wanted to keep this corridor, this question, this answer, forever.

Then, slowly, a quieter thought rose beneath the happiness. Her parents. Their rules. Their hard eyes when love arrived without their permission first.

The change showed on her face before she found the words.

Rohan saw it at once. He tightened his hold on her hands.

“Don’t worry about your parents,” he said gently. “I will speak to mine. My father is the panchayat head of our village. He has a way of convincing people, even the stubborn ones. Once he and my mother understand, they will go to your parents. They will speak for us.”

Isha looked up at him. The worry was still there, but trust rose through it like light through thin cloud. She squeezed his fingers and nodded.

“Then we begin,” she said softly.

“We begin,” Rohan answered.

In the corridor outside the celebrating hall, with their hands joined and the future finally spoken aloud, the decision settled between them like a vow already kept.

On the drive home, Rohan steered his hatchback through the evening streets of Pune with his mind still floating. The doctoral hood lay folded on the back seat. The certificate rested on the passenger seat beside him, catching the last soft light through the window. She had said yes. After three years of quiet devotion, she would be his wife. Joy moved through him in waves, bright and almost weightless, and under it sat a steady gratitude. He owed so much of this path to Kunal.

The memories rose on their own.

They had met on the first day of college. Rohan walked into the hostel room assigned to him and found Kunal already there, bags open, talking to someone on the phone as if the whole building belonged to him. Kunal was loud and restless. Rohan was quiet and serious. Somehow that was enough. Within weeks they were inseparable. By choice they stayed roommates through every semester after that, two boys who learned each other’s habits the way brothers do. They shared late nights, exam fear, cheap tea, and the kind of loyalty that needed no performance.

At graduation, Rohan’s name sat at the top of the list. Kunal barely passed his classes because photography and sports had taken all his time. While professors and friends told Rohan he was a fool for turning down corporate offers to become a lecturer, Kunal was the only one who stood beside him and said, ‘Do what you actually want, brother. The rest will manage.’

They kept living together after college. Rohan joined the university as a lecturer and poured himself into research. Life settled into a quiet rhythm of shared rent, shared meals, and Kunal’s restless energy filling the house whenever Rohan came home late from the lab.

Then Isha arrived.

She joined as Lab In-charge in the EEE department, and her desk sat in a clean line of sight from Rohan’s faculty table. The first time he looked up and saw her, the world narrowed. Fair luminous skin. Soft oval face. Large dark eyes, slightly upturned, watchful as a cat’s. She moved through the lab in conservative sarees, pallu neat, posture careful, every inch of her wrapped in respectability. Under those sarees lived the body that would haunt him: full breasts that filled the blouse with a heavy, graceful curve, a narrow waist, and wide hips that turned ordinary walking into something his mind catalogued without permission. The ultimate dream pornstar body, hidden inside campus sarees.

At night he lay awake for hours. When he closed his eyes, she returned: that same hourglass shape, those same soft lines, the conservative saree sliding through his imagination. He was restless and aching, caught between respect and hunger. Hypnagogic images flashed behind his lids of her waist, her breasts, and the fall of cloth over hips he had memorized from across a room. He woke tired and still wanting.

He talked to Kunal about her for hours, nights on end.

“Write her a letter,” Kunal said at last, half laughing, half serious. “You’re dying in slow motion.”

Kunal helped him write it. Line by line. Soft words. Honest ones. When Rohan still hesitated with the finished page in his hand, Kunal pointed at him with a grin that meant business.

“If you don’t give her that letter,” he said, “I will kick you in the balls myself.”

Rohan gave it.

Four days later it was back on his desk. On it, in red ink, she had written Yes. Love began there, shy and certain. Three years followed. Most of their love lived in long night phone calls, talking about anything and everything in their world. On weekends they met in the park, then at the mall, and later in the movie theatres, where in the dark she kissed his cheek. Hands held. Soft looks. Mild hugs. Those cheek kisses felt like vows. For him those three years felt like minutes, because he was with her. And today she had said yes once more.

Rohan turned onto their street and passed the little park at the corner. At their duplex the first-floor lights were already on. He swung left into the parking driveway, stopped at the steel gates, and rolled the car in beside Kunal’s sports bike. At the end of the driveway the stairs climbed past the ground-floor studio to their flat above. He took them with the certificate under his arm, the evening still warm on his face.

Inside, the hall opened at the center of the first-floor 2BHK, the kitchen quiet beyond it. Kunal sat at his media desk, the big computer and screens glowing soft, one ankle crossed over his knee as he scrolled like any other night. He glanced up when Rohan came through the door, easy and unhurried.

“What’s the update?” he said.

Rohan kept his face as blank as he could manage. He held out the PhD certificate.

Kunal took it, scanned the name, and grinned. “Nice. Congrats on that. Now what about the main thing?”

Rohan scratched the back of his neck and looked at the wall, then at the floor. “I did meet her…”

He let the silence hang. Kunal waited a beat, then sat forward.

“Idiot. Did you get cold feet again? I’m going to kill you now.”

Rohan laughed, the blank face gone. “You are now looking at Mr. Isha.”

Kunal stared, then barked a laugh and shoved his shoulder. “You bugger. You finally did it. We’re going out now and you’re paying the bill.”

Rohan went to change. Kunal stayed in the hall a moment longer, the screens still glowing behind him, and looked at the empty space where his friend had stood.

The words Mr. Isha sat warm in his chest. After three years of letters, night calls, park walks, and that soft, stubborn patience, the man had finally asked. Kunal grinned at the wall, then the grin settled into something quieter.

He had known boys like Rohan were rare long before anyone else bothered to look.

College had shown it first. First year, same hostel room, two opposite lives pressed into one set of walls. Kunal was restless, average in class, always somewhere else in his head. Rohan was serious, steady, and somehow never tired of standing up for people. Kunal started calling him Karna for the joke of it, then for the truth of it. The nickname stuck. Friends used it. Juniors used it. By the end, half the block answered to Karna when someone shouted for Rohan, and a few newcomers honestly thought that was his name. Kunal never corrected them with much energy. The name fit.

After college, the fit mattered more.

Kunal had no job and no direction, only a borrowed camera and a stubborn love for pictures. Ordinary openings came and went. He hated every one of them. Rent pressed. Pride pressed harder. Most people saw a restless boy who had scbangd through exams and should grow up. Rohan saw something else.

He bought Kunal his first proper DSLR.

“Make it your work,” he said, as if the choice were already clean.

Kunal had called that camera a seed. Rohan had called it a gift. Both were true. The seed grew slowly. Early studio years were thin and loud with worry. Clients were few. The ground-floor space waited through long empty afternoons. Shared rent still had to be paid. Rohan never made the struggle feel like a lecture. He stood there, paid what needed paying, ate whatever late meal they managed, and kept believing when belief was the only useful currency left.

When the work finally began to hold, Kunal opened a joint account for the studio and put Rohan’s name beside his own as co-owner. Seed money deserved a share. Rohan smiled, nodded, and left every paise untouched. The account sat there like quiet proof of a debt Kunal felt every day and Rohan refused to collect.

That was Karna. That had always been Karna.

Kunal shut the screens, grabbed his keys, and followed the sound of Rohan’s footsteps toward the stairs. Tonight his brother had finally asked, and the girl had said yes. Tonight they would eat well, laugh loud, and Rohan would pay because Kunal had said so.

And under the jokes, Kunal carried the older truth with him: whatever good had grown from that first DSLR, from those hard years, from the studio downstairs, it had grown because one man believed in him when almost nobody else did.

---

A week later, Isha was folding a saree on her bed when her phone rang. The screen showed Mother. She wiped her hands on her pallu and answered with the soft, ready voice she always kept for home.

“Hello, Ma.”

“Isha,” Saroja said, brisk and certain, as if the matter had already been settled before the call began. “Listen carefully. We have planned an alliance for you.”

For a second the room tilted. Isha’s fingers froze on the folded cloth.

“Ma… what are you saying?” Her voice rose too fast. “Alliance? What alliance? I don’t—”

“Yes,” Saroja said. “Your father has agreed. We will have the engagement next week. Book your tickets and come next weekend.”

Panic climbed Isha’s throat. An engagement next week, another man, another life — the words stacked too fast to hold. She stood up without meaning to, the saree forgotten on the bed.

“Ma, I can’t,” she said. “I am… I mean, there is… Ma, please, I already—” The words stuck. She could not say his name. “There is something. No. I mean… I have been… for a long time I… Ma, I can’t just suddenly—”

“Don’t worry so much,” Saroja cut in, gentler now, the way she spoke when she thought she understood. “The groom is from your college only. They are fine with you continuing work even after marriage. That is already discussed. You can keep your job. So stop fretting.”

Isha closed her mouth. Hope arrived so suddenly she almost laughed from the shock of it. Of course her mother thought it was about the job. In her house, girls did not fall in love. They listened. They came home when they were told.

“From my college?” Isha asked carefully. Life pressed back into her chest, thin but bright. “Who is he, Ma?”

“Some lecturer,” Saroja said. “His father is the panchayat president. Very reputed family. Looks like his parents saw you on your campus. They liked you and approached us through contacts.”

The last of the fear left her body in one long breath.

It was Rohan’s father, the panchayat head, the man who could convince stubborn people. He had done exactly what Rohan promised. He had made their love look like an arranged marriage, neat and respectable, arriving through the front door of family pride.

Isha sank back onto the bed and lay there smiling into the quiet room, the phone still warm against her ear.

“Can you at least send the photo of the groom?” she asked, trying to sound only curious.

A moment later the message arrived. She opened it.

Rohan looked back at her from the screen, formal shirt, quiet eyes, the same face that had asked her to marry him in a university corridor one week ago.

“Okay, Ma,” Isha said, her voice steady now, warm with a joy she kept carefully small. “I will come.”

She ended the call and kept the phone on her chest, his photo still open above her heart. The road ahead was clear now. A wedding that could walk through her parents’ front door without shame. With the fear gone, memory rose on its own, soft and complete, from the first day she had ever heard his name.

When she joined as Lab In-charge, a final-year girl had paused at her new desk, looked across the faculty floor, and smiled.

“Look,” the girl said. “Your desk is straight from Rohan sir’s desk.”

Isha had followed the line of sight, curious. “How do you know a lecturer from another department by name?”

The girl laughed as if the question itself was funny. “There is no one on this campus who doesn’t know him. Attend one class of his and he will impress you with his knowledge. And if any student has a problem, we go to him. He stands by us, takes it to the higher-ups, and gets it resolved. He is such a kind person.”

Isha had only nodded then. He sounded kind, knowledgeable, and popular for the right reasons. The name settled somewhere quiet in her.

A few months later, that same kind man walked up to her desk.

He fumbled first, talking about the weather, the corridor fan, and something about the lab schedule that did not need saying. His ears had gone faintly pink. At last he held out a folded letter, eyes unable to stay on hers.

“Please read it,” he said, and then he ran.

She had a class to reach urgently. She slipped the letter into her drawer and left. When she returned, work swallowed the afternoon, and the letter slipped from her mind. Only while leaving in the evening did she remember. She searched the drawer, the files, the edge of the desk, and found only her usual papers. Fear touched her then, small and sharp. A letter from a man had vanished from her keeping.

On the third day, which happened to be her birthday, she went to the temple and prayed for the wellbeing of her future. Back at her desk afterward, she opened the drawer and took out a note she needed for the day. The letter had stuck to it; as she lifted the note, it fell to the floor.

She picked it up with careful hands and read.

Rohan had written a beautiful poem, soft enough to make her breath catch. At the end he asked only if he could love her, and left the rest untouched.

Her upbringing rose at once like a wall. Love was a crime, parents knew what was best, and the city and love both corrupted — she had heard those lines all her life, spoken like scripture.

But the letter melted through them. And she had just come from prayer, asking the universe to look after her future, and the letter had fallen at her feet as if answering. It felt like a sign, and she believed it with her whole heart.

She took the whole night.

All she had ever heard about him was good. He wanted to love her. He was not even asking her to do anything in return. Lying awake in the dark, she turned the thought over and over until a simple answer settled in her: why not?

In the morning, when no one was there, she wrote YES in red ink and left the letter on his desk. The rest became their quiet history.

She was the one who asked that their love stay secret, sealed so tightly it could never travel home by rumor or accident. Rohan had no complaint. He only agreed, gentle and sure, as if her fear deserved protection more than his pride deserved display.

In the years that followed she saw other male lecturers try their luck with her: sweet talk in corridors, lingering smiles, careful compliments dressed as professional courtesy. Rohan saw it all from the far end of the floor. On their night calls he left those men alone and stayed easy beside her voice. After a lifetime of being watched and corrected, that ease felt like freedom. She loved him for it.

She loved to gossip. Rohan became her only true friend for that soft late-hour talk. She would scold modern dresses, complain about girls and boys behaving shamelessly, insist that premarital sex was a sin that would send people to hell. She knew he did not fully agree with half the things she said. Still he only hummed and let her talk. That small mercy made the nights feel safe.

For three full years he loved her quietly and patiently, staying within the soft limits she could bear even when desire sat clear in his eyes. And after carrying that feeling for so long, he had found the courage to ask her to marry him. Then he had taken the full weight of speaking to the families, instead of leaving that burden on her shoulders.

Isha pressed her cheek into the pillow and smiled until her eyes stung. All of it had cleared. All of it had come home.

Warmth gathered low in her belly without warning. Her breath shortened. Then she felt it — her panties were wet.

She froze where she lay.

For a moment she thought she had wet herself. Shame rushed up her neck. She lay completely still in the dark, confused and embarrassed, with no name for what her body had just done.

[sakurasan]

Chapter 2 — The Engagement Aftermath

Plastic chairs lined the walls of Isha’s childhood living room. Both families filled the room, talking carefully.

Rohan sat beside his father, hands on his knees. His mother spoke softly with Saroja near the doorway. Uncles compared village roads and train timings. Children peeked from the corridor and were shooed back.

Across the room, Isha sat between her aunts in a pale green saree. She kept her gaze down most of the time.

She and Rohan did not look at each other for long.

When their eyes met for a second, both looked away.

An elder uncle on Isha’s side cleared his throat and smiled toward Rohan.

“So,” he said, “you teach at her college. Have you seen her there?”

Rohan nodded once. His voice stayed even.

“I have seen her a few times on campus,” he said.

A soft murmur moved through the room.

Saroja turned toward her daughter. “And you? Have you met him before?”

Isha shook her head.

“No, Ma,” she said. “I have heard his name only. I have never seen him.”

Someone laughed lightly. Rohan’s father smiled quietly.

The formal talk continued. Horoscope notes were shown. Work after marriage was confirmed again. Dates were discussed. Plates of sweets waited on the side table.

They exchanged rings and took blessings while aarti smoke curled toward the ceiling fan. Photographers asked them to stand closer, then closer still. For the camera, Rohan and Isha stood side by side. His fingers brushed hers once when no one was looking. She did not move away.

The engagement was done.

Later, when the elders had drifted toward tea, Isha’s cousins found Rohan near the veranda steps. They came in smiling, already treating him like one of their own.

One cousin laughed and nudged his shoulder. “Listen when she talks, don’t make her wait for replies, and if she ever calls home crying, we will all come to Pune together.”

Another grinned and held up his phone. “I am saving your number right now. First sad voice note from her, and this whole group is on a train.”

A third clapped his back. “Keep her happy, sir. That is the whole job.”

Rohan smiled and nodded, caught in the circle of jokes, when Isha’s elder brother, Praveen, walked over and parted them with an easy hand.

“Enough,” Praveen said, laughing with them. “Leave the poor man alone. He will take care of my sister better than anyone standing here.”

The cousins groaned and backed off, still grinning. Someone pointed at Isha across the room and mouthed a last reminder, still smiling. Praveen stayed beside Rohan until the teasing thinned, then tipped his head toward the quieter side of the veranda.

“Come. Two minutes.”

They stepped away from the noise. For a moment Praveen only looked out at the yard. When he spoke again, the joke was gone.

“Our parents are not easy people,” he said. “You will learn that soon enough. I got out early. I was a boy, so they gave me that much rope. From senior college I pushed for hostel, fought for it, and left. Once I was out, their hands could not reach me the same way.”

He glanced back toward the house, then at Rohan.

“Isha never got that chance. She stayed under them. Every rule, every fear, every small permission — she paid for all of it. She has been the one who took their methods the hardest.”

His voice stayed low.

“I am asking you not to become another cage. Don’t control her the way they did. Take care of her. Let her breathe.”

Rohan met his eyes without looking away.

“I will,” he said. “I respect women more than anything else in my life. Their free will matters to me. I will never take that from her.”

Praveen studied him a second longer, then nodded once, quiet and satisfied.

“Good,” he said. “Then we understand each other.” He tipped his head toward the house, the host again. “Come. Lunch is ready.”

Rohan followed him in.

After the meal, Rohan’s family left first. His parents started for their village. Rohan left in his car soon after, with only a polite goodbye at the gate. One by one the other guests followed, until the house was quiet again.

In her room, Isha packed her bag. The new sarees from the engagement went in carefully, folded over one another, soft and bright under her hands. Saroja pressed a box of sweets into her hands and reminded her, for the third time, to call as soon as she reached Pune.

Praveen drove her from the village into Nashik to catch her bus. Near the stand he parked away from the crowd.

“Isha,” he said, “I spoke to Rohan. He seems like a nice guy.”

“Yes, Bhaiya,” she said.

“Looks are deceiving.” His voice stayed mild, but the caution under it was real. “I will do a background check on him. I don’t want you to get caught from one control freak to another.”

Lying to their parents had never cost her much. Her brother was different. With him, she could not hold the lie.

“Bhaiya,” she said quietly. “Actually, I know Rohan very well.”

Praveen turned. Surprise cut clean across his face.

“What do you mean?”

“Actually, we have been in love for the past three years.”

For a second he only stared. Then the surprise broke into something brighter, almost boyish.

“I can’t believe this.” He laughed under his breath, shaking his head. “I am so excited you are marrying someone you love. I was scared what groom Dad would bring for you.”

Heat rose in her throat. She pressed on before fear could close it again.

“Actually, he is waiting here for me.”

She told him the rest. Praveen listened without interrupting, one hand on the open window, his face moving from shock to understanding to quiet pride.

When she finished, he sat quiet a moment longer. Then his voice changed. Softer for her, firmer for the house they had left behind.

“Listen to me carefully, Isha. From today, stop hearing Ma and Dad the way you always have. Their fear is not your life. Their rules are not your future.” He held her eyes. “Rohan is your future. Only him. You marry him, you build with him, you decide with him. Not with people who never let you breathe.”

Something in her chest loosened and shook at the same time. No one in that house had ever given her permission to stop obeying.

“You mean it?” she whispered.

“I mean it,” Praveen said. “I got out. You are getting out too. Don’t carry their voice into your marriage and call it duty.”

He exhaled once and nodded toward the road ahead.

“Come. Show me.”

They walked together past the stand noise until the car came into view a little ahead. Rohan was already outside it. When he saw Praveen beside her, his body went still. Isha reached him first.

“He knows,” she said softly.

Rohan’s eyes flicked to Praveen, then back to her. Before he could find an apology, Praveen held up a hand and smiled.

“Relax,” he said. “She told me everything. The act you two put on back home? Strong work. Even I believed it.” He glanced between them, warmer now. “Take care of each other. And you—” he tipped his chin at Rohan “—you already said the right things on the veranda. Keep them.”

Rohan nodded, still catching up, relief slow to reach his face.

“I will.”

Praveen squeezed Isha’s shoulder once, the way he had when she was younger and the house felt too large.

“Remember what I told you.”

She nodded, the words still sitting heavy and bright behind her ribs. He waited until she slipped into the passenger seat with her bag at her feet, until Rohan shut the door and started the engine, then raised a hand and stepped back into the stand crowd.

“We did it,” Isha said softly.

“We did,” Rohan answered.

They did not speak much after that. Fields slid past. Every few minutes Isha looked at her own hand, checking the ring.

Then she caught him.

He thought she was still watching the road. His eyes dropped, quick and careful, to the soft rise of her blouse, then lower, to the curve of her hip against the seat, before they returned to the highway as if nothing had happened.

If any other man had looked at her like that, she would have burned. She had burned before. This time the heat was different. She suddenly felt pleased that it was Rohan looking. In three years of closeness, his eyes had always stayed on her face. This was the first time, sitting this near, that she had watched them travel beyond it.

When his gaze held the road again, she let hers travel too. The line of his throat. His hands on the wheel. The shape of his shoulders under the shirt he had worn for the engagement. She looked away before he turned.

After that, neither of them quite settled. Conversation came in short pieces and broke again. Each time one of them thought the other was busy with the traffic or the window, a glance slipped lower than it should have. Marriage was fixed now. The old careful romance had begun to thicken into something physical, quiet and new between them.

Near Pune the traffic thickened. Evening light softened the city. He turned toward her flat.

When he stopped outside her building, neither of them moved at once. The street was quiet. The air in the car still held what the drive had started.

Then Rohan leaned in, the way he always had, aiming for her cheek.

Isha turned her face at the last second.

His mouth found her lips instead.

For a moment he went still, caught by the change. She did not pull back. The kiss stayed longer than either of them had ever allowed. Her hand found his shirt near the ribs. His palm settled at her waist. The kiss deepened, and their breath mixed.

When they finally eased apart, Isha’s eyes stayed closed a beat longer than his. Rohan looked at her as if he was still catching up.

“Good night,” she whispered.

“Good night,” he said, voice lower than usual.

She climbed the stairs with the taste of him still on her lips. He stood by the car until her flat light came on, then drove home.

The kiss had left him hard. Even on the drive back it did not go down. By the time he reached the duplex he was still aching in his trousers, and he thanked the day for one mercy. Kunal was out of station. At least his friend would not see him like this.

In his room he lay down, opened his trousers, and took himself in hand. The kiss came back at once, and his mind did what it always did. It opened the moment wider and brighter than it had been. Her mouth turned under his. Her saliva tasted like honey. Her tongue was shy against his, then surer. The smell of jasmine and clean skin and her filled his head until thinking became useless. He stroked to that memory, slow at first, then harder.

When he came, it was only to her. The pleasure emptied him. His life felt complete. The PhD was done. The woman he loved was his. He passed out still breathing hard, fully content.

Across the city, Isha opened her flat door to noise and light.

Her two flatmates, Riya and Sneha, both colleagues from campus, were still awake in the hall. The moment they saw her bag and the ring, they were on their feet.

“There she is,” Riya said, grinning. “Mrs Almost Rohan.”

Sneha caught her hand and turned the ring toward the light. “Congratulations, madam.”

Isha laughed, awkward and pleased. “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank us,” Riya said. “We are still recovering. You walked around looking so innocent and naïve, and quietly you landed the biggest fish on campus.”

“I did not land anyone,” Isha said, heat climbing her face. “It was not like that.”

“Of course not,” Sneha said, already laughing. “The sweetest lecturer in the university just happened to fall into your lap. Pure accident.”

Isha kept defending herself, but the teasing did not sting the way campus gossip used to. For once, she enjoyed it. Their jokes made the day feel real.

Sneha tipped her head toward the door, still smiling.

“Good. So next time we come home late, fewer of those faces from you.”

The smile on Isha’s face faltered. She knew those faces. She had given them freely.

“I am sorry,” she said. “For that. I will be different from now.”

Riya raised her eyebrows, surprised and pleased.

“All right, then,” Riya said, tapping the ring. “When is the wedding?”

“Soon,” Isha said. “We will know in a week.”

Sneha snorted. “What difference will a date make? Those two will just sit and stare at each other even on the first night.”

Riya tipped her chin at Isha. “Then what about kids?”

“I don’t think that is happening,” Sneha said before Isha could answer.

“I will have three,” Isha said at once, earnest enough that both of them laughed harder.

Sneha wiped at her eye. “Hope Rohan knows what to do in bed. I am very sure you know nothing.”

“You are too much,” Isha said, face burning. “We even kissed just now.”

Riya’s grin sharpened. “Where? On the forehead? Or did you mistake a cheek smooch for a kiss?”

“No.” Isha pointed at her own mouth, stubborn. “Here.”

That was as much as she could take. Under her saree her panties were already wet, and their laughter was climbing toward something she could not stand in the open hall. She grabbed her bag, fled into her room, and shut the door hard.

Outside, Riya and Sneha were still laughing.

