Chapter 4: Dars and Riddles are currently in a restaurant in a hotel
The air in the restaurant was a tangible thing, thick with garlic, cumin, and a hundred competing conversations. A waiter swept past their small table, a rainbow of curries balanced on a tray, and the clatter of plates was a percussive rhythm beneath the human din. Riddhi watched Darshan across the table, his eyes on the menu but his attention palpably elsewhere—on her.
She could still feel him. A phantom ache, a delicious soreness with every shift in her chair. It sang a quiet, constant tune beneath the noise. She took a sip of her mango lassi, the sweetness cool on her tongue.
“You’re staring,” he said without looking up, a faint smirk playing on his lips.
“You’ve had that menu open to the same page for five minutes. Deciding between the chicken tikka and the existential crisis?”
He finally looked at her, and the heat in his gaze was a live wire in the bustling room. “Just thinking about logistics.”
“Logistics.” She raised an eyebrow.
“Mmm. The distance from this table to our room. The average walking speed of a highly motivated man. The statistical probability of me getting my hand up your kurti in the elevator.”
She kicked him lightly under the table, her toes connecting with his shin. “Behave. We’re in public. Surrounded by aunties and uncles who probably know your mother.”
“They don’t know my mother. This is Atlanta.” He leaned forward, his voice dropping, the playful veneer thinning. “And I don’t want to behave. I’ve been behaving for twenty-six fucking years, Riddhi. Last night… that wasn’t behaving. That was starting.”
Her breath hitched. The word ‘starting’ felt heavier than ‘final’ had. It promised a terrifying continuum. The waiter appeared, and they ordered in a rushed, mechanical duet, eager to be alone again in the crowd.
When the food came, it was a vibrant distraction. They ate with the focused intensity of people avoiding a conversation. But the silence between bites was charged. His leg pressed against hers. Every time her hand reached for her water glass, his eyes tracked the movement. The spice of the rogan josh built on her tongue, a heat that mirrored the one pooling low in her belly.
He pushed his plate away, half-finished. “I can’t.”
“Can’t what?”
“Sit here. Pretend this is normal.” His jaw was tight. “I look at you and I see the marks on your neck. I see the way you’re sitting carefully because you’re sore. My sore. I want to put my mouth on you right here and taste the lassi and the chutney and you. This is agony.”
His words, low and vehement, were a brand. The crude honesty of them, here among the linen napkins and clinking glasses, was more shocking than anything against the door. It stripped the pretense. They weren’t a couple on a cute weekend. They were accomplices in a heist, stealing moments of raw truth from a life of careful lies.
“Then let’s go,” she said, her voice surprisingly steady. She dropped her napkin on the table. “Stop talking about it.”
He threw a wad of cash onto the bill without counting it and stood, pulling her chair out. The walk through the restaurant felt like a perp walk. She was hyper-aware of every glance, every potential judgment. He held her hand, his grip firm, possessive, leading her not as a date but as a captor claiming his prize.
The elevator was mercifully empty. The doors slid shut, sealing them in a mirrored, brass-trimmed coffin. The silence was immediate and suffocating.
He didn’t wait. He backed her into the corner, his body a solid wall of heat. His hands found her face, tilting it up. The kiss was deep and searching, a confirmation. He tasted of ginger and cilantro and want. One hand slid down, cupping her ass through her silk trousers, pulling her flush against the hard ridge already prominent in his jeans. She gasped into his mouth.
“See?” he mumbled against her lips. “Agony.”
The elevator chimed. He broke away just as the doors opened on their floor. An elderly couple stood waiting. Darshan nodded, a picture of calm, and guided Riddhi out, his hand a burning brand on the small of her back. They walked the hallway in a tense, hurried silence. His keys jangled, a frantic sound.
Inside the room, the door had barely shut before he was on her. But this was different from the night before. There was no frantic violence. This was a slow, deliberate unraveling. He turned her around, his lips on her neck, his hands working the buttons of her embroidered kurti with a frustrating, meticulous slowness.
“Darshan, please,” she whispered, her head falling back against his shoulder.
“Please what?” His voice was a dark caress. He parted the fabric, exposing her shoulders, her back. His mouth followed the path of his hands. He kissed the knob of her spine, the dip of her waist. “Tell me what you want. Use the words. The filthy words you type to me at 2 AM when you think I’m asleep.”
She shuddered. “I want your mouth.”
“Where?”
“Everywhere.”
He chuckled, a low, wicked sound. He spun her back to face him, the kurti hanging open. He looked his fill, his eyes dark and hungry. Then he sank to his knees on the coarse hotel carpet.
He hooked his thumbs into the waistband of her silk trousers and her panties, dragging them down in one rough pull. The cool air hit her exposed skin, followed immediately by the heat of his breath. He didn’t kiss her inner thigh. He went straight to the heart of her, burying his face between her legs with a groan that vibrated through her entire body.
