Chapter 7: My loosing myself
The blood had dried to a rusty brown on the inside of her thighs. Saumya stared at the stain on the white hotel sheet, the proof left behind when Vishal had finally stood, dressed with terrifying calm, and told her to clean up before her husband arrived. The scent of him, of them, still clung to her skin beneath the hurried shower. Jasmine and sex and sweat.
Now, a week later, she lay in a different bed. Her childhood bed. The pink walls and faded posters of boy bands felt like artifacts from someone else’s life. The only light came from a dim lamp on the bedside table, casting long, dancing shadows as the ceiling fan whirred above.
“So?” Tia’s whisper was a warm breath against her ear. They were tangled together under a single cotton sheet, just like they had been for a thousand sleepovers. Tia’s leg was thrown over Saumya’s, her hand resting on Saumya’s stomach. “You stopped at the champagne. He tasted of champagne. Then what?”
Tia was her mirror, her echo. Same age, same neighborhood, same secrets whispered in this very dark. But where Saumya was now a married woman, Tia remained untouched, a virgin with a hungry, curious mind that lived through Saumya’s experiences. Her fingers traced idle, familiar circles on Saumya’s nightdress.
Saumya took a shaky breath. The air in her old room smelled of dust and rose potpourri, a stark contrast to the memory of the bridal suite’s heavy perfume. Telling it here, to Tia, made it both more real and more like a forbidden story.
“He sent everyone away,” Saumya began, her voice low. “The aunties, the friends. Just like that. One look from him and the room emptied. It was so quiet I could hear my own heart.” She felt Tia’s body tense with anticipation beside her. “He walked over to the bed. He didn’t say anything at first. He just looked at me. Like I was a painting he’d bought.”
“God,” Tia breathed. Her hand slid up, coming to rest just below Saumya’s breast. A silent prompt.
“He took the glass from my hand. Put it down. Then he touched my chin, made me look up at him. His thumb… it was on my lower lip, pushing just a little.” Saumya closed her eyes, seeing it. “He said, ‘Open.’ Just that one word.”
Tia’s fingers curled slightly, gripping the fabric of Saumya’s nightie. “Did you?”
“Yes.” The word was a confession. “I did. And he kissed me. It wasn’t… sweet. It was deep. And the champagne taste was so strong. He held the back of my head so I couldn’t pull away, not that I even tried. I just… melted.”
She heard Tia swallow. “Then he pushed you back.”
“Yeah.” Saumya’s voice dropped to a murmur. “Onto those stupid, silky sheets. The marigolds crunched under me. His weight was on top of me, and I could feel… everything. His belt buckle dug into my hip. And he was hard already. Pressing against me through all my clothes, through the lehenga.”
A small, involuntary shudder went through Tia. “What did you feel?”
“Terrified. Excited. Like I was going to throw up and fly apart at the same time.” Saumya opened her eyes, staring at the fan’s blur. “His hands went to my blouse. The little hooks at the back. He didn’t fumble. He just… unhooked them. One by one. I could hear each one click open.”
Tia’s hand had gone still. She was utterly captivated.
“He peeled the blouse off my shoulders,” Saumya continued, the details flooding back, crisp and vivid. “The air was cool on my skin. Then my choli. He pulled it down, slowly, until my breasts were bare.” She instinctively covered one breast with her own hand, remembering the exposure. “He just stared. Like he was memorizing me. Then he touched. His palms were so hot. He squeezed, not gently. His thumbs on my nipples, rubbing, pinching.”
“Did it hurt?”
“A little. But it also… it felt good. A sharp, good hurt. I arched into it without even thinking.” Saumya bit her lip. Admitting this to Tia was like admitting it to herself. “He kissed my neck, my shoulders, then… then he put his mouth on me. On my breast.”
Tia shifted, turning onto her side to face Saumya fully. Her eyes were wide, black pools in the lamplight. “And you let him?”
“He didn’t ask.” A pause. The memory of Vikram’s shy, tentative kisses in the car flashed and was gone, overwritten by Vishal’s absolute certainty. “He just took. He sucked so hard it almost bruised. His tongue, his teeth… I’d never felt anything like it. It was like he was drawing something out of me, right through my skin.”
A long silence stretched between them, filled only with the fan’s whir. Tia’s hand, tentative now, crept from Saumya’s stomach to the waistband of her cotton shorts. Her fingertips dipped just beneath the elastic, resting on the flat plane of Saumya’s lower belly. It was an old, understood language between them. A question.
Saumya gave a tiny, almost imperceptible nod.
