“Yeah, right. On cable TV, maybe!” I snorted. “You think a fucking marriage counseling reality show? That means meetings. Showing up for makeup call at oh-dark-thirty. We’d have to hire an agent. We’d have press conferences.”
“Or a reality show about marriage counseling, with fucking.”
“I—what?” I did a double take. “You wouldn’t.”
She tucked her chin and her eyelashes veiled her eyes. “I might. Who knows? I’m working on the shameless thing.”
She peeped at me from under her lashes. She was hot and sassy and too smart for me, and she knew me inside and out. This was my honeymoon, dammit.
My hands tightened in hers. “We’re done with this conversation.”
I wrestled the dress thingy off her. She knocked my turban off. I tossed pieces of her jewelry to the four corners of the suite. She pulled the parts of my cloth-of-gold suit off me. I dragged her to the high, pillow-covered bed and boosted her up onto it, where she knelt, naked and grinning, on the coverlet.
I swallowed. “Take your hair down.”
“You take it down.”
My lungs filled up with the perfumes coming off her skin: sweat, all the foods we had eaten, the perfume the women had dabbed on her yesterday morning, shampoo or something in her hair, and the perfume of her sex.
I knelt in front of her and began to pull the ornaments out of her hair by feel. Her eyes closed as the gold clasps slid away.
I moved behind her to watch the next bit. The first lock of her hair fell down her back. It untwisted, fluffing up in the damp sea air.
My dick was already hard. How was I gonna make it through the next five minutes?
I focused on freeing her hair. As the ornaments and bindings came out, big long lengths of black hair loosened and untwisted and puffed up, rising like smoke around her, falling with tantalizing softness onto my dick like a cloud of black feathers, hiding her body from me. But then she leaned her head back against my shoulder. I could see her throat gleaming with sweat. I drew my fingers up over her cheeks from her chin to her temples. Her throat moved as she swallowed. Her eyes were closed, but everything else about her was wide open.
I could have jumped her and fucked her brains out at that moment. I didn’t. Begin as you mean to go on.
I bent forward and whispered to her while I played with her hair from behind. “Rathi Padmini, most desirable of women. Your face is pleasing as the full moon. Your body is soft as the mustard flower. Your skin is fine and fair as the yellow lotus.”
Here I couldn’t resist reaching out and cupping her breasts. Her nipples crinkled even tighter and she arched against me, pressing her head against my shoulder. Down, boy, I thought.
“O my beloved. Your eyes are bright and beautiful as the eyes of the fawn. Your breasts are the glory of moons.” I brushed my thumbs over her nipples. She gasped very nicely.
I withdrew my hands up into her armpits, and she moved her arms languidly, stretching them backward to rest on my shoulders. I had to stop and look. Kneeling in front of me, leaning backward against me, lying on my lap on a huge black cloud of her own hair, with her arms stretched up to caress the back of my head and her eyes half shut, she seemed miraculous, mysterious, oh boy.
But the part I wanted most to see was just out of reach.
I slid back, and she slid to the bed on her own slippery mass of hair. She made a little sound in her throat. Her eyes opened.
“I’m here,” I promised.
I crept alongside her and lay down, drawing my hands along her face, her throat, and down her side to reassure her. She was definitely limber. Lying on her back with her knees folded under her, she seemed perfectly comfortable.
Still, safety first.
I kissed the outside of her thigh. “Love, lift up your pelvis—arch up high on your heels for me.” Slowly she did, balancing on her head and her heels, her pubic bone pointed at the ceiling. Wow. So limber. Now her sex was beginning to roar with smells. I got a savage, possessive mine! feeling in my belly when I smelled her. I took hold of one ankle and coaxed her lower leg out straight. “Lie down flat, baby.”
When she lay flat, I sighed. I began stroking her inner thighs, first one, then the other. She trembled under my hand. My face was inches from her sex. I snuggled closer and slid my other arm under her butt.
With another throat-sound she rolled onto her side and threw her leg over my shoulder. I felt her wrap one arm around my butt—oh, honey, go slow, or I’ll blow—and her other hand took hold of my cock.
That quickly, she was in charge.
I shuddered all over with the effort of holding back orgasm.
“Are you going to make it?” she said, puffing warm air against my cock.
“I dunno,” I admitted.
“Go with the flow,” she advised. “We have lots of time.”
I let my chuckle ruffle her pubic hairs. Then, resting my cheek on her sweet, strong thigh, I got down to business.
O my beloved husband, will you please fuck me?
Did I say it, or only think it?
His tongue probed and licked and pressed on each individual part of me down there, making me aware of every fold, every swollen mound, and my shockingly powerful, sensitive clit. I felt like a dancer limbering up, or a fighter plane when the pilot presses each button in turn, lights coming on, the whine and rumble of engines revving, needles swinging into the green zone, all systems go.
