“You never had a problem following instructions before.”
“Was that not fun for you, Lotus?” I repeat.
Her expression darkens and she tugs on the front of my shorts. “Fuck. Me.” She punctuates the words by grabbing my cock and squeezing. I groan at the long drag of her hand. “Make it more fun,” she adds and twists her fingers.
“You really should punish me for depriving you,” I tease.
Her mouth lifts in a filthy smile and I know, without a doubt, she’s going to ruin me.
Three. Pleasure rooms
Tamara, August
“While we don’t have a garden, I was thinking this might be a good place to put the sink and large windows,” my client continues, waving her hands around her kitchen.
I nod along, barely registering what she’s saying. Between the amount of work I have to do and a random bout of illness, I’m not paying attention. Kitchens and family rooms have always been ‘my thing’, especially since I started out at Bold Lines twelve years ago. Building and designing the most gorgeous farmhouse kitchens is my bread and butter. Find me a space with large windows and bright lights and I’ll create a beautiful room with enough storage for all your gadgets and gizmos. Then I changed directions and started designing more personalised rooms that don’t get included in my company biography.
For as progressive as we are as a nation, people don’t take kindly to seeing photographs of sex rooms and dungeons on the internet. I’m pretty sure the censor board would flag the Bold Lines website if that ever happened. So I keep it under the radar. If you know someone I’ve designed a pleasure room for, then it’s easy to get in touch with me. Otherwise it’s a whole process of hiring me.
I’m still a Bold Lines employee and I get paid through the company monthly, but the work I do outside of their regular clients doesn’t always filter through our business team. In fact, every single sex room I’ve worked on so far has been a referral. That way I know for certain they want me to build them a specific kind of room.
“Miss Chandy?”
I snap back into focus and force my smile to reach my eyes. I’ve been in Mumbai a day and most of it has been spent staring at these same walls. When she sees that she has my attention, she rambles about her requirements again. Here’s the problem—this space is not big enough for a farmhouse kitchen and all the parts she’s pointing at won’t provide any light or vibes. It doesn’t matter that I’ve drawn this plan out a million times, she still insists she knows better.
Adjusting the mask around my mouth, I press my other hand to the counter to steady myself. “Joshi,” I call out to the contractor and nod towards the wall on the other side of the room. “What’s beyond there?”
“A common area. Large open garden and playground.”
I nod and exhale loudly, the mask fluttering against my mouth. It’s annoying to be wearing it, but given the building is still under construction the amount of dust is atrocious. After my first day at the site, I spent an hour washing dust and cement pieces out of my hair. I was coughing so much I was convinced there was poison. So I now wear a mask, a hair net and booties.
I definitely don’t want to make my ‘illness’ worse. First it was dizziness every time I got out of bed or stood up from my desk. Then exhaustion settled in my bones, making me want to sleep at any given opportunity. I’m not a napper because I always wake up grouchy, and my routine hasn’t changed. There was nothing to help me figure out something was wrong. Until I started throwing up.
Swallowing back my nausea I gesture to the wall closest to me. “This is where you should put the sink and window. That wall can have a window too, but not a prominent one. It’s not going to offer any additional light and certainly won’t have a view. From here, you can soak up the rays and admire the garden.”
She doesn’t look happy at first, but clip-clops over in her loud heels. I wince. In preparation of my stomach being a total pain in the ass, pun intended, I only ate toast this morning. The nausea doesn’t seem to care. I got a whiff of coffee earlier and almost emptied my stomach. Then I choked on some dust while slipping on my mask and spent a good amount of time washing it out. Now something else is triggering the vomit and this time, there’s no stopping it.
I pull a barf bag out of my tote and barely make it out of the room—I started carrying them around when the vomiting presented itself at all the wrong times. Pressing it to my now unmasked mouth, I puke into it. My stomach lurches again and I groan, leaning against the wall and not caring about the dust transferring onto my clothes. When a bottle is pressed into my hand, I silently thank them and take small sips of the water. I fold up the bag and let the workers know it’s outside, and to be careful, then walk back inside.
“My apologies. Where were we?”
My client is unimpressed, but says, “So you believe the window is best here?”
I nod and adjust my mask. “The whole point of the farmhouse kitchen is to have a window to stare out of, bright lights and all the elements that come with being a large open space. If you tuck it away in a dark corner, it completely defeats the purpose.” When she twists her mouth unhappily, Joshi and I share a look. I gesture to the other parts of the kitchen. “We’ll put the majority of your storage below the counters, and we’re using the drawer and cabinet designs you approved. The stovetop will go here and I know you haven’t decided if it’s going to be gas or electric, but either way the distance between the sink and stove will be fine. I’ve designed some floating shelves for spices and cooking essentials as well.”
She nods, face still contorted unhappily. “What about the coffee station?”
I move across the kitchen, glad I can hide my snarky smiles behind my mask. “That will go here. We’re going to build a set of cupboards here for all your kitchen appliances. The coffee machine will sit on a tray with wheels so you can pull it out and tuck it back in without taking up counter space.”
Joshi and I spend another thirty minutes taking the client through all of the designs and elements we’re adding to the kitchen. She’s approved everything twice, changed things as many times, but I’m really hoping this is the final time. Another team from Bold Lines is handling the main flat, but I got saddled with the kitchen because the client requested me specifically.
I like being popular and well-known enough to be requested. It’s infuriating when the client is the equivalent of a bridezilla. Once she leaves, I retrieve my bag of puke and head downstairs with Joshi. We met while working on a house early in my career at Bold Lines and as two Malayalis we stuck together. Now he’s my go-to contractor for all jobs and he never turns me down.
“You could have helped me out, you know?” I chastise him in Malayalam and he laughs.
“She yelled at me about things I’m pretty sure we never discussed.”
I sigh and stop in the lobby to rip off my protective layers. I shove everything into a bigger bag, the puke going in as well, and dispose of it in the garbage cans outside.
