I plucked it and held it to my nose. It smelled like heaven. “But we have no knife.”
He hunkered down beside me until we lay thigh to thigh under leopard spots of sunshine. “Here’s the way it works. Every time you sniff it, or peel a bit of skin off, or bite it, or lick it, or touch it, or it touches you—” I lifted my eyes to his face and felt a shudder of anticipation. “I’m going to tell you how beautiful you are.” He took the mango from me and brushed my cheek with its smooth round side. “How much I love you.” He rubbed it between my breasts and mango perfume scented the air between us. “How you are my perfect goddess.”
His hand stilled. I felt my heart bump against the mango on my breastbone. Suddenly he grinned. “If you could see your eyes. Big as mango pits. I love you already.” He laid the mango on my chest and picked up my hand and put it on the mango. “Now peel it.”
He swung suddenly, lifted my head from the grass, and slipped his calf under my neck. “So I can see your face. Go on.”
I couldn’t help grinning back at him. “It’ll make a godawful mess.”
“Good. One of the many things I love about being a god. Now peel it.”
I let my head fall back, supported on his leg, and brought the mango to my nose. I sniffed it. The scent brought me back, so far back. The sunlight making the pink walls of my playhouse glow. The overpowering scent of mango blossom. I wanted to taste mango.
Beside me, my husband sighed, “You’re beautiful.”
I dug my thumbnail into the skin, near the stem, and peeled back a long strip, exposing the rosy flesh. Mango scent exploded out of the exposed fruit. “I love you,” he whispered.
Tentatively I gave it a lick. The fruit was cool and sweet, so sweet. I crushed it against my lips and sucked at the slit of juicy mango peeking through the skin.
“Make a mess, my perfect goddess. I love you. You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever known.”
Emboldened, I peeled back another big strip of skin—and another. Mango juice dripped onto my breasts. I couldn’t resist. I bit into the flesh, feeling the ecstasy of the first mango of the season flood my mouth, fill my head. My pulse played mango music in my ears.
“Beautiful Rathi…goddess of desire…she who is adored,” he murmured. “Did they call you a bad girl? You can’t be too bad for me, my goddess. Show me. Show me how much you love mangos.”
I ate all the exposed mango down to the pit until I could feel the fibers catching between my front teeth. Impatiently I ripped the rest of the skin off and devoured it. Mango juice covered my hands, my face, spattered my breasts and belly. I lay propped on Kama’s leg, arching my back like a child, gnawing the mango down to the slippery stone, staring blankly up into branches and branches loaded with ripe fruit.
Kama whispered to me the whole time. I felt almost as if I were biting into his words—taking them for my own. When I was scraping my teeth against the pit I reached up for what was just out of my reach. “Another.”
Kama reached up and plucked me another ripe mango. “I guess you really like mangos,” he said with a smile in his voice.
“I love them.” I peeled this one in seconds, my fingers rough with impatience, leaving sticky wet dents in the yellow flesh.
“Show me. Show me your love of mangos. The most beautiful goddess on earth gives her love to the mango.”
I bit deep into this one, filling my mouth. Then, feeling his pulse in the leg under my neck, smelling the animal scents of our bodies, I ran the wet bitten face of the mango over my forehead—licked it—rubbed it on my throat. It was cool and juicy and slippery and smelled like heaven.
“More, Rathi. I wish I was the mango. I would bathe you in sweetness. Let me.” I felt his hand touch the back of mine, where I gripped my mango.
I laughed and jerked it away. “Nuh-uh. Mine.”
My hand trembled, but I crushed the mango against my right breast—how cool, how slippery!—rubbed it over my nipple until I couldn’t bear the slide and tickle any more—then rubbed my left breast—Kama’s leg shifted under my neck—hm, he seemed to be getting restless. The mango heated against my hot flesh.
A deep, powerful knowledge came up inside me, as if a mountain were rising up under me, carrying me safely into limitless air.
“Rathi, you’re driving me wild. Gimme that mango.”
