by Rea Thomas
“Why did you come here?” His questioning tone permeated my hazy thoughts and my eyes refocused on him standing with his back to the heating kettle. In the shadows, he looked even more intimidating.
“Why did you ask me?” I felt a streak of defensiveness creep into my voice.
He rested his backside against the counter, folding his arms again. The fabric of his mundu pulled tight across his groin and thighs, emphasizing the hard length of his cock. “I think you know.” His eyes were hooded, shaded by long lashes. The black depths became somehow blacker. I felt as though I were gazing into the dangerous, tantalizing abyss.
Any witty retorts I might have been inclined to spout were lost. Instead, I gaped silently at his body, at the truth of his intentions, pressing with unyielding persistence against the soft cotton. When I was able to pull my eyes away from his impressive manhood, I found his smile to be reeking of infuriating self-confidence. He was pure sex, pure power. The kettle whistled, echoing the warning in my mind.
“The…erm…tea is ready,” I said, sounding feeble and lost. Suddenly I was doubting myself, doubting my sanity again. Damn Jerald to hell for the epic way in which he had fucked me up. I was destroyed, devoid of any common sense. I had become a lunatic, following a stranger blindly for the sole purpose of sex! It was beyond ludicrous, it was downright, no-questions-asked insane.
He took a languid moment to straighten, allowing me another second of viewing his thick cock beneath the fabric. Despite my very best efforts not to, I was unable to resist lowering my eyes. God, he was beautiful. I wanted to reach out, pull the mundu free, unravel that length of pristine white cotton and view him in his wondrous entirety. I swallowed hard and lifted my eyes to meet his.
I wanted him to fuck me.
Chapter Two
“Do you have a name?” I asked. The silence had stretched too long. He was pouring tea into small metal vessels, the thick tendons of his back rolling beneath dark, smooth skin.
“Navin.”
He turned suddenly, advancing toward me with a cup of steaming tea. I thought, as I accepted the beverage, that this was the most surreal moment of my life. Nothing could outdo this, I was certain. I could climb Mount Everest, skydive from an airplane, bungee-jump from a bridge toward a raging river and nothing would be more surreal than standing in a paddy-field shack in India with the sole, inevitable purpose of having sex with an absolute stranger.
“Thank you,” I said. “Nanni,” I corrected, trying one of the handful of words I had learned in Malayalam.
Navin smiled, his dark brows knitting in surprise. “You are welcome. Drink.”
Despite having no desire for the aromatic tea, the first sip was ambrosia to my taste buds. There was a crisp perfection to the brew, as though Navin were a connoisseur. Groaning my approval, I sipped again. Navin watched me over the rim of his aluminum cup, his plump lips parting to blow curling steam in my direction. The lack of conversation between us became almost intolerable, yet I sensed it was part of the brooding man’s game plan. While it seemed to unsettle me, Navin remained quietly self-assured.
He waited with sturdy patience, never taking his eyes off me. I wondered if he wanted me to make the first move, or whether he had traits similar to the tabby cat I owned when I was a teenager. Milo rather enjoyed playing with his prey before devouring it. Navin, with his sinfully dark eyes and impassive facial expressions, unsettled me. I was waiting for him to pounce, to tear the teacup from my hand and have his wicked way with me in the open doorway of his home.
By the time I had drained the cup of tea, Navin was still sipping slowly. He waited ten minutes more—or it might have been an hour—before reaching out to relieve me of my empty cup. By now, the sun had risen far enough to slant beams through the doorway, catching his impressive frame, casting the height and breadth of him in soft light. His black hair curled at his nape, shiny with coconut oil, and it shimmered with the slick iridescence of spilled petroleum. When he looked up at me, his eyes settling sharply upon me as though my smallest movement had triggered some sudden reflex in him, the morning light brought brownish hues forth in his irises, making them the darkest, richest mahogany.
“Why did you come to Kerala?” he asked, his conversation so benign it startled me. I was unable to reconcile the casual intonation of his words with the feral glint in his eyes. For a moment, I struggled to make sense of the question, to articulate a response.