I let him work. He seemed a bit on edge. But his cock was silky-soft and fragrant against my cheek, tempting me. I was hungry to be filled.
He taunted me at first, never staying long in one spot, setting up a rhythm only to break it ten or twenty seconds later. He flicked my clit for a while, then, when I began to tighten and the needles swung toward red, he switched to lapping it with his lower lip—too soft! I groaned. Then he poked into me with that long red tongue as I squirmed and sighed with pleasure. Poke, poke, poke. It was a parody of penetration, a joke, a tease.
I wanted more than his tongue. I wanted serious penetration.
Two could play this game.
I slid my palm flat along his cock and pinched the tip gently.
His tongue jerked inside me. I smiled.
I took the side of his cock in my mouth and teased it, first covering my teeth with my lips, then, when I felt his arm tighten around my bottom, I let him feel my teeth, ever so gently.
He shook. I felt his cock swell between my lips.
Then I felt him put his finger against the opening of my yoni. I bit a little more firmly. I felt the finger slide in…and wriggle around…and another finger touched my clit and began to press, harder and harder.
A shockwave rippled up into my belly, and I grunted. That made him shudder. I opened my mouth wider and took as big a bite as I could of the side of his cock, covering my teeth with my lips, and when my tongue was pressed against him, I began humming. I think “House of the Rising Sun.”
The next instant I felt his jaws clamp down over my yoni, and he was growfing and snarling and poking my clit with his chin. I couldn’t help laughing—against his cock. Every time I laughed, his body shook.
He lifted his head. “Mercy! What is this?”
I gave the side of his cock a suck and a lick. Then I lifted my head. “That’s one to me. I’m trying to remember all those Kama Sutra positions. What comes after playing the skin flute?”
“What do you want, woman?”
“Guess.”
He wrapped both arms around my hips and gave me a big shake. “Oh, now that’s just bullshit.” His chin banged against my clit again, sending urgent messages rushing out to my fingertips.
“More, then!” I tried to take the end of his cock in my mouth but he rocked away. “I want you in me!”
In answer he rolled me onto my back, grabbed my knees, and roughly pushed them apart. That gave me a huge rush. He threw himself down on my belly. I went dizzy as I felt his breath on my knees, his weight crushing me, and his hands pushing
my legs open. He clamped his thighs around my ears. My eyes rolled up in my head. Then he slid his arms under my bottom, reaching under my hips until I could feel his fingers tickle the opening of my yoni.
“I’m coming in,” he growled into my crotch.
I opened my mouth, and here came his cock, poking in a slow rhythm. He pressed his hips down onto my face. There wasn’t room for my hands. I covered my teeth with my lips and hoped for the best.
The best…I felt his fingers enter me, not just one, I couldn’t tell how many. This new body of mine was so tight and small—he thrust those fingers in, stretching me, stretching me—rushes of joy rocketed through me.
More. I wanted him in me even more.
I opened my mouth wider and slithered my tongue against his cock, big, hot, hard, smooth, driving in and out of my mouth as if teeth didn’t even matter.
Was that his thumb on my clit? His tongue?
I felt two—three—four licks, and then I shattered, my throat tightening around his cock as he slid in deep, deeper, deepest and his fingers twisted and filled me and stretched me and I turned completely inside out and the needles pinned in the red zone and the world went white and then dark.
When I woke, he was holding himself over me in pushup position, face-to-face, looking into my eyes, and his cock was sliding in and out of my yoni very gently.
I wrapped my arms around him. “Don’t you ever quit?” I said with sleepy satisfaction.
He looked very pleased with himself. “Haven’t yet.”
I smacked my lips. They tasted salty, but they would anyway. We were both sticky with sweat. “Did you come?” I wasn’t far from it myself. Again.
His face got that thoughtful expression. He looked past my forehead for a concentrated moment. “Al—most—”
“Good grief!” I lifted my legs and locked them around his hips in the Noose of Rathi and drove my heels into his tailbone. At the same time, I clenched my innermost muscles—“the pair of tongs”—around his cock.
“Aaaugh!” he yelled.
I grinned. I clenched again. That got me just a grunt. But his cock was swelling inside me, longer and thicker at every stroke. As he thickened, I set a rhythm, squeezing him every other stroke. His arms trembled as he held himself up. His eyes were squeezed shut. Was he feeling orgasm come? Was he holding it back?
I doubled my pace, squeezing every stroke, timing the pinch so that it caught him as he withdrew. He was hammering into me now. He shifted, tilting his pelvis so that his pubic bone bumped against my clit.
This time I cried out.
