Her gaze was lowered for a while and she sat unseeing, as the darkening blue of the night approached them from the seaside. He was aware, she wasn't stunned by his proposal. Neither amused, nor did she laugh up her sleeve. There was no anger in her eyes or contempt. Her lips didn't move from a tremble and the surprise didn't give an affected rise and fall to her breaths. It was as if he hadn't spoken at all. Or, had he assumed that it was even necessary, when it appeared as though she had seen it as a natural progression of their night together.
On his own accord, he turned to sit facing her, folding his feet under him and his proximity made her pull back her chin from over her knees.
"Drive me back home, Rishabh..." She said and brought her knees down, mirroring him, in an attempt to swivel around and get off the block, when his hand went around her back and urged her to stay put.
"You only have to show me with your eyes," and with that he leaned in, his forehead resting on hers, "and we can drive far from all this..."
"No, Rishabh..." She began shaking her head, but his hand cupped the side of her face and she stilled closing her eyes. "Please..." her voice drowned in a drawn out exhale.
And her pleading came as if she only wanted to be held in a nearness that put their former positions distal in comparison. In moments, her nose touched his and their breaths mingled with her bent knees over his, when he'd enveloped her in his hold.
"I have to be...some place..." While she struggled with that whisper, her hand slid down the side of his face to pull him off of her and instead found her fingers curved around his ears.
There was a sense of deepening center in their silence, in how they sat enclosing it, as if it was the last of their togetherness that lay cradled in their palms.
"I won't kiss you," he said continuing to hold her face, "not without your acceptance."
She turned away from his hand. "Because, I don't want that night to happen all over again. Not when the only woman who will matter in this life..."
"No..." he heard her say softly in protest.
"Might feel I'm violating her by kissing without permission." he said while his breath assaulted her cheeks.
Overcome by a tender vulnerability, however brief, she pressed her forehead against his for the smallest lapse in time and endeavored to put some distance between them."This is a public place and I would like to go home, Rishabh." she said with a determination that let her assemble quick movements to get down on her feet.
He didn't resist when there had been a finality in her voice and they boarded his car without another exchange. This time, it did turn out to be a long ride, with a looming of gloom that thickened as they approached her home.
What had led him to hope that she would stop and have a word with him, he couldn't tell. But, when she abounded with eager steps to escape him right after the car came to a halt, he got out with a stinging in his chest. There hadn't been an answer to his proposal. Nor there had been a rejection in so many words, but her receding form had been enough to conjure the refusal inside him.
So, it did come as a relief when she doubled back to him soon after she'd entered the compound of her home; she landed with the full length of her body thrust on him.
"Its not rare when your heart and mind are not in unison. But, its indeed, rare when they are." She said raising her palm to his chest. "You don't pass it over, when they are telling you the same thing. I can't, Rishabh, when in all insanity, it would never be violating any..."
She didn't bother finishing what she'd begun then, when she leaned up in a pulse and pressed her lips to his. It wasn't in the throes of passion that his hands trailed her body, his tight hold around the waist that lifted her a bit off the ground when he crushed her lower lip, but from an incendiary that coursed in his nerves.
"This wasn't my kiss," she said upon pulling apart and looking up into his eyes, a tinge of moisture swirling in her own. "This is your kiss - the one you didn't want to take from me tonight." Her hand slipped over his shirt and then she was gone with a palm over her mouth, muffling a sound of pain or cry; he didn't care any more.
Argh! the flash of spasm that rippled though his body was inconceivably numbing that instant. Her words could have stood for many things, but for now, it was good bye and he stayed there watching her window, as if the only identity he'd known all his life had been stripped bare off him.
His phone rang then and by virtue of a habituated response, he attended to the call.
"Chief, its me." Bittuji sounded breathless, but he didn't have a mind to register his own aching, let alone Bittuji's hardships. "I have him located finally. We are on the ready. All I need is your word and then it will be done."
He titled his head to look up at the starless sky, dark and descending.
"Bittuji, no jazz," he managed after a long beat of quiet. "None of that hyperbole, that you mentioned. I just want plain old parroting." he said and finished the call after some threats of caution that Bittuji sometimes needed.
Of the years to come his survival was assured; that much he knew. But, what of tomorrow? he thought with his gaze still directed upward, when her scent was still on his skin, the brush of her tendrils against his neck. Without doubt, tomorrow was a problem.
Book Talk
