Chapter 44: Chains
Who are you?
You know who I am.
No, I don't…
I am the man you married.
I don't know the man I married…
He watched her close her eyes and the water stream over her eyelids as if in slow motion.
I don't know the woman I married…
Why couldn't you have been different?
She tilted her face to the side and the water ran down her neck and inside her blouse, which was so soggy and transparent now that he tugged hard on his wrists.
You are nothing like what I imagined…
What did you imagine?
….. ….. I don't know… Someone less confusing, someone who I did not have anything in common with, someone who would – could – always be an outsider to me… someone who would be my husband in the truest sense of the word… not my friend… not my mate… not anyone who would touch my soul…
He tugged on his arms with more force now and her eyes opened. It was a calculated contradiction on the part of the one who had tied them up like this that his skin was gleaming with sweat from the warmth of the wall while hers was radiant from the sheen of the oil and water…
They were both suffering from something else too… it was pointless to deny it… It was now five hours since they had been left alone… and true to the words of the voice, they were at touching distance, if only any part of their bodies had been free…
I am not at liberty to feel any of those things…
I know… You love her… You will always love her…
Yes, I will always love her… I love the idea of her… I love that there is a part of her that I will never know… I love that there is a part of me that she will never know… I love the idea that we could forever remain shrouded in such mystery from each other and pretend that all is well… She is a woman who men love to write about… trying to uncover her secrets… what makes her who she is… but she herself knows that the only reason that she is an enigma to them is also what makes her never belong… She is content to be that way now… at least that is what she tells herself… it is a loneliness that is permanent… it can never be erased…
It's in you too… you're alone… very much so… and you like it…
I don't… that's my secret… I have always thought that I was destined for loneliness, but maybe…
But maybe…?
Nothing… I don't understand you… how can you be this way? What way is this? Have you never been in love before? I am sure men have been in love with you before…
No, they haven't…
I would be willing to bet my life on it… I just don't think you knew… it would take a man a great deal of confidence to confess his love to you…
Why? You find me that difficult?
He smiled.
There are some women who possess grace in every molecule of their being… it makes a man remain forever in a state of awe and paralysis, only being able to love from afar… never thinking himself worthy...
I don't understand…
Does your arm hurt?
She straightened from her lax position and lengthened her arms as much as the chains would allow. Her motions crushed her sari to one side, allowing him a glimpse of her long torso. This time, he could not avert his eyes as he watched a drop of water roll down the vertical line from her blouse and collect in the tiny hole of her belly button… The frail muscles there quivered slightly then, disturbing the droplets from their brief resting place and letting them slide down her lower belly to disappear into the folds at the waist of her sari…
He couldn't think straight at all… his eyes climbed up the line of her belly and paused at her chest… he knew by the rising and falling motion of her breasts that her breathing had turned shallow… she knew, of course, that he was watching her…
It hurts a little… but just when I get reminded of it, I catch you staring at me like that and I forget…
He was tired of fighting it… he was tired of fighting the inevitable…
I want you… very very badly… I think that makes me somewhat of a deviant… maybe the CUP was right after all… there is a part of me that finds you breathtaking like this… not because you are tied up… but because both of us are… and I can touch you everywhere I want a thousand times over in my head without ever being worried that I will act on it…
She pulled in her lower lip just then, worrying the same spot that she had bitten down on before.
That doesn't help… It only makes it worse…
She stopped biting on her lips and he could see from what it had done to her lips how such a simple thing like that could drive a man insane…
I don't think I can take three more hours of this… And yet I dread the moment these shackles will come off…
Her eyes closed again as her lips parted…. He tugged harder on his wrists, the strength of the steel there giving him the comfort to try to fight whatever was welling up inside him….
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