Chapter 6: Next morning
The first thing he was aware of was the weight of her leg thrown over his, and the scent of her skin, warm and sleep-soft, pressed into the pillow beside him. Sid blinked against the grey morning light filtering through the hotel curtains. The digital clock read 7:18. Their flight wasn’t until noon.
She was on her stomach, the sheet tangled low around her hips, her back a long, bare curve in the dim room. Her hair was a dark cloud across her shoulders. He watched the slow, steady rise and fall of her breathing. Last night felt both impossibly vivid and like a dream he’d desperately tried to memorize.
He didn’t think. He simply moved.
He slid down the bed, the sheets cool against his skin. He kissed the small of her back, a gentle press of his lips. She murmured, a sleepy sound, but didn’t wake. He trailed kisses lower, over the curve of her hip, his hands spreading her gently. He put his mouth on her.
She was still mostly asleep, all softness and heat. He licked her slowly, savoring the taste of her, salt and skin and something uniquely her. A deep, shivering sigh escaped her. Her hips shifted slightly, pressing back into him.
Her voice was thick with sleep, blurred at the edges. “You… you started with your breakfast already.”
He lifted his head just enough to speak, his lips brushing her skin. “Starving.”
She rolled onto her back then, her eyes half-open, a smile playing on her swollen mouth. She looked down at him between her thighs. “My turn,” she whispered. “I need mine.”
She pushed at his shoulder, guiding him up. He moved over her, but she shook her head, a dark strand of hair sticking to her lip. “No. Like this.” She nudged him onto his back and slid down, her hair cascading over his stomach. She took him into her mouth without hesitation, her tongue flat and warm.
He groaned, his head falling back into the pillow. His hands found her hair, not guiding, just holding on. She was slow and thorough, a kind of focused laziness that made his toes curl. She hummed, and the vibration traveled straight up his spine.
It was too much and not enough. He tugged gently on her hair. “Come here. Please.”
She crawled back up his body, kissing his stomach, his chest, his throat, and finally his mouth. He could taste himself on her lips, a dark, intimate flavor. He flipped her onto her back, settled between her legs, and entered her in one long, smooth push. They both sighed into it, a shared release of breath.
This was different from the frantic energy of the night before. This was slow, deep, a grinding rhythm that built a different kind of heat. The room was quiet, just the sound of the sheets rustling and their increasingly ragged breath. Her eyes were locked on his, wide and unfocused.
“I love this,” she breathed, her voice barely audible. Her hands came up to frame his face. “I love how you fuck me. So deep. Right there. Just like that.”
He kept the pace, watching her fall apart beneath him. Her words tumbled out, broken and honest.
“Even if… god… even if we’re not together later. Next month. Next year.” She gasped as he angled his hips, hitting a spot that made her back arch off the bed. “I’ll remember this. I’ll want this. Just this. You, inside me, just like this.”
Her confession hung in the air, raw and stunning. It wasn’t a promise of forever. It was something more terrifyingly real. An acknowledgement that this thing between them was temporary, finite—a business trip fling—but that the feeling of it would outlast the circumstances. He felt something clutch in his chest, tight and painful.
He started to lose the rhythm. His mind blurred. Nothing in the room seemed solid—not the bland hotel furniture, not the light at the window, not the future waiting for them back in Delhi. The only real things were the points where their bodies connected: the sweat-slick slide of his chest against hers, the grip of her thighs, the hot, tight clasp of her around him.
“Everything goes quiet,” she whispered, her eyes drifting shut. “In my head. It’s just… feeling. It’s like dreaming. Nothing else is real.”
He knew exactly what she meant. The pressure of work, the unread emails on his phone, the fact that they’d have to sit in a cab together in a few hours pretending to be just colleagues—it all dissolved. There was only this building tide, this friction, her sharp cries becoming a steady, pleading chant of his name.
“Sid. Sid. Please.”
He shifted, driving into her harder, faster, spurred on by her words, by the terrifying honesty of them. She came suddenly, a silent, open-mouthe gasp that seized her whole body, her nails digging into his back. The intense, fluttering pull of her own orgasm tipped him over the edge immediately after. He pressed his face into the hollow of her neck, breathing her in as he fell apart.
For a long time, they just lay there, a mess of limbs and damp sheets. The real world began to seep back in. The hum of the hotel’s air conditioner. The distant whine of a vacuum cleaner in the hall.
