Beyond the Horizon

Her sunglass was glamorously large and her saree was seductively sitting on her curves. She was at the race course, in one of the premium seats, sipping deliciously tangy wine and puffing clouds to her vision. She smelled like a secret, giving rise to an overpowering desire among the explorers around her. She smelled like layers waiting to be touched. She had placed her bet on Blueblood this evening.

Evenings in the Calcutta Race Course were a sight to behold, with the sky as attractive as the people who made it there regularly. There was an old world charm of sensations igniting the air. And it was not just the pulsating hooves of the horses that evoked it. Today it was the man in the denim shirt and khaki trousers. His RayBan just enough to accessorize the carved chin. He moved in an aura of affluence. His cuff links glittering the right amount to glisten an attentive eye.

With Blueblood trailing Cruzer in the first two rounds, the crowd dispersed for a bite to the conveniently placed buffet area of interactions. Pallavi was relishing the cold mushroom and chicken salad by herself when he walked up to her counter and asked, "Tastes good?" Not used to explorers flagging their discovery immediately, Pallavi smiled. He repeated, "Tastes good?" This time clearly indicating that her answer would help him decide on what to put on his plate. She demurely replied, "Well cooked, yes."

"Thank you. It is no good to have well cooked food alone. I am Siddhant, and I would love it if we spend the evening together." Within, he was all but his name. His senses overtaken by her sensuous presence, his discreteness giving away to a blunt outpour, he knew she would be wild, this woman. Intellectually, as much as she seemed physiologically. She was irresistible. Not waiting for her response, and allowing some kind of magic to work on him, he led her back to the seats. Graciously, to hers, and joined her. Enjoying the bit where she was not refuting either, he allowed his prowess to progress.

Pallavi was too stunned by such an advance to know how else to react. She followed. As they settled down in their seats with their wine glasses, she asked him couple of questions and got to know that Siddhant was a successful gentleman and outrageously attractive. The intensity of the unknown air was so tight that there were gentle explosions. Blueblood came second, but that did not matter. What was more unbelievable was that she asked her driver to take her to the address he had slid in her hands. There was an adventure in this unknown, and she was party to it. 

In the club, she made it to the room number he texted her, and entered in a soft lit spacious room of wooden sofas and a queen sized bed. As he made her a drink, they revealed their past lives of being together. How far in the past was that? Ten years? Twenty, may be? As they spoke of what went wrong, she felt his eyes undress her and her entire being glide over his. They mumbled some sentences of jumbled meaning and lost complete control of themselves as they coiled into each other. They blossomed with sheer outrage, distasteful decisions, some lost love and a lot more lust. The bed came to life with their unending, inexhaustible catching up with time. And then they coiled back to comfort. The comfort of the known.

Through the length of the night Siddhant, like a champion discovered each of Pallavi's layers of smell. Her secrets dissolved in his arms. They kissed like the meltdown of a sunset on a sea which loses track of the horizon. On and off they went, till dawn finally asked them to sleep. Her alarm went off at 6.30 am, bringing back to her the wasted time of her life till now. She looked at the face buried in the pillow, remembered how he had given up on her for a petty thing like expectations, and smilingly went to the bathroom. As she washed her face, remnants of his hickeys on her earlobes and neck screamed back to her the helplessness with which he returned.

He could never forget her, and though he lived a life where his workplace showed off a happy photo frame of his wife and son, he missed the love she gave her all him life, he missed the passion she gifted him last night. She smiled.

She gifted him revenge. For the rest of his life. 

She went back to call for tea, and asked him if he wanted some. As she consistently refused any further touch, and coldly placed a bet on Blueblood for the day, she calmed her aching heart and devoured the bittersweet victory of pity for him. She was a body of love, which could justifiably punish too. She dressed up in front of him, he lapping like a drooling dog, knowing what he could no more have. She ruined him.

"I hope your wife touches you half as well as I did." And she left. Beyond the horizon.

He would die a daily death, desiring her.