Cognitive Dissonance

Then another family came to identify her. It was then I realised, she was that coworker, the one who would have borne his child instead of me.

Everything went off in a whirl, the funeral and other stuff. To the world they were just two coworkers travelling together when the accident occurred. Only I and probably her family knew something more.

A few days later the clinic called, they wanted me to collect the reports. I never bothered, then they delivered it to my place. The envelope lay on a table for a few more days, and then one day, I opened it. All my reports were normal, his wasn't. He had azoospermia, his sperm count, which should have been in the hundred millions was absolute zilch."

"How could that be? He got that woman pregnant didn't he?" I exclaimed.

"She was pregnant no doubt, but she wasn't pregnant by him. She was obviously seeing someone else at the same time. Maybe that other man wouldn't marry her, maybe she genuinely believed that she was carrying his child and not the other man's, maybe she felt there was more financial security in this option. I will never know the answers. But another fearful question gripped my mind.

If she was promiscuous, was she disease free? Was this now dead husband of mine disease free? Was I infected? I went and got every possible test for every sexually transmitted disease done, each and every one of them including those for HIV. All of them came out negative. I had them repeated three months later, and then again after a year. Thankfully, I was clean. By then I had decided to move out of that city and move in here......

Years would pass and I would meet a former student of mine. He would fall in love with me, he would tell me that I was his first and only crush and that he has been in love with me for years. Much as I wanted to resist, much as I am years older to him, I too fell in love with him. You said you had no option, Agni, you did not leave me with an option either."

I got up from her lap and I held her tightly to me. I stroked her hair, I stroked her back.

"All that is over now Neeraja, your days of anxiety, suffering and a paucity of love are gone. I am here, I am back and I am with you. I will love you like you have never been loved before, I will take care of you, I will make you smile and laugh, I will do anything and everything to make you happy."

"There is so much passion in your words, Agni, so much fire, just like what your name stands for. Yes, my love, only you can love me the way I want to be loved, only you can care for me the way I want to cared for."

And then I looked into her eyes and asked her,

"I have never kissed a woman Neeraja, never been with one. Will you teach me how to kiss, how to make love? Will you be my teacher once more?"

She kept looking into my eyes, so I added, "You can rap me on my knuckles or anywhere else if I don't do things perfectly."

I thought she will laugh, but her beautiful moist lips gently found mine. Her eyes were closed, so I closed mine too.

I felt her tongue gently caressing my lips. It made me adventurous, I was now Jeremy Irons kissing Meryl Streep. I let my tongue traverse the outline of her lips. We broke with a smooch sound and then we found each others lips again. Our mouths opened. I sensed her tongue inside my mouth, I met it with the tip of mine. She let out a shiver, so did I. The pressure on our lips and tongue started to increase, and our bodies started to exert a force on each other. We were moaning now. I spoke into her mouth, "I love you my Neeraja...." But I think I just made some intelligible sounds.

We kissed again and again, her hands roamed all over my back. She broke the kiss, but a moment later her lips plunged into mine. I could feel her breasts pressing hard into my chest. I responded by pushing into her. Her back was against the couch as she pulled me closer.

Every time we came up for air, I heard the words, "I love you...," sometimes the voice was mine and sometimes it was hers. I stroked bare skin as my hand found its way under her shirt, her tummy and waist seemed so warm to my touch. She held me tighter as she moaned, "I love you, I love you......"

I caressed her stomach, moving my right hand to her midriff, my thumb making small circles, my other fingers lightly kneading her flesh. My left hand supported the back of her head and neck as I ensured our lips remained glued to each other. With a will of its own my right hand moved up her back, my forefinger traced her spine, till it and the other fingers reached the strap of her bra. My hand lingered for a while, and we were still kissing deeply, passionately, fervidly, heatedly. My brain took over as I felt over and over again for the clasps of her bra.

"Agni," she whispered, "it opens in the front," and then went back to kissing me. I controlled myself. I was in a hurry but I did not want to be in a hurry. I wanted to get her to be in a hurry. I continued to keep my hand on her back, letting it rise to her shoulders, and I gripped her shoulder muscles tightly.