“To get away for a while,” I said at last, thinking how very true my answer was. “To find myself.” Getting away had been my very first instinct in the wake of my failed engagement. I couldn’t bear the pity, the smothering, cloying sympathy of those who loved me. While a beach holiday in the Maldives should have been my first choice, I wanted somewhere so busy and vibrant my brain wouldn’t have a moment to reflect too deeply on Jerald. As it was, reflecting upon him was all I had done, morning, noon and night until this morning, when I had glimpsed Navin on the beach.
It surprised me how close he had gotten, crossing the space of his shack to stand in front of me again. While I had been ruminating over my answer, his bare feet had made no sound on the wooden boards. He was fast, silent and once again drawing parallels to a devious feline.
“Would you like to sit down? You seem uncomfortable.” Navin gestured to his bed, a makeshift wooden structure with a thin mattress and a clean blanket. Nothing about this man was ostentatious; he was poor and he knew it. He accepted it without self-pity. Navin’s modest surroundings didn’t seem to cause him any discomfort whatsoever, and I admired—envied, perhaps—the manner in which he lived.
“Okay,” I said, hoping his suggestion would lead me closer to being in his bed. But I didn’t move. What had become of me, I could not explain. I felt as though I had been freed of unspoken restraints about the kind of behavior one ought to conduct. It wasn’t acceptable to follow a stranger blindly to his home in a foreign country, yet in this place, I had no one to answer to but myself. The liberation was empowering, filling me with some confidence that was previously unknown to me.
I cleared my throat. “Or maybe we could just…talk about why you invited me here, and why I came.” Although my voice was unsteady, I felt a surge of satisfaction inside my chest at my newfound courage, even more so when the Indian’s eyebrows rose in surprise.
“Why talk at all?”
My smugness crumbled into pieces in a split second as he closed the gap between our bodies, sandwiching me between the hardness of his chest and the equally hard doorframe behind my back. His bare skin was hot, radiating through the flimsy fabric of my vest-top. His height truly dwarfed me. I felt I might be cowering with the strain of looking up at him. I thought Navin seemed pleased with himself, happy to have overthrown my cockiness.
His dark hand rose to caress my cheek, almost lovingly. I was surprised, for his size and strength did not mesh well with the idea of tenderness. He turned his gaze away from mine, focusing on the length of his fingertips against my skin.
“So pale,” he mused, his thumb stroking the curve of my cheekbone. He touched upon the place I knew was speckled with freckles, and he seemed amused by them. Then, as his features became somber, his fingertips caressed the arc of darkness beneath my eyes, evidence of sleepless, tear-filled nights. “So tired.” I found it difficult to stand beneath his intense scrutiny, being read and analyzed so thoroughly. I felt emotionally naked as his gaze rose again, fusing with mine, conveying a complete understanding of who I was.
I didn’t expect his kiss then. Still reeling from the reflection I saw of myself in his eyes, I froze when his lips descended to meet mine, hard and urgent. He tasted of sweet tea, coaxing my mouth to open beneath the gentle, sensual stroking of his tongue. My muscles relaxed, my body leaning into his. The longer he kissed me, the easier it became to reconcile my reasoning for coming to his paddy-field house. In those moments, I was an adventurous traveler who had become acquainted with a very attractive lover.
Large hands slid int
o the unruly curls of my hair, touching the base of my skull and awakening every sensitive nerve ending in my body. I trembled at his touch, my spine arching as I sought to get closer to his hard, smooth body. There had never been a time in my life when I had been so thoroughly kissed, when I had felt worshipped by a man’s lips.
Navin’s teeth nipped playfully at my lower lip. A moan rose in my throat, stifled by his mouth, lost against his tongue as he soothed the little infliction. He murmured something through our kiss, something I couldn’t understand. I didn’t know whether he spoke in English or Malayalam, but the medium of language was needless, for I understood a whispered plea regardless of how he verbalized it. Navin was struggling to restrain himself. Suddenly his hands were cupping my skull hard, pressing roughly against my scalp as his narrow hips shot forward, grinding against my own. His cock was rigid.
