I gasp, legs flailing around him and sandals hooking into the material of his jeans. My skirt slides farther up, baring my legs, and his ravenous eyes drop to them. He drags his hands from my waist down to my thighs, his movements unbearably slow, and digs his fingers into my flesh, pulling me even closer. That sends a heady flutter pirouetting up my body.
It wracks me,wrecksme.
Rudra tilts his head up, captures my lips with his, and kisses me again.
While our previous kisses were dry and slow, this one’s rough. Our mouths are open and we’re making out with such aggression that it numbs my mind. He tastes like beer, and for a moment it feels like I’m getting drunk on it, drunk onhim. Whatever preconceived notion I had about French kissing, I was wrong. Done like this, eased into, it feels intense, in a good way.
My hands are around his neck, fingers weaving into his silken hair I’ve been longing to touch. I’m wrapped around him like a koala bear, and my hold on him is the anchor that’s grounding me, keeping me in this reality, which feels like it’s fracturing like a kaleidoscope, pieces breaking away chip by chip.
There’s a friction in my lower body because my legs are pried apart, pressed against his sides, and he has a solid grip on my thighs that he uses to direct my body to move on him. My breaths are harsh, ragged, and quick, and this iswild, because we’re in public, visible for everyone to see. But then, it’s Goa, and this probably is the least scandalous thing to happen here.
Rudra’s breathing hastens, and he breaks our kiss to bury his face in the crook of my neck, eyes shut tightly. I’m here, on his lap, holding on to him for dear life, but I’m also three feet above, separate from my body. Staring down at us. At what’s happening.
“Krishna,” Rudra whispers into my neck, his hands settling against my lower back, fingers spreading and flat on my spine. “You don’t know how long—”
“What the actual fuck?”
Rudra and I tear apart as if we’ve been burnt. I jump off his lap and scramble away from him, landing butt-first on the sofa. The suddenmovement disorients me so much I have to prop my hand against the back of the couch to steady myself. My thoughts zip through my head at lightning speed, a dizzying mess.
Priti stands in front of the glass table, staring down at us, absolute, unbidden rage on her face.
Rudra straightens his hair, his outfit, and grabs a pillow from the couch and places it on his lap. It takes me a second to realize why, and when I do, my eyes widen. After that, Ican’tlook at him. My lips are swollen with the kiss, and blood pulses through my body so loudly I’m sure everyone in Calangute can hear it.
Priti doesn’t say anything for ten whole seconds, just stares and seethes. Then she spins on her heel and walks out of the bar.
28
I’m Assuming Boys Who Have a Boner Can’t Run with Said Boner
Goa, Monday
“I’m going after her,” I say, leaping to my feet and nearly falling back down because I’m so dazed. “You... you stay...”
Because of your situation.
I don’t say it, but Rudra understands, his face flushing with color. A sequin has come off the corner of my eye and gotten stuck to his cheek, and the sight of it would bepreciousif things weren’t going to shit right now.
Rudra doesn’t notice, too preoccupied with his embarrassment, and instead stammers, “Y-yeah.”
There are tremors erupting all over my body as I dash after Priti, who is speed-walking down the slope to the beach. I cut through the deck, taking the wooden slope to the fluffy sand below. My sandals filled up with sand on the way here, so I bend down and yank themoff, letting them swing from my fingers as I dash barefoot the rest of the way to Priti.
“Priti!” I call. “Priti, wait!”
“No, Krishna,” she snaps back at me, her long legs carrying her forward at a speed I can’t match. Given the cardio workout she does every week, I know if she decides to take off into a sprint, I will not be able to catch up to her. But she does come to a stop at the edge of the rolling waves then, fists clenched by her sides. I reach her, panting.
“Priti,” I say, gulping, because I dread explaining this turn of events to her, how I might’ve just had the hottest first kiss with Rudra Desai. The thought makes my stomach flip, and images from a few minutes ago come back to me with startling fervor.
No.
Now isnotthe time to be thinking about any of it. Especially not about how good a kisser Rudra is, or how soft his lips are, or how his hands were all over me, or how he—
Shut up, Krishna.
“What you saw ... that was ...” I start, shaking my head. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
Fuck.
Wrong thing to say.