I moved my lips away from hers, and let it traverse down her neck. I made my kisses as wet as I possibly could, licking gently with the tip of my tongue, applying a wee bit of pressure. The noises she made told me that I was doing everything right. I pulled my hand out from under her shirt and started undoing her buttons. She pushed me a little away from her so that I had the necessary leverage.

I opened the first button and then kissed the area that now stood exposed, even as my fingers moved to the next one. I went on kissing more and more of exposed skin and flesh. My hands started to trace the edge of her bra straps. And then slowly, with both my hands, I unhooked her.

Her breasts were so beautiful, and they heaved, pushing most of her bra away. I cupped them, the left one first and then the right, each was just a shade larger than my palm. I started to caress them.

She pushed them deeper into my palms, so I started squeezing them softly, and then started to take her nipples between my finger and thumb. She gasped and I could feel them hardening.

"Do you like them?"

"They are better than all that I did not fantasise about."

"You crazy idiot, don't you wish they were larger?" she was smiling now, very mischievously.

"Okay, I cheated a bit Neeraja, I did fantasise about you, and with absolutely no guilt feelings that day after the party. The pillow that I hugged, squeezed and kissed, if it had a voice and feelings, would have cum screaming."

She laughed. "Not bad, for someone who has kissed a woman for the first time just a few minutes ago, you seem to be adept at making love with your words alone. But you still haven't answered my question."

"These are made for me Neeraja, each one just about the size of my palm, anything bigger than this would be such a waste."

"Kiss them, show them how much you love them."

I slipped her shirt and her bra off. I started kissing her beautiful breasts. As my lips and mouth focused on one, my hand worked on the other.

"I want to feel your skin on mine, take off your shirt," she said, tugging at it. I let her pull the tee shirt over my head. Her hands started caressing my back and chest. I started mirroring her movements. Then I stood up and pulled her up to me.

"This sofa isn't all that comfortable now. Would you consider me wicked and lusty if I pulled you into the adjacent bedroom?"

"If I said 'no,' what would you do?"

"I would pull you into that bedroom."

"And if I said 'yes'?"

"I would still pull you into that bedroom."

"Then why are we still standing here?"

I locked on to her lips as I walked backward into her guest room and we rolled on to the bed.

"Agni, time out," she said, "go get those pillows from the living room."

"Oh, no," I groaned and then pulling her up and still kissing her, I walked back, pulling her along, and then handed her one pillow and picked up the other, and still in a tight embrace, we walked right back to the bed.

This time she pushed me over and clambered on top. "Someone is very possessive this morning?"

"Yes, she was hugging me like there was no tomorrow and sobbing and crying early on today, she is very very possessive indeed," I said.

"That's it," she pouted, "everything comes back to me. What a devil you are!"

"Eleven years to catch up on Neeraja, please don't deny me these moments, you know how crazy I am about you."

"Hold me tight Agni, just hold me for a while, let me feel you on me."

I held her tight, her cheek to mine, her breasts to my chest, hands on each other's back and as her smell of lavender wafted to my nostrils, all the lost sleep over the past few days started to pile up on me.

I was being shaken awake, her voice called out to me. "Wake up Agni, it is almost 2. It is past lunch time.... wake up sweetheart..."

I pulled her to me, I noticed she had her shirt back on, but I could make out that she wasn't wearing her bra. She started to stroke my face.

"I dozed off too," she grinned, "I didn't sleep well for the past two days either. But I managed to wake up an hour ago and I have fixed us some lunch. Come my love, let us eat."

We ate silently, looking at each other and smiling often. Then I cleared the table and we did the dishes. She opened a cupboard and tossed me a toothbrush. "In case you want to brush your teeth, the flavours in the food were strong today."

We had minty fresh breath when we hugged again, it started raining outside and the weather started to turn cold. We got into bed and she pulled a light blanket over us and we cuddled.

"I want to make love to you Neeraja," I said.

"I want to make love to you too, but can we take it a bit slow? I have some reasons for this, so will you be patient with me?"

"That will be difficult, but you know me Neeraja, I will do anything for you."

"Agni, can you stay with me through the night? I will wake you up early, fix you some breakfast and you can go home, shower and change and still be on time for work."

