Sanaya Shah

'Ok, Luke,' she began, tucking the bank note away in her wallet. 'I respect how you feel. Perhaps I can thank you in some other way.'

I had a flashing mental vision of Sanaya and me writhing naked on a huge, four-poster bed and I felt the blood rush to my cheeks.

'It's nearly Christmas,' she went on, smiling faintly as though she'd read my thoughts and was amused by them. 'Perhaps you'd allow me to take you out for dinner one evening as a thank you.'

I gulped and suddenly felt dizzy. Had this gorgeous, unobtainable lady just asked me out to dinner? It hardly seemed possible. But here she was, standing looking calmly at me, waiting for my answer.

'Gosh, yes,' I stumbled. 'That would be lovely. Are you sure? I mean...' I tailed off clumsily.

'Are you free a week on Wednesday?'

She was surely being polite; I'd hinted to her previously that I didn't really have a social life outside the wine bar.

'Yes,' I said, trying to pull myself together and rescue a little dignity. 'That should be alright. I'll check my calendar,' I grinned.

Sanaya delved into her wallet again and came out with a business card.

'There's a little bistro on Suffolk Street, Carlos's. I'll book a table for seven.' She handed me the card and gave me a faint smile. 'Call me if there's a clash with your calendar.' Then she was gone.

I stood stupidly for about thirty seconds as the enormity of what had happened sank in. Sanaya had invited me out for dinner. I looked at the card. It was a simple affair: Sanaya Shah Enterprises was embossed on it together with a mobile phone number and a logo of a windsurfer silhouetted against a huge setting sun.

That night I masturbated to thoughts of Sanaya Shah. It was the first time I had done so, which might sound strange but up till that point the idea of having sex with her had seemed unreal, unachievable, forbidden, even, like the idea of having sex with your sister or your mum.

Now, however slim, there was a chance that it could become a reality. She had asked me out for dinner, so she must, at some level, like my company. I imagined kissing her and running my hands over her slender body. I tried to imagine what she would look like naked and how it would feel to penetrate her. I felt my orgasm rise and I pumped my hand faster and the feeling swelled and burst through me.

'Oh, God, Sanaya,' I gasped as I ejaculated over my stomach and chest. Then the feelings were subsiding and reality was sweeping in and the thoughts of sleeping with Sanaya seemed silly and childish. Perhaps she'd just invited me out because she found me an amusing idiot.

Over the next week and a bit, I died a thousand deaths. Some days I imagined an intimate, candlelit dinner where I would entrance Sanaya with my wit and education. Other days I imagined a stumbling conversation as my sophisticated dinner partner realised that I was merely a callow youth. Once I imagined trying to kiss her after the meal and being rebuffed. Even the idea of it made my stomach churn.

On the following Wednesday afternoon I was tense and silent at the wine bar to the degree that Chloe asked me if anything was wrong.

'Just thinking about an assignment,' I lied.

After work I went back to my flat and showered and shaved and polished my shoes and dressed in my best chinos and a dark-blue woollen shirt that I'd bought earlier in the week and which had cost me about a month's food money. I stood in front of my bathroom mirror and hoped it looked alright. Hoped I looked alright. I wasn't even sure what the dress code was for Carlos's. I'd assumed she wasn't expecting me to wear a suit.

I set out for the restaurant ludicrously early and dawdled along and then I was worried I'd be late so I speeded up and got to the place at a quarter to seven. It was definitely more upmarket than I was used to, with a front-of-house waiter greeting customers at the door. It looked busy, too, and I was met with a hum of chatter as I opened the door.

'What name is it, sir?' asked the waiter.

'Shah,' I said, after a slight hesitation, sure that she'd have booked in her name. She didn't know my surname, I realised afterwards.

'Ms Shah hasn't arrived yet, sir. Let me show you to your table.' I followed him through the main part of the restaurant to a little alcove at the back where there was just one table.

He took my coat, which I was rather pleased about because it was borderline scruffy and I didn't want it on the back of my chair.

'Can I get you a drink while you're waiting?' he asked.

'No, thank you, I'll wait for Ms Shah.'