Isha leaned against the door for a second. Outside, the laughing had thinned. Inside her, something would not settle.

She was wet. The cloth between her thighs clung, and a strange ache lived low in her pussy, restless and new. Her nipples had hardened under the blouse without her asking them to. She stood there breathing too fast, then began to strip because the clothes felt wrong against all of it.

The saree came off first. Then the petticoat. Then her panties, sticky when she peeled them down. Blouse and bra stayed on. She lay back on the bed with her bare legs open to the air.

Between her legs, her clit felt like it was vibrating on its own, a small bright itch she could not ignore. She reached down and touched it with her fingers.

It felt good.

She pressed again, unsure, then rubbed where the itch was strongest. Wetness spread under her hand. She kept rubbing, clumsy and curious, chasing the feeling without knowing what she was chasing. Her thighs tensed. Her breath shortened. A few minutes later her body shivered hard, pleasure breaking through her in a confused wave that left her soft and empty.

She slept like that, blouse still on, fingers still near the wet heat between her legs.

Around two in the morning, across the city, Rohan’s sleep turned.

In the dream it was already the morning after their first night. Isha woke early, got ready, and went to the kitchen. Relatives filled the space with tea and talk. Saroja stood near the stove and touched her daughter’s cheek.

“Beti, are you happy?”

“Yes, Ma,” Isha said.

Her mouth held the right answer. Her face did not. Something quiet and unfinished sat in her eyes, and Rohan saw it clearly from wherever the dream had placed him. Sweat broke across his skin. He woke with his heart racing, the room dark, that face still behind his lids.

Would he be enough?

He sat up, rubbed his face with both hands, and could not shake the look she had worn while saying yes.

---

In the week that followed, campus life returned, and the engagement news moved faster than either of them expected. Once students learned he was settling down, congratulations found them in corridors, stairwells, and the canteen line from people they had barely spoken to.

Isha received more of it than he did. Female students especially stopped her, smiling, curious, wanting a look at the woman their favourite teacher had chosen. Faculty who used to pass with a nod now paused to wish her well. She liked the new spotlight. It sat warm on her shoulders in a way her old careful life never had.

They met openly in the canteen now, close enough for the whole hall to see. In his free periods, Rohan walked to her lab and sat near her desk while she graded record notes. The room stayed quiet. She worked. He watched. When she glanced up, she found his eyes already on her.

He looked at her while she worked, at her face and the soft shape of her under the saree. Desire rose clean and simple, and under it the same private fear returned. Would he be enough?

She felt his eyes on her and grew wet behind her composure. For the first time she understood how physically hungry he was for her when they were this close and allowed. The hunger in his looking made her own body restless. She liked it.

Almost every day he drove to her building for pickup and drop. In the car they spoke little and looked at each other more than the road needed. At her gate he kissed her longer than before, then watched her climb the stairs before he left.

At night her novice touching continued. Her fingers found her clit again. It still felt good. Each passing day it satisfied her less. The shiver came smaller, or took longer, or left her wanting when it ended. Her body was asking for more than her hand knew how to give.

Across the city, Rohan’s nights turned to porn. It had always been his only real reference for sex. He searched for women built like her and men built like him. Clips with her kind of body were easy to find. Clips with a cock near his five inches were not. Again and again the matches skewed interracial, the men thick and long, some near a foot, moving into bodies that looked too much like hers. Heat and shame arrived together. His worry deepened.

By the end of the week she had mapped his gaze. It no longer stayed only on her eyes. Again and again it slipped to the shape of her under the blouse and to the sliver of waist the pallu left when it shifted. She noticed. She carried that knowledge into the weekend.

Sunday evening they came back from a movie. At her building he kissed her the way he always did. She wanted his hands to travel. Asking for more would feel unladylike, and the embarrassment sat thicker than the desire. So she tried another thought. If she gave him more to look at, he might take the next step himself.

Until now her blouses had always been stitched back home by her mother’s tailor. On the ground floor of their building lived a ladies’ tailor in her thirties. Riya and Sneha always used her and always praised the fit. Isha had walked past that door for months. The next day she went in.

Savita looked up from the sewing machine, took in Isha’s face and figure in one slow practical sweep, and smiled like a woman who already knew the work ahead.

“Come,” Savita said. “Sit. You have a beautiful body. I can make you look even better if you let me.”

The old Isha would have left at that. This Isha thought of Rohan’s eyes at the pallu’s edge and stayed.

Savita set the catalogue on her lap and looked at Isha properly. “Tell me. What do you need?”

Isha swallowed. “Two blouses. Something trending.” The next part came quieter. “And one nauvari. For my wedding.”

She had a whole list to stitch later. This was just to see how Savita’s work was.

Savita’s smile widened. “Blouses and a nauvari. Then I take the full body.”

She opened the catalogue and sweet-talked her through page after page, bold necks, open backs, sleeves cut high on the arm. Heat climbed Isha’s throat. She kept saying yes.

Savita stood with the tape already in her hands.

“Full numbers,” she said. “Saree off. Old blouse too. Bra can stay.”

Isha’s hands went to her pallu and stopped. Heat climbed her throat. Undressing here, in the open room, felt too much.

Savita’s smile stayed soft. “Just us two. Come.”

That was enough. Isha undressed where she stood, careful fingers on pins and hooks, freer now, until she was only in her bra and petticoat. Savita’s gaze moved over her the way a hand might, from throat to the heavy swell of her breasts, down the narrow waist, over the full hips that filled the cloth.

“Stand straight,” Savita said. “Arms a little out.” She paused, eyes dropping. “Panty on?”

Isha’s face heated. “Yes.”

“Then petticoat off,” Savita said, as if it were ordinary. “I need the bust clean. Waist and hip too.”

Isha’s fingers found the lace at her waist. She untied it and let the petticoat fall. The cloth pooled at her feet. She stood in bra and panty in the middle of Savita’s room, bare legs cool, body suddenly too much in the open air.

The tape came first around her bust. Savita’s knuckles brushed the soft underside through the bra as she pulled it snug, then settled the measure across the fullest part. Her palm stayed a beat longer than the tape needed, cupping the weight as if checking how it hung.

“Thirty-six,” Savita murmured, almost to herself, and wrote it down. Her thumb stroked once along the side curve, light enough to pass for adjusting the cloth. “C cup. Full. Soft.”

Isha’s nipples tightened inside the bra. Heat flooded her face. Maybe this was how good tailors worked. Savita was a woman. Women knew women’s bodies. That must be it.

Savita knelt and drew the tape around her waist. Her fingers spanned the narrowest place and pressed in gently, learning the give of skin. “Twenty-six.” Then the tape dropped to her hips. Both hands shaped the roundness before the number came, palms warm through thin panty cloth, thumbs resting at the soft sides as if the hip itself needed holding to be believed. “Thirty-eight. God, what a figure.”

She rose close enough. One more pass: tape from shoulder to bust point, then under each breast from the side, Savita’s hand sliding in to lift and settle the weight while she pretended to mark where a cup should sit.

“For the neck and the push,” Savita said, almost idle. “I need to feel how much you have.”

Isha stood still and let her. The touch was thorough and somehow still dressed as work. Savita’s fingertips traced the lower curve again, slower this time, and Isha told herself the shiver was only cold air on bare arms. Between her thighs she was wetter than a fitting should make anyone. She clasped her hands in front of her and waited to be finished, too shy to step back, too innocent to name what Savita was taking from the moment.

Savita wrote the last line in her book and smiled that same knowing smile.

“Next weekend,” she said. “Your two blouses and the nauvari. Deep. Sharp. You'll see.”

Isha dressed with fingers that would not steady. When the saree was back on, Savita clicked her tongue and stepped in close again.

“Not like that,” she said. “You are dbanging like a grandmother. Girls your age wear it like this.”

She loosened the saree at Isha’s waist and tied it lower on the hip, then drew the pallu further to the side with an extra fold and a steeper slant. Cool air found Isha’s tummy. Standing straight, a good portion of her hip showed above the new waistline. Savita’s hands smoothed the cloth once more than the dbang needed, then stepped back to look.

“See? That is how it should sit.”

Isha looked at herself in Savita’s mirror and something bright and rebellious lit in her chest. She smiled, pleased, already sure Rohan would like looking at her even more. She went back upstairs still smiling. If the work was good, the rest of her wedding list would come back through that door.

Monday morning she dressed the way Savita had taught her. She liked the mirror before she left. She walked the corridors with her chin a little higher, steps sure. More people greeted her now, students and staff alike. She told herself it was because she was Rohan’s fiancée. The real reason lived in the way she carried herself.

At night the shiver under her fingers came weaker each time. She lay awake wanting his hand where hers had been, wanting him to hold her tighter, rougher. She wanted him to know how hard her nipples stood inside her blouse whenever he stared, thinking she had not noticed.

Across the city, sleep started to leave him. She looked more like a sex dream every day, and the ache got worse. He had always guessed she had a porn-star body under those sarees. Now, with so much of her open to him, he was sure.

For all his intelligence, that sharp mind still did not read the new dbang as an invitation. He told himself she was only wearing what felt comfortable.

At night, watching porn, he stopped hunting for men his size. He searched only women built like her, and he studied their faces at orgasm, that open, undone look of a woman fully satisfied.

Then he closed his eyes and tried to build it in his head, the way he worked through any problem. He imagined himself inside Isha, moving with everything he had, and waited for that same look to break across her face. It never came. He changed the picture, gave himself more, tried her a different way, and imagined it all over again. However he ran it in his mind, her face stayed unfinished. He could not make himself believe he would ever put that look there.

By the end of the week she was offering him more with every sideways dbang of the pallu, and still all she got was a kiss. Frustration sat sharp in her chest. Three years of upright courtship had trained him dormant, and she cursed herself for it.

He drove home wanting her harder than before, unsettled by faces on a screen he could not honestly give her. He wanted her happy. Loving her with his whole heart no longer felt like enough.

[sakurasan]

Chapter 3 Six Months

That Sunday morning, Isha went down to Savita’s door. Savita opened it, smiled, and pulled her inside.

“Come. Try now. Blouses and nauvari are ready.”

Isha tried the first blouse. Lower neck, high sleeves, real weight in the mirror. She liked what she saw. The second blouse sat the same. When she turned, the open back showed her old cotton bra cutting an ugly line across.

“That kills it,” Savita said. “These necks need one proper set. A silk push-up with a lace back and a modern cut, and a matching silk bikini with it. Try it in my bedroom. I’ll wait.”

Savita handed her the pair and stepped out. Isha changed in the bedroom. She came back in the new blouse. Her nipples had hardened against the thin cups. The open back showed no trace of bra.

She tried the nauvari next. The dbang sat low on her hip; cool silk brushed bare skin above the bikini line.

“Your work is lovely,” she said.

She bought five sets, ran upstairs for sarees, and came back with cloth for fresh blouse cuts.

“These next. More blouses.” Her voice thinned. “Can you go deeper in front? More push. Like—”

Savita slid both hands under her breasts through the blouse and pushed up until the cleavage deepened.

“Like this? The way they show in the movies?”

Isha nodded.

“I will cut deeper necks from these, with stronger cups, by the end of next week.”

She left with the packets against her chest, silk already on under her saree.

That evening her phone rang while she was still folding the new blouses into her cupboard.

“Isha,” Saroja said, brisk as always. “Listen carefully. The priests have found the wedding date. The next proper one is six months from now. Your father and his people have agreed. So this is the one. Start thinking of leave from college, and shopping.”

“Six months?” Isha asked. “Why so long, Ma?”

“As you know, your horoscope is complicated, right?” Saroja said, as if reminding a child of an old fact. “That is why we did not get a groom for you for so long. Dates are not easy either. This is what they found. We take it.”

“Okay, Ma,” she said. “I heard you.”

Isha sat down on the edge of her bed. Six months until the wedding. Six months before she could sleep with him. Her body already wanted him now.

Sleep gave her clarity. She wanted Rohan now, not after six months. In her mind she was already his. If that made her a bad girl, she would be one, and she would make him a bad boy too. Her hand went to Savita’s new blouse.

Isha walked into campus proud of the new blouse. To her it was modern. At break Rohan came near her desk and saw more skin than before. After the break she turned to walk back. The open back showed the shape of her and bare skin. Rohan stared. His cock twitched right there. Cool air moved over her breasts through the thin silk as she walked.

At her gate that evening his mouth stayed on hers longer. His hand went from her hip up her bare back. She went upstairs sure the blouse was working.

That night her fingers were not enough. She pressed the hard edge of her engagement ring against her clit and rubbed in small circles, then pinched it. Pussy hair caught in the ring. The tug stung, and even that felt good. She came, incomplete though.

Same night Rohan tried to find some sleep. His phone lay on his chest. He had finished watching porn with voluptuous women built like her.

Sleep took him. In the dream the clips played again.

A naked woman knelt on the floor, fair hips wide, heavy breasts hanging as she worked a thick black cock with both hands and her mouth. Spit shone on the shaft. Her lips stretched around the head, then slid deep until her throat took him. The man gripped her hair and fucked her mouth in short hard strokes. Then he lifted her clean off the floor and turned her around in the air. Her face swung into the light.

Rohan jolted. Soft oval. Dark eyes lifted at the corners. It was Isha.

The man stayed on his feet. He lined his cock to her pussy and drove in. She was fully airborne, held only by his hands under her thighs. He bounced her on the full length, wet flesh slapping each time she dropped. Her thighs pressed hard against her breasts, crushing them up toward her chin. Her bare back slid against his chest. Her eyes stared straight into the camera while her body took every stroke.

Rohan tried to call her name. He wanted it to stop. Other than her name, the word would not come. She did not hear him anyway. The man sped up, bouncing her harder, her breasts shaking between her thighs, her mouth falling open. They climaxed together. Cum filled her as her body locked and shook on his cock. Then Rohan saw it. The face of bliss. The satisfied look he had hunted on her since the engagement night and never found when he put himself inside her. Now he was not sure he should have tried to stop her.

That happiness lifted a weight off his chest. For the first time since that night, he slept deep.

The rest of the week she wore the new blouse. On campus his eyes stayed on her open back, and at her gate his hand found that bare skin again but never went further.

From Monday the dreams kept coming. In different clips he saw her face on the women, and big cocks fucked her to finish. The first night he had tried to call her name and make it stop. Through the week that resistance faded. He still flinched when another man took her, then less, then barely at all. By the end of the week he let the pictures run, and sleep came easier for him.

For Isha the opposite happened. Her body wanted more than fingers and a ring, so some nights she stood before the mirror still in her blouse, one hand inside her panty and the other pulling a nipple free of the silk to play with it until her legs shook, still unfinished.

By the weekend Savita delivered the deeper Bollywood blouses Isha had ordered.

Monday morning Isha stepped out of her room dressed for college in one of the new cuts. Riya stopped mid-sip and looked her over, grinning.

“Savita finally got you,” Riya said. “That blouse is dangerous.”

Sneha whistled once, soft. “Madam is serious now.”

Isha shrugged and reached for her keys. “It is comfortable.”

They laughed. She left before the laugh could turn into questions.

That week on campus the new cut hit Rohan harder than the first batch. Until now every blouse she wore had held her breasts close against her chest. These cups did the opposite. They lifted her breasts and pointed them forward, as if a hand had gathered them and aimed them at a mouth, and even when she stood straight or walked the corridor the shape stayed full and clear under the silk until his mouth went dry. No other woman on campus came close.

At night the dreams changed with her. The porn studios faded, and the fucking moved onto campus.

One night the dream put her alone at her lab desk after hours, still in saree. A big man walked in, taller and fitter than Rohan, and Isha looked up at him the way she looked at Rohan when she wanted a kiss.

The man pulled her out of the chair by the waist and kissed her hard. She opened for him at once. He shoved the pallu aside, got both hands under her blouse, and squeezed her breasts through the silk cups until she moaned into his mouth. Then he yanked the blouse open, tore the bra down, and took a nipple between his teeth. He stripped the saree to the floor next, dragged her petticoat up her thighs, and pushed two thick fingers into her panty. She was already wet. He fucked those fingers into her against the desk edge until her knees dipped.

He lifted her onto her own desk and pulled the panty off her ankles. Her heavy breasts sat bare under the tube lights, nipples wet from his mouth. He spread her thighs wide with his palms, spat on her open pussy, and rubbed the head of his thick cock through the spit and her wetness until she tried to pull him in with her heels.

He drove into her in one long push. She took the head with a broken breath, then the full length as her cunt stretched around him. He held her hips and fucked her on the desk hard enough that papers slid and a pen rolled to the floor, her breasts bouncing with every thrust. When her head tipped back he caught her hair, pulled her mouth to his, and kept pounding while he kissed her.

Then he laid her flat, pinned both breasts under his palms, and crushed them as he drove faster. Wet sounds filled the empty lab. He pulled out, flipped her onto her stomach across the desk, dragged her hips back, and sank into her from behind so deep her cheek pressed the wood. One hand stayed in her hair. The other reached under and rubbed her clit while he fucked her. Her mouth fell open against the desk. When they came, his cock pulsed deep inside her and her body locked and shook under him, that bliss face open against the desk.

He woke with no urge to push the dream away. He let the next nights run the same way, and sleep came easy.

Saturday afternoon Isha sat at her desk while a practicals class ran in her lab. She worked through forms and watched without speaking.

At another desk her senior colleague was checking a PG student’s work. He was in his forties, quiet, a friend she respected. The girl stood bent over the papers in a low-neck T-shirt, arguing that her assignment was correct. He tried to explain where she had gone wrong. From Isha’s seat the whole picture was clear. Each time he spoke, his eyes dropped to the girl’s cleavage and stayed a beat too long. He pulled them back to the page, then lost them again. He was trying hard, and he still could not keep them off her chest.

Cleavage worked on men even when they tried to look away, and Isha wondered if she could use that on Rohan.

That night she stood at her mirror still in her saree. The blouses were already doing their work. Only the pinned pallu still hid her cleavage. She thought about the PG girl bent over those papers, and about Rohan sitting across from her the same way. She did not need a big fall. Only a few inches. She unpinned the pallu and practiced a small slip: a slight turn of her shoulder, a soft shift of cloth, enough for the upper curve of her breasts to show, then a calm catch so it looked natural. She timed it until the few inches looked like nothing. She wanted him to look at her the way her senior colleague had looked at that student.

Monday morning she replaced the safety pin with a saree clip. At her desk she waited. When she saw Rohan walking toward her lab, she removed the clip and set it in her drawer. He sat across from her and they talked about the day’s work. As she spoke she moved a little in her chair, turned her shoulder once, reached for a file. The loose pallu slipped a few inches. Cleavage opened to him across the desk.

He froze, eyes wide, like a deer caught in headlights. She loved that look. The cloth did not fall the way it had in her mirror though. Half her cleavage stayed hidden under the fold, and no small shift would free the rest.

Through the next days she tried again whenever he sat near her. Sometimes the pallu gave her more. Sometimes it barely moved. Once it slipped enough that his mouth went dry mid-sentence. Never once did she get the full clear show she had practiced alone in her room.

In those same days, when Rohan stared at her across a desk or in the corridor, the dream bled into daylight. For a second he saw her bare and taken right there in the lab, the same way she was in his nights, while students walked past. He blinked and the room returned. The heat in his body did not.

Their goodnight kisses grew longer, and the hugs grew tighter. With her full breasts pressed into his chest she felt every breath he took.

---

Late one afternoon the next week Rohan sat in the canteen waiting for her. She came from the counter with two coffees, walking straight toward him, hips easy under the saree, breasts pointed forward in the blouse, eyes on his face. He watched every step.

She set her cup down at the seat across from him, then leaned over the table to place his. As she bent she drew the pallu down on purpose, enough for the full cleavage she had practiced for in her room. The cloth did not hold. It ran past her hands and fell open down her chest, and for a clear stretch of seconds she stood over him like that: the deep line between her breasts, the soft upper swell held forward by the cups, and the lower curve where silk met bare skin. Warm canteen light sat on that skin. Anyone behind him could have seen it too, but she did not seem to care.

Rohan’s eyes locked on her chest and stayed there. His mouth fell open. A thread of saliva gathered at the corner of his lips, shone, and slipped before he swallowed hard. Another bead formed while he still stared, pupils wide, breath stuck.

Weeks ago that much skin in a public place would have burned her with shame for days. She would have yanked the pallu up with shaking hands and hated herself. Now she felt none of that. She had meant to give him cleavage. The fall had given him more. He was looking. That was enough. Heat moved through her belly instead of embarrassment, and she kept her eyes on his wet mouth.

Then she laughed softly, drew the pallu back over her breasts, and sat down across from him.

“Sorry,” she said. “The cloth slipped.”

“It is fine,” he managed. “Fine.”

She kept seeing the drool at the corner of his mouth. Under the table his cock was hard and straining, and he kept his knees tight so the cloth would not show it. They drank the coffee. When the cups were empty she stood.

“Come,” she said. “We should walk back.”

He fumbled with his empty cup and did not rise. “You go ahead. I will follow in a bit.”

She gave him a questioning look, then turned for the path back to their departments. She knew he would watch from the chair. She put extra sway into her hips as she walked.

At once the dream bled over her. Two hunks appeared at her sides, walking with her as if they owned the corridor. The hunk on her left had his hand on her right ass. The hunk on her right held her left ass. Her hands rested on their hips, steering them along like she was taking them somewhere private. Rohan sat frozen and watched until the picture broke and only Isha remained, hips still moving, already farther down the path.

He stayed in the chair another fifteen minutes, waiting until his cock had gone soft, before he trusted himself to stand and leave.

That evening he parked near her building. For a moment they sat still. Then Rohan leaned across and kissed her, and this time his tongue pushed into her mouth.

She answered harder than he expected. Her hands came up, caught his head on both sides, and held him there while she kissed him back deep and wet, sucking at his tongue, pulling his mouth open wider. Her full breasts crushed into his chest. The pallu slid off her shoulder and pooled in her lap. She did not pull it up. Cleavage pressed bare against him and she only dragged him closer, biting his lower lip, then the corner of his mouth, then the soft skin of his cheek, then his mouth again as if she could not get enough of the taste. Her breath broke against his face. She kissed him like hunger with no patience left, tongue and teeth and wet sounds in the small car, until he was shaking under her hands.

“Isha,” he breathed when she finally let him go.

She smiled, pulled the pallu back over her chest, and went upstairs with his mouth and the canteen drool still in her head.

That night alone in her room the hunger turned sharp. She stripped to her panty, took the hard back of her hairbrush, and beat it against her clit in rough strikes until the sting met the wet cloth and made her jerk.

“What is wrong with you,” she whispered, and hit again. “I showed you everything I could today. You looked. You drooled. You kissed me like you wanted me. Then you sent me upstairs like a gentleman.” Her hips jerked into the brush. “I am your fiancée. I was asking with my body. You could have taken me somewhere closed, taken this saree off, and fucked me until I stopped shaking. Instead you are still caring about your good boy image.” She beat faster, eyes wet, angry at him and at herself. “How many signs do you need, Rohan. I am already yours. Just take me.”

She came hard on the brush, shaking, still angry, the wanting not gone.

In the evenings that followed, the moment the car engine cut near her building she did not wait for him to speak. She climbed over the gear into his lap, the pallu sliding off her shoulder and hanging forgotten between them, and kissed him like the hunger had been waiting all day. For long stretches she stayed there, crushing her breasts into his chest, mouth hungry on his, while his hands stayed on her back.

He locked his legs under her so his cock would not rise hard against her ass. He still feared his size. If she felt him and found him small, it would break her heart. So he kissed her carefully while she kissed him like she wanted a locked door behind them.

Between the kisses she dropped small hints. Shame still stopped her from saying the full thing.

“You said your friend travels a lot,” she murmured against his mouth. “Is the house empty when he goes?”

Another night, after a long suck at his lower lip: “Must be quiet there. Just you.”

Another: “I still don’t know what your place looks like.”

She smiled as if she were only curious. Her pussy had been treating her badly since the engagement, waking her unfinished, punishing her for every soft goodbye.

He heard what she was really asking. The raw hunger was plain on her. Her nipples pressed into his chest hard as diamonds through the thin blouse, and he knew her body was suffering for a need he kept refusing. He did not want her to pay for his size fear. Keeping her happy was his job. He wanted to help her soon.

One night sleep put him in a decorated bedroom. It brightened until he knew it was his native home. It was his first night. He faced the closed door and waited for Isha to walk through it as his bride.