His tongue was a ruthless, knowing thing. It licked a broad, flat stripe through her folds, gathering the wetness that had been building since the restaurant. He cursed into her, the words muffled against her flesh. “Fuck, you’re dripping. This is all for me? This sweet, sticky cunt?”
She could only grip his hair, her knees threatening to give way. He latched onto her clit, sucking the sensitive bud into his mouth, applying a rhythmic pressure that made her cry out. His fingers joined the assault, two pushing inside her, curving upwards. He finger-fucked her with slow, deep thrusts while his tongue flicked and circled.
“You taste like last night,” he growled, lifting his head for a second, his chin glistening. “You taste like me. Like you swallowed me whole and this is what’s left.” He plunged his face back into her, his tongue delving deeper, fucking her with it. The obscene, wet sounds filled the room. She looked down and saw him, her sophisticated Darshan, on his knees, devouring her like a man starving, his eyes closed in rapture.
The climax built not as a wave but as a detonation, sudden and total. It ripped through her with a force that stole her voice, buckling her legs. He held her up, his mouth relentless, drinking every pulse and shudder until she was limp, whimpering, tugging at his hair to pull him away from the overwhelming sensitivity.
He rose, his own need etched into the tense lines of his face. He was hard, the outline straining against his zipper. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, never breaking eye contact.
“My turn,” he said, his voice raw.
He pushed her backwards until her legs hit the bed. She fell onto it, sprawled and open. He undressed quickly, his clothes landing in a heap. His cock stood thick and angry, the tip already wet. He climbed over her, but instead of entering her, he shifted upwards. He knelt over her face, one hand guiding himself to her lips.
“Suck it,” he commanded, his tone leaving no room for play. “Get it nice and wet for that pretty, used-up pussy of yours.”
She opened her mouth, taking him in. The taste of herself on him was darkly erotic. She worked him with her tongue, swirling around the head, tracing the vein underneath, taking him deeper until he hit the back of her throat. He swore, his hips giving a shallow thrust.
“Yeah, just like that. Fuck, your mouth.” He looked down at her, his expression one of pained ecstasy. “Remember last night? Against the door? I’m gonna fuck you just like that again. But slower. I’m gonna watch every inch disappear inside you.”
He pulled himself from her mouth with a pop. He positioned himself between her splayed legs, the broad head of his cock nudging at her entrance. He pushed in, just an inch, a torturous, stretching invasion. He paused, his whole body trembling with the effort of restraint.
“Look at me,” he gritted out.
She did. Her eyes were wide, dark pools of surrender and fire.
He sank deeper, a slow, inexorable possession. She felt every ridge, every millimeter of his girth stretching her tender flesh. It was a feeling beyond pleasure, a full, aching completeness that bordered on pain. He seated himself fully, buried to the hilt, and let out a shuddering groan.
“Riddhi…”
He began to move. It was a deep, grinding rhythm, each withdrawal almost complete, each thrust a deliberate, soul-searing reclaiming. The angle was different on the soft bed, deeper, hitting a place that made her gasp with each drive. He watched where they were joined, watched her body take him, his face a mask of fierce concentration.
“You take it so well,” he breathed, his pace increasing incrementally. “This perfect, tight cunt was made for me. To drain me. To milk my fucking balls dry.” His language was crude, a dark incantation. “I’m gonna come inside you again. Fill you up. Mark you again from the inside. And you’re gonna come around me. You’re gonna squeeze every last drop out.”
His words were the trigger. The coiling tension snapped. Her orgasm crashed over her, a series of brutal, internal spasms that clamped down on his invading length. She screamed, her back arching off the bed.
The sensation of her pulsing around him shattered his control. With a final, driving thrust, he slammed home and stilled. A raw, torn shout erupted from his throat as he emptied himself into her, jet after hot jet, a possession as profound as any vow. He collapsed onto her, his weight a crushing, welcome anchor, his face buried in the sweaty hollow of her neck.
They lay like that for a long time, glued together by sweat and spend. The smell of sex and spices from their skin was the smell of their escape.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand. Then hers. A simultaneous vibration, insistent.
He didn’t lift his head. “Don’t.”
“I have to,” she whispered, her fingers tracing the sweat-damp hair at his nape. “It’s my mom. If I ignore it again, she’ll call the Atlanta police.”
He rolled off her with a sigh, the loss of connection feeling like a amputation. She reached for her phone, her body complaining. She swiped to answer, her voice shifting into a higher, brighter register as she walked to the bathroom. “Hi, Mummy! Yes, the conference is great… very busy… no, the food is fine…”
Darshan lay on his back, staring at the ceiling’s textured plaster. Her performance was flawless. The lie was flawless. And the warmth of his own release, leaking from her onto the sheets between them, was the only flawed, beautiful, true thing in the entire world. The momentum of their rebellion was slamming into the immovable object of home. The weekend was half gone.