I smiled up at him. “Mine.”
“Then let me lick it off you.”
I shook my head and leaned back again, arching so I could see the play of lake-reflected ripples on my ceiling through the trees and vines crowded over us. Slowly, slowly, I slid the mango down my belly. No one would stop me now. If Kama grabbed me, it would be to leap inside my body with that mango-loving cock of his. I smiled at the ceiling and slid the mango between my legs.
Beside me, my husband moaned.
I gave the mango a squeeze to release more juice. Godawful mess, I thought, smiling, feeling the juice trickle into the folds of my pussy, and arched my back. Slowly at first, I rubbed the mango left to right, back and forth across my most personal landscape, which Kama had rubbed already so much that it seemed three times its normal size. I could feel the mango pit now, emerging as I rubbed away the flesh, a little hard moment crossing back and forth over every sensitive fold, and the bright, hard shock as I bumped myself on the clit with it.
The leg under my neck writhed. I didn’t even look down. “Am I—still—your goddess?” I panted softly.
“Uh-huh.”
A laugh fell out of me. I rubbed harder. Powerful movement was happening in my bones, or somewhere, I twisted on his leg, not knowing why I did. The only thing that made sense in the entire universe was to keep rubbing myself with that mango.
Kama gave a groan.
Right, I’d almost forgotten. “Am I still beautiful?” All sticky with juices?
“Yes—oh god, Rathi, you’re so beautiful—don’t stop—”
My hand had a life of its own. It rubbed faster—my pussy seemed to swell even larger—I was panting and flopping like a fish against his leg and the floor, reaching with every cell in my body toward something that was—
“Mine!” I shrieked and convulsed, my hips pointing upward at infinity.
My eyes opened to see Kamadeva leaning over me. He had slithered his leg out from under my neck somehow, without my noticing. He looked intensely pleased.
“I forget,” I said lazily. “Do you love me?”
“More than life itself.”
I realized this was true. “What can I give you that would equal that?” I wondered.
“You just did.”
I looked down the length of my own body. He lay beside me, his thigh barely touching mine. “How do you figure?”
He turned his head, leading my gaze toward my hand, which still clutched the mango. “Let’s say, I have a very vivid imagination.”
“Okay. Now what?”
“Now you find out how much you give me, just by enjoying yourself.”
He looked up suddenly, and I followed his gaze. A butterfly lazed through the still air, flicking yellow and orange wings through a patch of sunlight. As I watched, the butterfly floated nearer and landed on my left breast, still impossibly sticky and smeared with mango pulp. Kama leaned closer to me.
“What do you suppose that butterfly feels or smells?”
I shuddered. “I can feel its little feet! They tickle!” I watched the butterfly walk slowly, moving one foot at a time, across my breast until it arrived at my nipple, which was rapidly crinkling, and still wet with sweat and mango juice.
“Imagine how it must feel. What’s this big creamy smooth hill here? And it smells like mango! If butterflies can smell.”
“Of course it can,” I said, but I was imagining with him, watching its slow-footed ascent of the hill, finding the dark red, sweet, wet bump on top. I watched the butterfly unfurl its coiled tongue and delicately taste my nipple.
Several explosions rocked me at once. The infinitely delicate touch of the i
nsect’s tongue—the taste of sweat and mango on my nipple—twice, with extra flavor, because I realized I was smelling and tasting what Kama did, because we were together, in me, and both of us were in the butterfly as it probed a drop of nectar on the tip of my nipple.
“Okay, that was weird,” I gasped, fighting for normal in my head.
The butterfly sprang off my skin, leaving six tiny points of sensation behind, and fluttered slowly away.
My eyes met Kama’s. He put out his tongue in a long, deliberate, indecent exploration of his own lips. He wiggled his eyebrows. “My turn.”
In an instant he was on me, slipping his shoulders under my thighs, lifting, opening me, lapping away at my mango-flavored female parts. I shrieked and giggled, too embarrassed to really feel him there, until I realized he wouldn’t stop just because I pulled his hair or thumped him on the shoulder.