The door never opened. He waited longer. The silence went on so long he stood and left the room.

He walked the house in a slow line. The hall was empty. The verandah was empty. The other bedrooms had beds made and no one in them. His footsteps were the only sound until he stopped at the kitchen doorway.

Sound reached him first. Gold on gold, bangles and chains beating together in a hard rhythm, mixed with wet skin. Then Isha’s moans, close and raw.

Under the tube light a huge naked Black man stood with his back turned, hips rolling into someone bent over the counter. Rohan stepped closer and saw her. She was completely naked except for full bridal jewellery and bridal makeup, mehandi dark on her hands and feet. Both hands gripped the counter edge. The man held her up by the hips and fucked her with a thick black cock, stretching her open on every stroke, balls slapping as he sank deep and pulled back shining with her wetness. Her bare breasts swung under her. The mangalsutra hung from her neck and swung with them.

Rohan came around to her face. Bridal makeup was still perfect except where tears had started. He tried to speak her name. No sound came.

“Please keep going,” she begged. “Please. Harder. Don’t stop. My husband does not know how to fuck.”

Tears fell from her eyes as she said it. He lifted his hand and wiped them. She did not see him. She did not know he was there. She only shoved back onto the cock and begged again.

“Please. Please. Keep fucking me.”

The man sped up. Jewels crashed on her wrists. Her pussy took him to the root. More tears ran while she asked for more. Rohan’s mouth opened and still no words came.

He woke in his bed shouting into the dark.

“I know how to fuck. I know how to fuck. I will fuck you. Please.”

Sweat ran down him. His cock stood hard. Her wet face would not leave him.

[sakurasan]

Very hot story, pls add hot gif in sex session

Thanks. I like writing. If someone volunteer for images and gif, i will be happy to support them with any input.

[sakurasan]

Chapter 4 Hold Her Like Your Wife

Two days had passed since the kitchen dream.

Friday evening after college, Rohan turned early into the quieter lane toward his side of the city.

He parked. When Isha lifted her eyes to the glass front and the café name above it, surprise caught her.

“We’re having coffee?” she said.

“Yes,” Rohan said. “Come.”

The moment they stepped in, a waiter near the counter lifted a hand. “Rohan sir. The usual corner?”

A girl at the billing desk smiled without looking up from the screen. “Your table is free.”

Rohan nodded once, already steering Isha that way. They took the corner table. He sat facing her, the open café at his back.

Isha glanced from the waiter to him. “Everyone looks familiar to you here.”

“Just walking distance from home,” Rohan said. “They feed us anytime our kitchen fails.”

A waiter came for their order.

While they waited, Rohan kept his voice light. “Has your side started the wedding noise again?”

Isha turned the engagement ring on her finger and smiled a little. “Cousins have. One wants a dance practice before the function. Another keeps sending jewellery shop links as if I asked.”

“And Praveen?”

“He is planning to come to Pune one day,” she said. “He wants to buy my wedding gift jewellery himself. He said he will not leave that to anyone else.”

Rohan smiled. “Tell him I will pick him up from the station.”

“I already did. He said he will manage, then asked which shops are good near you. My aunt from Nashik called too. She wants to know the colour theme before anyone else decides it. I told her I don’t know yet.”

“You don’t have to know yet.”

“I know.” She looked at him. “With you it feels simpler. Everything else can wait.”

He almost answered. The coffees arrived. He wrapped both hands around his cup and used the heat as an excuse to look down.

Inside, his mind had already left the talk.

He could see the signs. The way she kissed him now. The way her body pressed into his in the car. The restless hunger that had started showing in her eyes. Kunal had been out of station for a full week. The house was empty. The rooms were free. He could take her there today.

While he stared into his coffee, Isha’s eyes moved past his shoulder.

A man stood near the middle of the café, looking straight at their table. He was taller than Rohan, broader in the shoulders, dark-skinned, with a sharp haircut that sat close on the sides. Tattoos ran over his large arms and both biceps. He looked like those DJs from music videos and pop album covers. For a second she thought he was staring at her. Then she was not sure if it was her or Rohan.

He smiled faintly and started walking toward them.

She opened her mouth to warn Rohan.

The man lifted one finger to his lips, still smiling, and gave her a small shake of the head. She understood at once. He knew Rohan, and he wanted her silent, so she watched him come.

He crossed the floor without hurry, bag on one shoulder, easy in his body, eyes moving from her face to the back of Rohan’s head. Up close the tattoos were darker, the smile warmer, the height clearer. Something in the way he carried himself made the café feel smaller. She kept her face still and looked longer than she needed to.

Across from her, Rohan kept his eyes on the coffee.

The old memory still pushed back against the idea. First year of their courtship. He had casually suggested showing her his place. The look she had given him then still lived under his skin, as if he had crossed something sacred. That look had kept him careful for a long time.

But the dream from two nights ago sat heavier than the old fear. He still saw her tears and heard her begging, and the need on her face stayed clear. He wanted that suffering to end. He decided. He would take her home on the pretext of picking something up from his room. Once they were inside, he would see what her body told him. If she wanted it, he would not stop this time.

He drew a quiet breath and leaned forward, the first words ready.

His phone rang.

He glanced at the screen and took the call. His father’s voice came through, steady as always.

“Yes, Baba.”

He listened. His eyes flicked once toward Isha.

“This Sunday?” He looked at her once more. “Alright. I’ll come. Yes… I’ll bring her.”

He ended the call and lowered the phone.

Behind him, the man had stopped a step away, waiting. The moment the phone left Rohan’s hand, two tattooed arms came around his shoulders from behind and pulled him into a rough, familiar hug.

Rohan stiffened for half a second, then the recognition landed.

“Welcome home, Kunal,” he said, voice shifting.

Kunal clapped him hard on the back, still leaning over him.

“I missed you this week, saala,” he said, and dropped into the chair beside Rohan, easy and open, as if he had never been away. “One week out and you already hide in my café with company.”

Rohan turned slightly in his chair, still half caught by the sudden hug, and looked between them.

“Isha, this is Kunal,” he said. “My brother from another mother.” Then he tipped his head toward her. “And this is Isha. Latest addition to our family.”

Isha smiled, a little shy, a little curious.

“Finally,” she said. “It’s good to put a face to all the stories I’ve heard.”

Kunal’s eyes moved over her face in one quick, open look. He grinned.

“Rohan told me you were beautiful,” he said. “He never said you were an angel who fell out of the sky, didi.”

Colour rose in Isha’s face at the compliment. Then her eyebrows lifted at the last word.

“Didi?” she repeated.

Rohan let out a short breath, half laugh, half protest.

“How can she be your didi? If I’m your brother, then she would be your bhabhi.”

Kunal raised both hands, still smiling.

“Okay, okay. Bhabhi then.”

“No,” Isha said at once, shaking her head. “I’m no aunty. I’m younger than you. No didi, no bhabhi. Please.”

Rohan glanced at Kunal, amused.

“You heard the lady. Just use her name.”

Kunal pressed a palm to his chest like he had been corrected in court.

“Isha,” he said, testing the name. “Done. See? I can learn.”

He leaned back in the chair, looking at her with open interest now that the titles were settled.

“So,” he said. “How do I sound? In his stories.”

Rohan opened his mouth.

Kunal lifted a hand without looking at him. “You don’t speak. Let me get the truth straight from her.”

Rohan shut his mouth, half smiling.

Isha glanced between them, then settled on Kunal. “All right. What I know so far. You are a highly blessed photographer.”

Kunal tipped his head, waiting.

“You specialise in couples work,” she went on. “Especially pre-wedding and post-wedding shoots.”

“True so far,” Kunal said.

“And the special thing about you is that you have no social media presence. You never display your work, so clients like the privacy you give them.” She tipped her head. “Did I say it right? I know Rohan can’t lie to me.”

Kunal grinned. “Not a lie. Not the whole truth either. He has censored well.”

“What did he leave out?” she asked.

Kunal drew a breath.

“Leave that,” Rohan said, cutting in before the answer could land. He looked at Kunal. “First tell her why you missed the engagement.”

Kunal’s smile thinned. He glanced at Rohan, then at Isha. “Fair. I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I got stuck in Assam. Bad weather hit, flights kept getting cancelled, and it is not easy to transit from there.” He looked at both of them. “From now till the wedding, I won’t take any long outstation work. I’ll be here for whatever is left.”

“It’s alright,” Isha said.

“Let me compensate now.” Kunal reached down for the black camera bag beside his chair and unzipped it. He glanced at the long windows. “When new clients come, I bring them here, take a few trial shots in this light, and show them what I can do on the spot. That is how I demo.” He lifted the DSLR. “A few frames of you both. Right here. Same setup.”

Isha smiled. “So I am sitting in your office.”

“Something like that.”

Rohan looked at the camera.

“Here?”

“Why not? Quiet corner. Nothing heavy.”

Isha glanced at Rohan. “Do you mind?”

“No,” Rohan said. “Alright.”

They walked over to the long window. Kunal checked the settings, took a quick test shot, then pointed to the floor.

“Stand here. Rohan, slightly behind her. Isha, turn a little toward him. Yes. Now look at each other. Not at me.”

Rohan moved into place. He left a careful gap between them. His hand rested high on her waist, light as a courtesy. His shoulders stayed stiff.

Kunal looked through the viewfinder and lowered the camera.

“Too far. Come closer.”

Rohan shifted half a step.

“Lower your hand,” Kunal said. “Further. Hold her like your wife, not your sister.”

Heat moved through Isha’s chest. At least someone was scolding Rohan the way she had wanted to scold him herself. Her face stayed calm for the café, but inside she liked Kunal a little more for that alone.

Rohan moved his palm lower, still short of where Kunal meant. He glanced at him, then exhaled.

“You show me,” he said.

Kunal held the camera out.

“Take it.”

Rohan took the DSLR. Kunal turned to Isha.

“Isha, do you mind?”

“No problem,” she said.

Kunal stepped in behind her. From the window and the nearest tables, they read as a real couple mid-hug. Only the two of them could feel the truth of it. His chest stayed a breath off her back. One arm curved around her waist in the air. His other hand hovered over the round of her ass, near enough to claim the shape in the frame, with a thin gap of air still between his palm and her saree.

He looked like a typical thug bad boy, tattoos and all, and yet he was this close without touching her. The professionalism of it surprised her. She held still and let the pose hold.

“This,” he said quietly. “Click.”

Rohan took the shot. Kunal held the pose a second longer, then stepped away and took the camera back. He checked the screen and nodded.

“Now you,” he said. “Do it like this. And hold her tight before she flies off.”

Rohan returned to the spot. This time he brought her in fully. His chest met her back. One hand found her waist. The other settled on her ass through the saree, warm and sure. Soft flesh filled his palm. It was the first time he had ever held her there. A quiet shock went through him, then a hunger he kept off his face for the lens.

Isha’s breath caught once. In her head she thanked Kunal for this. Without him, Rohan would never have put his hand on her ass at all.

“Yes,” Kunal said, shooting. “That one is alive. Hold. Look at each other.”

They looked. He took the frame, then kept going. The next ones were his signature work, angles and holds that belonged to him alone, sharp enough that even a café corner looked like a set. Each time Rohan fumbled the pose, Kunal stopped him, handed over the camera, and stepped in with Isha to show the hold. At least half the set went that way. He guided her with light touches on her wrists and fingers only, turning a palm, setting a hand on a sleeve, nothing beyond that. Rohan clicked, learned, took his place again, and held her tighter each round. Isha moved where she was told, breath quick sometimes, liking how often the scolding turned into Rohan’s hands finally doing what she wanted.

By the time Kunal lowered the camera and checked the back screen, the card was full of them.

“That’s enough.”

He packed the DSLR into its bag. The plan Rohan had carried into the café was already gone. With Kunal back in the city, the house was no longer empty.

Rohan looked at Isha.

“Come. I’ll drop you home.”

She nodded. The whole café was still on her: Kunal’s voice correcting them, the lens, being turned and held in front of strangers, Rohan’s hands finally learning her waist and ass like a husband for the frame.

Rohan started the car. As they pulled away, she sat quietly in the passenger seat and had not fully come back from that zone.

After a stretch of road she tipped her head. “What was that phone call about?”

“Oh. That one.” Rohan kept his eyes ahead. “Dad wants us to visit this Sunday. Are you free?”

“What question is that?” she said. “Where you go, I go.”

“Cool. But you should still decide for yourself.”

“You started again,” she said. “Now drive fast.”

He almost laughed, and took the next turn. Near her building he slowed.

“Your friend is very good,” she said, softer now. “I forgot the clock.”

Rohan smiled without looking away from the gate. “Forgot the clock. One shoot. Already addicted to the camera.”

Colour rose hard in her face. “Nothing like that.”

“Nothing?” He parked. “You went quiet the whole way like someone who found a new habit. Say it. You liked being looked at.”

“Rohan.”

He leaned in. The kiss was short, only lips, warm and quick. She kissed him back once, then pulled away before the tease could push her into admitting anything, looked at him once more, and went up.

On Sunday Rohan reached her building at six. Isha came down in a simple saree, pallu neat, hair tied. She slid into the passenger seat and shut the door harder than she meant to.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ask me after we reach,” she said.

They left the city and joined the highway. For a while she watched the fields. Then she glanced at him.

“This is my first time going to my future home, I am nervous.”

“Don’t be.” His voice stayed easy. “They already like you. Grandfather only wants to see the girl who stole his grandson.”

She almost smiled. “Your grandfather was in service, right?”

“He served, yes, though he is ninety now and mostly in bed.” Rohan checked the mirror and changed lanes. “In his active days he was more liberal than most men around him. My father followed that. I followed my father. So the house you are walking into is different from yours.”

Isha looked at him for a long second. “Really? No one strict? That is interesting.”

“Interesting good, or interesting suspicious?”

“Interesting I will verify myself,” she said, and he laughed once.

His smile thinned a little. “He was in hospital this week. They brought him home again. He is stable now. That is why Dad called. He wanted us there while grandfather is awake enough to bless us.”

“He is all right now?”

“Yes. The doctor said he has at least six months if he rests,” Rohan said, hands steady on the wheel. “We go, take the blessing, and let him see you.”

Isha’s voice softened. “I will pray he is at our wedding.”

“So will I.”

Rohan’s phone lit on the dash before either of them could say more. Kunal’s name filled the screen. He tapped it onto the car speaker without thinking.

“Bro, you are not in your room,” Kunal said, voice easy, as if he were still in the hall.

“I’m running an errand,” Rohan said. “I’ll be back before night.”

“Okay.”

“You’re back early from the gym.”

“No. Skipped it today.”

Rohan smiled at the road. “You skipping gym. That is interesting.”

“I’m editing our café pics,” Kunal said. “That’s why.”

“Cool. I’d love to see those. Our engagement pics were amateur.”

“You’re in good hands now,” Kunal said. “Sending them. Can you forward to bhabhi?”

Isha’s face changed at once. She shot Rohan a naughty angry look and punched the dashboard lightly with the side of her fist, mouthing the word like a crime.

Rohan cleared his throat. “Isha. Not bhabhi.” His eyes flicked to her, pleading for patience on Kunal’s behalf.

“Okay, okay. Let me know if Isha likes them.”

“Her number is on our computer,” Rohan said. “You send it to her and ask yourself. I’m not a postman for you both.”

Kunal laughed. “Too much. You are one lucky bastard. That is why you speak like this.”

Rohan opened his mouth to say he was with her, and that she was hearing every word. Isha shook her head hard and pressed a finger to her lips. Stay quiet. He swallowed it.

“Hmm,” he said.

“Man,” Kunal went on, warming up now, “what a body Isha has. Camera just goes stupid for her. Those curves under the saree look sexier than bikini models. Waist, hips, that chest… she could feed milk to the whole village and still have some left. I barely touched the edit. Cloth like that on a body like hers does half my job.”

Rohan reached for the dash to cut the call. Isha’s one hand clamped over his mouth, the other covered the spot on the dash so he could not end it, eyes sharp with a silent threat. Cut it and I will kill you. He froze with one hand still on the wheel, breathing against her palm, cock already starting to thicken under the shame of listening.

Kunal kept talking, fully convinced he had only his brother on the line.

“Saala, look at you. Engaged to those grip-bar hips and still holding her like your sister. You were a fool to wait three years, you know that, right? Some god saved you. Otherwise a beauty like that would have been stolen long back.”

Rohan was fully hard now, trapped under her hand. Ever since the engagement she had become a sucker for flattery, and Kunal’s rough praise fed that. The sharper joy was hearing him scold Rohan for the sister-hold, the three soft years, for not being the bad boy her body wanted. She liked being seen. She liked Kunal angry at Rohan on her behalf. The vulgar edge only added spice to it.

That was what scared him most. He had been terrified she would hate Kunal for talking like this. If the two people he loved most could not stand each other, his life would split down the middle. Instead she was smiling against the window light, still holding his mouth shut.

He could not take any more of it.

He pulled her hands away, shouted into the speaker, “We’ll see tonight,” and cut the call.

For a second he was too afraid to look at her. When he did, she was still smiling.

“So,” Isha said, smiling, “this is how you boys speak when no one else is there.”

[sakurasan]

Sakurasan, hello my friend. You are such a great writer. Your writer is so good that it’s hard to believe that Indian erotica has such quality content writers. There are only few writers, who can write cuckold erotica with subtle nuances and rhythm progression. Your previous story is one of my favourite and this is turning out to be a lot better than previous one. I want to write this to you since a longtime. Keep writing and good luck!

Thanks Violet. Made my day. This is the currency that keeps us going here right.

[sakurasan]

Chapter 5 Bad boy

They were finally home. Rohan parked under the neem and killed the engine.

Isha stepped down in her saree, slower than usual.

“Come,” he said.

Before they reached the main door, the women were already there.

Rohan’s mother, Lata, came first, aarti plate in both hands, the lamp steady. Two neighbour ladies followed with flowers and a small bowl of kumkum.

“Stand still, beta,” she said, smiling.

She circled the plate once, twice. The flame passed across Isha’s face. A thumb of kumkum touched her forehead. Petals landed on her hair. One of the neighbour women pressed a sweet into her palm and closed her fingers over it like a secret.

“Welcome home,” Lata said.

Isha’s throat tightened. “Thank you, Aunty.”

“Aunty is for guests. Call me Ma.”

Colour rose in Isha’s cheeks. She nodded.

Rohan’s father came out of the hall and folded his hands.

“Good you came. Grandfather has been asking since morning.”

“We started early, Baba,” Rohan said.

Before anyone could settle into talk, two men appeared at the gate calling his father’s name. One held a folded paper. The other kept glancing toward the fields.

“I’ll be back,” his father said, already moving. “Don’t wait for me. Take her to him first.”

He went with them across the front, panchayat voice switching on before he cleared the cows.

Lata wiped her hands on her pallu and tipped her head toward the inner rooms.

“Come. He wakes and sleeps in short spells. We should catch him while he is up.”

They crossed the big hall in the middle of the house. Bedroom doors lined both sides. The kitchen opened off one end. Lata stopped at the last room on the right.

Grandfather lay propped on pillows. His eyes were already open when they entered. Rohan bent and touched his feet. Isha followed, the saree whispering as she knelt.

The old man’s hand found Rohan’s head first, then hers. His palm was dry and light.

“So this is the one,” he said. His Marathi-tinged English came slow. “You found a pretty wife, boy. God saved some sense for you after all.”

Rohan smiled. “She is Isha, Ajja.”

“I heard. Sit. Let me see her properly.”

They sat on the low stools by the bed. He looked at Isha for a long time, not unkind, only thorough, the way old soldiers studied a map.

“Your face is honest,” he said. “That is rarer than beauty. Keep that.”

“I will try,” she said.

He chuckled once, then drifted. “In service, honesty got men killed and also saved them. Funny thing.” His eyes went somewhere past the wall. “First posting, Assam. Rain for weeks. We slept in boots because the ground never dried…”

The story unfolded the way old stories do, with detours and names that meant nothing to her and everything to him. Rohan listened like he had heard versions of it before and still would not rush the man. Isha kept her face turned to the bed, smiling when he paused for breath.

Her handbag buzzed against her knee. She slipped the phone out under the fold of her pallu. Kunal’s name sat on the screen. Below it, a message, then images still loading. She pushed it back into the bag. Grandfather was already on the next post, a train journey, a junior who had forgotten his rifle. Isha nodded at the right places and kept her hands quiet in her lap.

In Pune, Kunal watched the ticks turn blue. No reply.

He closed the chat, opened it again, and left it alone. Maybe she did not like them.

Grandfather’s voice thinned, then stopped. His eyes closed mid-sentence. Lata rose at once and settled the sheet higher on his chest.

“He will sleep now,” she whispered. “Come.”

Outside the room, Rohan glanced at Isha.

“Sorry. I hope he did not make you sleep.”

“Those were beautiful stories,” she said. “I loved it.”

Lata smiled.

“Rohan, show her our place. Isha, I will be in the kitchen if you need me.”

She went ahead, already calling something to the neighbour women who had stayed to help.

Rohan walked her through the house. Hall, four bedrooms, kitchen, store room.

“So many rooms for only you?” she said.

“They built for a bigger family than they got.”

He took her out the back.

Five acres of field ran behind the house. Near the rear wall stood the well, its stone rim nearly four feet thick. They sat on it. The wall was warm under their hands. Wind lifted Isha’s saree and kept pulling at the pallu.

She pushed the cloth into Rohan’s hand. “Hold this.”

Then she took the phone out.

The photos had finished loading long ago. She opened the first one.

For a second she did not recognise herself. The woman on the screen looked like someone from a film poster.

She scrolled through the rest. Every frame gave her the same shock.

“Rohan,” she said. “This does not look like me. He made me look like a movie star.”

He leaned over and looked. A small smile pulled at his mouth.

“I told you. You’re in good hands.”

An hour under the photos, a second message waited.

Kunal: Did you like them

She stared at that line longer than the pictures.

“He asked if I liked them,” she said. “What shall I reply to him?”

Rohan kept his eyes on the field.

“He asked you. Not me.”

She looked at him. Same tone he used whenever she waited for him to choose for her.

Isha typed.

Isha: Hi Kunal

The reply came at once.

Kunal: Sorry. I think I did not do justice to you.

Isha: What are you even talking about?

Kunal: I know you did not like them. That is why you did not reply.

Isha: Did not like them? Are you crazy? I love them. It is surreal. I am already imagining walking into the wedding hall looking like that. You are a God-blessed talent.

Her thumb was still on the phone when the cooker whistled from the kitchen.

She stood. “I should check on Ma.”

Rohan gave the pallu back into her hand. She went in.

In the kitchen, Lata was already at the stove, lid in one hand. Isha moved to help.

“No, no,” she said, waving her off with the free hand. “You are the guest today. Sit. I will take care.”

Isha sat on the low stool near the door. Lata talked about the rice and how much spice Rohan could take. Isha nodded at the right places.

She faced the stove, back to her. Isha looked at the phone in her lap.

Kunal: Cool. You made my day. Those pics are all you. I did nothing.

Isha: All me? Then why does every photo look like your work?

Kunal: Because the camera finally got a subject worth staring at.

“Isha, do you drink buttermilk at lunch?” Lata asked, back still to her.

“Yes, Ma.”

Isha: Keep talking like that and I will start believing you.

She smiled at the stove. Isha locked the phone and kept her face soft.

They sat for lunch in the hall. His father was back. He spoke to Rohan about the wedding. The hall was booked. Guests from Pune needed confirming. Guest count came first.

“Confirm how many cars we need from Pune,” his father said. “And the stage people want the advance this week.”

Rohan nodded and took more rice. Under the table, Isha’s phone stirred. She opened it on her thigh.

Kunal: Cameras naturally love you. Hope I am blessed to click you again.

Isha: What hope. I need you to take all the wedding concepts you do for every couple. I want it all.

Kunal: No way. You will hate me if we do all.

Isha: What do you mean?

Kunal: I am a very bad boy. I can’t say more. But I promise, we will shoot whatever you want.

She stared at that last line. In the café he had said Rohan censored the truth. When she asked what was left out, Rohan stopped him. Now Kunal was holding something back again.

She locked the phone. The chat sat unfinished in her head. Lata looked at her.

“Salt is fine?”

“Delicious, Ma,” Isha said. “This is the best food I have had.”

