by Libby Rice
“I can’t. No men, no exceptions. But I’d be one car back with you always in my sight.”
Lissa cringed, remembering the scrutiny placed on the women in the last train and wondered which option made her more conspicuous. “No, I’ll stay with you.”
The city loomed dark and quiet when they resurfaced at Patel Nagar, and suddenly Lissa missed the dueling cabbies and hawkers and beggars outside the airport. The map Cole had printed from their guest-house website promised only a few minutes’ walk, yet they faced an uncertain path. No signage to say which exit they’d used to escape the tunnels. No outdoor lighting. No street signs. No cars. Orienting themselves became nearly impossible.
So they walked.
Around piles of brick and dirt. Over hedges of long-set concrete, forgotten rebar thrusting upward. Through soot and exhaust lingering from the previous night. And past the fires Cole had promised. Tiny dots of flame skirted the street in sporadic outcroppings of warmth, each hosting a circle of silent people huddled on the ground beneath thick, coarse blankets. Breathing through the scratch of smoke in her throat, Lissa could barely make out shapes. She saw only orange flickers in the whites of eyes, eyes trained on her.
Safely tucked into Cole’s grip, Lissa looked more closely. Most of the gazes glinted with curiosity rather than hostility. Locals were right to question the audacity of foreigners on a freezing morning, before dawn, walking the street with no obvious place to go.
Frankly, Lissa did, too. “We shouldn’t have raced the sun.”
“Correct,” he said, without reminding her that waiting had been his plan and leaving, hers. They’d come to an enormous traffic circle beneath what appeared to be an elevated byway. Cole examined the map with a flashlight he’d pulled from a daypack slung across the front of his chest.
Peering through the first shafts of light, Lissa stated the obvious. “Still no street signs.”
Cole chuckled. “I can count on my hands the number of street signs I’ve ever seen in India.”
“How do we get around?”
He leaned down and pressed his lips to the space in front of her ear. “Carefully.”
Coughing discreetly into her opposite shoulder, Lissa nudged him for more.
Cole straightened. “My phone’s an international one. I can get online and upgrade the plan for mapping and GPS here in India. First we’ll gauge how stupid it would be to flash a five-hundred dollar phone. Blending issues, you know.”
Lissa looked to the nearest fire circle and confirmed that all eyes remained on them. “I do.”
Alternatives dwindled, and Lissa realized they were lost and, for all intents and purposes, alone in the middle of a metropolis of over twenty million people. Perhaps they should disappear into the metro for an hour or two, riding in circles until the city woke up. If they couldn’t navigate post-sunrise, hordes of cabs would be back and at their disposal.
Just as she opened her mouth to suggest backtracking, a rickshaw wobbled out of the haze. At first the driver didn’t spot them, but once Lissa slid a reluctant foot into the empty street, he jerked his head and pedaled doggedly their way.
The driver had paired a faded button-down with a long, once-white sarong that wrapped around this waist. The cotton crushed upward where it hit the bicycle seat, shortening the garment to around knee length. Only rubber sandals protected his feet from the dusty street. The man was bone thin in a wiry, capable sort of way, and Lissa supposed only the most committed, or the most desperate, trolled the streets at this hour. He had to be the first out for the day.
Rolling to a stop in front of them, the driver spoke rapidly, likely in a dialect of Hindi. The language rolled over her ears, unintelligible but lilting, the sound like new music.
“English?” Cole asked.
The man shook his head, so Cole stepped forward with the map and pointed to their destination. Lissa stifled a yawn that threatened to dislocate her jaw, hoping like hell that finding a rickshaw on this particular corner meant the driver knew his way around the immediate vicinity. If she didn’t find a bed soon, she might join one of the campfires for a power nap.
The driver turned the map in circles, mumbling to himself before motioning for them to jump into the seat balanced on his rear wheels. Lissa stumbled back onto the dirt that wasn’t quite a sidewalk. This man obviously had no idea where the guesthouse was. She’d rather take her chances with tired feet and a back that bowed under the weight of clothing and supplies.