My fingers slackened in his hair. I lay back. He made a “finally!” noise in his throat, and a lot of funny snarly nom-nom noises that had me giggling again, covering my eyes with my sticky hands.
Then he really got to work. And I lay still and felt it.
It felt quite odd.
I think I liked it.
I began to get used to his tongue, softer than my fingers, more sensitive, and quicker, too. Then he pulled another mango off the tree and peeled it with his fingernails and crammed it up against my pussy, growfing out bites of mango while the slippery fruit slid all over me, the juice and bits of fruit getting in his hair and up his nose, until I was helpless with laughter.
He wanted me to come that way, but I couldn’t stop giggling. He was too silly.
“My turn!” I crowed at last. I peeled my own mango—two—three—and managed to savage several big pieces off the pits, throwing the rest into the corners of my godawful mess of a living room. These big pieces I wrapped around his godlike cock, holding them in place with both hands. I nibbled away at them until he was howling for mercy. My first attempt at fellatio hit a few speed bumps, but I managed to have him sweating and whimpering and rubbing his chest with my long hair before he lost patience again and leaped into me with a mango-flavored spear.
I think it must have been four o’clock when we took another break. I picked up all the slimy mango pits we were lying on and threw them after the others. Then we sat up, side-by-side, exhausted and well pleased with each other.
“I’m serious, love,” I said. “Rathi—my goddess self—seems to think we have to do something. Get back to work somehow.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Don’t overdo your first workout. Stretch, hydrate, carbo load, and rest up before the next one.”
I punched his arm. “I mean it.”
“That is our work, Rathi. Rough job, but somebody’s gotta do it, huh?”
His face softened more, and I waited hopefully for another wild sexual idea. But as those boyish eyes searched mine, I thought I saw other emotions, less pleasant. Sadness seemed to cross his face like a shadow.
“What is it, my love?”
He heaved a big breath and his jaw tightened. “Baz was right. And you’re right. If we’re going to do our job, Rathi, there’s something I have to do. Do you have scissors?”
I blinked. “Of course I have scissors.”
“Go get them.”
“They’re in my purse—” I looked around my ravaged living room. Grass carpeted it, where my once-lovely Jaipuri carpet had lain. Flowers grew, and blooming shrubs, young trees, and vines. Even orchids grew in the crotches of tree limbs. Mango pulp was spattered everywhere. “Somewhere,” I said helplessly. “Oh. Kitchen. Wait.”
My kitchen was weirdly quiet and tidy. When I came back to my living room, it was like walking into a jungle. “Here. Who is Baz?”
He turned his back and lifted his back hair. “Snip out a lock. Somewhere it won’t show. Don’t let it fall into this mess.”
I frowned, but I did it. “Why on earth?” I said, holding the scissors in one hand and the lock of his hair in the other.
He closed my fingers over the hair. “Put this away. Keep it safe. It’ll do instead of ashes.”
Seriously alarmed now, I said, “Kama?”
He went to the living room window and calmly yanked down one of my sheer drapes. Then he ripped a long strip off it.
“Kama! What are you doing?”
He began winding the fabric around his still-sticky loins—wrestler style, I noticed. I had a bad feeling.
He said, “Where’s the nearest Hindu temple?”
“Oh, no. No, you don’t! You fool, you have no defense—”
“I think I do,” he said calmly. “I’ve had four hundred and fifty years to think about this. I think it was a parlor trick. I think he can’t do it again.”
“Hinduism is the third largest religion in the world, you madman. You have only nineteen devotees! Most of them are brand new!”
“Full of convert zeal. How do I look?”
“Like a fool,” I said flatly.
“I’ve been practicing my moves,” he said. “Thinking about this. Not much lately—but when I first got my body back. The first hundred years or so, I did a lot of brooding. Figuring the angles.” His grim look faded. He took my hands. “Rathi, I have to do something. I can’t live in fear forever, and you don’t like me sucking a bong to avoid thinking about it. I know, I know, I was born to make love, not war. But maybe a little jujitsu is called for.”