She smiled. “At least you appreciate it.”

“Mom, it is regular for us,” Rohan said.

“I can’t cook like this,” Isha said. “I am nervous.”

“Don’t worry,” Lata said. “Rohan hangs with me in the kitchen whenever he is here. He knows how to cook well.”

After lunch Rohan went out with his father to check the wedding guest list. Lata touched Isha’s elbow.

“Come. I want to show you something.”

She took her to a side bedroom and shut the door. For a moment she only looked at Isha, as if measuring a dream against the girl in front of her.

“I always wanted a daughter,” Lata said. “After Rohan, the doctors said no more. So I waited.”

She unlocked a tall cupboard and pulled both doors wide.

Folded silk sarees sat in soft greens and wine. Chiffon piles that would move in city air. Lengths of jean cloth stacked beside printed kurti fabric. Soft cotton tees in loose cuts. One shelf held soft night-suit cloth still in shop folds.

Lata watched her face. “These are all for you. Take whatever you like to Pune today. The cloth, get it stitched to your fit.”

Isha’s hand hovered over a chiffon fold. “Ma. I don’t know what to say. Did you get all this after the engagement?”

“Years of collection.”

“You have really good taste. I love them all.”

Lata laughed once. “I have been buying ever since Rohan started earning.”

“Then I have been getting lucky even before I met him.”

“Hmm.” Lata took out her favourite in hand. “I need to tell you this. The men in our family are good. Too good. They don’t know the concept of self. If someone comes for help, they give whatever is in their hand.”

“I know. I have seen Rohan.”

“Yes. We could have had more land by now. All we have is good name and goodwill.”

“I understand what you are trying to say.”

“That is why I take the excess from his salary. Leave it with him and it walks out with the next person who asks. After marriage, that charge comes to you.”

Isha nodded. “Don’t worry, Ma. I will take care.”

She turned back to the cupboard and shook her head at the tees and the jean cloth. “Ma, I don’t wear these.”

She left the silks where they were. Those could wait for married days. Her hands went to chiffon and printed georgette, soft folds she could wear in Pune now. This one for the way he looked at her pallu. That print for a movie evening. The wine chiffon if she wanted his eyes stuck. Eight sarees stacked neat in the suitcase. Work for Savita, her mind said, already counting blouses.

Lata watched the stack grow and smiled, the kind of smile that had waited years. She pressed the suitcase into Isha’s hands and held on a second longer than the gift needed.

By late afternoon they started back to Pune. Four hours of road ahead. Fields first, then highway, then the slow push into city traffic.

For a long stretch she only watched the land go. Then she turned to him.

“Your parents are gems. I envy you. Growing up here.”

Rohan smiled at the road. “Ma was waiting for a day like this.” He glanced at her. “Your parents are both college teachers. They run the house the same way.”

“You will never understand what I went through,” she said. “Forget it.”

She left it there. Kilometers passed. A bus overtook them. Somewhere after the next town her mind circled back to lunch, to Kunal’s smile, to that one line he had thrown and she had locked away.

“But I am curious about your friend.”

“What is curious about him?”

“He said you did not tell the whole truth about him.”

“It is not like that.”

“Come on. Spill. You can’t lie to me.”

Rohan checked the mirror and changed lanes. “See. He is a bit different from most people in his profession.”

“He has exceptional talent. But what is the big deal in that?”

“That is true. But I am not talking about talent.” He took a breath. “Let me put it this way. He signs a non-disclosure agreement with every client. He can never take credit. He can never share even one pic he takes of them. If any image leaks, he pays a huge penalty. Those clients pay heavily for that service alone.”

Isha frowned at the dashboard. People paid so that their own photos stayed hidden? In her world a photographer put work on Instagram and prayed for likes. She sat with that until another town slipped past.

“So his clients like privacy. So what?”

“You are still being a novice,” Rohan said. “The privacy is because he takes intimate pics of them. Not the regular couple pics. Real intimate ones.”

Isha stared at him. The lunch chat kicked in her head at once. You will hate me if we do all. I am a very bad boy. Her throat worked once.

“Who will do that? You are pranking me.”

“See. That is why I never shared this with you. He is really, really good in erotic art photography. And he has a clientele who pay him heavily for it.”

She looked at the road and did not see it. Erotic art, paying clients, money for naked work. Words she had never had to hold next to a real person she had sat across at lunch. Questions piled with no order. Who asks for this. Who agrees. Where do they find him. How does a man walk into a room and make that normal. Heat moved low in her belly. She pressed her thighs together once and kept her mouth shut for a long stretch of highway.

When she trusted her voice again, it came smaller.

“Have you seen those pics?”

“On the system. He classifies and saves all his work. He is highly organised that way. Mainly three drives. One for regular and romantic. One for intimate, couples kissing, hugging, crazy poses, but cloth still covering what matters. And the last one he names Explicit.”

“So you have seen all those.”

“Actually, I have seen only the first two. I have never opened the Explicit drive. Kunal has no issue with me seeing it. But I did not feel it was the right thing to do.”

She believed him. He did not lie to her. Still the word Explicit made her swallow hard before she asked.

“What goes into the Explicit folder?”

“As I said, I have never seen them.”

“You should have some idea.”

Rohan’s mouth tipped once. “His room has a lot of adult toys. I think those should be involved. A few items I have heard him mention. Some women want special pictures of themselves which they will gift to their men. Some honeymoon couples become really, really bold for the camera. That kind of thing.”

“Do people like those really exist?”

“His bank account shows they do exist. Also, these are my guesses only. Again, never seen them.”

She turned to the window. She did not really know what adult toys were, and listening had left her panties wet. She stayed still in the seat and let another stretch of highway pass before she spoke again.

“Is that all? If I find you did not give me the full picture, I will feel hurt that you did not trust me.”

“There is one more thing. But it does not matter.”

“I will decide that. You say what it is.”

Rohan’s hands stayed on the wheel. “Many models he shoots… they fall for his charms. I have seen many mornings. Beautiful girls coming out of his room. They smile at me and run away.”

Isha’s breath caught. Beautiful girls leaving his room in the morning. The picture stacked on top of everything else until she could not sort which question came first. How many. How he talked to them. Whether he even remembered their names. She stared at the dash lights until they blurred.

“How many?”

“I can’t keep count. That many. That’s all.”

She took a long time with that. Fields had thinned. Towns had thickened. When she spoke, her voice was softer.

“What about love? Doesn’t he have anyone? What about marriage?”

“His words,” Rohan said. “I get free lunch anytime. Why should I hire a cook?”

“No way,” she said, still staring at the road.

By the time Pune’s lights began to show, traffic had slowed them to a crawl.

Rohan checked the mirror again. “I am not sure how Kunal will take it if he knows I have outed him all to you.”

“Relax. I’m not telling him.”

She meant the promise. The car shook through the city bumps and her nipples dragged like knife points against the blouse. She crossed her ankles and stared at the traffic like that would hide it.

At her gate he killed the engine and got out. Isha stepped down. He pulled the suitcase from the boot and set the handle in her hand.

“Now you know,” he said. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you about him.”

She shook her head, almost laughing. “You boys are so bad.”

“Not me,” he said. “I am your good boy. He is that bad boy.”

They laughed. He waited until she crossed the gate, then drove off.

[sakurasan]

Chapter 6 Presque Vu

On the stairs, the weight in her hand brought Lata back, the cupboard, the years of collection, the smile that had sat on Ma’s face when the stack grew, as if Isha were already her own daughter. Lata had chosen modern pieces for a city daughter-in-law. Soft night cloth. Jean lengths. Those chiffons that would move if she walked. Isha saw herself for a second in the wine chiffon, thin enough that light would pass, and pictured Saroja’s face if she ever walked into the house like that. Ma would die of a heart attack on the spot. She almost smiled, climbing the last flight with Lata’s gift pulling at her arm.

Rohan drove home and went to sleep.

The dream returned in the wee hours.

This time it started happy.

He was back in his native house with Isha, rerunning the day. They walked the hall, laughed at the empty bedrooms, then went out into his fields with her hand in his, talking soft nonsense. For a stretch the day was still good.

Rain started hard across the fields.

He tried to grab Isha and run for the house. His hand closed on empty air. She was not there.

As the rain got heavier he moved toward the house for cover, shouting her name, searching the path for her. Halfway home he stopped dead.

Two figures sat on the thick stone rim where he and Isha had rested that afternoon. Rain sheeted off them. One body rose and dropped on the other in a hard riding rhythm.

Then the shape resolved. The woman was Isha. Completely naked.

She straddled a man on the rim, knees spread wide on either side of his hips, her full ass slamming down on his thighs as her cunt took him to the root. Rain ran off her bouncing breasts and over his stomach. Wet flesh slapped with every drop of her hips. Bangles crashed on her wrists where she clung to his shoulders.

He had watched her taken many times by now. This one felt wrong.

From this distance the rain blurred the man. Thick calves, skin darker than Rohan’s, but not the usual black pornstar. Hard thighs under her weight. Above that he stayed smeared, a body without a face.

Rohan stepped closer.

Her head tipped forward, mouth open. She had her arms locked around the man’s head and her heavy breasts crushed over his face, smothering him while she rode. He thrust up from the stone. She bounced faster. Rohan’s cock stood hard while his stomach twisted.

He moved around the rim for an angle.

Up close the man looked local, and still there was no face to steal. Her tits hid it. Rain wiped the rest of him soft whenever Rohan tried to lock a shoulder. Every time a line almost cleared, Isha leaned harder and buried him again.

The fucking on his childhood well was enough to wreck him. The man under her breasts sat worse. His mind raced through every thick-legged body he knew and landed nowhere.

Face down on the bed, his hips were already bouncing. His cock was trapped under him, grinding the mattress in the same hard rhythm as her ride. He came into the sheet, then the field went black, and sleep took him.

The next morning Isha sat alone in the lab and opened WhatsApp. One unread from Kunal.

A photo filled the chat. Black beach under a thin gold sky. Wet sand holding the first light. Water almost still. The caption read: Good morning sunshine.

She smiled before she meant to.

Isha: It looks unreal. Like a film still. Where are you?

Kunal: Daman. Pre-wedding shoot.

Isha: When did you go?

Kunal: Left yesterday after we chatted. Sunrise call time for them. Coffee call time for me.

Isha: Beautiful. You get to see the world so differently.

Kunal: Differently? Right now I am bending over backwards so this couple looks like they fell in love on purpose.

She laughed once under her breath.

Isha: So this is what our pre-wedding will feel like?

Kunal: If you want beach, yes. Hills, fort walls, old streets, temple steps, I will find the frame. Tell me what sits in your head when you say pre-wedding.

She stared at that line longer than the sunrise.

Isha: I don’t know the names. I only know the feeling. Soft and romantic, the kind you look at years later and still get shy.

Kunal: Soft I can do. Shy I can do. Send me three moods. I will show you how other couples wore them.

Three password-protected PDFs arrived one after another.

Kunal: Same password for all. Next message.

He sent the password. She typed it.

The first file already carried his eye. A sharp low angle. Hard clean light. A couple held in a hush that made the place look smaller than them.

Isha: I don’t even know how to explain it. I just like this.

Kunal: Good. Open the next.

The second set was beach work. Couples in bikinis. His eye still sharp on wet skin and bright sun, bodies caught mid-turn, mid-breath, never the usual stand-and-smile.

Isha: These are bold.

Kunal: Nothing bold in it. They are just in comfortable clothes. Now see the naughty one.

The third file opened on the same couple. One oversized t-shirt dress on both of them, arms out through the shared sleeves. The man held her bikini top in one hand and the bottom in the other. She held his speedo in both hands. Funny first. Then the heat of it.

Isha felt heat rise in her. She zoomed in. The woman’s nipples pressed clear through the thin t-shirt.

Isha: These are too risky. I am scared.

Kunal: Don’t be. We will take pics only you both are comfortable with. I only pitch ideas. The couple are always the ones who decide. This couple wanted more funny than romance.

Isha: I am definitely not doing these.

Kunal: That’s ok. Forget about you. Are my pics good? Do you like them?

Isha: They are very nice.

In Daman, Kunal stared at that message longer than a client compliment ever held him. Clients praised because the shoot was theirs. Rohan praised because he was family. Her praise was different. A third eye on the work, and from her it landed sweeter.

She bit her lip, then typed before she could dress the thought up.

Isha: Won’t you get into trouble for this. Sharing them with me.

The reply came fast.

Kunal: Relax. Rohan owns my firm. You own him. That makes you my boss’s boss. Purely internal.

Isha: Blessed to be part of your inner circle.

Kunal: Your pics will be ten times better. We have both the camera and you.

Isha looked at the blank whiteboard across the lab and tried to answer like a girl who was only joking.

Isha: I will be there. But also my fiancé, who does not even know how to hold a woman, will also be there.

She sent it and immediately wanted to unsend it.

Kunal: Don’t worry. I know how to get the job done from him. Trust Kunal.

She laughed at the screen before she could stop herself.

Isha: Good. Somebody has to teach him.

Kunal: Leave that to me. Best part of the job.

She locked the phone, still smiling, and only then noticed the student records waiting under her hand.

Over the next few days the chat barely cooled.

Kunal kept feeding the chat from his collection, picking borderline naughty work he trusted she could still take, beach cloth and playful holds that stopped short of the drive Rohan had named, and each time she praised a frame another file followed. Client compliments paid the rent. Her compliments made him send again.

On her side the curiosity sat quieter.

Ever since Rohan named the Explicit folder on the highway, her mind kept circling it. Late one night, while a bikini set from Kunal still sat open on her screen, the question rose again. What lived past this. She shut the chat and told herself not tonight. She rolled over and tried to leave it alone. It did not leave.

Rohan’s nights stayed fixed.

The same dream kept repeating, and his struggle to find the man continued. Her breasts stayed crushed over the man’s face. The harder he stared at a back, a hand, a shoulder, the more those edges blurred on their own, wiped clean before he could name them. Each night ended the same way on his cot, spent into the sheet.

Friday afternoon they sat in the canteen with plates between them.

“Your mom called,” Isha said. “She is making a gold necklace set for me.”

Rohan looked up from his rice. “That sounds like her. We have a goldsmith from years back. She trusts only him.”

“She wants me to send designs I like.”

“And?”

Isha broke a piece of roti and did not eat it. “And I have nothing. My mother never even let me buy a saree on my own. How am I supposed to know what jewellery I like?”

“Then we find out,” he said. “After college. Biggest jeweller in the city. You point, we take photos for Ma.”

She smiled. “I love shopping.”

“Window shopping,” Rohan said.

He checked his watch and stood. “I need to run to class. Call Kunal. Ask him to join us.”

“Go,” she said. “I will handle him.”

He left with his tray. Isha finished what was on her plate, then went back to the lab. The room was empty. She dialled.

Kunal picked up on the second ring.

“Kunal, are you free this evening?”

“You should not ask,” he said. “You should only say what I need to do this evening, Big boss.”

“Started again.” She almost laughed. “Anyway. We need to steal something from a jewellery shop.”

“How many grams are we talking?”

“Just digital images. No real gold. Can you take pics of the necklace I like?”

“Again. No questions. Only orders.” His voice stayed light. “They will not allow a photographer. But we will pose as a wedding party, and I will get the job done on the phone.”

“Five PM then.”

“Five PM,” Kunal said.

At five they walked into the jeweller together. A young, pretty salesgirl led them to a long glass case of necklace sets with a line of rotating stools along it. Rohan, Isha, and Kunal sat in three consecutive seats. Rohan stayed where he was.

She pointed first. A heavy set with a low-falling pendant. The salesgirl unlocked the tray. Kunal took the necklace before she could offer.

Isha turned and showed him her nape. She drew her hair forward over one shoulder.

He came in close.

Her smell rose warm and stopped him there, necklace still in his hands. He lifted the last of her hair off her nape and found the clasp. His knuckles brushed her neck while he fastened it.

She faced him again and he caught the pendant, settling it lower until the gold sat in the soft line of her cleavage.

“There,” he said. “Now it shows.”

He lifted his phone, close enough that his forearm almost touched her breast as he framed. “Chin up. No. Soft. Like you already own it.”

She laughed once and gave him the look he wanted. He clicked, adjusted the pendant again with two fingers against her skin, shot again, then undid the clasp and reached for the next set without asking her to move away.

Rohan watched.

They did not come back to him. Each new tray the salesgirl set farther along the table, and Isha and Kunal shifted with it. By the heavier sets they were four seats down from him. Isha kept picking, rejecting, asking for heavier, asking for lighter. Kunal moved with her. Every piece she liked, he put on her. His hands found the clasp at her nape. His thumb corrected a chain where it caught on her blouse. When a choker sat too high, she leaned in so he could hook a finger under the gold and draw it down until it rested where her breath lifted the cloth. Then he raised the phone and clicked before they moved on.

The salesgirl brought earrings. Kunal tipped Isha’s chin, slid the hooks in, and shot the side of her throat before they moved on.

“This one,” Isha said, touching the gold where it disappeared into her blouse.

“Good,” Kunal said. Phone low, shooting up so the necklace filled the frame against her skin. “Stay.”

Rohan’s hands stayed on his knees. He was the fiancé left behind. They were the ones working.

Another tray moved farther down the table. The salesgirl walked it past Rohan to Kunal and Isha, still talking purity and making time as she set it down. “Sir, this weight will sit well on madam for the wedding.” For that stretch her back cut the two of them out of his sight.

While he could not see them, Isha put the new necklace on wrong. The pendant hung too low. She stood between Kunal’s knees for him to fix it, and from the seat his face came level with her breasts. His hands went around to her back and dragged the chain up so the pendant rose into place, head buried in the soft wall of her blouse.

The salesgirl stepped aside.

Rohan saw it at once. Kunal’s face gone behind her breasts, mouth near enough that one breath would have warmed the skin above the cups, both hands still working the clasp at her back.

Rohan’s stomach dropped. Then what he saw changed.

Her clothes went. His went. She climbed onto him, naked thighs locking around his hips, and took him inside her in one drop. Her heavy breasts crushed over his face exactly as they had in the dream, hiding him while she rose and fell. The bounce started, wet and hard, the same ride in a different place.

Then her chest lifted on an upstroke and the face that had always stayed buried came clear. The blur that used to wipe the man’s back and arm in the dream was gone. Rohan saw the tattooed arm locked around her, and the face under her tits was Kunal’s, fucking her in the same hold the dream had shown night after night.

Then it snapped. Kunal was only working the clasp at her back. Both of them dressed. The salesgirl still somewhere behind the cases.

The AC was cold on his skin and he was still sweating. He sat frozen and cursed under his breath. Why the fuck was his brain painting this.

The salesgirl came back still smiling at the two of them. Isha had not stepped out from between Kunal’s knees. His hands had left her back, but the space between them had not opened.

“Lucky you, madam,” she said, eyes moving over how close they still stood. “Most men wait near the door. Your fiancé is doing our job also.”

Rohan heard her call Kunal the fiancé. The word sat in him wrong.

Isha laughed, bright and startled, and shook her head.

“He is not my fiancé.” She pointed back to Rohan. “He is.”

The salesgirl followed the point and found Rohan. Then her eyes came back to Kunal and ran down him, lingering on the shoulders, on the tattooed arms. She smiled at him. “And you are?”

A pinch of jealousy went through Isha. She put her hand on Kunal’s shoulder.

“This is my friend,” she said.

Kunal grinned. The salesgirl smiled at him and did not look away.

He could not stay in that seat. He stood and walked over.

“Have you decided what you want?”

“Have to think more,” Isha said. “But I have seen enough to decide.”

“Then let’s go,” Rohan said.

On the drive back Isha talked enough for both of them. Which set she liked. How the heavy pendant sat. How Kunal knew where every chain should fall before she even asked. How easy he made the whole thing. She turned in her seat and waited for him to agree, to tease, to match her mood.

His hands stayed on the wheel. Her words passed through without catching. Behind his eyes she was still naked on Kunal’s lap, bouncing, tits smothering his face while the shop lights burned around them.

At her gate he parked. She reached for her handbag.

Her phone vibrated.

She opened it at once. Kunal had sent the jewellery pics. She scrolled, caught on her own face in gold, and stepped out still looking at the screen. She walked straight to the building with the phone open in her hand.

Rohan sat in the running car and watched her go, still seeing the other version of her climbing onto his best friend.

Late that night he lay alone in his room and replayed it until the ceiling changed shape.

His dreams had shown Isha taken by many men. Black men from porn. Strangers with no names. Campus bodies that never fully formed. None of that had broken him. Lately he had even come harder for it, face down in the sheet, ashamed and hungry in the same breath. So why did Kunal send him into this. Why this panic in his chest like the floor had dropped.

The answer came clean.

Unknown men stayed fantasy. They lived inside a screen and a sleeping mind. Kunal was real. Kunal slept across the hall. Kunal had his hands on her clasp in a shop this evening. If the man under her tits had a name that close, the fantasy world and the waking world were colliding. That was the danger.

Then the next question. Why Kunal. Of all people. Of every body his brain could have borrowed.

That answer came faster.

First year. Hostel. Late night on Rohan’s laptop, porn flickering in the dark between their beds. Kunal stood to get water. Under his kurta his cock stood massive, thick enough that the cloth could not hide the shape. Rohan stared before he could stop himself. He would have sworn it was more than twice his own. The nickname left his mouth before thought could catch it.

Tripod.

Kunal went red, naive enough at that age to hate being seen. When Rohan used the name again among friends, Kunal covered it with a laugh. “He calls me that because I love photography.” Rohan never corrected him. After that night Kunal kept a pillow on his lap whenever anything hot played on a laptop or a phone. The name Tripod spread through their circle anyway. Outsiders heard cameras. As the years passed, even Rohan forgot what the name really stood for.

Now, staring at his dark room, Rohan was sure of it again. Kunal was blessed with a cock like those pornstars. No wonder his brain had handed him that body when it needed a face for the ride.

The last question sat heavier.

Would he be all right if Kunal was actually intimate with Isha. Not in a dream. In this life. Would he survive it.

Pornstar fantasy was one thing. A man he loved, in the girl he loved, was another. He turned on his side and found no answer that let him sleep.

[sakurasan]

Dear author the wait is getting longer…. Please help your fans with update on next update of the story… and we all are looking for a bigger update… so please enlighten us when we can expect the update

Bro, the image/gif requests are giving me writing blocks. I’m already doing this with the very limited free time I have. I can guarantee one chapter per week. If I get more free time, I’ll work on extra chapters and the images.

[sakurasan]

Chapter 7 This is it

The next morning, sleep had given Rohan clarity. The jewellery-shop panic was calmed, and he could think without his chest locking.

In theory it was simple. If some random pornstar on a screen could fuck Isha in his head and leave him hard and spent, why not Kunal. Same kind of cock. A man he already trusted with his life. The dream had even handed him the face.

In reality he was not ready to decide anything. One wrong move could hurt her, hurt Kunal, or hurt himself, and he was sure of only that. Until he understood what he could live with, he would not push any of them into it.

A plan came. A new blockbuster had opened at their favourite multiplex. The tragic love story half the campus was already quoting. He opened the booking app and took three seats dead centre in a row close under the balcony. No aisle on either side. If they sat together, Isha would have to take the middle. He scrolled up, found one empty seat in the balcony almost above those three, close enough to see everything and too far to hear a word, and booked that too. He added a large popcorn to the order.

Saturday he kept it light. He messaged Isha first and kept it plain: Sunday afternoon at their multiplex for the new film. She replied with three heart emojis and a demand for popcorn. Then he messaged Kunal for the same show and screen, told him to come early, and left her name out of it. Kunal sent a thumbs-up.

Sunday afternoon he parked at her building and waited. Isha walked out in wine chiffon. The blouse underneath was bright, so the thin chiffon went almost see-through, her belly button clear through the cloth. She came down the path like a diva on a red carpet, each step sure, the chiffon moving around her hips.

His mouth went dry. His hand went to his phone. He could still call Kunal and cancel. Then the thought came. This was the real test, what he would feel if she and Kunal sat together as more than friends. His hand left the phone.

She slid into the car already smiling, talking about the trailer she had watched twice.

At the multiplex entrance, she had her hand in his when she saw Kunal waiting near the poster wall. She stopped.

“What is he doing here?”

Kunal turned at the same second. His eyes went from Rohan to her and his brows rose.

“Arre. You brought company.”