Tia’s hand slipped lower, under the shorts, finding the damp warmth there. Her touch was knowing, practiced. They had explored each other this way for years, a secret rhythm of shared curiosity and release. But now it was different. Now Saumya’s body held a new map, charted by someone else.
“Keep going,” Tia whispered, her own breath quickening as her fingers began to move in soft, slow circles. “What did he do next?”
Saumya’s hips pushed lightly into Tia’s touch. “The skirt,” she gasped, the story and the sensation merging. “The heavy lehenga. He pushed it all down, over my hips. He took everything off me. Until I was just… naked. On the bed. And he was still fully dressed, standing there, looking down at me like I was a feast.”
“Were you ashamed?”
“Yes. And so excited I thought I’d die.” Saumya’s own hand came up to cover Tia’s, pressing it harder against herself. Her words came in short bursts, matching the rhythm Tia was setting. “He told me to spread my legs. I did. He knelt between them. He just… looked. For so long. I’ve never felt so open. So seen.”
Tia’s forehead pressed against Saumya’s temple. “Then what? Saumya, tell me.”
“He touched me there. With his fingers. Not inside, just… rubbing. Circles. Like you are now. But harder. His eyes never left my face. He watched every single change, every twitch.” Saumya was panting now, her back arching off the familiar mattress. “And then… he lowered his head.”
Tia’s fingers stilled. “He didn’t.”
“He did.”
“You let him… lick you?” Tia’s voice was filled with a horrified, thrilling awe.
“He didn’t ask,” Saumya repeated, a desperate mantra. “He just did it. His mouth, his tongue… it was wet, and hot, and so soft and so rough at the same time. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. I just… came apart. Right there, in his mouth, screaming into a pillow.”
Tia made a small, choked sound. Her own hips were grinding slowly against Saumya’s thigh now. The cotton sheet was a tangle between them. “What did it taste like?” The question was blunt, juvenile in its curiosity, and utterly Tia.
Saumya turned her head, her lips brushing Tia’s ear. “Me,” she whispered. “It just tasted like me. He said he loved it. He said I was sweet.”
They moved together then, a frantic, silent dance of shared memory and immediate need. It was different from before. Saumya was different. Her responses were sharper, her sounds deeper, informed by a new and brutal knowledge of her own capacity. When the wave broke over them, it was Tia who cried out first, a sharp gasp muffled in Saumya’s shoulder, followed by Saumya’s own release, a shuddering sigh that felt torn from a place still raw and aching from a week ago.
They lay spent, slick with sweat, the sheet kicked to the floor. The fan cooled their skin.
After a long time, Tia spoke, her voice dreamy and sated. “So… after that… he must have been gentle with the rest, no? After making you feel so good?”
Saumya’s body, so relaxed a moment before, went rigid. She stared at the ceiling, the afterglow evaporating, replaced by the cold, clear memory of what came next. The fear. The tearing pain. The distant sound of the shehnai as she lost consciousness with him inside her.
She hadn’t gotten to that part yet.
She turned her head slowly to look at Tia, whose face was still soft with pleasure and vicarious thrill. Saumya’s hand found Tia’s, lacing their fingers together. She squeezed, hard.
“No,” Saumya said, her voice now hollow and strange in the dark room. “That’s when it stopped being about feeling good.”
Tia’s eyes widened. The craving in them hadn’t faded. It had deepened. “Tell me,” she said, squeezing Saumya’s hand back.
“Tell me,” she said, squeezing Saumya’s hand back.
Saumya closed her eyes, separating the memory from the man. “He was an expert, Tia. That’s the thing. He knew exactly what he was doing. Every touch, every second… it was calculated to make me lose my mind.” She let out a shaky breath. “After he… after he used his mouth on me, after I came apart like that, I was just liquid. I couldn’t have said no to anything.”
“So what did he want?” Tia’s voice was barely a whisper.
“He stood up, beside the bed. And he just… looked at me. He was still dressed, remember? Perfect trousers, that untucked shirt. And I was destroyed, naked, still shaking.” Saumya’s fingers tightened on Tia’s. “He put his thumb on his own lower lip, slowly. Then he said, ‘Your turn.’ Just like that. ‘Your turn.’”
“Oh god,” Tia murmured, her body shifting closer.
“He made me kneel on the floor in front of him. The marble was cold on my knees. My hands were shaking so bad I could barely undo his belt.” The memory was a sharp, vivid film behind her eyelids. “He helped me. He guided my hands. Then he… he pushed my head forward. I could smell myself on him, Tia. On his skin. It was the most shocking thing I’ve ever smelled.”