She should have followed Cole’s instructions to pack “like every pair of underwear equaled the weight of an Indian elephant” since he “would not be lugging her junk.”
“No, Cole”—she swayed heavily—“no way. He doesn’t know where to go.”
Two things happened at once. First, the weight of her pack drifted from her shoulders as if by magic. When she turned loosely, surprised at the relief, she saw that Cole had slung the straps over a vascular forearm. Second, beyond that forearm she could navel-gaze for the duration of their trip, she spied something far less pleasant.
******
Like the rickshaw, the men emerged in crawling degrees, seeming to grow out of the abyss beyond. Cole counted five in total.
“Shit,” Lissa whispered beside him. Like him, she ignored the rickshaw driver’s confusion. Instead, her eyes searched farther, to the approaching band of tool-wielding men. One held a sledge hammer, another what looked to be a shovel.
“Stay low-key, Lissa,” he said with a calm bred of fear more important than for himself, “self-assured, confident, and casual.”
Only her ragged breathing answered him, but her head bobbed. When she gripped his arm, he could feel tremors radiate through her slender fingers. Angling his body between her and the rickshaw, with the approaching men on the other side, he pushed her hard behind him. The move masked her smaller frame with the combined bulk of his body and the packs he carried.
How to play this? Though it wasn’t the India he knew, Lissa had been right about the news reports. The last year had been a devastating one for women in India. Stories of brutal sexual assaults, often perpetrated by groups of several men, had incensed the globe. The calls for increased protections and consequences thundered through his head.
He could have started the protecting by not bringing his Lissa here, not like this. With Kate, there’d been private drivers and five-star hotels. He’d never questioned anything less. Why had he done different with the woman now shaking behind him?
Because she’s stronger, a voice whispered in his head. Cole knew he imagined what he wanted to hear, but the sentiment translated with the force of external knowledge rather than internal hope—a truth the universe would finally force him to accept. She doesn’t want the gilded cage, is ever trying to escape it.
The armed group threaded closer, heading their direction with quiet purpose. Cole should hear taunts by now—whistles, questions, the soon-to-be ubiquitous comment that his wife was pretty.
Too-fucking-pretty Lissa Blanc, with the smart mouth and fragile body he refused to break.
Déjà vu couldn’t be that cruel.
Behind him, Lissa beat on his pack. “Get in the rickshaw.”
“Too slow.” Walking was faster. Instead of climbing aboard, Cole threw Lissa’s pack on the seat and talked to the driver in a language he knew the man would understand. Pointing to the star on the map like he hadn’t a care in the world, Cole enunciated clearly. “Thirty rupees.”
Lost or not, the driver perked up. Before, he’d seemed unsure of the destination. When Cole offered several times what the ride should cost, the man abandoned the plight of the directionally-challenged.
The driver’s greed played on Lissa’s fear, totally worth it if one of those emotions swept her off the street.
Because the numbers weren’t in his favor. With a quick glance at the incoming group, Cole realized if he couldn’t beat them, he would distract them.
Gladly.
“You get in,” Cole demanded. Sickness swam in his
stomach at the possibility that his plan wouldn’t work. “I’ll meet you at the guest house.”
“I will not leave you,” came Lissa’s implacable reply.
Cole eyed the driver, keeping him talking until he could all but shove Lissa onto the rickshaw. “Fifty rupees.” Or twenty-five thousand. Didn’t matter.
With a quick jerk, Cole dragged Lissa around to his front. Lifting her bodily, he dropped her on the seat next to her bag. “Go.” The demand came out more like a prayer. Please go. Be gone. Be safe. But the driver didn’t move. Instead he sat perfectly still, eyes darting from side to side, head facing rigidly forward. Finally, the little guy had noticed they were about to have company.
Cole amended the thought—more like did have company.
The men clustered around the back of the rickshaw. Up close, Cole realized the five were a construction crew. The tallest one in a yellow hard hat broke out the Queen’s English. “Where do you go?”