Isha looked at Rohan. “You did not tell me.”

“I did not tell him either,” Rohan said. “I thought we could all watch. You two are friends now. Reviews are strong. Come.”

Isha’s mouth tipped, half scold, half smile. “Next time warn me. I dressed for a date, not a group outing.”

Kunal looked her over once, quick and open, then raised both hands. “Group outing. Got it. You will not know I exist.”

“We will see,” she said.

They collected the tickets and went in. Rohan led them to their row until he found the seats. Big men already sat on both sides of the block. No aisle escape either way. Rohan felt the plan click.

“Here,” he said.

Kunal took the left. Rohan the right. The middle seat waited. Isha looked at both of them, then at the men boxing them in, and sat down with a small huff.

“Of course I get the sandwich seat.”

“Best view,” Kunal said, dropping into his chair. “Centre of the universe.”

She turned to Kunal before anything played on the screen. “I get too emotional in romance movies. Don’t make fun of me. Okay?”

“Even I cry,” Kunal said. “Very soft heart.”

“Liar.”

He grinned. “Fine. No making fun.” He tipped his head. “But it will be fun to make fun.”

Isha looked from him to Rohan and back. “Stuck between a liar and an idiot. He knows I will cry at this and still he brought you.”

“I thought you would like the company,” Rohan said.

She poked his arm once and faced the screen. “Both of you are impossible.”

The trailers started. Rohan sat with the balcony ticket in his pocket and no clean line in his mouth. He needed an excuse to leave them alone and climb up there. He had never been good at lying to her. Every sentence he tried felt like a full falsehood, and he stuck on it, staring at the ads on screen while his mind turned the same problem over. His phone buzzed. It was the dean.

He stood at once. “One minute. I have to take this.”

He walked out to the corridor and answered. The dean wanted the shortlist of white papers forwarded first thing tomorrow morning for a contest submission. Rohan knew he could finish it after the movie. The call still handed him the opening he had been stuck without. He said yes, sir, and cut the call. He walked back to their row.

“That was the dean,” he said. “He has urgent work for me.”

Kunal frowned. What was so urgent on a Sunday. “Don’t be a party pooper, saala. We just sat down.”

Isha’s hand went to her bag. She had wanted this film badly. Without Rohan, how could she sit in a theatre and watch it. “Are you sure we need to leave?” she asked.

“I did not say we,” Rohan said. “I need to leave. Don’t cancel on me. I will feel bad. There is a good chance I come back very soon.”

“Let’s go and come back together,” Isha said.

“You don’t have any work in college. Kunal is our friend. Just hang here. I will mostly be back by intermission, or even before.” He looked at Kunal. “Back me up.”

Kunal nodded once. “Isha, I will keep you safe. You can trust me.”

She sat with that. She had met Kunal in person only twice before, but Rohan’s three years of chatter made him feel like an old friend. She felt safe. Both of them were right. Maybe she was overreacting. People watched movies with friends all the time. What was the big deal. “Okay,” she said. “But you should be back in a jiffy.”

“Before you know it,” Rohan said. He held out his car key. “Your bike. I will go and come faster.”

They swapped. Kunal passed the helmet too. As he left the row he told himself he would watch from the balcony for a stretch. If he could not take the view, or if she looked uncomfortable, he would be back in this seat in a minute. Most likely he would join them by intermission anyway. He went down to the parking, started the bike, and rolled it to a different bay away from their current spot. When the bike was settled he walked back toward the multiplex.

As Rohan walked out, the hall went dark and the film started. The heavy stranger on Kunal’s left had forced him toward Isha, shoulder to shoulder. Rohan’s empty seat stayed open on her other side. She was saving it for him.

Kunal tried to find space for his arm and failed. Isha noticed the shift beside her.

“Here,” she whispered. “Before you break something.”

She took his right arm and set his forearm along the top of her seat. They watched like that until she settled back against him. Her bare upper back met his arm, skin on skin. The touch felt different, even for him, and he was not short on experience. The girls he took to bed had never felt like this.

Kunal’s eyes went everywhere first, then stayed on her midriff and her heavy breasts. Looking at her like that brought the guilt. Then they stopped on her face. She laughed at a line and covered her mouth, then let the smile stay. A frown came later, her head tipped as if she could argue with the heroine. He did not need the screen. When she lit up, the scene was kind. When her mouth went small, trouble had come. He had shot faces that knew they were being watched. Hers did not.

He admired how she gave herself to the art. That was what an artist longed for. He wanted to be close friends with her, the way he was with Rohan. Only prettier. The guilt eased. Looking was not a crime.

Before interval the heroine’s life turned into a question. Isha’s face followed it down, cat eyes wet at the corners. He hated seeing her like that. A friend would not leave her in it.

“I warned you,” she whispered, voice thick.

“I know,” he said. “I am not laughing.”

Isha wiped her eyes once.

“That face is not for her,” Kunal said. “That is for you.”

“I saw myself in her.”

He took his arm off her back, caught her hand, and set it on the seat between them. His other hand opened her palm as if he had done this a hundred times.

“Lucky you. Palmist is in.”

“Since when does a photographer read palms?”

“A man needs a side income. Some of us are not on a college salary.”

“Fine, liar. Go on.”

He traced a few lines, sure of them.

“These say five kids. All strong. All fit.”

“Baapre. I will be a gone case.”

“Rohan has a huge house. Fill the rooms.”

“Stop. Enough about kids. What else.”

“Heart line. Your love life is about to get busy. Very soon.”

She thought of Rohan, of every clue she had already given him. She kept that off her face.

“Next.”

He followed the long line down her palm.

“Life line. You and your husband both live to a hundred.”

She liked that one.

“A hundred is greedy. Eighty is plenty.”

They laughed. His hands stayed firm on hers.

A boy from the counter stopped at their row with a large popcorn. She took the tub and kept it on her lap.

“Look at that,” Kunal said. “He even prebooked the popcorn. Thoughtful man.”

“Thoughtful? He sets the whole thing up and then leaves for his dean.”

She tugged her hand back to settle the tub. He did not give it.

“Leave my hand.”

“If I let go you will fall back into the movie,” Kunal said. “I will eat with the other one.”

“As you wish. You will get very little.”

The lights went down.

His left hand went into the bowl. He made a game of it, stealing what she had picked, plucking kernels from her fingers, missing on purpose and coming back. Each reach brushed the dark between her thighs, and a tingle went through her with the salt.

Near the climax of the film Isha was crying again. Her body had shifted until her shoulder rested under Kunal’s arm. In the dark his left hand left the tub and found the bare skin of her waist where the saree had loosened. When a sharp sob left her, his fingers moved once against her open hip, a small tickle.

She jerked, bit down on a wet laugh, and twisted toward him.

“Don’t,” she whispered.

He did it again. She pinched his arm, found it too strong, and changed to a punch. He caught her wrist. The struggle stayed playful and close in the narrow seats, her breasts against his arm. For a moment her forehead pressed to his shoulder and his arm fully circled her. The tickle fight melted into a brief tight hug that neither of them rushed to end.

“You said don’t make fun,” he murmured. “I listened. This is different.”

She stayed against him one breath longer, then faced the screen again with his arm still around her.

Rohan saw them walk out still holding hands. Nothing in him turned bad. The disgust he had feared never arrived. Instead he felt proud, for a reason he could not name. Playboy Kunal had not been able to stop looking at her. She was that beautiful.

At interval he had thought of going down to join them. Then he saw her laugh while Kunal played with her hands, and a thrill went through him. His cock had been up since then. He set Kunal’s helmet on his lap to hide it. He sank in his seat, in case they turned. At the climax Kunal’s tickle had been too much. One touch and he would have come. He was glad he had not, not in a hall.

He wanted to join them now. The crowd was heavy, everyone pushing for the exit. He came down into the corridor and moved to catch them. In the crush Kunal held her tight at the hip, her whole body against his. When he came close, Kunal spoke.

“Hope you liked our date.”

“Our date?”

Kunal winked at her.

“Who is holding you now. Is this not our date.”

She laughed. “Okay. I liked our date.”

Rohan stopped. The line sat in his ear. He let the crowd take him the other way.

He rode to college alone. In the faculty parking he took out his phone. Her name filled the log, calls during the film and after it. He rang her.

“Hi,” he said. “Movie is over.”

“Finally you called. Are you still in college?”

“Yes. So Kunal left.”

“Yeah. He is so funny. He joked I was on a date with him. He would not leave without a hug.”

The tightness in him eased.

“Kunal being Kunal,” he said. “No surprises. I will see you tomorrow.”

That night Isha locked her door and lay down to sleep in her nighty, bare underneath.

She started scolding Rohan in her head. Such a nice movie. He had skipped it. His dean could have waited. He had left her sitting there like a fool.

The scold did not last. Kunal had been right there. He had talked through the sad parts, stolen her popcorn, and made her laugh when she was trying to cry. He had been good company.

If only Rohan had dropped her. She could have kissed him properly in the car, climbed into his lap, and taken his mouth until she was done.

Since posing with two men in the café, her mind had been too busy taking in everything new. Her pussy took a back seat.

Not tonight. Heat rose from her pussy while she was still turning the day over. She could feel it acting up again.

She reached under the nighty and gave the swollen flesh a small slap, the way she would correct a pet that would not settle.

“Stop it. We are sleeping.”

It throbbed under her fingers, stubborn, warmer.

“You have a mind of your own. Behave.”

The throb only grew. Her clit had swollen on its own, and when she shifted her thighs the bare flesh brushed and her breath caught. The skin around it felt puffy, almost bruised with need, as if someone had been sucking it for a long time and then left it aching.

She pinched the swollen tip, then gave it the short tugs that used to finish her. Her pussy refused. The throb grew heavier, a demand she could not talk down.

She turned onto her stomach, pulled the pillow under her cheek, and lowered her hips until the smooth wooden rail at the bottom of the cot pressed against her. The nighty had ridden up. The wood caught her squarely, skin on the hard edge. She moved once. The pressure landed exactly on that over-sensitive flesh and a broken sound left her throat.

She began to rock.

Short strokes first, then longer ones, dragging her bare pussy along the rail until the wood grew slick. Her swollen clit dragged and caught with every pass. She gripped the sides of the cot and pushed harder, thighs trembling, chasing that catch, her breasts crushed in the nighty against the sheet.

Her pussy had taken over her mind. The girl who had told it to behave was gone. She was face down on her own cot, grinding bare on the wood, doing a thing her head would never have let her do.

She kept going. Each pass caught her clit on the edge and sent a jerk up her spine. She bit the pillow and drove her hips harder until the climax tore through her in sharp waves that broke before they finished. She stayed on the rail, pulsing, forehead pressed to the pillow, the wood slick under her. Her clit still throbbed against the wet edge. Her pussy was back. It was not done with her.

After that Sunday, at her building, she climbed into his lap as soon as he parked and took his mouth the way she had wanted on the night he skipped the film. The kisses ran long. She opened him, sucked at his tongue, and kept him there until his hands found her back. When he tried to keep it light she made a small sound in her throat and pulled his head in harder. Her fingers found a nipple through his shirt and pinched it firm enough to make him jolt.

“Isha.”

She pinched again and kissed him deeper. Then she started licking him first, his cheek, the edge of his jaw, the corner of his mouth, tasting her way in before she took his lips. One hand fisted the back of his shirt. The other found the other nipple through the cloth and pinched until he groaned into her mouth. She hugged him tight enough to take his breath, grabbed his ass, and kept him there. Each evening she stayed longer, until the windows had gone dull and her eyes had gone dark. Then she climbed off with her mouth still wet and went up the stairs.

That night he lay awake in his room. The goodbyes kept coming back. She came at him like an animal in heat, starving for a thing he was becoming sure his cock could not meet.

He still could not say it. How did a man open his mouth and tell this to Kunal. To her. What would they think of him if he even tried. The question sat in his chest with no answer and kept him staring at the ceiling until the sky outside the window began to change.

Friday evening they left campus in the car. His phone rang. Kunal.

“Bro, the fridge is empty. Nothing. We have to go to the market.”

“I’ll drop her and come,” Rohan said.

Isha looked at him. “I need to buy things too. Don’t drop me. We’ll go there.”

“We’re coming,” Rohan said into the phone. “Both of us. Ten minutes.”

They walked the lane together, the three of them. Isha had leaned in toward Kunal, close enough to catch the jokes without making him repeat them.

“I am telling you, the couple wanted a horse. In Pune. Where am I getting a horse.”

“You find everything else,” she said. “Find a horse.”

A shout went up at the far end of the lane. Teenage boys came running toward them, loud, scattering carts as they came. Then the barking followed, sharp, and a pack of stray dogs poured in after the boys.

The crowd broke. Rohan was shoved left. Kunal and Isha were driven right. In the scramble she stumbled. A dog lunged past a cart, close enough that she cried out, shut her eyes tight, and grabbed the front of Kunal’s shirt with both hands.

He lifted her straight off the ground. Both arms locked around his neck. He held her there, her body flush to his chest, while the dogs tore past them. Her face was buried in the side of his neck, breathing hard. Her thighs had tightened around him.

Rohan had been pushed against a shutter on the other side of the lane. He saw all of it. The easy strength. The way she clung with her eyes shut. Kunal’s left hand high on her side. That palm would be feeling the softness of her side breast through the blouse. His other arm under her thighs, fingers spread on the lower curve of her ass.

She deserves this, his mind said. Kunal was the best man for the job. That Tripod cock would quench the animal heat in her. She might think she would be happy with me. She will never really know what true pleasure is until she takes Kunal.

This is it.

He wanted Kunal to fuck her. That strength, that size, that ease, inside her. Whatever it cost.

The dogs were gone. People came back to their carts, cursing.

Kunal turned toward Rohan, still holding her, and smiled. His eyes went to her, then back. Rohan smiled too. They each took a step in, close enough to talk.

“Where was I,” Kunal said. “Horse. Not happening.”

Rohan looked at her wrapped around him. “Ask her. She told you to find one.”

Kunal spoke into her hair.

“Madam. Horse. Yes or no.”

Isha lifted her head, eyes still shut, breathing fast.

“Are the dogs gone?”

“Yes, madam,” Kunal said.

“Then please let me down.”

Kunal grinned, adjusted his grip, and gave her a small swing, testing the weight, before he set her on her feet. Her body slid down his front the whole way. When her sandals touched the ground she opened her eyes and still held his shirt a second longer than she needed.

They walked on. His mind was already working out how to bring it to Kunal.

[sakurasan]

Thanks everyone for the likes and comments. Keeps me motivated. Special thanks to Lucifer8797 for the graphics.

[sakurasan]

Chapter 8 Please

He dropped her at her building and waited until she went in. Behind his eyes Kunal still held her off the ground. Rohan drove home and took the stairs past the studio.

Kunal’s door was shut. The grocery bag sat by the media desk. Rohan took the chair, opened his favourite interracial porn, ran the volume high, and sat back.

The woman on the bed was built like Isha, heavy breasts and a waist a man could hold in two hands, hips wide enough that they took the frame when the camera dropped. Fair enough that the man’s dark hands looked huge on her. He had her knees up and he was feeding a thick cock into her, long enough that her mouth fell open before he was even halfway in. A wet sound came out of the speakers, then a broken moan as the thick shaft stretched her.

Kunal’s door opened. He stood in the frame already looking at the screen, then came in and took the other chair.

“Hostel night in the hall.”

He gave a low whistle.

“You still pick this kind. Never anything else.”

“Watch,” Rohan said.

The man on screen drew back and drove in. The woman’s breasts jumped. Her hands grabbed at his back and failed to find a hold. He held her hips and used the length, long strokes that made her belly move.

He had known Kunal would fall for this and join him in the hall, and Kunal had done exactly that. He would give it a few minutes, then play his trick.

Kunal sat with both hands pressed to his lap, pinning the thick line of his cock under his shorts so it would not lift the cloth. Rohan saw the hold. He had seen it since first year. He smiled and kept his eyes on the screen.

“That girl is a real beauty. Right?”

“What can I say. That ass can take a beating.”

“Speaking from experience.”

Kunal snorted, still watching her.

“No, my virgin friend. The models I photograph are size zero. Lean as a stick. Half the time I am hunting for a chest or an ass.”

“So you wish she came with something to hold.”

“I wish they all did.”

On the screen the man pulled out. His cock shone, thick, near a foot, the head dark and heavy. He slapped it once against her open pussy and she jerked. Then he pushed in again and gave her the rest of it, and her voice went high.

Kunal watched her the way he watched a difficult shot. His hands pressed harder.

“For fuck’s sake. Yes. When you go for a ride you need something to hold. Look at her. So much to grip. That is why a man like that can keep going.”

“A body like that… it doesn’t look like it would be happy with less.”

“She would not. You put a short one in her, she will ask if you are in yet.”

Rohan’s throat was dry.

“How short is short.”

“Anything that cannot reach where she is clenching,” Kunal said. “Look at her now. He is in her belly. That is why her mouth is like that. A smaller cock would only tease the opening of her pussy. She would have to finish with her hand later.”

The woman on screen came with a sound that was almost a sob. Her thighs locked around the man’s waist. He kept fucking her through it, and her breasts shook until she grabbed them herself.

Kunal was saying what Rohan thought. He wanted him to admit more.

“If the man is average. Say five inches. You think he can do this.”

The clip cut. The man had her on her knees now, taking her from behind, both hands on her breasts, pulling her nipples as he drove in.

“Five inches against that? In most positions it wouldn’t even be a fair fight. Missionary, maybe he gets in. Even then I doubt a girl like her feels him.”

“So missionary is the only hope.”

“Hope is a big word for five inches.”

Rohan’s palms were wet.

“Say it plain then. If five will not work, what does she need.”

Kunal did not look away from her face.

“She’d need something that can actually fill her. Length and thickness both. Like what he’s working with there.”

Rohan nodded.

The man held her hips and gave her the last of it, and she came again with a wet cry, squirting over his cock and the sheets. Kunal stood so fast the chair jumped. He went to his room and shut the door. Rohan sat with the screen still running. Kunal’s hand would be busy by now.

It was Rohan’s turn to cook. He waited until his cock went down, then closed the window and went to the kitchen. Kunal came out when the food was ready.

After dinner they sat in the hall again. Rohan took the chair and opened the café folder. They went through the set.

“These came well,” Kunal said. “That window did half the job. I take clients there for a reason.”

“You were right about the café.”

“Look at this one. She is carrying the picture.”

“What do you like in this photo.”

“Your girl made it special.”

“What did she do specifically.”

“The curves. The saree shows the line instead of hiding it. My usual girls give me nothing to light. She fills a frame. Those curves are beautiful. I do not have to invent them in the edit.”

“Only the body.”

“No.” Rohan had opened a closer frame, her face filling the screen. Kunal did not look away from it. “The face. Look. Innocent. I have photographed women who learned that look in a mirror. She did not. That face could be the same as the day she was born.”

Rohan watched him.

“So what does the camera like more.”

“Both. The body makes the picture. The face makes you stay on it.”

Then Rohan stopped on the first picture of Kunal standing with her. One arm at her waist, his other hand a breath off her ass. Rohan had clicked it.

“This one. This is the best one from that day,” Rohan said.

Kunal looked. The easy talk left his mouth.

“I was showing you the hold.”

“I clicked it. Maybe I am getting better than you.”

Kunal let out a breath.

“Come on. She makes anything look good. And you posed badly. It is not the man behind the camera. It is the people in front of it.”

“Someone is jealous of my photography. Do I smell hypocrisy.”

“I am stating facts. The only thing you are smelling is your jealousy that I posed better with Isha.”

“So you posed better,” Rohan said. “You were only the photographer. If you were her boyfriend, you would have fumbled like me.”

“No way. I would not be lame like you.”

“If she was yours, how would you have posed.”

Kunal looked at him, then at her in the photo, then back.

“That is your fiancée.”

“Just hypothetical,” Rohan smiled. “Answer it.”

“I would lift her off the ground,” Kunal said. “One leg locked around me, heel on my ass. The other in my hand. She would be in the air, and I would bend and kiss her neck. Those eyes would look at the camera like she wants me. Even Vogue would put it on the cover.”

“You think like that. It is not possible with Isha. She has a lot of rules.”

Kunal sat forward with his forearms on his knees. His jaw moved once.

“That is you. You are not doing her right. You should have pushed her lines. You should have taught her. You take her from place to place like a driver. Park, mall, theatre. You do not do the rest.”

“That is a lot of talk,” Rohan said. “Tell me how you would have changed her.”

“She is not my girl. How do I say.”

“It is only imagination. You have heard three years of this. Enlighten me. How would you have done it.”

Kunal looked at the photo, at his own hand a breath off her.

“If she was mine, I would have done it differently. I would have been ruined in a different way.”

“Meaning.”

“I would drop every other job. Every picture would be her. I would make her the hottest sex icon in the country and keep those pictures a secret for me.”

“I know she likes to pose. But those sex icon pictures are next to impossible.”

“See, you don’t know girls. Someone like Isha, I would have married her in the first month after she accepted me. Then we would not leave the bedroom for months. When we came out, she would be doing more work than the camera.”

Rohan’s mouth was dry.

“Months in bedroom ah. what about Food. Work.”

“We would get food delivered. And you are earning for all three anyway, no?”

“You are crazy. You know that.”

“Crazy is how I get hired. People pay me because they want that.”

“Hmm. You deal with a lot of crazies. I have a crazy request too.”

Kunal sat back, still smiling.

“The most grounded lecturer in the city has a crazy request. Interesting.”

“The porn we saw earlier. Can you remember the shape of that woman. I like those videos because she is built like Isha. Don’t you agree?”

The smile thinned.

“This is getting crazy. Yes.”

“I do not have a cock like that man.”

Kunal looked at him.

“Women don’t care about size. You will make Isha happy. She is not a porn star. Her needs are different.”

“Women do care. They settle for what they get. I do not want her to settle like the rest.”

Kunal shook his head.

“You two are virgins. Get laid first. Then you will stop this crazy thinking.”

Rohan’s palms were wet on his thighs. The real sentence was in his mouth. He let it out.

“That is not the crazy part. This is. I want the best for her in every way. Can you give her that pleasure.”

Kunal went still. The smile was gone. He looked at Rohan as if the chair had moved.

“You have gone mad. You watched too much porn today. You are not thinking straight. Go to sleep.”

Rohan turned the computer off.

“All right. What I said is true. We both sleep on it.”

Rohan went to his room and shut the door. He lay down in his clothes. The weight left his chest. He had finally said it. He had left Kunal with enough tonight, and Kunal would come around. For the first time in months, he fell into a deep sleep.

Across the hall Kunal went to his own room and lay down. Other nights his head hit the pillow and he was gone till morning. After the studio started paying, he slept even harder. Even Rohan joked that it was hibernation. But not tonight. He kept his eyes on the ceiling. Rohan had asked him for something huge. Rohan had never asked him for a thing, not once, in all these years. The first time he did, it was this, and Kunal could not sleep.

His first thought was that it was a prank, and a good one. Rohan had even kept his face serious. Tomorrow Rohan would say it was a joke, and they would laugh.

Then the other thought came. What if it was not a prank. What if Rohan was only scared, and making a bad call. If Kunal did not pull him back, Rohan could hurt the life he was building with her.

Rohan was the wisest man Kunal knew. He loved Isha more than he feared anything. He would not give her away because he thought he could not satisfy her. Unless that love was so sure that another man in her bed felt like a thrill he could live with.

Rohan might call it a thrill. But Isha had lived inside rules her whole life. Kunal did not want Rohan pushing her into a bed she had not chosen. Then he stopped himself. Rohan had spent three years refusing to take a single step she had not already taken. He would not start now.

The worst of it came after that. Kunal had wanted a chance to help him. Now that chance was this, and he wanted a hard no. How was he supposed to say no to a man who had never said no to him.

He went back to the prank. He prayed that was all it was, and drifted into sleep.

The next morning Rohan woke to an empty flat. Kunal’s door stood open. In the driveway there was only his car. On the kitchen table a scrap of paper said, Back by dinner.

Kunal had taken the bike into the forest roads he used when he needed new ground. He scouted backgrounds as he rode, and he used the ride to clear his head.

That evening Kunal came back. After dinner they took the sofa.

Kunal sat half turned, one hand working the seam of the cushion. He looked at Rohan and looked away.

“About last night,” Rohan said, and smiled.