"Shall we go out for dinner?"

"Is there a place where they can serve us dinner as we lie under a blanket?"

"No."

"Then stop asking stupid questions, and start kissing and caressing me. I'm not letting you out of my arms till tomorrow morning."

We talked as we caressed. I kissed her ear lobes, she wriggled, I kissed her behind her ears, pushing her strands out of the way, she wriggled some more.

"Do you like getting wet in the rain?" She asked.

"Yes, especially of it is raining heavily."

"Come then, let's get wet."

"Neeraja, what will I wear when I have to get back tomorrow morning?"

"We will wrap ourselves in a couple of towels and then go out in the rain."

"My god, she calls me impulsive. We step out in a towel and everyone walking outside and the neighbours can see us."

"Where I am going to take you, no one can see us."

We stepped out through a door next to her kitchen. The rear part of her bungalow had high walls around a kitchen garden, that was open to the sky. I had never seen this part of her house before, nor noticed that door.

"Neeraja, for this place we don't even need these towels."

"Right," she said and she pulled mine away and ran from me. But well, the open area was just too small for her to be out of my reach. I grabbed her and pulled her towel away too.

We held each other the full length of our fronts in contact and let the rain lash us, especially our faces as we looked up. There were flashes of lightning followed by thunder. My mind went into analytics mode. There were high walls around us, and there were tall trees just beyond the wall, so there really wasn't any chance of lightning striking us. I relaxed.

We kissed, some small kisses interspersed with deep long ones.

"Why does this beautiful lady in my arms calls me impulsive when she does crazy things like these?" I asked.

"It is called the induction effect," she answered, "there is this crazy man who actually is driving me crazy. I love getting wet in the rain, but this is the first time I have done this with my clothes off."

Then she giggled, "Someone downstairs is getting naughty."

"My girlfriend is such a tease, she does all these crazy things and then when I want to make love to her, she asks me to wait."

"That 'my girlfriend' sounds so wonderful. You asked me to be your teacher, remember? Now listen to your teacher." She pressed herself close to me. Then her hands started roaming all over my front.

"Your abs muscles are so hard, so tight," she whispered. I had the presence of mind to not tell her why they were so hard. That part of my training using anti-G suits involved tightening the abs muscles so that during high-G manoeuvres, the blood is not allowed to drain to the feet. Any mention of anything related to a sortie would upset her and the magic of our moments would be lost.

"Only abs sweetheart? There is something further below that is even more hard."

I turned her around and cupped her bosom, and started kissing her on her shoulder and neck. "You are so beautiful, ravishingly so, and just like your name, the water cascading down your body makes you even more enchanting." She shivered as she dropped her right hand on to my manhood.

"You feeling cold? Shall we get back in?"

"It is not the cold or the rain my darling, its is just you and your words. Do you write poetry?"

"Never tried, but you inspire me Neeraja. Maybe I will. Love poems just for my love."

Her hands started to move on my organ. "You really want to go there sweetheart?" I asked. "You said you wanted to wait, this isn't going to make waiting easy."

"Hey! Face it. When you get back, before you go to work, you are going on a flight of fantasy, and I am going to do something similar. In other words, we are both going to jack off thinking about the other. So why not just do it to each other now?"

I squeezed her breasts gently, and I kissed her. "That logic is irrefutable." Just then the cloudburst started to ease, the rain started to fall in a gentle drizzle.

"Looks like we will have to take a rain check to do it in the rain. But can we cuddle up together and do all this after dinner? I really want to feel you wet because of me, not feel you wet because of the rain."

"Yes, Agni, I am starting to feel cold now, take me indoors and keep me warm."

We stood under the shower for a while and soaped each other to wash off the rain water and then dried ourselves. She used the drier on her hair, then she gave me one of her pair of pyjamas and a large shirt.

"The pyjamas will be short, but you can wear these till tomorrow," she said as she put on a nightie. I held her hands. "A long tight hug Neeraja, please.... then you can put this on."

The long deep kiss that came with the long tight hug of course was a bonus.

She rustled up some stir fried noodles and a sweet and sour vegetable for dinner.

"Neeraja, your cooking is just Le Cordon Bleu, you are absolutely awesome."