Cole wanted to buy the friendly angle, but he couldn’t, not with Lissa sitting, pale but mutinous, on the back of a trumped-up bike that had a fat kid’s chance in a candy shop of serving as a getaway car. Snatching the map from the driver, Cole pushed it forward toward the hard hat and faked oblivious. “A guesthouse,” he explained evenly, “very close by.” In the same breath, he beat the driver on the back and stepped away to make room for the rickshaw to blast forward.
Nothing happened.
The worker took the map. His four comrades bent forward to peer at the paper, which had, in the last fifteen minutes, been folded and rolled and manhandled until the lines were faint. The men lapsed into Hindi, muttering amongst themselves. Every few seconds, one of them pointed in a different direction, obviously making a case for the way to go.
The sun chose that moment to crest the ridge of city rising above them. Shafts of gray light filtered through the smoke, immediately lifting the taint of danger surrounding the group. A car blew by, followed by a motor bike. The uncharacteristic silence of new morning gave way to raised voices and the staccato flare of honking horns.
The men kept bickering amongst themselves.
Cole almost laughed when the hard hat broke away and hammered out terse instructions to the rickshaw driver, who nodded enthusiastically. How quickly relief shifted to embarrassment. Indians did things differently, with a whole-body, whole-brain passion the rest of the world not only lacked, but couldn’t begin to understand. Cole knew better than to assume the worst.
These men had come to help.
Hard hat handed the map back to Cole and said, “Very close. Ten rupees to him. No more. Ten.”
“Ten only,” Cole agreed. “And thanks.”
Hard hat smiled and held up both hands. “Ten.”
The driver meandered a while, long enough for even Cole’s unfamiliar eye to see the same hotel—of course not theirs—pass by several times. When they finally pulled up in front of their home-away-from-home, the driver held out his hand.
“Fifty rupees,” he said, snapping his fingers at Lissa’s reproachful snort.
This time Cole did laugh. They were off to a great start.
Chapter 28
Lissa blinked open bleary eyes. Judging from the shadows creeping across the water stains on the ceiling, she’d slept much of the day. Probably not the brightest jet-lag plan, but by the time they’d checked in and tripped up the rickety stairs to their room—the single room Cole had failed to mention around booking time—she hadn’t had the energy to brush her teeth at the rusted sink.
Her comments about the flypaper hanging in the shower, or at least the corner of the bathroom with a spigot and a drain, had been met with amusement. “Our grant budget is fresh out of white marble bathtubs,” Cole had informed her.
“Is it also out of toilet paper? Because we don’t have any.”
Cole had flopped onto his twin bed with a look that said no matter how tired, he’d always enjoy seeing her bristle. “Don’t drink from the tap.”
Before she could inform him she wasn’t stupid, he was deep asleep.
Now Cole shifted, slapping his footboard with a long leg not meant for his tiny single bed. Looking at him, she noted Cole wasn’t one of those people who softened at rest. The planes of his face appeared just as severe, and just as beautiful, in slumber.
She tilted her head against the mattress, memories of her own dysfunctional nap flooding in. The dreams had sifted through past months, cresting on one restless scene before the next. First, she’d seen the blaze in Cole’s eyes on their first morning, when he’d destroyed her painting of Melina and told her life was about to get hard. He’d been the hard one in the next moment, beating back questions about his family and his past with a searing kiss against his dining room table. The kiss had thrown them on a one-way, no-exit conveyor belt to complications. Suddenly, she’d seen him over her, felt him inside her, a feeling so real she’d jerked awake with his name trapped behind sealed lips.
Waking hadn’t helped, not when her wild eyes immediately swept from the ceiling to the clothes slung over their shared nightstand and to the bare, lean slabs of muscle rising and falling within arm’s reach.
Lissa shuttered her traitorous gaze and forced herself under a second time. Again the dreams came, equally tumultuous, exceedingly haunting. Instead of the slow pump of Cole’s hips, she sensed the drag of her heart the morning after, when she’d awakened alone, but unsurprised.
And then her imagination jumped the rails. Instead of her own perceptions, her mind superimposed Cole’s point of view over their hardest day. All her chattering mental interjections faded, replaced with his cold, clean need. He had to get her into the truck. Now. Yesterday.