Kunal’s shoulders dropped. He jabbed a finger at that smile.

“I knew it. It is a prank.”

He did not wait for an answer. He came across the sofa, hooked an arm around Rohan’s neck, and hauled him in like they were still in hostel. He thumped Rohan’s back with an open hand, loud, the way collegeboys punish a friend. Rohan stayed in the hold and let him.

“Saala,” Kunal said into his hair, and thumped him again. “I lost my whole sleep. I rode till my hands went numb. I sat on that bike thinking you had lost your mind, and you sit here with that face.”

He knuckled the top of Rohan’s head, shook him once, then let go and sat back, grinning.

Rohan pulled his shirt down. He was still smiling.

“Actually, it is not a prank. Let me say it cleanly. Can you please fuck my fiancee.”

Kunal’s grin died.

“You are really serious.”

“You know how hard it is for me to ask for anything. Would I prank you like this.”

They sat. Kunal’s eyes went to the floor, then to the dark TV, then to nothing. Thoughts ran through him too fast to hold. The first one was why. Last night Rohan had already given him that, clean, and Kunal would not make him say it again. Rohan knew the next word was Kunal’s. He waited.

The clock on the wall moved through ten minutes. When he spoke, his voice was quiet.

“Why me.”

“Your girls,” Rohan said. “The glow they come out with. Tired like they ran a marathon, and still that smile, like it was the best night of their life.”

Kunal let out a short breath.

“That anyone can do. You spend the night with Isha, and she will also have that smile.”

“Liar. I know what you have. Don’t act innocent.”

“I don’t have anything special.”

“Did you forget who named you Tripod, and why.”

Kunal went still. Colour rose in his face. He looked at Rohan, then away, and his mouth stayed shut. He sat forward, then back, hunting for the next line.

“You are not scared I will steal her.”

“You know how much I love her. I know how much you like me. You will not steal her from me.”

Kunal rubbed his jaw.

“I can never hurt you and then sleep. That is why this is a bad idea. Are you sure you will be all right with it.”

“I will feel possessive. It will hurt a little. But if she never feels a cock like the ones in those movies, it will haunt me for life.”

“And Isha. How does she say yes to this. Do not talk to her the way you talked to me. She will think you pushed her.”

“Not in a million years. Seducing her is your job. If I say this to her and she looks at me like a criminal, I will lose the purpose of my life.”

“Good. If it even happens. Is it one night.”

“No. I want it for as long as you both want it.”

“How do we live after that. Three people. Something will shift.”

“I give her all the love she needs. You take the lust now and then. Then the marriage is complete. I am her husband. You two are friends with real benefits.”

Kunal blew out a breath.

“God. You have really thought about this.”

“A decision this big. Do you think I would not think it through.”

“Okay. I am going to be honest. Isha has a body any man would die for. Especially me. I never looked at her that way because she is your girl.”

“I am the one asking you.”

“I know. That is why I want to promise you a few things. You tell me if you are fine with them.”

“Sure.”

“I will try every trick I have. That I will do. If she is not comfortable, I stop. If she never wants it, you do not get to say I let you down.”

“Definitely. I want her pleasured. Never forced.”

“And I chase her only until you marry. If she never gives in before the wedding, you do not bring this to me again. I will not start with your wife.”

“Okay. If she never says yes before we marry, I will never ask you again. Is that all.”

“No. If she yields, I lead the first night. I show her what that night can be.”

“Yes.”

“After that first night I do not even flirt with her. Second time happens only if she comes and asks for it.”

“Okay. But if she comes back on her own the second time, that is proof enough that she needs you. You should not hold back after that. Her pleasure is what makes me happy.”

“Deal.”

Rohan sat with that a second.

“How do we start.”

“Do you know I have been sending her my work almost every day.”

“I did not know. That is fine.”

“The way she talks about the pictures makes me send more.”

“Even I appreciate your work.”

“Nonsense. You say good. Perfect. One word. She sees things in a frame I did not even know I had shot. I became a fan of how she looks at the art.”

“All right. She sees more than I do.”

“I will start being more flirty now. We start the pre-wedding shoots soon. I will have more time with her.”

“That is a good plan.”

“One last thing. If it happens, I can give you a high-level picture. You do not ask for more. I am shy that way.”

“I want her happy. Nothing more. I will not disturb you for details.”

“Are we clear.”

“Absolutely.”

“Let’s sleep.”

In his room he sat on the bed and opened his phone. He found her in the café set, pallu at her hip, blouse tight across her chest, her face turned as if she had just heard her name.

He used to crop that shot, send it, and call it work. Tonight he kept his thumb on the glass and let his eyes run the waist and the heavy curve of her hip. He had liked her before, the way she filled a frame, the way she talked about one. Now he wanted the woman under the saree.

Then the other thought came.

Rohan was more important than this. More important than sex, even with a goddess. If she fell in love with him, Rohan would lose her.

She should never love him. She should see the bad boy, the playboy you sleep with and never marry. He would keep her there.

Sunday morning he opened the chat and sent it with no picture.

Kunal: Good morning, beautiful.

Isha was still in bed. She smiled at his name, then saw there was no sunrise under the words, only that.

Isha: Good morning, Kunal.

She looked at the first word again.

Isha: Beautiful? ??

The reply landed at once.

Kunal: I said what I said. Facts do not get a question mark.

Colour rose in her face. She typed with the sheet pulled over her mouth.

Isha: You never called me that.

Kunal: Get used to it. I have more names for my favourite model.

Isha: Favourite model already.

Kunal: I cleared every weekend for the pre-wedding. I want the bride in every dreamy frame I have been imagining.

Isha: What about my fiance.

Kunal: You are my talent. He is your prop.

She snorted, then frowned at the screen.

Isha: That is mean.

Kunal: Have you seen him pose.

She laughed into the sheet.

Isha: Fine. I will drag him. When do we start.

Kunal: Café today. We plan the rest there.

Isha: 11?

Kunal: ?

[sakurasan]

Chapter 9 Bait

Isha looked at the chat again. Kunal had called her beautiful. She grinned, wicked with it, and rang Rohan. He answered.

“Awake, my love?” she said.

He was surprised she had said love.

“Very well awake, my bride.”

She laughed, pleased.

“You caught my mood,” she said. “Kunal is ready to plan our pre-wedding.”

He smiled. Kunal was starting what they had agreed last night. His stomach flipped.

“That is good,” he said. “What are the details.”

“The café. Eleven. We meet him there.”

“I will be on time to pick you up.”

At the café they sat in their usual corner.

Kunal came through the door with an iPad Pro in one hand. He sat on her side and shoved her along with his hip. She made room after she was already against him. He put his arm along the seat behind her and drew her in, then woke the iPad between them.

“I picked places you might like,” he said. “Why don’t you shortlist.”

She took it in one hand and scrolled.

Rohan watched from across the table. She was tucked into Kunal’s side, his arm around her, their heads together on the screen. Rohan’s cock went hard.

Kunal took the finger she was using and scrolled on, his mouth near her hair.

She stopped on one and turned the iPad toward Rohan.

“Do you like this one? I want something we can put on the screens in the wedding hall.”

“Yes,” Rohan said.

She went for another. Kunal’s hand came down over hers on the iPad and flicked the folder away, then tried to turn the screen toward Rohan himself. She held on. They had the tablet together over the table, twisting it between their palms, her fingers sliding under his as she pulled it back. The pictures kept moving. From across the table Rohan could see their hands rubbing on the glass more than he could see what was on it.

“This one,” she said, still fighting the angle. “Rohan?”

“Not that,” Kunal said. He turned the iPad in her grip, his knuckles running over hers. “This.”

Rohan’s eyes stayed on their hands.

“Yes,” he said.

She knew he meant her. Kunal tried once more, same tangle, same heat of his palm on hers. She asked again. Rohan said yes again, still watching the hands.

Kunal’s hand left the fight.

“Yours,” he said. Rohan had sided with her. He had no choice.

He pulled her in until her ear was at his mouth. His palm covered his lips so the words stayed in her hair. His breath was warm. His thigh was still on hers.

“How about the dresses,” he whispered. “The cocktail ones. The bride in the pictures I sent you.”

Her face went hot. Rohan only saw Kunal’s hand at her ear and the colour climb her throat. Kunal watched Rohan’s face over her hair. If Rohan was going to pull her back to his side, it would be now. Rohan only watched her blush. His cock got harder.

“I am doing only sarees,” Isha said, loud enough for the table.

“Then sarees,” Kunal said. His arm was still around her. “Bride and groom. Different traditions, different days. I will tell you. He wears what matches.”

“Tell us,” Rohan said. “We will wear it.”

Kunal stood. His hip left hers last.

“Come. We pick them today.”

He took them to a big boutique. The sales manager reached him before he had crossed the floor.

“Kunal. Your usual?”

“Pre-wedding. Sarees. Groom matching. She is the bride.”

The woman looked at Isha the way she looked at his other clients and was already moving. They took pieces off the racks. Isha lifted silk that hung heavy. Then designer sarees so thin the light came through her fingers. The sales manager turned a tag into the fold before anyone could read it, then did the same on the next. Kunal kept both kinds and sent the rest back. Rohan stood with his hands in his pockets and let Kunal make the call.

“You two change,” Kunal said. “I will tell you what stays.”

The fitting rooms were down a short hall, his door on one side, hers on the other. Rohan went in with an armful of groom clothes. He came out first. Her door was still shut.

Kunal looked him over once.

“Next one. You change.”

Rohan went back in and put on the next set. The cloth was thicker than his own shirts. He came out. Her door was still shut.

“Next one,” Kunal said, and put a sherwani in his hands.

Rohan went back in a third time. The inner piece caught. The hooks sat wrong and he had to start them again. The outer layer was stiff. When he got the last hook done, he opened his door a crack. She was at the mirror now, in silk, the pallu pinned across her chest, the blouse closed under it. Kunal was already with her. His fingers set the knot, spread the pallu, pinned it at her shoulder. Isha stood still and let him. In the mirror her face was flushed.

“See. That is the fall.”

Kunal’s hand rose and settled the pallu at her chest, on the cloth over her breast. Rohan stayed in the gap and watched until Kunal stepped back. Rohan’s cock was hard.

“These,” Kunal said. “Pack them.”

Rohan came out and looked at her.

“You look good enough to eat,” he said.

They kept going. Silk first, then the designer ones, and more groom sets. Kunal stood her at the mirror in front of Rohan now, that saree sitting low on her hip, fingers on her tummy, on the curve of her hip, spreading the pallu. Isha stood still. Rohan watched and stayed hard. Then Kunal turned and fixed Rohan’s collar, tugged the sherwani straight, closed a hook Rohan had missed. Isha saw that and told herself it was work. He did it to both of them.

He put her back at the mirror and his palm went under the pallu at her waist, on the knot. Her breath caught. He smiled at the mirror, not at Rohan.

“These,” Kunal said. “Pack them.”

Isha and Rohan went back to change into their own clothes. When they came out, Kunal was at the counter.

“It is paid.”

“I will pay,” Rohan said.

“Studio property.”

“Let the studio take it,” she said.

Rohan looked at her, then at Kunal, and let it go.

“This weekend,” Kunal said. “I will message the time.”

He went.

Rohan left her at her building and came home. Kunal shut the hall door. They looked at each other, and both of them smiled.

“I had my doubts about you,” Kunal said. “I thought you would chicken, seeing me so close to her.”

Rohan thought of the theatre, Kunal’s arm around her in the dark, and the two of them walking out still holding hands. That was why he had been composed today.

“Didn’t I say I am truly in it.”

Kunal looked at him, then went to his room.

In his head the saree was already off her and he was inside her, and his cock went hard in his trousers. He stayed with that thought.

Across town she lay in bed. Kunal’s fingers had teased her midriff while he helped her dress, and her pussy had tingled to every swipe. She called it imagination. If he had done anything bad, Rohan would not have watched. Kunal was a professional. She was not going to think like a naive village girl.

Then she put Rohan’s hands where Kunal’s had been and rubbed her pussy to him doing it in public, until her thighs shook and she came with her mouth shut.

---

The next day after lunch she was scrolling her phone when his message landed.

Kunal: Madam, are you free

Isha: Free now, sir. What is it.

Across town Kunal grinned at the sir. She had not let him have the last word.

Kunal: The blouses from yesterday. They need a proper fit before the weekend.

Isha: Okay, director.

Kunal: You are doing too much ?

Isha: You started it. What do you actually need.

Kunal: They have to sit on you. Not hang. I will take you to my tailor.

Isha: There is a good one downstairs in my building. We can go there.

His plan to take her out alone crumbled.

Kunal: Then good.

He was not one to fall. He started his next trick.

A set of files followed. A woman stood in a studio against an empty wall, in a blouse and nothing else, the pallu dropped in her lap. The cloth was a second skin. It held her breasts as if it was not there at all if not for the different color.

Isha: She looks so good. Have I seen her somewhere.

Kunal: Jewellery ad. The one in the theatre that day.

Isha: Oh. That one. Her eyes are a lot. She looks like she is going to eat you.

He had shot that set the morning after he had her. The girl had still been hungry for him. That was the look he wanted on the screen. Isha had seen it.

Kunal: She was a fond one. That is not why I sent it. You will look better than her. The blouse just has to sit like this.

She wanted the best pictures. She would do what he said for that.

Isha: I will get the blouse before the weekend. That look I do not think I can do.

Kunal: We will get there soon.

That evening Rohan picked her up. In the car she told him she had to see Savita. Kunal wanted the new blouses altered before the weekend. Rohan said yes. He was not following the tailor talk. He heard Kunal’s name. Then an unlikely thought came. What if she stopped loving him if Kunal kept coming closer. He wanted to hold her. Dropping her now would hurt.

He turned off the usual road.

“Where are we going.”

“You will see.”

He took her to a big park and walked her to a tree away from the path. He put his head in her lap and held her hips. She smiled, played with his hair, and talked about her day. He listened to her voice more than the words.

When it was dark he drove her home.

At the gate she said, “We are doing this every day, right.”

“Every day. I have no other place I want to be.”

Through the week Kunal kept sending more and more pre-wedding pictures, a lot every day. She reacted with a thumbs-up, a heart, a scared face, a thumbs-down. Hearts and thumbs-up were the poses she was ready for. He was already sending only his milder work. At the start she sent the scared face on many of them. Later in the week he watched similar ones turn into thumbs-up.

Saturday Rohan drove her out of the city.

“Where is Kunal.”

“Ahead of us. He left before sunrise.”

“Why. We are the ones getting photographed.”

“He takes men to set the lights and clear the place. Then he sends them off before the couple walks in.”

“He should do that for us also.”

“I told him. He said we are not some random booking. For us he stays and does extra.”

“So Kunal.”

The road thinned. An old temple sat off it, stone and weeds, no name board. Kunal was waiting beside a small caravan. He took them both in. At the back a cloth screen made a change room. In front of it, stools and a mirror for makeup. The costumes were already behind the screen.

“You first,” Kunal said.

Isha went in. Rohan and Kunal waited outside. When she came out she was in silk, pallu pinned, blouse closed. She sat at the mirror. Rohan went behind the screen.

Kunal stood over her with a small kit. He did her face. Then he put powder on her tummy, on her back, and along the line of her cleavage.

“This stops the shine,” he said. “Sweat will ruin the frame.”

She sat still and let him.

When Rohan came out, Kunal held up the brush.

“You too.”

“I will do it myself,” Rohan grinned. “Anyway, the eyes are going to be only on the bride.”

Kunal snorted and took them to the temple steps.

They stood in the doorway. He clicked. They moved to the broken wall, then the inner court. He came in close to her ear, close enough that she felt his breath, and told her the correction. She moved Rohan. Chin down. His hand on her waist. Pallu to the right, kept on her.

They went back to the caravan and she changed. Another silk. Then a third. Makeup quicker. Steps, a stone trough, the same ear, the same way she told Rohan where to stand. By late morning the stone was hot. Rohan drove her home. Kunal stayed with the caravan.

Sunday they shot at Aga Khan Palace, lawns still wet from the night rain. She came out of the caravan in the diamond-studded sheer bridal saree from the boutique. Rohan was still changing.

Kunal drew the pallu until it covered only one side of her blouse.

“The blouse has so much work. It is a crime if you do not show it.”

She looked down. One cup sat in the open. She stood still and let him.

He took a small roll from the bag. The tape was clear. He peeled a strip and both sides caught on his fingers.

“What is that.”

“Fashion tape. It holds. The pallu will not move.”

He pressed it to the blouse, then the pallu onto it. He pressed more under the saree, onto her skin. She felt the cool of it.

Rohan came out in a sherwani.

They shot on the wet lawn. He placed their hands and went back to the camera. The saree went thin in the light.

“This one I do not get,” Rohan said. “Show me.”

Kunal held her the way he meant, then put Rohan there and went back to the lens.

By late afternoon Rohan drove her home.

Tuesday evening they were on their bench under the big tree. Rohan slept in her lap. Her phone buzzed against her thigh. Kunal had sent the weekend pictures. She scrolled with one thumb and kept the other in Rohan’s hair.

Isha: You did it again. We look like we rule that palace.

Kunal: Perfect for a wedding hall.

Isha: You do not sound happy.

Kunal: They still do not have my signature. Anyone could have taken them.

She had an idea what he meant. She pushed that thought away and typed something safer.

Isha: You are being modest. You owned these. They are all yours.

Kunal: That is cute. You look at my work more than you admit. You know what is not there.

Isha: I agree. The others are more beautiful than ours.

Kunal: No. These are the beauty. The others are sexy. And that is still not what I meant. Do not go shy on me now. We are friends. Say the thing you are already thinking.

She opened the other couples and scrolled until she was sure. She still could not type it. She looked at Rohan asleep in her lap, and that made her brave.

Isha: Those girls’ boobs have eyes.

Kunal laughed at the phone. Boob eyes. She could not say nipples, and that shy little rename went straight to his cock.

Kunal: Eyes. I like that. Good catch. That signature of mine is missing. Or layered to hide.

A chill went through her. She wondered if she was ready for that.

Isha: That will be too bold for me.

Kunal: It is all right. You being comfortable in the pose is what matters.

She read it twice. He had let her off that easily.

Saturday Rohan could not take off. Sunday they drove to Sinhagad.

The caravan sat at the foothill, set the way it had been last weekend. Kunal waved them in. Isha went behind the screen and pulled it shut. She started to change, old blouse off, and his message came back as a thought. Her hands found the bra hooks and held. Fear rose in her chest. She took the bridal blouse and put it on over the bra, then came out.

Kunal looked at her. Something in his face dipped and then held still. She could not tell if he was disappointed or if she was inventing it.

They shot a quick set in the foothills. He put them closer than last week. She felt the heat of Rohan’s body against hers and Kunal’s eye on both of them, and it climbed through her as they held each frame.

Back in the caravan she changed alone. In the mirror her nipples stood hard under the blouse. She stared. That was what his other girls had. The look that made a picture stay. Her face went hot. She wanted hers to stay too.

She unhooked the bra and left it on the stool.

The next set Kunal had laid out was thin Japanese silk, blouse the same cloth. She put it on, pulled the pallu to cover only one side of the blouse, and stepped out as Rohan went in to change.

Kunal saw her nipples poking through at once. His face lit like a stadium bulb. That look made her feel special. She laughed, proud of what she had done. His eyes answered hers.

He took the foundation and worked it onto her skin in slow strokes. He had the pallu off her shoulder for it. She stood with her hands open, the cloth in one fist.

Rohan came out. Kunal’s face was close to her stomach. Her breasts pushed the thin blouse toward him as if they were an offering, rising and falling as she breathed. Rohan was too naive to notice the missing bra. The scene made his cock go hard. He mumbled an excuse and went outside fast so they would not see.

He waited by the caravan for more than half an hour before they came out.

Then they climbed. At first Rohan and Isha walked together, Kunal behind them for mid-hill frames. Higher up the path turned sharp. Rohan went ahead quick. On the hard steps Kunal had to lift her and hold her until she found her feet again.

At the top they shot against stone, sky, a broken wall, the drop. Whenever her nipples softened under the silk, Kunal said it in the open. “Your eyes are closing.”

The first time she stared. He put his palm flat on his own chest. She understood. The private joke alone pulled them hard again. When it did not, she turned her back, pinched them through the cloth when she was sure neither man could see, and faced the lens with them standing.

That night she lay in bed with the day still on her skin. Rohan saw none of it, she thought. He does not even know. Only Kunal and I do. The thought made her press her thighs together.

Sleep took her. In the dream Rohan came to touch her, the way he had on the other nights. The face stayed his. The touch did not. It felt different, naughty under a familiar smile. She looked down. The hands and body on her were Kunal’s, tattoos and all, and her pussy jerked.

Two days later Kunal called them to the café. Same corner. Same seats. He sat on her side again and drew her in. As they began to talk his hand found hers. Mild at first. Then his fingers locked through hers, firm, and she felt the strength in his grip.

“The clothes from the boutique are done,” Kunal said. “We need new ones.”

“New ones already,” Rohan said. “Those looked so expensive. You are spending like a madman.”

“Nonsense. I am doing what is needed. Nothing extravagant. A beauty like her deserves that much.”

“No. Give me the bills. I will pay them.”

“Nothing doing. You save for the wedding. This bill is not your worry.”

“At least cut down on what comes next.”

“Not possible. I only do the best job. If you feel bad, assume I am spending from your share of the studio.”

The men kept at it. Isha could hear every word, but her mind was elsewhere. What are these two thinking, she thought. I am a woman. I am sensitive. Kunal is holding me like I am another man in the room, skin on skin, and Rohan will not even glance at his fiancée stuck against someone else.

“Back me here,” Rohan said.

“Back me,” Kunal said, almost with him.

Both faces turned to her. Rohan looked sure she would speak for him.

“This is your problem,” she said.

She was looking at Rohan. His face went blank.

“Excuse me.”

“See. You take so much pleasure helping others. You never let anyone help you.”

“It is not like that.”

“You call Kunal family all the time. Then what is the real problem if he spends for us. Would you not do the same?”

“I would. But.”

“No buts. Give him the pleasure of helping you at least once.”

Rohan sat with his mouth open. The words would not come. She had nailed it.

Kunal’s face broke. Tears stood in his eyes. He pulled her into a hard hug and kept thanking her against her hair. She did not know what else to do, so she held him and murmured that it was all right.

Rohan saw the tears. He had never seen Kunal cry. This hug was not one of his tricks. It was real.

[sakurasan]

Chapter 10 In the Air

Rohan and Isha sat alone.

“That was new,” Rohan said.

“That was intense,” she said.

Kunal came back freshened and took the same seat beside her.

“The past ten minutes never happened,” he said. “If I hear either of you bring it up again, I will kick his ass.”

“That is not fair,” Rohan said. “Why will you kick me if she brings it up.”

A shiver went through her at that. “Can you give him a kick right now.”

All three of them laughed.

“Anyway. I have designer friends in Mumbai,” Kunal said. “Your samples are already with them for size. Next set lands before the weekend.”

“Mumbaikar sarees. Hmm.”

“Not only sarees. Lehenga choli. Ghagra choli. Madisar. Anarkali. The lot.”

“But.”

“No buts. They are cousins of the saree only.”

“Isha, it is only for the pictures.”

She had no answer. The words would not come.

“Okay.”

Saturday morning the caravan stood in the Empress Garden parking lot. Rohan and Kunal waited at its door. Isha came out in a lehenga choli. The dupatta was thin and transparent, almost not there at all. Both men went still. Her hourglass hips showed clean through it.

Rohan went in and came out in a sherwani. Kunal went in after him and came out in one too.

“Director is also getting ready,” she said. “What is cooking today.”

“I am starring too,” Kunal said. “Wedding-hall boring is finished. This weekend we do the funny ones.”

“Nice. How exactly.”

“I make Rohan chase you. He is going to be on his knees a lot this weekend. I come in between you two, and he still has to win you.”

“Nice. A competition. I am loving it.”

All three of them laughed.

Both men let her walk two steps ahead. Neither could keep his eyes off the shake of her hips.

Inside the park Kunal stopped them in a stretch clear of people. He set the camera for the frame, then came back. The remote sat in his pocket.

“In this one I lift her and run,” he said. “Rohan chases with a rose. She tries to take it.”

They took their places. Kunal lifted her. Her belly rested on his shoulder. She leaned for the rose in Rohan’s hand. His two-day beard brushed her flank, and the lift held her there, and she went stiff under it.

