‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m putting myself on your destiny line,’ she said.
Kiyan resisted the urge but knew he was growing down there every second. Not able to withstand the tickle, he pushed Kashti and pinned her against the wall. Her body was slippery with sweat, while her face was only slightly visible to him now.
‘Why did you drug and bite me?’
‘What do you think?’ She was trying to fight him, but Kiyan had her hands pinned strongly.
‘Answer me.’
She stepped on his feet. And came close to his face.
‘I wanted to taste you, mister bestselling author.’
Though there was a lot of steam between them, he knew she was staring at him just like he was at her. Kiyan went for her lips. She moved her face. He sucked her ear lobes instead. And as she slowly moved her face towards him, rubbing her cheeks against his lips, her quivering lips finally met his. And a devouring game began. Kiyan let go of her hands. He cupped her face while placing her hands on his outer thighs. Her nails dug deep into his flesh. The erotic music, the steam, the nudity and the fact that they couldn’t see each other clearly turned on both of them. They were like two animals, primal and pure. And since it was instinctive, they were sucked into the moment more than they would have otherwise. Kiyan’s hands slid down to her waist while she grabbed his hard dick, this time with just the kind of pressure that made him shut his eyes. Kashti kept up the steady pace with her hand, imagining his facial expressions by his soft grunts. He broke the smooch.
‘This isn’t real, this can’t be real,’ Kiyan whispered, feeling the orgasm build up inside him.
‘Only when this is over will you realize how real it was,’ she said, as Kiyan let out a low moan.
‘Was it only this you wanted?’ he asked.
‘This . . . you wanted, Kiyan. You wanted to meet.’
‘And what do you want?’ he asked, grunting softly.
In response, she increased the pace of her hand. His grunts turned louder, and finally Kiyan sprayed his seed in three full bursts.
‘Patience, mister bestselling author,’ Kashti said. Kiyan was busy catching his breath while opening his eyes slowly. Her hand was no longer on his penis. As the passion subsided, Kiyan felt embarrassed. Never before had a girl led him so easily into a sexual encounter. This girl had something about her.
‘Look, I don’t do this kind of thing and . . .’ The steam in the room had reduced. There was nobody in the room. He heard a knock. The trainer peeped in.
‘Sir, did you enjoy it? Would you like to continue?’
Kiyan rushed for his towel and asked, ‘Where is the girl?’
‘Which girl, sir?’
‘The one who was with me in this room.’
‘There was a girl? I’m sorry, I didn’t see anyone.’
The song inside changed to Rub You the Right Way by Johnny Gill. The lyrics amused him as he walked out of the steam room. She had kept her promise. She had met him. But would she meet him again? The way people meet, not animals, he wondered. As he reached his locker, there was a Post-it note stuck to it.
1 minute and 13 seconds. Mister bestselling author, I hope you will last longer next time. ☺
Kiyan smiled and tore the note into pieces. Now he knew there would be a next time.
* * *
A Girl’s Diary
5 March 2016, 10.40 p.m.
Loving someone is one thing. Living with that person is another thing completely. Kiyan may be a bestselling author now, and I’m sure there will be girls and women dying to make him theirs in every sense of the word, but what is their fantasy was actually my reality. I lived with him.
I was happy our love story was back on track again. This time permanently. We both had our offices in Gurgaon and both our places were twenty minutes from our offices. He lived in wing A with another guy while I lived in wing B of the same society with two more girls. Weekdays simply flew by in a monotonous loop, and it was only during weekends that we could give time to our relationship, to us. Kiyan’s roommate used to travel to his hometown in Jaipur every Friday night, leaving the entire flat to us. And we lived together throughout the weekend. Living with him, I realized Kiyan and I were two different human beings when it came to sex.