Her fingers traced idle patterns on his shoulder. “We have to check out,” she said quietly.
“I know.”
“Flight’s at twelve.”
“I know.”
She turned her head to look at the clock. “We should shower. Pack.”
Neither of them moved.
He watched the slow curl of her hair on the pillow. The vacancy of the day ahead in Delhi, the sterile office air, felt like a physical affront. “What if we didn’t?”
Kirti turned her head, her eyebrow arched. “Didn’t shower? We kinda have to.”
“No.” He rolled onto his back, staring at the ceiling. “What if we didn’t get on the noon flight?”
She propped herself up on an elbow. “Our tickets are non-refundable.”
“I’ll change them.” He reached for his phone on the nightstand, the screen blinding in the dim room. “I’ll pay the fee. Let’s take the last flight out tonight.”
Her silence was heavy. He could feel her watching him, calculating. “Why?”
“Because I’m not ready for this to be a cab ride to the airport yet.” He didn’t look at her, thumbs tapping the airline app. His voice was low. “Are you?”
She didn’t answer. She just leaned over and kissed his shoulder, a soft, simple press of her lips. That was answer enough.
The call to the airline was a muffled, bureaucratic murmur. He handled it, citing a vague client follow-up. The change fee was steep, but the click of confirmation felt like a victory. He dropped the phone onto the rumpled duvet. “Done. We have,” he checked the clock, “ten more hours.”
A real smile broke over her face, mischievous and bright. “Ten hours of what?”
“Of not being colleagues.” He swung his legs out of bed. “Starting with a proper bath. That tiny shower won’t cut it.”
He walked naked to the large, impersonal bathroom and cranked the hot water. He rummaged under the sink, finding a small, dusty bottle of bubble bath left by the hotel. He poured the entire thing under the roaring stream. The scent of fake jasmine and chemicals filled the air.
Soft, iridescent bubbles began to multiply, climbing the sides of the wide tub. He tested the water, his hand disappearing into the cloud of foam.
When he walked back into the bedroom, she was standing by the window, the thin hotel sheet wrapped around her body like a sari. She was looking out at the hazy city skyline. “I feel guilty,” she said, not turning. “Playing hooky.”
“We’re not.” He came up behind her, resting his hands on her sheet-clad hips. “We’re conducting essential post-client rapport deepening.”
She chuckled, leaning back into him. “That sounds dirty.”
“It will be.” He nuzzled her neck. “The bath’s ready.”
He led her by the hand into the steam-filled bathroom. The tub was a mountain of white bubbles, overflowing onto the tile floor. The air was warm and thick with the cloying floral scent. She let the sheet drop, a pool of fabric at her feet, and stepped in first, sinking with a sigh until the foam covered her to the shoulders.
He followed, the hot water a shock that quickly melted into relief. The tub was big, but not that big. Their legs tangled immediately underwater, a smooth, secret contact. Bubbles clung to her hair, her lashes.
She scooped a peak of foam and blew it at him. It dissolved in the air between them. “This was a good idea,” she conceded, sliding down so the water lapped at her chin.
“I have them sometimes.” He found her foot under the water, massaging the arch with his thumb. She hummed in approval.
For a while, they just sat in the quiet heat, the only sound the soft pop of bubbles and the distant groan of plumbing. The frantic energy of the morning, of the night before, was finally gone. This was something slower, more vulnerable.
“Back in Delhi,” she said, her voice echoing slightly off the tiles. “It’s just Monday.”
“I know.”
“We can’t do this there,” she said. It wasn’t a question.
“No.” His hand moved from her foot to her calf, fingers tracing the slope of muscle. “We can’t.”
She looked at him, her face serene above the blanket of foam. “So this is it, then? This room. These ten hours.”
He didn’t have an answer. Instead, he leaned forward, bubbles sticking to his chest. He kissed her, a slow, water-soft kiss. The taste of fake jasmine was on her lips. “For now,” he whispered against her mouth. “This is for now.”
He reached for a washcloth, dunked it in the hot water, and wrung it out. He began to wash her back in slow, deliberate circles, wiping away the ghost of the previous night. She closed her eyes, surrendering to the simple, tender motion. The water grew cooler around them, but neither moved to add more heat. They were preserving the moment, sipping it slow, knowing the world was waiting just outside the bathroom door, past the hotel lobby, on a later flight they’d already booked.