I could see that she liked that compliment.

"You know, they say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, in your case I am finding my way to your stomach through our hearts. I realised this morning, whenever I have cooked for you, those snacks when you were younger and the food these last few days, I have been putting my heart into it. That 'I am making this just for him' feeling was and continues to be very intense."

There could be only one response to this. I pried the fork from her hands, and brought both her hands to my lips. I kissed them again and again and whispered, "I love you, I love you so much."

It was 9 PM when we cuddled up in bed. She set the alarm for 5 AM, and to be doubly sure, I set one on my phone for 5:15. The rains had stopped, the air had turned warm and humid, a typical phenomenon in tropical regions. She switched on the air conditioner and then pulled out a light quilt from one of her cupboards, and we went under it.

We lay together for a long time, just talking, kissing, touching each other on our faces and neck, and naturally the hands started traversing down our bodies. She opened a few buttons on my shirt, or rather her shirt that I was wearing and let her hands in, I opened the buttons on her nightie, one by one and then grasped her mounds. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion and then suddenly everything turned into a frenzy.

She pulled at the draw strings of my pyjamas, and I was pulling down her panties and our hands started to caress our hot spots. Our kisses turned deep and our other hand pulled each other close. She was wet and I was hard and leaky.

"Gently my love," she whispered, and then she put her hand down to direct my thumb to her sweet spot and instinctively my fingers tried to enter her. She was smooth down there, with just a small patch of short silky hair. And then her hand came back to grasp my penis firmly.

Time stopped for a while as I gazed into her eyes and then our hands started moving. I was obviously doing things right because that is what the noises that she was making told me. And then she whispered, "I think I am cumming Agni, it feels so intensely beautiful to cum when in your arms, oh...oh...oh...uhhh...

"Neeraja, me too, are you okay with this.... There are psychedelic lights going on and off in my brain......"

She pulled me closer to her, "Just cum, just cum with me, I love you...."

The next thing we felt was we were holding each other tightly. My hand was drenched and so was hers, and I could feel my cum on my tummy as well as on hers. I moved my right hand to her buttocks and pulled her closer to me while my other hand was around her shoulders and back. I kept my eyes closed and groped for her lips with mine and we found each others lips. She bit my lower lip, and she tugged at it with her teeth.

"Neeraja, this was so crazy for me, are you okay?"

"No, I am not okay, I am vibrating all over, and I love you very much."

I felt for her hand and our juices mingled. I put my fingers in her mouth and she put hers in mine.

"This Agni, is one of the many tastes of love."

"No, Neeraja, not the taste of love, it is one of the many tastes of OUR love."

"There you go, making love to me with your words again."

"That was English, I can do it in math too."

"Really?"

"Double Integral A upon N dot da dot dn is equal to infinity."

"Converges to infinity, stupid!"

"No rap on the knuckles for that goof up, my darling teacher?"

"No, a more severe punishment, you will get one kiss less than what I had originally planned to give you."

"You will really do this to me?"

She drew my face down to her breasts. My mouth found her left nipple and my fingers her right.

I woke up and felt around me for my phone. The time was 4:56 AM. I started to kiss her awake.

"Agni, is it wake up time yet?"

"In a couple of minutes your alarm will buzz, but I thought this might be a better way to wake you up."

"Mmmm," she reached out and cancelled her alarm. "How about a few minutes of cuddling and kissing before we get out of bed?"

I brushed my teeth and got into my own clothes. Then we were in her kitchen as she fixed the breakfast and coffee. Scrambled eggs on toast, some cornflakes with slices of banana in milk, with a sprinkling of raisins and almonds.

We held each other, just like the other times, not wanting to let go.

"You think, you can come back here tonight?"

"Yes, Neeraja, I want to be with you. I will be here by 7, let me take you out to dinner."

"Yes, one last kiss before you go." Well, it turned out to be four last kisses......

It turned out to be a difficult day at work. Difficult because I could not concentrate. My thoughts were perpetually turning towards Neeraja. And since I was still expecting a lot of results from the simulations and tests being done back at our plant in Germany, there really wasn't much that I had to do. I shut down my work at 4, went back, took a nap and at 7, I was with her.