His stroke got so long that he was slipping almost completely out of me at the top. I could really give that big fat tip of his cock a good squeeze as he came out—and I tightened, to make a pop! as he drove back in.
I knew he liked that. I grinned wider.
He stood about four of those pops. Then I heard him suck in air in a way I hadn’t heard for centuries. He paused at the top of his stroke. He shuddered. Then he smashed down into me in long, slow, deep strokes as his orgasm took hold and he lost control.
He sank down onto me, pumping fast, then slow, softening in me, making little wheezing, weepy sounds against my neck.
And I felt him work his hand between our bodies.
His thumb found my clit. He gave me a few expert rubs.
I gasped, clutched his back with sharp claws, and soared.
Two days later, room service brought us breakfast and a pile of postcards.
“Who wrote? Nobody uses snail mail any more,” my bride called from outside on the patio, where she was pouring papaya juice into two glasses at the table.
“Some do.” I tossed the cards over.
One card was from Veek, obviously mailed before he left Delhi, a picture of the Eiffel Tower with congratulations in French on the back.
One from Baz, sent out of Chicago two weeks before the wedding—a cartoon of a ball and chain on the front and the business card of “a reputable divorce lawyer” (Baz’s annotation) taped securely to the back. His brief, grumpy “Good Luck” was scrawled under it.
One was a pretty picture from the Isle of Cyprus from my ex-roomie Archie, he of the incredibly skanky bedroom, forwarded from the Lair, signed by him and his bride Chloe. They had been out of touch, on their own honeymoon, so Archie hadn’t heard the news.
And one was from my ex-roomie Lido, a self-made snapshot postcard of himself and his new boyfriend getting married somewhere where that’s legal. He had written, I hear you just joined the grown-ups. Welcome!
I laughed and tossed the cards back onto the room service cart.
Contrary to my expectations the cabana was not trashed. The sliding patio doors stood open. Fresh air off the water brought sounds of gulls and lapping waves.
“Come and eat, husband.”
“Coming, wife.”
I sat and soaked up the sunshine, eating toast and marmalade from Rathi’s hand.
She looked fresh and young in the morning light. Her hair seemed a little subdued—we hadn’t showered yet today. I knew now that it hung down to her knees. It took half an hour to shampoo and almost as long to rinse out, and it would dry for hours, fluffing out as it dried, so that she had to keep brushing it and tying it up, lock by lock, unless she wanted to look like she stood under a coal-black halo six feet in diameter. Her skin shone. Her eyes were bright and sly as she picked over the breakfast dishes, tasting, putting things on her plate and mine, watching me.
She was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
One of these days we would have to go back to Chicago. She would put her lawyer suit back on. I would clean out my room at the Lair. Eventually we would show up at Shiva’s next board meeting together, although I planned to let Rathi do the talking. We would work out how to represent the pantheon and our own roles from the States. Maybe that reality show.
I couldn’t care less. It would happen. Rathi would make it happen.
Right now my favorite job was back in my lap. In my bed. Across my breakfast table.
She smiled at me as if she were way ahead of me. She probably was.
I put out my hand. She put her toast into it. I put the toast down on the plate and took her hand in mine. “Come to bed, wife.”
“Coming, husband.”
We had all the time in the world.
Acknowledgments
Infinite thanks for reads and advice to Pat Rice, Kelly McClymer, Lori Devoti, Pali Kari, Bernadette Cychner, Rebecca Jaxon, Kate Early, David Stephen Rappaport, Mindy “She’s So” Fine, Ruth Kaufman, Sam Reaves, my Musa team Rory Olsen, Kelly Shorten, and Coreen Montagna, the wonderful gang at Chicago-North RWA, India advisors Raj Iype, Prof. Dwijendra Narayan Jha, Prof. Catherine Benton, Prof. Wendy Doniger, Iku Pathok, Kharkhua.com, Ashok Banker, Devi Badhuri, the terrific folks at the Facebook Assamese Cuisine And Recipes community, food expert Sudipta Biswas, and the ever-patient Rich Bynum. Special and abject thanks to Sonali Dev for saving my cookies on all things Indian: you’re a goddess!
About the Author
Twenty-five years or more ago, Jennifer Stevenson was born under a cabbage leaf, dreaming even in the center of those stiffly furled-up leaves of becoming a hack writer for the pulps. She longed to emulate the careers of bygone greats: Rudyard Kipling, PG Wodehouse, Sax Rohmer, Rex Stout. After a flustering detour down the rabbit-hole of literary fiction, she located a trail of breadcrumbs and followed it here, where she finds new uses for old sex demons and celebrates smart-mouth women.
Website: http://jenniferstevenson.com
Hang with her on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/JenniferStevensonAuthor
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