I have never heard this from friends or heard this discussed anywhere, but that Saturday night when Kiyan and I had sex for the first time, I realized two people who are genuinely in love can be strangers sexually as well. I’m not talking about sexual compatibility. I’m talking about sexual preferences. It was the first time I ever had sex, and I remember we hadn’t planned it. Like any other weekend, we had come back from watching a movie and trying a new restaurant nearby for dinner. It wasn’t that he had touched or kissed me for the first time that night, but when I was changing in the darkness of his bedroom I noticed him standing by the door. Usually, Kiyan would give me enough space and never made me feel conscious, but seeing him stand by the door, I knew this would be a night we, at least I, would remember for years to come. But it wasn’t just the moment I remember, but the way it all happened. He rushed to me when I doffed my T-shirt and wasted no time in undressing me completely. I wanted him to go slow and take his time. I was his anyway, but he was in a hurry as if I was going to slip away from him. I tried to explain this to him, but he seemed possessed with lust. I knew he loved me, but I was disturbed by the way he seemed to devour me. I wanted him to go slow, but he was all over me. He bit me, pinched me and even spanked me. I almost felt like crying but didn’t. It was the only time I thought I didn’t know the person I was in love with. It’s not that we hadn’t discussed sex till then. We had. We had made out in college too, but he was never this aggressive. It wasn’t his aggression that was upsetting me. I wasn’t averse to consensual aggression in bed, but I also wanted to take it slow. When the same thing happened the following 3–4 weekends, I realized it was a pattern. I understood that he would give only his way of lovemaking a priority. I tried to talk to Kiyan about it, and he would agree we would take it slow, but the moment we would begin, his way of lovemaking would take precedence. He would satisfy all his kinks and I felt like the object of his sexual urges rather than an equal partner in the act. He wasn’t harming me and yet he was. He wasn’t humiliating me and yet he was. He wasn’t intentionally pushing me to feel uncomfortable with him and yet he was. This was one thing that started affecting me. However, it didn’t affect our relationship. I learnt that love also meant internalising something and keeping it locked away all to yourself to safeguard your relationship. It’s funny how a relationship is about two people, but when it comes to safeguard it, more often than not it becomes one person’s prerogative.
After a point, I couldn’t talk to him about it, fearing it would somewhere ruin our relationship if he didn’t understand what my point was. I discussed it with a close friend of mine, Shriya, and she too said the same thing. It’s rare that a guy would understand your point of view when it came to sexuality. They are too weighed down by their own urges. I was happy I didn’t let this ‘in-bed’ issue affect what I shared with Kiyan when I wasn’t in bed with him. But I was a little hurt that he didn’t understand it himself. I realize that I didn’t give him hints but the person you love should understand you without hints, right? It’s like anyone would understand a film with subtitles, but someone in love with the film would go the distance and perhaps learn the language to understand it like a native. With time, I accepted this dissimilarity between the two of us. And somewhere, my own sexual preferences blurred as I gave in to his. If relationships were soaps, then sex was at best the scent of it. The lather of course had to be love. And Kiyan and I had more than enough lather.
Five months after I lost my virginity to Kiyan, his roommate shifted base to Bangalore. Kiyan suggested it would be better if we lived together. That way, our expenses would be curtailed to an extent, and we could live as a couple. At this point, I asked him if we could get married. Kiyan said
he wasn’t ready yet. When that was his response, I felt it was yet another addition to the list of situations wherein I was giving in to his preferences. Shriya told me this giving in was the start of the end, since it turns people into what they are not. And though you fall in love with someone by being who you really are, you can’t sustain the love by being what you are not. Sooner or later, it chokes the relationship to a slow death. I didn’t believe her because I was sure mine wouldn’t die out. Ours wouldn’t die out.
6
Indore
13 March 2016
Saturday, 12.30 a.m.
Smaller cities have a charm of their own. The people, the roads, the shops, the cows, the beggars, the out-of-order street lights, the wannabe malls—everything seems to tell you something. A story. Everything and everyone seems to reach out to you, wanting to form a relationship. Like they haven’t had a patient listener for a long time, Kiyan wondered as his chauffeur drove him from the airport to Lemon Tree Hotel.