My arms slipped around him, my hand splayed wide across the expanse of his smooth, hard back. The muscles shifted beneath my touch, and in a moment of craziness, when my thoughts merged into a tornado of incomprehensible ideas and themes, I had a clarifying image of Navin as the Vitruvian Man; a drawing meant to represent a perfect anatomical specimen. Navin the Farmer was nothing short of perfect beneath my wandering touch.
His hands wandered too, moving from my hair downward as his knuckles brushed my jaw and neck. He broke our kiss, tracing the plump softness of his lips across my cheek. Warm breath fanned over my skin, but it was his touch that notched my temperature upward. His palms slid beneath my breasts, his thumbs stroking my nipples through the fabric of my vest.
Growing up I had always hated my pert little breasts. I wished for a full bust, the sort men usually liked. Going braless never seemed like much of a luxury, but this morning, as Navin’s big hands slid over my breasts, I liked that I didn’t have a cumbersome bra to remove—and that my breasts were small in comparison to his palms.
He stepped back, breaking contact between our bodies. I was immediately bereft at the loss of warmth from his bare skin, and in the chasm created there was suddenly room for self-doubt. I wasn’t sure of myself, when he could so easily assess me. I thought of all the times I had hidden my body during sex, thinking my petite frame lacked the feminine curves so often depicted in movies and porn. I needn’t have worried, for Navin’s expression was lustful, drinking in the sight of me slumped, flushed and panting, against the doorframe.
“I don’t want to…erm…” He paused, as though searching through his limited vocabulary of my language for the correct word. “Rush.” Navin nodded, seemingly satisfied this was what he wanted to say. “Athe, I don’t want to rush.”
I was sure I had never heard words so beautiful in my whole life. Sex, which was undoubtedly what Navin was referring to, had always been a quick affair for me. It became a necessary part of a social contract formed between two people. I had often felt, in the years Jerald and I were together, that we were entirely disconnected from the event. To have a man stand before me, declaring he wanted to take his time with me, was perhaps the most arousing prelude to sex there had ever been.
He reached for the edge of his mundu, tied at the top of his hip, undoing the easy knot with a flick of his wrist. I watched as the strip of cotton fell away, my heart almost ceasing to beat as he became bared to me. I was certain, now, that Navin represented the perfect male form. His thighs were thick and strong, waist and hips narrow. Between his legs, his beautiful cock was fully erect, no longer contained by his meager clothing.
My pussy gave a squeeze, reminding me of how much he aroused me just by existing. I had never felt such powerful, immediate attraction to another human being in all my life. There was something so inexplicably potent about Navin—a primal, fundamental sexuality that removed all the other unnecessary bullshit and left only the reality—he was incredibly hot.
His stare was commanding, compelling me to follow his unspoken order to undress. I slipped off my vest, letting the still-cool morning air caress my skin. I trembled, my nipples hardening beneath the black weightiness of Navin’s eyes. Rigid as a soldier, with his head held high and his chin pointing upward, he waited for me to flick the little brass button on my shorts. I felt vulnerable yet bold, encouraged by his obvious lust. Navin’s cock was a thick baton between his strong thighs, less patient than the man himself, for the smooth tip glistened readily with arousal.
My shorts fell to my ankles, revealing my whole body with its many imperfections, to the man before me. The trembles increased, leaving me shivering in the open doorway. I had never been so exposed before. I felt like a virgin, awaiting my first sexual experience with both eagerness and trepidation. Although I tried to resist covering myself, the old insecurities resurfaced and my arms rose of their own volition, crossing over my breasts and my groin.
Navin moved with the reflexes of a wildcat, snatching my wrist as an expert fielder might catch a cricket ball. I froze, stunned at the fierceness of his grasp and how tightly his fingers encircled my wrist. My arm looked tiny, captured by his big hand.
He pulled my arm away, and his body came flush against me. Warm, hard flesh and soft, smooth skin, pressing against my own. I thought we could have made a beautiful piece of art—an interesting representation of life. He depicting virility, perfection and masculinity and I, the uncertain and imperfect. Somehow, as Navin lowered his head to look down at me, I felt like the most perfect, desired woman in the world.