Tia was breathing fast now, her earlier satisfaction replaced by a new, hungry tension. Her leg hooked over Saumya’s thigh, pulling them closer. “And you did it?”
“What choice did I have?” Saumya’s question was rhetorical, hollow. “He was my husband’s boss. He was a god in that room. And part of me… a huge part… wanted to. To taste what he’d made me feel. To know the power he had in my mouth.” She paused, the confession hanging in the dark. “So I did. I opened my mouth. And I took him in.”
A low whimper escaped Tia. Her hips made a small, involuntary circle against Saumya’s leg. “Was it… awful?”
“No.” The answer was immediate, shocking in its honesty. “It was terrifying. It was degrading. And it was the most exciting thing I’ve ever done. The way he groaned, the way his hands fisted in my hair, controlling the pace… I felt owned. Completely. I made him come, Tia. I swallowed it. And I liked that I could.”
The air between them was electric, thick with shared breath and the heat of the story. Saumya turned her head, her nose brushing Tia’s cheek. She could feel the feverish warmth coming off her friend’s skin. Tia’s eyes were glazed, her lips parted.
“I’m so wet,” Tia breathed, the words a blunt, honest confession. “Just hearing you. I can’t… I can’t even imagine.”
“You want to imagine?” Saumya whispered back, a daring, dangerous energy rising in her. Vishal’s lessons were already twisting into something new. “Or do you want to know?”
Tia didn’t answer with words. She just surged forward and crushed her mouth against Saumya’s. It was nothing like their previous, exploratory kisses. This was desperate, messy, all tongue and heat and the sharp click of teeth. Tia’s hands were everywhere, pulling at Saumya’s shorts, pushing her own cotton panties down.
“Show me,” Tia gasped, breaking the kiss. Her chest was heaving. “Please. Show me what it’s like.”
They scrambled, a tangle of limbs, until Tia was on her back and Saumya was hovering over her. In the dim lamplight, Tia looked both utterly familiar and entirely new—her best friend, laid bare and trembling with want. Saumya felt a surge of something that felt like power, a faint echo of what Vishal must have felt.
She didn’t speak. She just lowered her head, her hair creating a dark curtain around them. She followed the map of Tia’s body—the frantic pulse in her throat, the tight peaks of her small breasts, the quivering flat plane of her stomach. Tia whimpered, her fingers digging into Saumya’s shoulders.
When Saumya finally kissed the inside of her thigh, Tia jerked. “Saumya…”
“Shhh.” Saumya’s own heart was a wild drum against her ribs. She breathed in Tia’s scent, clean and musky and utterly different from the perfumed suite. Then she closed the distance.
The first touch of her tongue made Tia cry out, a short, sharp sound she quickly muffled with her own hand. Saumya copied what she remembered—the slow circles, the firm pressure, the occasional soft flick. She listened, adjusting to Tia’s hitched breaths and the twitching of her hips.
“It’s so… it’s so much,” Tia sobbed, her hand now fisted in Saumya’s hair, not guiding, just holding on. “Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.”
Saumya didn’t. She lost herself in the rhythm, in the taste, in the profound intimacy of giving this to her oldest friend. Tia’s pleasure became her own, a feedback loop of gasps and tremors. When Tia finally broke, her body bowing off the bed in a silent scream, Saumya stayed with her, gentling her through the waves until she collapsed, spent.
Saumya crawled back up the bed, tasting Tia on her lips. They faced each other, noses almost touching. Tia’s eyes were wide, dazed, glistening with unshed tears.
“Now you know,” Saumya whispered.
Tia just stared at her, as if seeing a stranger. Then she slowly, deliberately, pushed Saumya onto her back. Her expression had shifted from sated wonder to a determined curiosity. “My turn,” she said, echoing Vishal’s words with a soft, terrifying gravity.
Before Saumya could react, Tia moved down the bed. Her approach was less assured, more tentative. Her kisses were questions against Saumya’s stomach. But when her mouth finally found its destination, the sensation was a lightning bolt. It wasn’t Vishal’s practiced, overwhelming conquest. This was Tia, her best friend, learning her, loving her.
Saumya’s head fell back. A single tear traced a hot path from the corner of her eye into her hairline. The pleasure was pure, uncomplicated by fear or power. For a few fleeting minutes, in her childhood bed, she was just a woman being loved by her friend.
It was beautiful.
And it made the memory of what came next with Vishal loom even larger, a dark and brutal shadow waiting just beyond this tender moment.