The small and vibrant city of Indore seemed to create a sense of déjà vu in him, with its lanes and by-lanes that had some similarity to the lanes of his home town, Lucknow. Also, it was time for yet another book event. Yet another meeting with Kashti? he wondered. Kiyan couldn’t believe she had jerked him off the last time they had met. It wasn’t really a meeting. It was barging into his private space. But thinking about the way she had done it still aroused him. He was yet to meet a girl like that. Fandom is one thing but to go ahead and jerk off your favourite author, that too in a steam room, was adventurous. Though she had clarified she wasn’t a fan, Kiyan couldn’t think who else she could be. Perhaps the whole I-am-not-your-fan thing was a ploy to raise his curiosity about her further. Getting involved—in whatever scope—with one’s reader was a cardinal sin if his marketing team was to be believed. Involvement broke the myth, it demystified the creator, it made him accessible and once someone was accessible, they became ordinary. If gods were found on every corner of streets, every hour, then people wouldn’t have found religion a worthy enough pursuit. But Kiyan had not only allowed Kashti to approach him, he had also let her lead him to his most vulnerable moment. Would she care to continue pursuing him? Kiyan checked in to the hotel, feeling slightly upset with himself for the first time after the steam room incident last week. Was he really that easy? Stalk him for a few book events, intrigue him and voila, you can jerk him off. He would act snobbish if she approached him again in Indore. ‘If’ and ‘she’ being the keywords. If she didn’t, then it would prove that he indeed was easy. He felt all the more stupid because he had met Kashti twice by now—once in the pub in Pune and then in the steam room in Bangalore—but still didn’t know exactly how she looked. And that was the most arousing part of whatever he shared with her—to be so intimate with someone you haven’t really seen. So when he tried to think of her, she could be anyone. This reality had the recipe for the perfect fantasy. And perfect fantasies, unlike perfect crime, can actually be perfect.
The landline in the hotel room rang twice after he checked in. And both the times, the hurry in his gait to pick up disappointed him. I shouldn’t be this eager. What was worse was the double disappointment he felt after he picked up the phone and realized it wasn’t Kashti. When will we meet again? If someone makes you expect things in their absence, then they are definitely controlling you. Controlling the Kiyan Roy. He smirked and promised himself he wouldn’t think about Kashti again even if she approached him in Indore.
The crowd at the Indore book event was the quietest he had witnessed. Kiyan had noticed over subsequent book events that people in smaller towns were slightly more hesitant in putting forward their queries than they were in the metros. Even the age group of the audience seemed a little over his normal target audience. And most of the younger ones had come with their parents or some guardian. It was while he was signing the books that Kiyan realized that most of the older members of the audience had come in seeing the hoopla in the bookstore. They didn’t know much about the books he had written but wanted to be a part of the crowd. It amused Kiyan, and he was happy to sign the trilogy for them, knowing well the reaction would be extreme from the fifty-plus readers if they read his erotica trilogy. Either they would abuse him, stating he was destroying Indian culture, or bless him for rekindling the lust that was fighting a hopeless battle against age within them. The surprise of the event, however, was when a particular guy of Kiyan’s age came up and requested an autograph. When Kiyan looked up at him to inquire his name he realized he was staring at his once-upon-a-time school friend.
‘What the fuck! Mridul?’ Kiyan stood up.
‘So the big author still recognizes small friends,’ Mridul said jocularly and reciprocated Kiyan’s hug.
‘Just wait for me. Let me finish signing the books. We’ll catch up.’
‘Sure,’ Mridul said and stood aside while Kiyan started signing the books fast. Memories of Mridul and him in school flooded back. They were best friends once. They had lost touch once college began. Mridul went to study in VIT, Vellore, while Kiyan was in a college near Shimla. And now seeing Mridul, he didn’t know what had made him happy—the sight of an old friend or the memories that it had triggered.
Right after the book signing, selfies and talking to a few readers, Kiyan finally excused himself and left with Mridul. They located a CCD outlet nearby and sat down over a hot cappuccino. Kiyan learnt Mridul’s wife was from Indore and that he had happened to learn about the book event when he had read an article about it in the morning.