After the take he showed them the frame. Rohan pointed at the screen.

“You always say I do not know how to pose. Now look who does not know.”

Isha shot back, “You are not wearing a lehenga.”

Kunal grinned. “I know the right treatment for this.”

He came in close and tickled her hips. She reached for Rohan. “Help.”

Rohan took her hands and held them out of the way. “Let him.”

Kunal tickled harder. She jerked and twisted like a fish out of water, laughing against her will, until the stiffness broke and her body went soft for the lens.

They shot through the morning.

After lunch they were back at the parking area by the caravan. She went in to change into the madisar. The cloth defeated her. She stood in blouse and petticoat, called Rohan through the screen, and asked him to help.

He looked at the folds and shook his head.

“I do not know this one.”

He called for Kunal.

Her face went sharp. Rohan read it. “He is a professional. Fixing the dress is part of his job.”

“Whatever. But you stay with me.”

Kunal stepped in. His look was flirty and quick. Her underbelly tingled before he touched her.

He took the saree and wrapped it around her. At each tuck into the petticoat his finger slid between her skin and her panties, deeper than the cloth needed. He worked that tuck around her whole waist. She almost wet her panties, her breath gone thin.

Rohan stood to the side in the groom set. He thanked the pheta that covered the hard line of his cock.

Sunday the caravan was back in the Empress Garden parking lot. Rohan and Isha went inside. Only one set of costumes waited. Kunal stood in a sleeveless t-shirt and shorts, already casual.

“Not starring today,” she said.

“Today’s theme,” Kunal said. “You two romancing. Forgetting the world in this park. My job is only behind the lens.”

Something warm moved through both of them. Every evening they already did that on a bench under a tree. This was the same thing, made into pictures.

Kunal saw the look they shared and left them a breath of it, then cut in.

“I need a lot of PDA. No shy stuff. Either of you.”

“Hmm,” Rohan said. “Lots of kisses then.”

She blushed. “Shh. Do not talk like that.”

“Okay. Get dressed quick. With these clouds I do not know how much light we have.” He stepped out.

Rohan’s clothes were easy. Hers was a mint-gold tissue embroidered stitched saree set, lace-strap sleeveless blouse. She went behind the curtain. He dressed fast at the mirror. She got the blouse on and stared at the rest. The stitched saree made no sense in her hands.

“I am ready,” Rohan said. “Do you need help.”

She knew he would be no use either.

“Call Kunal.”

“Right away.”

He went. Kunal came in with a grin.

“Man ready for the job.”

“Help me.”

He sorted the saree, held it open like a barrel, and nodded for her to step in. She moved. He stopped her.

“You cannot do this with a petticoat.”

A tremor went through her. She stood like a deer in headlights.

“Quick. We are losing light.”

She untied the knot. The petticoat fell. She stepped into the open cloth as fast as she could. He pulled it up and zipped her in. As he fixed the fall, her breasts rose and fell under the lace-strap blouse with no bra. He sat her facing the mirror and worked the makeup from behind her, the sky forgotten. She started to relax.

The shoot began. She and Rohan liplocked through frame after frame, at least twenty times that day. By the break he did not even want lunch. He had already taken so much of her mouth he felt full. All day she wore the look of a seductress. It sent a shiver through both men. Neither wanted to admit it.

That night she tossed and turned in bed. Standing in just her panties before Kunal flashed again and again. That had been the danger, she told herself. From that moment to now the heat had not left. Her pussy was still hungry. She wanted to book a cab, go to Rohan’s room, and ravage him where he slept.

At the same hour Kunal sat at his computer editing the day’s frames. She had shaken over dropping the petticoat. On the stool she breathed hard while he fixed her, breasts bouncing in that lace-strap top, and from his angle he had a clear look inside. He saw her nipples. His cock went huge. He turned her to the mirror and did the whole makeup from behind after that, her body hiding his crotch so she would not see it. His cock stood hard in his shorts again now. He stopped on a shot of her looking into the lens just after a kiss. The look was intense. He had seen that face on girls already deep in heat. He was on the right track. This was no longer help for Rohan. It had gone far past that. He wanted to bed that beauty. He decided to escalate.

Her phone lit while her thumb hung over the taxi app. A notification landed. She opened it. Files from Kunal. As they loaded, the previews looked like couples in a garden. She took them for today’s work. Then the first image opened full. A different couple. More forest than park. What caught her eye was the bare skin. They did not seem to be wearing anything.

He had sent implied nudes. A girl behind a tree, side silhouette with no cloth. A couple in a hug, objects placed to hide what mattered. More of the same.

She did not know how to answer. She dropped the phone and put both hands on her pussy, working her labia hard, rubbing until sleep took her without her noticing.

For now, blue ticks. He went to sleep happy.

The next day he toned it down. A couple on white sand, bikini bottoms only, the rest of them bare to the light. He sent the set and waited. Blue ticks. No reaction.

The afternoon after that her replies landed. Thumbs-down on every frame. Kunal grinned at the phone. She had not told him to stop sending. That was the first win. The thumbs-down was the second. He kept going.

Sunday he took them trekking above Kune Falls.

“Kunal, how much longer,” Rohan said.

“Don’t worry. Just one kilometre more.”

“What is today’s theme,” she said.

“You two are going to be acrobatic dancers.”

“Can we really pull that off.”

“We throw you in the air a couple of times,” Kunal said, grinning, “and it will come out fine. Trust your director.”

They reached an empty stretch with the upper falls in view and the stream running past.

“No caravan today,” she said.

“Not possible up here. See that small tent. I set it up for you.”

“Isha, you first,” Rohan said. “Kunal will take an hour on you anyway. I am dipping in the river.”

Kunal and Isha started toward the tent. Rohan went for the water.

Kunal’s hand settled on her back and drew her in close enough that only she heard.

“So. All thumbs-down.” He pulled a sad face.

“You are one big bad boy, aren’t you. Why send those to me.”

“Maybe.” He tipped his head, eyes on hers. “But aren’t they beautiful. You know how much thumbs-down hurts an artist. Especially from a girl who looks like you.”

“They were beautiful. I looked at them many times. But they are never for me.”

“Never say never.” Softer now. She drew breath to protest. “Don’t answer. We will not do anything you do not like. Come. Get dressed for today.”

She went into the tent. The costume was a thin white Bengali silk saree with a red border. The blouse was strapless, seashell cups in front, a scarf tie at the back.

She had sensed he would pull something like this after last week. She had come prepared: strapless bra, boyshorts underneath.

She put on the saree. She took off her own blouse. She could have tied the cups in front and turned the piece around herself. The pictures had worn down her resistance to showing him more skin. She wanted Kunal to come in and help her dress. She held the blouse to her chest and called out.

“Can you come in and help me.”

From the stream Rohan looked back. Kunal and Isha walked toward the tent like lovers, his hand on her back. Kunal was making progress. If Rohan kept giving them this privacy, maybe he would get the dream he had asked for: Isha satisfied. That was why he had always left them the caravan. Even today he had said Kunal would take an hour, a clue so Kunal would stay with her.

Now he saw her call him into the tent. Kunal went in. Rohan’s pulse kicked. His conscience knew Kunal would only help her dress. His head painted it differently. The tent walls went clear. Kunal was stripping her and taking her there. When he first asked Kunal, his mind had been only on her pleasure. Now, for a second, he wished he could really see them together. A voyeur’s need rose in him. He scolded himself for how uncivil the thought had become. Her pleasure was the point, not his eyes. He turned into the water and let them have the tent.

Inside the tent she stood with her back to the flap. Both hands held the seashell cups hard to her breasts, the pallu folded over them. She heard him come in.

“Knot them.”

Kunal sucked in a breath at the sight. The bare line of her back. The strapless bra. The saree already around her hips. He stepped in close and set his fingers at the bra clasp first. She had half expected that. The hooks opened. She let the bra fall, pulled it free from under the cups, and dropped it on the floor. His hands took the scarf ends at her back and drew the blouse tight until the cups sat firm on her. He tied the knot.

He turned her to face him. The pallu stayed in one of her hands.

He looked at her.

“Wrong wrap. You cannot dance in this.”

She put the pallu in his hand. He found the tucked end at her waist and pulled. The white cloth came free. She turned as he drew it, slow circle after slow circle, the red border sliding off her hips, her thighs, until the whole length was in his arms and her back was to him in the strapless blouse alone.

She stayed that way a second longer than she needed. She smiled to herself. Boyshorts, not panties like last week. From behind, they held her like skin, tucked into the crack of her ass. The cloth held every round with nothing left to guess. His cock went hard in his shorts.

He turned her to face him. Eyes on the saree in his hands, then on her.

He started at her waist. The first wrap went low and tight. His knuckles brushed her belly as he tucked the cloth under her waistband, finger to skin, and pulled until it bit. She drew a breath and stayed. He walked the tuck around her, palm sliding over her hip, the small of her back, the other hip, each press seating the cloth. Heat climbed through her. She turned when his hand asked her to turn.

He gathered the front into fan pleats, one fold at a time between her thighs. His fingers worked between her thighs, cloth warm against her pussy. She shifted her feet wider so he could set the fan clean. Her pussy pushed against the thin cloth as his knuckles passed. She let it. He locked the pleats at her waist with a hard tuck and his thumb stayed a beat too long on the soft skin above the waistband.

Another wrap went higher and tighter, cloth climbing her ribs. His hands smoothed it under her breasts, around her back, across her belly. Her nipples pressed the seashell cups. Her mouth stayed open. He lifted her arm for the pallu, ran it over her shoulder, fingers trailing the side of her breast as he set the fall. The wrap sat locked at the waist, fan clean in front, body free to be thrown and caught.

He stepped back once and looked at her.

“Now you can dance. Let’s go.”

“No makeup today?”

“Only natural,” he said. “Water will wash it off anyway.”

They came out of the tent sooner than Rohan had hoped. His face fell for a second. He left the stream and went in to change.

The shoot began at the edge of the water. Kunal wanted Rohan to throw her and catch her. Rohan froze with his hands on her waist.

“What if she breaks her leg.”

“We are standing in water,” Kunal said. “Worst case she gets wet.”

“How are you sure.”

Isha tipped her head at Kunal.

“You throw me. Let him learn.”

Kunal grinned and took her waist. He threw her. She left the water and came back into his hands, his grip hard on her hips, then her thighs, then the round of her ass as he set her down laughing. Rohan watched and still would not try the high throw. The rest of the day she posed more with Kunal than with him, lifts and catches with his hands learning the same places again and again for the lens.

On the ride home she still felt that grip on her hips, her thighs, her ass.

Monday a new file landed. A girl in a halter-neck top, back fully open. After a run of thumbs-down, the scared face came back.

Kunal: Want to try this next.

Isha: No way.

Kunal: Okay.

Through the week he watched. A few of the earlier thumbs-down flipped to the scared face. He kept sending.

Thursday he sent a woman in a tribal saree, side pose. The frame gave almost no detail. She was not wearing a blouse. Isha sent a thumbs-up.

Kunal: We are doing this then. This weekend.

Isha: No.

Kunal: No?

Isha: Yes.

Kunal: We have a yes from you.

she first wanted to argue that was a yes to no. but She could already see his sad puppy face. She typed okay.

Kunal: Great. Pack your bags. We leave for Amboli Friday night.

Friday night Isha stood at the gate with one bag and watched the empty road. She wore a soft cotton saree from her old collection, blouse to match, easy for a long night drive. The thought would not leave her. This weekend she would stand in front of Kunal with no blouse on. Last week he had unhooked her bra, and the feel of it was still echoing in her back. That had felt too intimate. She decided not to pack one for the trip. Her breasts moved free now with every breath inside the blouse.

The car rolled up. Kunal at the wheel in a short sleeveless kurta and pyjama, arms open to the night. Rohan shotgun in a t-shirt and jeans. She pulled the back door. Camera gear filled the seat to the roof. No place for her.

“Can you two geniuses tell me where I am supposed to sit.”

Rohan tapped his lap.

“Here.”

Irritation and heat hit her together. She threw the bag onto the gear pile and climbed across his thighs, cotton saree riding up as she settled. Her bare breasts shifted under the blouse against his chest.

“I am sixty kilos. Can you survive the trip.”

“I am going to carry you like this all my life. This world and the next.”

“Big talk, lover boy.”

Kunal laughed once from the wheel.

“My plan was the bike. But your fiancé forced me here.”

“A long drive tonight, rain any minute,” Rohan said. “Bike is risky.”

The irritation left her. The logic was clean.

“Yeah. Rohan is right. We can adjust.”

The drive went on.

“Where are we going in Amboli,” she said.

“Estate owned by a client who is also a friend,” Kunal said. “Vintage house. Forest. Meadow at the back. Gatekeeper stays far from the house. Cook comes twice a day, leaves food, cleans, goes. Perfect for private shoots. I have used it a lot.”

“Sounds like the best.”

“We should keep the best for last, right,” he said.

Only then it landed. This adventure with Kunal was ending. This month had been different: the roads, the shoots, the posing. Her parents had never taken her on a vacation. She had turned down Rohan’s travel plans more than once. She cursed herself for ever thinking it would run forever. She kept her voice light.

“Yeah. All good things have to come to an end.”

“Someone sounds like she will miss me,” Kunal said. “Don’t worry. I will hang with you both even after you marry. I am not giving my friend away completely.”

“Another big talker. Let’s see.”

“You will see.”

By eleven they stopped for a restroom break. Kunal and Rohan were back at the car first. Rohan had pulled on a thick sweater. When she came out, he was behind the wheel.

“Come,” Kunal said, and patted his thigh.

She paused. Protest rose, then died. Rohan was at the wheel and did not mind his fiancée on another man’s lap. Why should she. She climbed on the same way, across Kunal’s thighs, her back to the door. Her weight settled as the drive began.

“Sorry, Isha,” Rohan said. “He needs to start work early tomorrow.”

“She will not mind,” Kunal said. His arms came around her. “Don’t you, beautiful.”

She left that hanging. Saying yes would make the lap official. His tattoo sat close under her eyes. She traced a line on his forearm.

“Is it all just random calligraphy.”

“You tell me.”

She twisted the arm to see clean. The letters locked.

“Wow. It is Rohan’s name.”

Rohan’s eyes left the road for a second. He had never looked that close. He had never known.

“You should not have done this.”

“Why will I not,” Kunal said. “It is my skin.”

“You wear his name. You two are worse than a couple.”

Both men protested at once.

She laughed and, without thinking, kissed his arm where the first letter of Rohan’s name sat.

Above the talk, everything stayed light. Under it, both of them were already elsewhere.

The moment she had settled on his lap, her scent had closed around him. Raw organic musk from warm skin, thicker at her neck and under her arms, the soft animal heat of a body that had waited too long. When she leaned in to read the tattoo, honey from her hair mixed into that musk and went straight to his head. He held his cock down by will alone, soft cloth and pyjama fighting a losing war. Then her mouth touched his arm. Heat punched straight to his groin. His cock thickened hard under the cleft of her ass, a thick hot ridge, and pulsed once, twice, lifting her a fraction with every beat.

Through her saree and his clothes she felt a penis for the first time in her life. A hot iron rod under her ass, alive, knocking up in slow heavy throbs that fluttered her pussy with every pulse. She had no word for it. Only that it was shameless. She had sat on Rohan’s lap so many times and never once felt this from him. He always kept himself in check. First time on Kunal and his cock was already drumming under her, no control at all. Guilt flicked through her chest for even feeling it. Her pussy answered louder. Shut up. We are finally getting to know a cock.

After a moment of silence she started a new topic. The talk died as sleep took them. Kunal’s arm came around her waist. His other hand rested higher, palm open on the side of her ribcage, the edge of his thumb almost under the outer curve of her breast. She looped both arms around his neck for balance and felt his breath at her temple as the drive went on.

Whenever Rohan could take his eyes off the road he looked at them. The two of them asleep like that. His cock ached. He watched and watched and almost came from the sight alone.

After a while looking was not enough. He lowered the window a fraction. Cold air slid into the car.

Still asleep, both of them hunted warmth and locked tighter. Kunal’s hands went under her pallu, found the bare skin of her midriff, and pressed in on both sides for her heat. The pallu slipped to her waist. Her free breasts rose close to his face. She pulled his head in. Her breasts were his pillow. His mouth sat in her cleavage. Hot breath poured down between soft bare flesh.

The new sight almost finished Rohan. He prayed not to come without a touch. He did not stop. On empty stretches he changed speed so their bodies slid on each other, her breasts dragging across Kunal’s cheek and arm, both of them pulling tighter after every slide.

Once she half woke. Her breasts were rubbing on Kunal’s arms. His nose was almost in her cleavage. She saw Rohan driving with a smile and fixed her pallu, then slept again. It slipped when he slowed them into the next slide.

They reached by three. The house was vintage, rooms enough for all of them. Rohan and Isha took rooms side by side. Kunal took the one opposite.

By nine Kunal and Isha were up and at breakfast. Rohan was still knocked out from the drive. Kunal brought a dark cotton saree, the cloth almost half the usual width, fashion tape in his other hand.

“Wear it like last week’s wrap,” he said. “But this one stops above the knee.”

“Sure. I learnt that wrapping. Will do.”

“After you are ready, come to my room. Makeup is there. And wake your sleepyhead fiancé.”

“Poor guy. He drove all night.”

She bathed and dressed. No blouse. The thin dark cloth wrapped high and tight the way he had taught her, cut off above her knees, thighs bare to the morning. She taped the pallu across her bare chest until it held, soft cotton stuck to skin, breasts only a layer of cloth and tape from open air. She cracked her door, checked the hall was empty, and went to Rohan’s room first.

“Isha,” he said, voice rough with sleep. “You look gorgeous.”

She had been too shy to warn him she would come blouseless. She had braced for him to reject it, tell her to cover up. He only stared, mouth soft, eyes dragging from her chest down her bare midriff to the short fall of cloth on her thighs. No complaint. Only hunger.

“Kunal gave me this. Here is yours. He asked us for makeup.”

“You go ahead. I will join after I get ready.”

“Breakfast is ready. Don’t forget that too.”

She left while he was still looking. Kunal’s door closed behind her.

Kunal whistled when she entered. Heat climbed her face. He sat her on the bed, cleaned her skin, and started temporary tattoos down her bare back and along her arms. His fingers lingered. He flirted through every line and took his time. Nearly an hour. He was almost done when Rohan came in dressed.

“You are ready,” Kunal said. “Get your groom ready quick.”

She began matching tattoos on Rohan.

The morning shoot went clean. Rain took the rest of the day indoors.

After dinner the wood chimney kept the main room warm. Isha had changed into a thin nighty from her bag. Nothing under it. The fire made that feel natural. Kunal sat beside her, camera between them, and went on with lens, exposure, and holding still for a slow shutter.

“Frame me,” he said.

She lifted the camera. He stood in the firelight and walked her through the settings with his finger on the dial until she got a clean shot of his face.

“Good. You have an eye.”

Pride warmed her more than the chimney.

Rohan stood from the chair, already heavy-eyed from the drive.

“I am done for tonight,” he said. “Wake me if you need me.”

He went to his room. The door stayed slanted open. In a few minutes his breathing turned slow and even.

He put the camera in her hands.

“Now you try on a person who moves.”

He stepped into the firelight. He pulled his kurta over his head and tossed it on the chair. She stared and forgot the camera for a second. Broad shoulders and a wide upper back narrowed to a tight waist, an inverted triangle standing in front of her. His stomach showed six hard ridges down to the dark line of hair. Heat climbed her face. He struck a simple pose, arms loose, chin lifted.

“Shoot.”

She clicked. He came behind her to check the small screen, chin at her neck, chest against her back, his front rubbing her through the thin nighty as he tilted the camera in her hands. From Rohan’s room came a mild snore. Neither of them spoke.

“Again,” he said, and moved to a new pose.

This time when he walked back to the fire she saw it. A thick line in his shorts, heavy enough to shift and swing with every step. She had no word for it. Heat ran straight to her pussy.

She still held the camera. Her eyes kept dropping to his shorts and jumping away. Her voice came out thin.

“Your life feels like a dream. Do you always love it.”

He took the camera from her hands and set it on the chair. He stepped closer, bare chest almost at her face, and smiled.

“Most times.”

“When do you like it the most.”

“Helping girls prepare gifts for their men.” He winked.

Heat climbed her neck. She laughed once, short, and pushed two fingers into his chest. He caught her wrist and turned her palm up, tracing one line with his thumb.

“Why don’t you try a gift set for Rohan. My poor boy will have a blast if you surprise him on the honeymoon.”

“I do not want you putting me in your third folder.”

His thumb stopped. Then he laughed under his breath and drew the line again, slower.

“So he ratted me.”

“He cannot keep secrets from me.”

He guided her to the sofa with his palm on her lower back and sat her next to him.

“I sent you only from the intimate folder. Not Explicit.”

She went still. Intimate was the second drive. Explicit the third. She had never opened Explicit. Curiosity for what lived there sharpened in her chest.

“Has Rohan also seen these pics.”

“He is no saint. You just tamed him to wait till marriage.”

“Is that not how all couples do.”

“Each their own.” His thumb found her palm again.

“You know I cannot pose like those.”

“I never asked for those. For the gift set, surprise him in western clothes. Modern ones. He has never seen you like that. It will shock him. I know you are not comfortable. We have to go past comfort sometimes.”

“If you think that will surprise him, I am fine. I really want to do something nice for him.”

“He will go bonkers.”

“How are we going to do that.”

“Next two weeks I am free on weekdays. Evenings. I will tell Rohan we are doing bridal specials. He drops you at the studio.”

“All indoor.”

“Blue screen and props. We will take care.”

“Okay. Let us do it then.”

He grinned and tugged her toward the rug by the chimney.

“Sit between my legs. Let me pamper my model.”

She settled between his thighs. His fingers dug into her scalp, hard enough that she gasped. Then a moan slipped out. He worked her neck the same way, thumbs pressing deep, and she tipped her head to give him more. Under the nighty his palms ran down her bare back with that same hard rub. She moaned again, softer, and leaned into him.

He lightened his hands once, waiting for her to stop him. She only pressed back into his palms. He brought one hand around to her belly and rubbed slow circles under the thin cloth. Her breath went short. His fingers drifted lower, toward her pussy.

From Rohan’s room came a cough.

She sat up fast. His hand fell away.

“Let me check on him.”

In Rohan’s room he lay on his side, still out, one arm under the pillow. He had slept through the cough. Guilt sat heavy in her chest. She lay down beside him, put her arms around him, and shut her eyes there. Going back to the fire felt impossible.

Kunal watched the slanted door a moment, then left them alone and went to his own bed.

In the morning Rohan woke and found her there. He kissed her head and went to get ready.

Clouds sat low when Kunal led them out. Today was the final shot. Isha wore the short blouseless saree again, pallu taped across her bare chest. Rohan matched her in the same dark cloth. Kunal had on a sleeveless t-shirt and shorts.

He took them to a cliff barely fifty metres from the house. The top sat level with the yard, but they had to drop ten feet and climb ten feet to reach the flat circle of rock, wide enough for a pose and not much more.

“One shot today,” Kunal said. “On top of that. When we stand there, the two mountains behind you do the work.”

He climbed the side closer to the house first and set the camera with the zoom locked. Then he came back and walked them through the pose with his hands.

“Too complex,” Rohan said. “Show us.”

Kunal climbed. Rohan lifted Isha up to him. Kunal hauled her onto the rock, then Rohan went to the camera.

Kunal lifted her again. He set her on his hip. Her right leg wrapped behind him, her left came across the front, thighs closed over his belt so her pussy sat hard against his hip bone through the thin saree. His right hand caught her left thigh and straightened the leg. His left hand braced her bare spine and tipped her back until she hung almost perpendicular to him, breasts lifted under the taped pallu, throat open to the sky. Wind yanked at the cloth. He pinched the edge between his fingers and held it so her chest stayed covered for the lens.

He leaned in. Their mouths were a breath apart. The demo should have stopped there. Skin on skin from hip to breast did the rest. Her eyes shut. Her lips parted. He kissed her.

She took it. They froze like that, mouths locked, her body hanging off his strength.

Behind the camera Rohan clicked and clicked. Kunal had given him the vogue hold he promised. Isha was not fighting it. A shiver ran through her where her inner thigh gripped Kunal’s hip, and Rohan caught that too.