“A thump of reality check upside the head,” I said fretfully. I smoothed his hair away from his face. “I don’t like this.”
That was an understatement. My stomach was in knots. I hadn’t seen Shiva since I went to him to scold—not plead, never plead, that was just spin by the priests who wrote down the story—and demand my husband back, four hundred and fifty years ago. Shiva had barely given me the time of day, until I showed him that the grass would not grow, nor the crops fruit, nor birds lay, nor animals bear, that he conceded that he, too, needed my husband.
“Shiva’s an arrogant fool,” I reminded my husband. “What did Baz say, anyway?”
“He said, an army is not a multinational corporation.”
“What?”
“Keeping an ever-expanding pyramidal corporation running is not the same job as winning a war. It’s the difference between being task-oriented and being administratively-oriented.”
I shook my head. “I’m still not computing this.”
“Never mind. Now, where’s that temple?”
I heaved a sigh. There was no deflecting him. “You don’t know? Really, Kama.”
“Your mother surely found it on the Internet for you when you moved here.”
I rolled my eyes. “She did. It’s south of here on the Des Plaines River. Do you want me to look it up for you?”
“Perfect, I’ll find it.” He threw his arms around me and gave me a big, hard squeeze. “Don’t lose that lock of hair,” he whispered in my ear. Then he kissed me and thrust me away. “You know why you have to stay here.”
“In case he—so I can—in case you—” Sharp tears stung my eyes. “Be careful, you fool. I love you.”
He gave a sharp whistle. My green parrot with the red beak zipped out of the trees that brushed my living room ceiling and landed before him. Kama lifted his foot, as if to step on my parrot, but it began to grow—and grow—until it was the size of a young horse. Kama straddled it and clasped his arms around its throat.
“Kama, don’t you dare!” I shrieked. “My windows!”
He whistled to the parrot again. It flew at the window that had been covered with plywood and hovered there, rapidly beating its giant green wings, while Kama pried away the plywood. The board fell. Immediately wind whirled into the room.
“What’s the matter with the door?” I screamed.
The parrot arrowed out the window.
*those were not the last words I would have chosen to speak to my newfound husband after a four hundred and fifty year absence,* my goddess self observed from the back
of my brain.
“They’re not the last words he’s going to hear from me,” I said through my teeth.
I looked down at myself. Naked. Not very lawyerly. I thrashed my way through the jungle to the bedroom and dressed my mango-and-sex-sticky body in my most formidable court suit with full accessories—pantyhose, low heels, matching chignon, the works.
Then I returned to my living room.
The carpet was hopeless. I couldn’t see the walls for the trees. The window—I didn’t have time to replace that big board myself, and I shuddered to contemplate facing the superintendent again.
Moreover, a larger problem, my wallet and keys were in my handbag somewhere in this mess, maybe under the sofa—where had it gone? I looked around me helplessly.
I needed a vahana—a vehicle—like Kama’s.
A pigeon flew through the exposed hole in the window and landed on a patch of grass, where it stepped forward carefully, cooing as if in wonder.
I looked at it. “Come here.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
“Suka, is that you?” I said, ducking low as my green parrot vahana streaked westward over the city.
“Of course, Kamadeva,” my old friend said. “Hold on.”
I clutched his neck tighter as we dodged around a condo tower. “Watch it!”
“I will make myself invisible,” Suka said. “But there is no concealing your path.”
I looked down. Below us, trees were erupting into bloom as we flew over them. Lawns greened up. Even flower baskets hanging on the streetlamps overflowed, their blossoms foaming down toward the sidewalk. Suka slowed as we flew over a nursery on West Randolph Street. From two hundred feet up I could see the corn plants shoot up and send out heavy, drooping ears. Tomato plants bloomed, set fruit in seconds, and bent to the ground with baseball-sized tomatoes.
“You are much stronger with Rathi at your back,” Suka said.
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