He kissed me again, his hands resting upon my hips. I squirmed, eager to be close to him, reveling in this moment of perfect lust and exhilarating lack of inhibition. I didn’t want the moment to end, and longed for my brain to stop thinking so deeply. When his hands hooked behind my thighs, elevating my backside, I whimpered in surprise against his mouth. His cock was between my legs, pressing against my inner thigh. My legs slid around his waist, allowing him to support my body as though I weighed nothing at all.
I was impatient, disregarding Navin’s instructions that we weren’t to rush. Although I wanted this day to last forever, I wanted him inside me, right at that moment. I longed to be filled, desired, wanted. The insistent rolling of my hips, grinding my wetness against him, forced Navin to break our kiss. He glared at me.
“Illa. No. Wait.” Heavens, his voice sounded good, so close to my ear. There was something almost choked in the way he spoke, filling me with a sense of satisfaction. I believed it was difficult for him to stay in control and it pleased me.
I couldn’t remember ever feeling so aware of myself sexually. It seemed every part of me was sensitive. My pussy was wet and my clit throbbing as one would expect in the midst of heightened arousal, but there was something more happening to my body. I felt as though every one of my senses had become hyper-alert. Even breathing had become sensual, my lungs filling with musky, woodsy scents. I could almost believe my sweet Indian tea was adulterated.
Navin’s fingers moved between our bodies, deftly finding the slick, hard nut of my clit. The gentlest touch had my hips jerking forward, bringing a smile to his lips as he pressed his mouth to my throat. I wondered if he could feel my heartbeat as it pulsed in my vein in a beat similar to the tabla drums I had heard resonate all over India. The touch of his tongue to the tender spot below my ear had the drumbeat increasing tenfold.
My fingers, splayed across his back, dug into the taut flesh. He twisted beneath my touch, wincing at the bite of my nails. I heard the hissing intake of his breath and dug harder. Whatever warning he issued in Malayalam, I failed to understand, but I loved how much it sounded like a reprimand, as though he were telling me off.
My bad behavior was punished by Navin thrusting two large fingers into my pussy, hard and without warning. I cried out, my voice operating without any conscious command from my brain. I tried to jerk away, finding it impossible to move, sandwiched as I was between the doorframe and Navin.
Moving suddenly, Navin swept us across the room, bringing us to the mattress with deft ease. Although the bed was basic, it served its purpose well,
ensconcing us in cushiony softness. I was beneath him then, pressed to the bedding by the weight of his body. It occurred to me how strong he was, holding me down so easily. The thought—and the blast of panic it brought—vanished as his lips settled over mine once more, his kiss teasing and soft.
He captured my wrists, thumbs pressing against the curve of my palm. While Navin kissed me, I yearned to touch his bare skin again. I could smell my arousal, as heady as the scent of incense that seemed as much a part of his wooden shack as the man himself. When the length of his cock brushed against my inner thigh, I released a whimper against his mouth, my hips jerking in response.
Soft lips traced my jaw, ever downward, leaving me breathless. Navin’s hands remained against my wrists, binding and restricting me, forcing me to be at the mercy of his touch. His lips sealed over the peak of my right breast, suckling on the hard pebble of my nipple. The wet tip of his tongue flicked across the nub, rapid and dexterous. His mouth alternated between gentle, playful nips with his teeth, to soft licks and hard sucks.
“Please…” I said, not quite sure what I was pleading for. I half wanted him to stop, feeling tortured by the sense of unfulfilled desire. The other half—or perhaps a little more than half—wanted Navin to continue his quest forever, driving me demented by his endless teasing. When one hand released my wrist, moving downward to cup my left breast, I took advantage of the momentary freedom and my fingers delved into the smooth, inky strands of his hair. He really needed a haircut, for the tendrils curled at the nape of his long neck, softer than they should have been with such a rugged image. Still, I couldn’t reconcile the picture of Navin the Farmer being groomed and smart. His hard body and chiseled features personified a man used to physical labor. How much he differed from the men I knew in London was startling.