The kiss ran long. Kunal pushed his tongue into her mouth. She let it in, wet and deep, and at that second lightning split the sky. They broke. He set her on her feet. Fat raindrops hit the rock.

“Rohan, take the camera home. Now,” Kunal shouted.

Rohan grabbed the gear and ran for the house as the rain opened hard. Kunal stood over Isha and cupped his palms above her head. Water sheeted through his fingers and soaked them both. He scanned the drop for a way down. Rain killed the fashion tape. The pallu loosened and she clapped both hands over it, holding the wet cloth to her chest. Wind tugged hard. For a second the edge slipped and he saw the side of her breast, soft and rain-wet, before she dragged the pallu tight again. He yanked his sleeveless t-shirt over his head and pulled it down over her. She let go of the cloth only long enough for the shirt to cover her. The wet cotton stuck to her tits and nipples.

Wind shoved her into him. She hugged his bare torso to stay upright. Her face came level with his chest, the inverted triangle hard under rain, water pouring off his nipples in thin streams. The kiss on the rock was still in her mouth. She put her lips on his nipple and drank the rain off it.

He felt it. He looked down. She looked up. He took her mouth again. This time both tongues pushed in at once, fighting for depth, spit and rain mixing as he fucked her mouth with his tongue. Thunder rolled over them and neither cared.

Rohan came back from the house with umbrellas. Rain cut the view to grey. The next lightning flash showed them locked together, kissing. He stepped closer. Another flash gave him the full picture.

They were not stopping. Kunal’s hands had gone up under her wet saree. Both palms gripped her bare ass and squeezed, fingers digging in, pulling her pussy against the thick line in his shorts. Her moan went into his mouth. The kiss did not break. Thunder rolled over the cliff and neither of them looked his way.

Rohan stood in the rain with the umbrellas and watched.

[sakurasan]

Rohan should understand and accept that he is not match for girl like isha and she needs a real man.bwith his small cock He can't satisfy her or give any happiness. She deserves to live with a real man like kunal. Only He can't give her healthy babies. Rohan has to give her freedom and make isha and kunal to accept and marry each other. Rohan should leave the country.

Interesting ideas. Keep them flowing

[sakurasan]

Chapter 11 The Bell

Kunal’s fingers slid into the cleft of her ass and pressed. Her moan went into his mouth. Then he saw the umbrellas. He dragged his hands out of her saree. She broke the kiss, breath ragged, lips swollen.

Rohan walked in.

“Isha. Kunal. You still there,” he shouted over the rain, loud and late, as if the storm had kept him from seeing a thing.

She shifted. Space opened between their chests. Kunal took an umbrella from Rohan first, then lifted her with his other arm and lowered her until Rohan caught her against him.

They walked back under the cloth. Inside, Rohan shook water from his hair. Rain still hammered the roof. He checked his phone, then sniffed hard. His nose was already running. A cough sat in his chest.

“I checked the weather. It is not going to stop.”

“But you both should still do that shot.”

“It is remotely possible. Let us start for home now.”

He coughed into his fist. Isha touched his arm.

“It is okay, Kunal. Better we head home.”

Kunal let it go. They packed and left the estate under the same grey sky.

In Amboli town they stopped for lunch. While they waited for the food, Isha took the camera and scrolled. The cliff still stopped her cold. Her thumb froze on the dial. Her nipples went hard under the blouse before she could stop them. She wanted to zoom until his mouth on hers filled the whole screen.

“Rohan,” she said, eyes still on the frame. “Kunal is suggesting a bridal special shoot. Just me.”

Rohan had been carrying a quiet worry all morning. The pre-wedding work was ending. Kunal still had not fucked her. Time was running out. Her words lit him up.

“Great,” he said. “We should use every hour he can spare for us.”

“Yeah.” She set the camera down. “How many brides get this kind of photographer in the family.”

Kunal had meant to raise it with Rohan himself. Hearing her take the lead pleased him more. She was eager. He heard it under the polite words.

“Pleasure is mine,” he said. He tipped the camera toward her once. “You make that thing hungry.”

His eyes held hers a second too long. Something low in her belly answered before her mouth could.

After lunch she fed Rohan cough syrup. Kunal drove. Rohan had her on his lap.

They left Amboli behind. Kunal and Isha traded songs and talked film, shot by shot, whose frames stayed with them. Rohan’s head grew heavy on her shoulder. His breathing slowed. Sleep took him.

She pushed his head lower until his cheek found her breast. She drew the pallu off her chest, covered him with it, cloth warm over his back and shoulders, and settled the end back on her own. His mouth rested on the soft blouse over her nipple through the cloth.

Kunal looked over at them. Envy stung.

“Hmm. He gets the baby treatment. You never cared for me like this.”

“He feels cold.”

“I was cold that night too.”

“Okay. Next time I will cover you like this too. Now let my baby sleep peacefully.”

“Okay, okay. Keep your baby safe. Feed it inside if you want. I will not complain if you feed me later.”

“Bad boy. That is all you think about.”

She pinched Kunal’s chest hard enough to make him hiss, then hugged Rohan tighter. His face stayed pressed into her breast through the cloth. She kept him there.

By night she reached her flat with her bag in one hand and a bunch of carrots she had picked up at lunch. Riya and Sneha were in the hall with their laptops open.

“Late again,” Riya said, and looked at the carrots. Her eyebrows climbed. “What are those.”

“From the hills there. Fresh.”

Sneha took one out of the bunch and held it up, long and thick and straight. She turned it slowly like she was checking a specimen.

“Do not cook these,” Sneha said.

“Why not.”

Riya already had another in her hand. “We will eat them fresh. In our rooms.”

Isha frowned. “They taste better that way. Sweet.”

Sneha clicked her tongue. “The mouth that is going to eat this still does not know taste.”

“What is that supposed to mean.”

Riya leaned back on the sofa, grinning. “Your man keeps you busy every evening. We are not so blessed.”

An old instinct made her open her mouth. She wanted to scream that she and Rohan were not doing anything. The words stopped in her throat. They had always seen her as naive. Why not let them see her like this too.

Her face stayed blank. She said nothing.

“Take what you need,” she said, and set the bunch on the table.

Sneha nodded toward the carrots. “So we manage on our own.”

Isha went still. The mouth that still did not know taste. Her pussy. Her face burned. She understood.

Riya picked one. Sneha took the thickest. Each walked off to her room with a carrot held at her side like a prize, still grinning.

Isha looked at what was left. She chose one, thick as her wrist. The shape hit her at once, the same thick line she had seen in Kunal’s shorts. She went to her room and shut the door.

Monday evening Rohan drove her to the duplex. He used his key card and got them in. At the far left, Kunal was adjusting lights in the main bay, green screen already bright behind him.

“Finally,” he said. “I thought you two got lost.”

Rohan walked her through. At the left corner an L-shaped mirror filled the wall. He slid a screen shut across it and made a changing room.

“Isn’t this setup nice.”

She thought of getting naked with only a screen between her and the floor. At least in the caravan they had stood outside. Here she could not send Kunal out of the studio. Anyway, her mouth only said, “Yes.”

He took her toward the right. A big billiards table sat there.

“So studios have these,” she said.

Rohan chuckled. “We did not have space upstairs.”

Kunal called from the ladder. “Models love to pose with it. Makes them look elegant. And of course we mainly use it to play.”

The far right end held gear and props, storage for his outdoor shoots. She saw the familiar reflectors and stands that had taken her seat in the car only yesterday. At the centre sat the workstation: one big monitor facing the door, a soft massage chair. Too comfortable for one, a tight squeeze when she and Rohan sat in. He took a remote and pressed it. A loud bell rang upstairs.

“See,” he said. “Anytime you press this, I will be down in a minute.”

She wanted him gone for the secret shoot. She kept her eyes soft so he would not feel pushed out.

“Meaning you will not be here,” she said.

“I have to prepare for tomorrow,” Rohan said. “I have no work here anyway.”

Kunal came down and wiped his hands. “You are an independent woman. You can manage a few hours without your fiancé.”

“Of course I can.”

Kunal tossed her a bag. “Then go get dressed.”

He turned to Rohan. “Thanks for the delivery. Go prep your lectures.”

As she shut the sliding screen, she heard Rohan’s footsteps leave for the stairs. Inside the bag: a shiny nylon T-shirt and jeans. She knew Kunal did not like the bra. She stripped to her panties and pulled the clothes on. They were tight.

“Kunal, this is not my size,” she said through the screen. “I am not lean like your models.”

“Bought for you. Push that ass in and come out.”

She forced them on and looked in the mirror. She looked more like a student on campus than a teacher.

When she came out, Kunal made nothing of it, as if she had always dressed like this. He did her makeup. The shoot ran like any other day.

When they were done, she changed back into her college saree and came out. Kunal stood by the workstation with the bell remote behind his back. She reached for it. He stepped aside and kept it out of her hands.

“What childishness. I need to go home.”

“Let’s trade for the remote.”

“Okay. What do you want.”

“Remember the cliff. I need that kiss again.”

“That was a one-time thing. Ask something else.”

He made a sad puppy face. “Oh. It was two times. Did I taste bad? You did not like it?”

“I did not mean that. It was nice.”

“If you did not mean that, then why not give me one.”

“Okay. Just one thank-you kiss.”

They leaned in. She lifted her head. He looked down. Their mouths met. Then he gripped both her ass cheeks over the saree and lifted her until their lips were level. Tongues found each other and stayed. She reached behind him and pressed the remote. The bell broke them apart. She fixed her saree and lipstick as Rohan came down.

On the drive they made small talk. Kunal was still in her mouth. She could feel him there, taste him. She took her kerchief and wiped her lips again and again.

At her building she leaned toward Rohan.

“You better not catch my cold,” he said.

Relief went through her. Her usual goodbye had already been taken, from another mouth.

“Okay. But this is back when you fix that throat. Rest well till then.”

“Of course. You too. Get some rest. I believe Kunal is a taskmaster.”

“You have no idea.”

Tuesday the bag held crop tops and leggings. Kunal kept the lens on her open belly, the navel, the soft line above the waistband. The shoot ran. When they were done she went for the remote before she changed.

He reached for it. She put both hands behind her back and held it there. He came in. She pushed him off with her breasts. Their chests pressed and fought, cloth to cloth, her nipples hard under the crop top.

He closed the last inch. She took his mouth first this time. He held her face in both hands and tipped her head to the wall. The kiss went wild. His hands left her face, ran her back, then cupped her breasts over the thin cloth and squeezed. She pressed the remote behind her. The bell rang. She laughed and ran for the changing screen.

Wednesday, before the last change, her pussy was shouting at her. You are having all the fun. What about me. After the Friday drive I am getting only those stupid carrots. I need the feel. She calmed it. Today I will take care of you.

She held a thin apple shorts in her hand. She took the panty off too before she pulled them on.

Kunal called wrap. She walked to the workstation and stood quiet. He understood. She was waiting for the kiss. He came close. She pulled his shirt, sat him in the chair, and climbed onto his lap.

The kiss was slow. For her the lips were a formality. Her pussy wanted the feel. Under the thin shorts she felt his cock pulse against her, the same thick line from the car. Ten minutes later he broke for air.

“Happy?” she said.

“Very happy. I do not need dinner now.”

She pressed the remote. The bell rang. She slid off him slowly and pulled the screen shut.

Thursday she wore a single thick cocktail dress, a slit running up her thighs. Cool air moved between her legs and kept her nipples hard. Between clicks Kunal came in close and pinched them through the cloth.

“They are not showing well,” he said.

After wrap she climbed onto his lap. They kissed, broke for air, kissed again.

“You know Rohan is the luckiest person in the world,” he said.

“Are you not getting the same luck right now.”

“These are just teasers. He gets the main picture.”

She could sense where he was heading. She kissed him to shut him up.

“These teasers are killing me,” he said anyway.

She tried to close his mouth again. He held her face and kept her there a full minute.

“Just once,” he said. “Why don’t you give me a special screening.”

She could not find words. If Rohan had not been upstairs, she would never have kissed Kunal at all. His being in the same building made this feel like a game, not cheating. When Kunal asked for sex, that same nearness flipped. Rohan was too close. How could she fuck Kunal with him one floor above.

Her answer was a wetter kiss, tongue pushed into his mouth. When she came up for air she said, “This feels nice. But you know I cannot do anything more. I love Rohan and he is my world.”

Kunal left it there. He rang the bell. She stood up and went to change.

That night her pussy and her brain went to war.

Her pussy shouted first. We are desperate. We need it now. Carrots are a joke. Give us him.

Her brain answered hard. To hell with lust. Love is the life. Rohan is the life.

Then a worse thought rose. For one second today, when Kunal asked for the screening, she had pictured the upstairs empty. Pictured herself saying yes. She cursed herself for that second. What kind of fiancée even runs that picture.

Her brain found the only door that still let her sleep. Rohan saw the kiss with Kunal. He even clicked it. He is fine with that much. We are not doing more. Kisses stay. The rest stays shut.

Her body took that line and drifted under.

Friday at wrap she was on his lap again. Soft cotton jeggings, a matching denim T-shirt that sat like a second skin, nothing under either. Kunal was in shorts. The thick line of his cock showed clean.

She sat as she had all week. Then her pussy begged for better contact. She lifted her right leg, straddled his hips, and faced him. His nose found her neck. She hugged him tight. Her pussy lips kissed the impression in his shorts through the thin cotton.

For one second Kunal went still. Who was chasing whom. Then he took her lower lip into his mouth and chewed. She rolled her hips slow. The chew sharpened. She let out an ah. He left her lip and kissed her neck.

“Show some mercy. Just once.”

“I already told you.”

“I love him too. That stays. This is only bodies talking.”

“Someone else’s body is a sin.”

“Sin starts after marriage. You are still free. Soon I will not even get to ask for a kiss.”

“We kiss only because Rohan has not tied the knot yet. My heart and my body are his.”

“Is that so. You gave him milk that day. My turn now.”

He bit her nipple through the T-shirt.

"Idiot. That hurts. Rohan was sleeping."

“Maybe not that day. After marriage you will feed him every day. Poor me can only dream.”

“You talk too much.”

She put the other nipple in his mouth. He went from one to the other, biting, then buried his face between her breasts and shook it there. Her fingers slid into his hair and held him. She let him play. Her pussy started to leak.

She pulled his head back.

“So what is your plan for the weekend.”

He came up for air. “Rohan is dropping me at the airport very early. Guwahati.”

“So far.”

“Don’t start missing me. Back Monday afternoon.”

“Why would I. You know we have college every other Saturday. Rohan and I will be busy.”

“I have a model too. She will be waiting at the airport.”

“Oh. A couple, or just a girl.”

“Aspiring heroine. Just a girl. And there is a good chance you might know her.”

He opened his phone and turned it to her. A young size-zero beauty looked back from the screen.

“She passed out last year from our department,” Isha said. “She does the lead in a lot of the cultural events.”

“Yeah. She is a free spirit.”

“I heard. Where do you both stay.”

A different feeling grew in her, ugly, and she had no word for it.

“A hotel near the location.”

He said it easy. He did not read her face.

“Same room?”

Her arms locked around his neck.

He looked at her then and laughed. “Listen to you.”

“I am only asking.”

“Sure.” He laughed and buried his face between her breasts again.

Her hips started to move. Their crotches rubbed slow. She held him there. It hurt, deep. That girl was stealing something that belonged only to her.

The wall clock hit eight. Her brain said enough. She pressed the bell. They broke apart. She went behind the sliding screen to change.

Outside, Rohan was talking to Kunal.

“What time do I wake you.”

“Four. Flight is early.”

Rohan’s voice gave her clarity. What was wrong with her. Why should she feel sad. Kunal hung out with girls all the time. That was his work. How silly of her.

She came out, hugged Rohan, and walked out.

Early next morning Kunal came out of his room ready. Rohan was already in the hall, the screens on, his hand inside his shorts. Isha filled the frames in western wear.

“How do you like the pics.”

“A different girl in every dress.”

“Different good?”

“Sex bombs. You turned my goddess into a bomb.”

“That I do. Enjoy your multiple wives. Don’t rat me this time. Surprise gift.”

“I promise.”

“I don’t kiss and tell. I will not hide anything from you either.”

“I understand.”

Late that evening Isha stood at her window. Below, a shoulder-high turnstile opened on the back gate. A narrow lane ran past it, wide enough for two-wheelers only, and beyond that an empty plot where the apartment kids played. The open ground usually calmed her when her head was a mess. Tonight it did not. Kunal had asked for just once, again and again. Her body was defying her every day.

Then the date landed. One year ago, this hour, this window.

She had looked down. Meera was in the lane with a man, their bodies locked, close to sex on the empty stretch. Her blood had boiled.

Meera was in IT, a distant relative of Sneha’s. She had lived with them a few months before Riya moved in. Same age as Isha. They had become friends at once. Meera video-called her fiancé in New York almost every night. Isha had even been on the call once, a small hello as a roommate. The wedding date was fixed. Isha had believed it was all clean until that sight. It changed everything. She felt she did not know Meera at all. She started avoiding her. Meera became the example she took to Rohan, the girl a woman should never be. Nothing he said went in. From this same window she watched Meera come home late with that man, night after night.

Meera caught her at the window one evening, understood the silence, and came up.

“I know you think I am a bad person. It is not that simple.”

“Your fiancé is on a screen. You are with someone else. What is not simple. I hate people like you.”

“My fiancé is a distant cousin. Arranged. The man you saw is my ex. He wanted closure. Don’t moral-security officer me. I have only been good to you.”

It did not land. Isha stopped speaking to her. Meera asked more than once. Isha still skipped the wedding.

Now the shame sat in her. Rohan’s words from that week came back, clear.

“That is her personal life.”

“They are not married yet. It is not cheating.”

“People live a little before they marry. That does not make them bad.”

Had he meant it, or had he only said it to calm her down. The question stayed. She smiled anyway. Fate had put her in Meera’s shoes, and at least she did not have a girl like her old self standing at a window to judge her.

Three evenings the rain hammered the studio door. Water shone on the driveway. Inside, her skin went hot the moment he touched her. Kunal put her in Wonder Woman, Supergirl, the rest of that lot, and said Rohan was a sucker for it. The shoot was a cover. He called wrap earlier each night than the last. His hands found her under the dress. She let him roam, and when he went lower she closed her legs or locked them around him. He begged like a fool. She laughed, and waited for the next line.

“You two are still innocent virgins. What will you even do on the first night. Sit on the bed and play dumb charades.”

“Your kids will grow up in the city. If they find out their mother was a virgin on her wedding night, they will call you uncool.”

“Rohan drives you around in the day. With my training, you can drive him at night.”

“What we will have is nothing more than a gym workout. A bit more satisfying. Rohan will never mind you hitting the gym.”

“Just one night, I will confer on you a PhD in night art. Then you both can live as doctors.”

She laughed and kissed his mouth shut. He thought he was getting somewhere. The moment he tried to undress her, the zipper moving an inch, a couple of buttons coming undone, she reached for the remote. For her the clothes were the last defense. If they came off, she would not be able to stop herself.

At night she stood naked at the mirror in her room. Her breasts and ass were red, still holding the crush of his hands. She turned a little, watched the marks move, and stayed. She liked how she looked after him. The kiss rule was long forgotten. Only the clothes still mattered.

Thursday the bag held Catwoman. Behind the sliding screen she worked the thin black latex up her legs. It caught, then sucked on, a wet shine, stretch so tight the cloth became her skin. One zipper ran the whole back, nape to the cleft of her ass. She got her arms in and pulled the neck. The latex sealed over her breasts and sat them high and apart, each swell packed, nipples showing as two hard points. It cinched her waist until the hourglass was a drawn line, then poured over her hips and locked her ass into two round halves that moved only as much as the rubber allowed. Between her thighs the seam ate in and held her pussy in a single black split.

She looked in the L-shaped mirror and went cold. If not for the colour, she was naked. Worse than naked. Bare skin would have given her a little bounce, a little lie. This dress held every muscle in place and showed the truth of her: the heavy chest, the narrow middle, the wide shelf of hip, the fat of her ass sitting round and high. She could see the shape of her cunt through the latex. Her mouth went dry. Her pussy went wet inside the rubber.

The mask was the last piece. She put it on.

The woman in the glass was gone. A sexy animal looked back, ears up, mouth cut out, eyes shining in the holes, body all black muscle and sex. Isha was somewhere under that. The cat was what the lights would get.

She did not walk to the marks. The naughtiness sat too high. Kunal was at the camera with his back to her. She climbed onto his back, legs around his waist, and bit his ear, then his neck, a mock cat attack, small sharp bites through the mask’s open mouth.

He caught her hips, swung her around to the front, and put her on the floor. He lay down next to her. She climbed on top of him to attack again. They rolled, latex squeaking on the studio floor, his hands on her packed ass, her thighs locking, both of them laughing into the next bite.

The kisses took over the way they always did, only the chair was gone and the floor was under them. In the roll his velcro shirt came open. Her hand went to his chest.

“Your boobs look almost like mine,” she teased.

“Yours are God’s gift. Mine is hard work.”

She cupped his chest. “Whatever. But they are the same.”

He pressed hers over the latex. “See. This is dough. Now try mine.”

She pressed and got nowhere.

“Okay. Yours is stone. But cats bite, you know.”

She bent and took his nipple in her mouth and chewed.

Kunal saw the camera standing idle. She had come straight to the action. No posing left to hide behind. He thought this was the night. His hand found the zipper at her back and slid it halfway down.

The top went loose. She felt it at once. She stood, picked up the remote, and sat in the chair, holding it up.

He lost it. He came close and closed his hand over the one that held the remote.

His voice went serious.

“You are so worried about not cheating on Rohan. You are cheating on yourself. Be true to yourself first. Then think about others.”

She went still. The laugh died. He felt he had landed wrong. He squeezed in next to her and took the mask off. Her face was all tears. He hugged her. The tears ran onto his chest.

He had hit it. Every night she had felt she was not being true. It was killing her. She had no words for it. He had named it, and she had no answer.

He thought he had offended her. He kept saying sorry. He drew the zipper back up, slow. Her tears made him sad. If Rohan saw her like this, he would be devastated. Kunal waited.

After a long time she came up for air. She had composed herself.

“This never happened. Okay?”

He zipped his own lip shut.

“Now go change. We will shoot tomorrow.”

He pressed the bell.

Rohan came down surprised. The bell had never been this early. He took her home. The ride was silent. She gave him nothing. He came back. Kunal was on him before he sat down.

“This is because of you. She is suffering. She needs a release. She cannot cheat.”

“You promised you would try.”

“I tried my best. She is different from the other girls. She needs only you. You fuck her. I cannot watch her suffer anymore.”

Rohan sat with both things at once. He felt pride that she had held, for him, and he felt the fear that his dream of her taking a bigger cock would die.

“Okay. Promise me you will try once more tomorrow. If she still holds, I will take care of her.”

“Okay. But if she holds back tomorrow, I will kidnap you both and lock you in a room until she is pregnant.”

She was home this early for the first time in two weeks. Clothes and plates had piled. She put her bag down and worked through them, then fell into bed. His words kept playing. She was cheating on herself. She shut her eyes and asked the universe to take her through the next day.

That night Rohan understood her better than people thought. She was holding at the studio only because he sat so close, one floor up, waiting on that bell. He was praying the Mumbai trip would give her the space she needed.

Kunal had not had sex with anyone since he first met her in the café. At the start it was coincidence. After Rohan asked, he was fully in Isha. Assam should have been a release. He could not even flirt. He had no interest in that girl. That was when he understood how much hold Isha had on him. He was sure he would fail tomorrow. A part of him wished for that, so he could try to move on. This was getting dangerous for everyone he loved.

[sakurasan]

This is a love story. No crimes please.

[sakurasan]

Very good stuff, writer playing with the pulse of readers ?‍? 
It’s a slow burn ? seductive from Isha? Or Kunal? Or Rohan,?
Rohan wants to c her happy Kunal wants to make her happy, but Isha doesn’t know the answer. Wonderfully crafted piece. Keep up the hide n seek game bw Kunal and Esha, through orally satisfied till first night, then actuality happens ??

[sakurasan]

I tried my hand in pics today. I would like to share them. If you people like them, I will share for all chapters.

Chapter 1







Chapter 2

[sakurasan]

Chapter 3







Chapter 4