'Of course, sir,' he smiled at me and disappeared and I sat and looked around and wondered about Ms Shah. Presumably she wasn't married or she wouldn't be asking a young, single man out to dinner. Or maybe it was a sort of business arrangement, just a thank you for services rendered and her husband knew all about it. Or maybe her husband was coming too. But the table was only set for two people and I smiled at my flight of fancy.

I looked at my watch. Five minutes to seven.

How would she be dressed? I wondered. She always wore business suits to the wine bar. Sometimes with trousers, sometimes with a skirt. I preferred the skirts; she had lovely legs, long and slim and clad in sexy stockings.

Seven o'clock. I looked across the restaurant but the door remained stubbornly closed. She didn't seem the type to stand a date up but then I didn't really know her. Maybe something more important had come up and she couldn't call because she didn't have my number. But she had the number of the bistro.

Five past seven. Well, ladies were often late. It was sort of expected.

Ten past seven. At what point did I leave, I wondered. Half past? Quarter to eight?

She arrived at that moment, preceded by the waiter. I stood up as she came to the table, dropped her shoulder bag on the floor and let the waiter help her off with her coat, an expensive-looking tan woollen affair. Underneath she was wearing a simple dark-green, long-sleeved cocktail dress which hugged her slender figure and outlined her breasts. She was wearing quite a lot of eye makeup and dark-red lipstick on her full lips. Her black hair shone in the low-level lighting in the alcove and her skin looked dark and smooth. She had painted her fingernails to match her lips. She looked entrancing.

'Hello, Luke. I'm so sorry to be late. I had a wretched meeting that went on for an eternity and then I had to go home and get ready. I do apologise, I hate it when people are late, it's such a discourtesy.'

I thought about kissing her cheek but instead I just smiled at her and said it was fine, I'd only just arrived and we sat down and the waiter asked us if we'd like an aperitif.

'Gin and tonic for me, please,' said Sanaya. I wasn't sure what the alternatives were and I didn't want to ask for beer so I told the waiter to make that two G&Ts.

'Well,' Sanaya began, 'here we are.' She smiled at me across the table and I felt my viscera contract and turn to liquid. She really was quite gorgeous.

'Yes,' I agreed, stupidly. 'Here we are.'

The drinks arrived and she took a sip, her dark eyes still on me.

'So tell me about yourself, Luke. I know nothing other than you work in a wine bar and you're studying hydroponics, which is about cultivating plants without soil.'

I was impressed and flattered that she had remembered and some of my nervousness disappeared.

'Ok,' I began, 'I'm originally from Manchester well, Stockport. My dad's a draughtsman and I've got two older sisters who are both married.' I went on to talk about my family and I told her that I'd once had a trial for Stockport County but it hadn't led to anything. Sanaya listened carefully, her eyes mostly on me. She asked me questions about my mother and what my sisters did and what I did in my spare time and what books I read and what music I listened to. I chatted away to her and she smiled and laughed in all the right places and I felt warm and content and alive, and I felt blessed that I was here in this bistro talking to such an entrancing lady and it didn't matter if nothing came of it because it had happened and I would remember it always.

About halfway through the main course I ground to a halt, empty of conversation about myself and I realised that I hadn't asked her about herself.

'What about you?' I asked, eventually.

She dabbed her mouth with her napkin. 'What would you like to know?'

'Well, everything. I don't know anything about you either except that you own a chain of travel agents.'

'Well, I was born in Jaipur, which is in northern India, not far from Delhi. My father was a doctor, a general practitioner, and he got a job with the British National Health Service and we moved to Bristol in 1977, when I was five.' She smiled across the table at me. 'That makes me fifty-one.'

'Could you speak English when you came here?' I asked.

'Hindi was my first language, but I was taught English from a very early age and I was fluent when we emigrated. I think in English, now,' she added. 'And it's been years since I dreamt in Hindi.'

She went on to tell me that her father had died a couple of years ago but her mother was still alive. She mentioned briefly that she had been married many years ago but it hadn't worked out. They had had no children, which was a sadness to her. 'Shah is my maiden name,' she explained. She told me that she had a sister who was also a doctor and that her father had been disappointed that his oldest daughter had shown no interest in a career in medicine.

'I wanted to be a businesswoman,' she said. 'To make money, I suppose. To be successful, whatever that means.'

'But you are successful,' I pointed out.

