A Little LessLove Part IV

She trudged back up the stairs after the long day in office. The lift was working alright but she had her new year resolutions to stick to. that to pursue a more active lifestyle. and activity for her had become restricted to taking the stairs wherever she could find them. Trudging up 13 floors were never pleasant and especially not with two heavy bags in both hands. But Shailaja was never one to be bogged down by any physical challenge. or mental or emotional. She was the tough one, the mature one and how proudly she had worn it around her neck till she grew sick off it. so sick she was ashamed of being mature. She was sick of carrying the weight around of being the bigger man every time with every one. Every single time.
She kept the bags to open the door of her apartment when she noticed the door was ajar and there was light coming out. Curiously the alarm bells didn't go off in her head. even before she entered the room she knew it was him. She knew he would be sitting there smoking. and fidgeting and counting the minutes. She had forgotten she had never asked him back for the key after they had stopped talking 6 months back. She had assumed he would lose it somewhere. She walked in and saw him lying on the sofa playing on his phone with his back toward her. He had not changed one single bit from how he had been when they were together. She went back to get the bags and shut the door with a bang. He jumped up from the sofa and looked at her. With same intensity, that mad passion which had driven her crazy. With that need, that searing desire. That hunger which had made her go weak. She was never able to resist his gaze. He had become haggard but he was the same in every other way. Always came to her as if he owned her, as if he had every right on her body. As if this was what they were born to do. To make mad love to each other.
He walked toward her. He came close enough that there bodies were within half an inch of each other. She could smell his perfume. He pulled her hair, hard, so hard it brought tears into her eyes. He looked deep into her eyes and kissed her. The moment his tongue came in contact with hers it sent pleasure waves coursing through her body. It was like getting electric shock. that was the moment she realised she could never resist this man. No matter how he treated her, no matter what he did, she had essentially become a slave for him to claim when he wanted , how he wanted. He wasn't kissing , he was devouring her with a hunger only he knew how to satiate. He tore her shirt and her bra along with it. He pulled down her skirt and her panty along with it. She was standing naked. All creamyand smooth in the soft light. Just like an apparition. too good to be true. Her silky smooth skin and those contours of her body. Every single contour he knew so well. He just stood there looking at her. drinking her through his eye. Up and down. He looked at her like a hungry child looks at candy which is forbidden to him, only this time he knew he would get what was forbidden. He took her there on the floor, the hard wooden floor. He could barely take his clothes off and enter her. He pulled her hands above her head and bit her on her neck. she shrieked out but both of them knew it was going to be brutal. and just the way the two of them liked. Rough, hard and beastly. There was nothing human like in the way they made love when they had unresolved issues between them. It was as if having sex liek animals would solve every other problem they had in their lives. He kept thrusting her, long and hard and she kept shouting and cursing him. It was as if they were battling each other only the weapons were their own genitals. Sh erolled him over and got on top and went at him with a vengeance till she came and he followed her within seconds and they both collapsed on each other exhausted. It was as if teh sex had drawn out all their anger, all the grudge, all the issues they had simmering between them for the last six months

A little Less Love

She woke up wide eyed. As if she had never gone to sleep. As if there had been no interlude between the two stages of consciousness. As if someone had wiped the sleep clean off the plate of her memory. Just like that. She sat on the bed for sometime. Unmoving, Unblinking, maybe Unthinking even. She didn’t know how long she sat there. She knew her mind had arrested her body. It had in the process also fallen prey to its own plans. Her mind too felt arrested. As if her brain cells were afraid to move. To be Active. They collectively stood frozen.

Till Vasu entered the room. Vasu. His entrance jolted her out of the self imposed cell arrest. Vasu. She kept saying the name again and again to herself. Under her breath, slowly muttering it, so slowly that even her own ears couldn’t hear what her lips were uttering. She pulled her lower lip in saying va- and then rolled her tongue in unison with both her upper and lower lip for the su.

He had come into the room looking for his phone. It had been ringing incessantly for sometime she realized now. He would have been as usual out on the terrace smoking. His ultra mild cigarette. He walked like a charging bull. She realized then. He always had. And she was the matador, baiting him, provoking him, playing him, priming him for the kill. The thought made her laugh out. He looked at her while still talking on the phone. Their eyes met. Hers drinking in every little nuance of his and his unseeing everything about her.

And that is how it had always been. She read him like an open book. She knew him so well, she could even sense what would be in store for him. He would ask her for advice about everything and her advice never failed him, not even once.

She could read him now as well. He was talking to his mom. And was clearly not comfortable having this discussion. She was sure his mom was discussing marriage with him. She knew his mother was trying to get him married off. He was getting fidgety and angling for a way out of the conversation. And very soon he would, he would tell his mom someone was at the door and that he would call her back. His mom would no doubt see through it and still go on. Then finally he would kick the table, tell her he stumbled and disconnect. And she knew this self infliction of pain during his mother’s calls were a clear signal to her about the literal effect of her choice of conversation. But his mom refused to read any signal she didn’t like. Like mother like son, she guessed.

 The entire scene played out just the way she had envisaged and then he looked up at her again. This time he held her gaze. He walked towards her and sat down beside her on the bed. She was sitting straight. Her legs folded under her chin and her arms around her legs.

He bent on the bed and kissed her waist.  She knew what he wanted. She could read all his touches. This one meant sex. Sometimes she felt angry at herself for knowing him so well, so intimately. Sometimes she wished she were as unseeing as he was. But then that was not her only wish as far as he was concerned.

He pulled at her hair. Forcibly. Till she came down on the bed. The love making was quick and soundless, like it had always been in the mornings, when he had been hurried and she too sleepy to care.

He got up and went out for a light again.

She lay there thinking how life had gotten them both there. Two individuals so different from each other, they could have well been from different planets.

Her thoughts went back to the day they had first met.