Page 75 of The Art of Taking Second Chances

He kissed the swell of my breasts and whispered against my skin, “Tara…babe…today’s game is pleasure. And to achieve it, you need to give up some control and a little bit of power. Today is not about outdoing me. We’re both winning, my love.” He placed a firm kiss on my lips. “So, are you going to behave?”

I bit my lower lip and nodded.

“No mischief.” He held up an index finger. I bobbed my head again.

He kneeled and began kissing my stomach. A touch, a graze, a tease. My ticklish body wiggled. Holding my hips in place, he looked up at me. “Relax.”

My hands gripped his shoulders. I breathed deeply and let him travel further down, kissing my hips, thighs, and the lace of my panties. Electric shivers fizzed across my skin.

Hooking two fingers in the band of my panties, he slid them down. “This is new,” he said and kissed my soft, waxed skin. My face felt hot as he came up to kiss me while his fingers continued to caress the tender skin. “I love it,” he said, and I savored the sound of his breathy, greedy words in my ear.

He propped up my right leg on the wooden console and knelt again. His soft lips took over from where his determined fingers had left off, kissing me right to my core. Pleasure, he had said, was the game. Does pleasure have a superlative, I wondered. And would I be able to make it to that peak without unraveling? In response, he pushed my legs open and ran a firm, warm tongue along my wetness. I came so undone, my head banged on the wall behind me.

His head snapped up at the sound. “Are you alright?”

“Yes, don’t stop,” I cried.

I flashed back to his apartment in Baroda, his clean-shaven face wedged between my thighs. “Keep them open,” he had insisted. I tried, and my body began levitating off the bed, suspended to his playful strokes. I remembered clutching the bedsheet in my fists, begging it to ground me, but he drove me higher and higher, like the kite I used to fly every Uttarayan day. I soared in open skies, uninhibited, strung only to his mouth, which kept tugging me along closer to the light. Then, when I thought I could fly no more, that golden light exploded into a thousand shards of white, brilliant sparks flying everywhere. I had struggled to breathe. But he was right there to catch me, reviving me with slow, loving kisses, and I was reborn in his arms.

I wanted what my nineteen-year-old self had found that night. I dragged my fingers through his hair and held on to him. This time I knew what I wanted, and I let my hands guide him. I felt the hot burn of his stubble on my inner thighs and on my swollen lips as he chased me nearer to the edge. He pushed me open wider and took charge. The tender licks and light flicks had given way to an intense, rhythmic sucking.

My breasts felt heavy and flushed with heat. A storm was already gathering below my stomach, rising steadily, threatening to wash me away. When he pushed a finger in, I cried out his name, softly at first, then as I approached devastation, my insides exploded in a deafening scream. I trembled in his mouth, and my foot slipped off the console. He caught it in his hand and kept going, but my shaky knees became too weak to support me. He held me in his arms and gently placed me on the rug. My insides spasmed, and the tremors refused to quell.

“Please don’t stop,” I begged with clenched eyes.

He covered my mouth with his and pushed two fingers in. His thumb rubbed my clit in tight, perfect circles as he carried me through another violent squall to the other side. My hips thrust up as I clamped down on his fingers, and he fought against me to keep going. It felt interminable. Exhilarating, exhausting, before the calm finally washed over me. I panted in his mouth. He smiled into mine.

This was the only way I wanted to feel powerless to him.

Chapter 23

Tara

Sameer.” I breathed a satisfied whisper as he held me in his arms.

“I’ve waited years to hear you say my name like that,” he whispered back.

I opened my eyes and looked at him. “Something’s wrong.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m naked. You’re not.”

He closed his eyes and laughed. “We can fix that, can’t we?”

I mounted him and pushed his t-shirt up, inch by inch, licking the soft hair on his stomach. My breath rattled as I unveiled his magnificent body. With every touch, I went further up, unwrapping him slowly like a prized treasure. When I pushed the t-shirt to his neck, he lifted himself halfway, pulled it off, and tossed it away. The heat from his naked torso hit me hard, making me ravenous. The fine, light-colored hair on his chest was sexier than I remembered. I went down his body, kissing, licking, nipping, as he let out soft sighs. When I undid the jeans, he lifted his hips, and I slid the pants and underpants off him. My heart vaulted when I wrapped my hand around him and stroked.

He groaned helplessly but raised himself up on his elbows. “No,” he said, coaxing me back to the rug. “Today is all about you, Tara.” He straddled me and caught me between his thighs.

I frowned. “What if that’s what I want?”

“Not today. Remember what I said?” He held my arms at my side and bit into the soft flesh spilling out of my bra. I moaned as he sucked and kissed the bite. While his teeth gripped the delicate skin again, my mind scrambled to recall that quote about sex and power.

“Oscar Wilde,” he said, and flicked my taut nipple through the lacy material.

I groaned. “What?”

He rolled his tongue over my nipple and sucked hard. “‘Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power.’ Oscar Wilde.”

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