'Success has many forms,' she replied, enigmatically. By this time we had finished our desserts and we were sipping a Remy Martin. A silence fell between us, although it didn't feel uncomfortable. It felt as though we were each absorbing what the other had said. The waiter appeared and asked if we would like coffee and I looked expectantly at Sanaya.

'No,' she said, decisively and I felt a twinge of sadness that she was signalling the end of the evening. She paid the bill and I thanked her for the evening and the waiter brought our coats and helped Sanaya with hers and we filed through the restaurant and out of the door onto the pavement.

It had rained while we were eating and the air was cool and fresh. 'Thank you again, Sanaya,' I said, for a really lovely evening. I've enjoyed talking to you very much.'

'Are you in a hurry to get home?' she asked and my heart fluttered.

'No, not particularly.'

'My flat's just around the corner. We could have a coffee, they make a lousy cup at Carlos's.'

It was after ten and the centre of Bristol was quiet apart from the odd bar and restaurant. She led me along the broad pavements, turning left, then right and stopping by a security door. She swiped a card and the lock clicked and we went into a tiny lobby with a lift and a fire escape. She swiped her card again and the lift whirred into action and the indicator above the door showed it descending. A minute later it thumped to a halt and the door opened and Sanaya swiped her card a third time and pressed the button for the tenth floor, the top.

When the door opened we were in a bigger lobby with the fire escape door and two other doors. She extracted a key from her coat pocket and unlocked one of the doors and we went into a vestibule with coat and shoe racks and two or three doors leading off it. We took off our coats and she opened one of the doors and we went into the main living area of her apartment.

As we entered some low-level lighting came on and I could see that her flat was very big, a penthouse suite with a huge lounge area dotted with sofas and occasional tables and with an enormous flat-screen television at one end. At the other was a kitchen area and there were doors leading off to other rooms. One side of the lounge was dominated by a full-length picture window looking out onto the lights of night-time Bristol.

'Wow!' I said. 'It's amazing!' We walked over to the picture window and stood, side by side, looking out.

'I can offer you freshly ground coffee,' said Sanaya, eventually, 'or we could forget the coffee and just make love.'

At her words the bottom seemed to fall out of my stomach and I felt suddenly short-breathed, as though I'd just run a 5k. I turned to her and tried to speak but I didn't seem to have the air to do it and suddenly I loved her directness.

'Yes!' I managed to gasp. 'Yes, that would be wonderful!'

She turned to me and put her hands on my shoulders and I put my arms around her, slowly tentatively as though I would be stopped at any moment.

She smiled, her teeth very white against her dark lipstick. 'It's alright, Luke, I won't bite. Unless you want me to.'

She was nearly as tall as me in her heels and our heads came together slowly, tilting to engage our mouths. Then contact. I felt her lips against mine, smooth and full and soft and I felt them open slightly and press against me.

The memory of that first kiss with Sanaya will stay with me to my final hours. It was the most intense and erotic kiss I had ever had and it flashed through my mind that perhaps all older women kissed like this. She kissed like she did everything else, with skill and enthusiasm and passion. And I knew instantly that she would be the most exciting sexual partner I had ever had.

And I responded to her. I mashed my lips against hers and met her tongue in a sensual duel and while we kissed I ran my hands up and down her back, feeling the ridges of her spine, feeling her hands on my shoulders, stroking my neck.

'Unzip me,' she whispered, breaking the kiss.

I found the tab and pulled her zip down to her lower back, where her buttocks started to flare out. She gently disengaged me and pulled her arms through the sleeves of her cocktail dress before pulling it down over her tummy and hips and thighs, dropping it to the ground and stepping neatly out of it. Underneath she was wearing a lace-trimmed black brassiere, matching panties and black hold-up stockings. She was still wearing her high-heeled shoes.

There wasn't much light in the flat but there was plenty to see that Sanaya's figure was everything I had imagined. Everything I had fantasised about. She was slender and flat-stomached with breasts that were full without being huge. The curving line of her hips was perfect and her legs were long and shapely in their black hose, her calves tautened by the angle of her feet in her high-heels.

'You're gorgeous,' I breathed.

Sanaya smiled and bending down, she picked up her dress and slung it onto a nearby settee. Then she started to undress me.

Shirt cuffs first, then the buttons down the front, then she was pulling my shirt out of my trousers and slipping it off my arms and throwing it onto the settee with her dress.