‘You know, I searched a lot for you on social media. Then I found your page, but realized it is not you who is running it.’
‘All my social accounts are handled by my publisher’s marketing team.’
‘Bade log, badi baatein,’ Mridul said teasingly.
‘Come on! Fame is a part of the profession.’
‘I know. I was kidding,’ Mridul said. He sipped some coffee and then added, ‘You remember Debi?’
Of course he remembered Debi, his first crush, first love and first heartbreak. When too many firsts happen to be the same person, it probably means you were a kid for too long.
‘What about her?’
‘She is a mother of two now! Can you beat that?’
‘Well, had I been her husband, I would’ve subjected her to the same fate as well,’ Kiyan said and winked at Mridul. Both laughed.
‘What’s your relationship status? Marriage on the cards anytime soon?’
‘Not really. Fame has just touched me. My publishers want me to keep my desirability quotient high.’
‘And being single helps?’
‘It does. Or so they say. Especially, if you write romance or erotica, as people fall for the mind that creates it.’
‘I get that.’
After an almost two-hour-long chat, Mridul suggested they check out Chappan Dukan and Sarafa Bazaar for their food. These two destinations in Indore were like what Taj is for Agra. When they reached, Kiyan couldn’t believe the number of people hovering inside and outside the Chappan shops. Mridul told him 90 per cent were locals who could never get enough of either Chappan or Sarafa. Both friends ate from different shops and then headed towards Sarafa.
Sarafa Bazaar was a jewellery hotspot during the day and a foodie’s heaven at night. It reminded him of his hometown Lucknow, where food had an important place in everyday life. While eating faluda from one of the Sarafa shops, Kiyan received a call. It was from an unknown number so he decided to avoid it. The moment his phone stopped ringing the Truecaller app displayed the name of the caller as ‘KR’. Kiyan immediately looked around for a possible stalker.
‘What happened?’ Mridul asked.
Kiyan was alert now. His phone rang again. It was the same number, but not unknown any more even though it was displaying only digits. Kiyan picked up. He was embarrassed to hear what was playing on the other side. It was him moaning Kashti’s name. A moment later, the recording ended and Kashti came on line with a giggle. H
earing her voice, Kiyan knew he had actually missed her.
‘How are you, mister bestselling author? All good?’ Kashti asked, controlling her giggle. There was a slight arrogance that Kiyan sensed. Who the fuck did she think she was, he thought and said aloud, ‘I’m with a friend right now. Can you call me later?’
‘I can see that,’ Kashti said. It was enough for Kiyan to stop talking and look around again. He knew Mridul was giving him looks, but he didn’t care.
‘It feels so wonderful to control someone. Especially if he is some celeb,’ she said and giggled once again.
‘So, it’s a bluff. You aren’t nearby,’ he said.
‘You are wearing a beige cotton shirt with black trousers, were eating Bhutte-Ka-Kiss a minute ago and are now having faluda. Yes, it was a bluff.’ The giggle was back. And this time the giggle had a taunt. Kiyan cut the line.
‘Mridul, something has come up. I think I will head back to my hotel,’ he told his friend.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. It was nice catching up. Let’s not lose touch again.’
They exchanged numbers. Though Mridul tried to invite him home, Kiyan had a plan in mind, and he knew it was more important to execute it. What happened the moment he left Mridul was exactly what he had anticipated. His phone rang, flashing Kashti’s number.
‘Yes?’ he said, walking amid the crowd at Sarafa.
‘Angry with me, mister bestselling author?’
‘Is this wild goose chase necessary? Especially after what happened last time?’
‘It seems what happened last time has remained with you.’
‘Hasn’t it remained with you?’
‘You know it has.’
‘Let’s come straight to the point. Why are you not meeting me?’ he asked, making himself comfortable under a lamp whose light was off. There was a small dark patch where he stood against a shuttered jewellery shop. There were no eateries nearby.
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