“Have you ever made love to a tongue, Lissa?” His well-founded arrogance sounded in her head. Probably not one like his, deep and thorough. Motivated. “Been fucked by a tongue?”
Lissa felt how intent he was on her response. He inhaled, and his pleasure washed over her. Cole loved her scent. She reminded him of candy, and he wouldn’t quit without a taste.
“From behind,” Cole went on, and Lissa detected the control he called upon to tamp down the urge to dominate, “while you rock against the warmth. It’s so soft…”
Dream Lissa panted over a mere glimpse into Cole’s world. She would have snapped, yet he mastered his body’s demands, focusing on her mindset and what she needed most. “Let’s get you situated… You all right? That’s my girl,” he said. Admirable, given how badly he craved the pleasure on offer.
The dream delivered every detail. Cole swelled tight, hot and needy behind his jeans as he dipped his fingers into her mouth and then raked them over her breasts. Through his eyes, she peered through the iced windshield and saw her easel fall. A flash of instinct demanded he stop, his need to prove his respect nigh overwhelming.
A thready whimper escaped Lissa’s throat, and he clenched. He could make the loss worth her while. Soon he’d be licking her, hungry and eager.
Game fucking over.
Reality intruded again as Cole’s mouth sank over her warm, warm center. Lissa jerked upright, searching for the noise that had sent her crashing back to earth. She found it in the space heater clamoring between their matching beds, a contraption Lissa had already predicted would kill them in their sleep, either death by electrical fire or noise-induced aneurism. Hours ago she’d piled all the room’s knick-knacks—a bottle-glass ashtray, a vase sans flowers, and a partially-used air freshener—on top of the heater in an effort to stop the rattling. Mostly the technique worked, but every so often, the shaking escalated to the level of a Mazda Miata driving seventy miles per hour over a washboard road.
Lissa swung a heel down and repeatedly jammed the top of the box, wanting desperately to return to the dream. What she saw there implied Cole had joined her in purgatory, that he walked the same edge of want and need, of acceptance and denial.
He’d told her as much. Until now, when her subconscious had taken matters into its own hands, she hadn’
t believed.
The heater died under her violent onslaught. Relieved, Lissa inched away.
“Perfect.” Cole cut through the quiet. “Now the only noise in the room will come from you.”
The urge to look at him was overwhelming.
“Close your eyes, Lissa Blanc.” Cole’s lips curved into the hypnotic smile of a Cheshire Cat. “I like how you dream.”
He knew. “How long have you been awake?”
The grin didn’t budge. “Long enough to hear you moan your own name.” Flinging aside a blanket that strangely resembled a ratty beach towel, Cole joined Lissa on her bed, legs bent over the edge. His palm found her quivering stomach.
“Who was in the dream with you?”
Oh no, not gonna happen. Never would she tell. You were there, but I was you and you were crazed with lust.
His hand began to circle, ever wider until each pass swept over the top of her pubic bone. “You weren’t alone,” he reasoned, “unless you commonly pleasure yourself in the third person.”
Heat flooded Lissa from the chest up and the waist down. She could only look out the smeared window and try to ignore his roving caress.
“Someone else was in that dream.” He pressed a spot that made her gasp. “I think he was me.” Jaysus, he pressed again, longer this time. “I think your beautiful mind played a trick. Minds tend to do that, you know.”
Lissa couldn’t stop the soft cry that crawled from her throat when he trailed the pressure lower.
“Tell me, Lissa, did you get inside me in that dream? When you called your own name, were you feeling me with you? Did I like it?”
Lissa’s hips lifted with a will of their own, but she bit down on her cheeks, refusing to admit he was right.
One long finger slipped beneath the satin between her legs, rubbing. “You’re wet. I’m either right, or you wish I was.” The strokes slowed. As always, Cole meant to use his glorious hands to coax forth the words he wanted to hear.
“If you did dream you were me,” he continued, “then I know the answer. I loved it.”
He kept talking, slowly building her up. Cole always seemed more talkative in intimate situations. Most of the time he guarded himself, clipped and closed. Get him aroused, and he went all erotic poet.