I stood transfixed as she undid the belt of my trousers and, bending over, pulled them down to my knees, taking my underpants with them and releasing my cock to spring up almost in her face.

'Sit down, Luke,' she told me and I took half a pace back and felt the edge of the settee at the back of my knees and I sat down suddenly.

Sanaya knelt on the carpet in front of me and unlaced my shoes and pulled them off. She took off my socks and slid my trousers and underpants off my lower legs in a thick wodge of material. And then I was naked, as naked as the day I was born, in front of the most desirable lady I had ever met.

I felt suddenly anxious. Would I be able to please such a lady? I'd had partners aplenty during my years as an undergraduate but they were mere girls. What would it be like with a lady like Sanaya? She must have had many men in her life; accomplished and successful men; men who knew how to please a lady both in and out of bed.

I pushed these thoughts out of my head and tried to relax. My cock was like steel, and it was an ok size, so there were no worries there. And Sanaya seemed to want to be in charge for the moment so go with the flow, I told myself.

Standing in front of me she reached behind and unclipped her bra, shucking it over her arms and dropping it onto the floor. Her breast were half-spheres, high and firm, despite her age, the areolae round and black, her nipples big and juicy looking.

She smiled at me again. Perhaps she was trying to reassure me. I was sitting back on the sofa, motionless, stunned, my mouth partly open, my breathing fast and shallow. Bending again she pulled her panties down and stepped out of them and I saw that she had a thick mat of black hair at her loins.

Without a word she straddled me, hands on my shoulders, breasts almost touching my face.

'Guide me in, Luke,' she said, softly.

I reached between her thighs and gripped the shaft of my cock, feeling its hardness, its heat. Sanaya lowered herself, very slowly, feeling for my cockhead against her pussy. I felt her pubic bush tickle my glans and I flexed my thighs, raising myself to meet her, rubbing the head around, seeking her labia.

Sanaya inched down and I felt pressure on my glans. She stopped lowering herself and started a slow gentle backwards and forwards motion, urging my cock into her.

I felt the exact moment her labia parted. Felt the instant that I penetrated her, feeling the wetness and the warmth of her cunt. Sanaya gave a big, deep sigh as she sank down onto me, taking my whole length inside her, whispering, 'Yes,' as I slid in, inch by glorious inch.

Then I was fully in, right inside her and we were both still, silent for a few seconds.

I felt the weight of her, sitting in my lap. My arms were now around her, feeling the swell of her buttocks and the smoothness of her delicious caramel skin, smelling her perfume and the deeper, more complex scents of her body.

She stroked my hair and used her hands to tilt my face to hers.

'Kiss me,' she whispered fiercely. 'Kiss me, Luke!'

She pressed her mouth to mine and slid her tongue into my mouth and I smelt her scent more strongly, her closeness, the texture of her skin under my hands, the warmth of her body, the intimacy of our coupling. We worked our lips together, tasting each other's saliva, tongues flicking over teeth and lips, sucking, drinking each other in.

And as we kissed Sanaya began to move. Slowly and gently, a rocking motion, pressing herself to me, rising and falling, coming out a couple of inches and sinking back down, squirming her hips to stimulate her clitoris against my pubis. And as she moved she moaned softly and stroked my face as she kissed me, as she built up a rhythm, rising higher, the moaning louder, turning to groans as she thrust her loins into me, her hands now on my shoulders, gripping me.

Although I would not achieve a climax in this position, it was heaven for me to just be there while this woman, this epitome of sexuality, writhed on my lap, pleasuring herself, impaled on her young lover. I could have sat there all night, kissing her while she fucked herself on me. But I could feel her climax approaching, feel the quivering in her body as the bubble of pleasure, centred on her clitoris, swelled and became hot and thick and consumed her.

Near the end, she threw back her head and cried out and, putting her hand behind my head, pressed me to her bosom. As her breast squashed against my face my mouth found one of her rigid nipples and I sucked it into my mouth and Sanaya gasped, 'Bite it, Luke! Bite my nipple!' So I clamped down as hard as I dared, feeling the rubbery nub between my teeth and she screamed and dug her fingernails into the skin of my shoulder as her orgasm rippled through her slender body and then drained away leaving her limp on my lap, her head on my shoulder, her thick, black hair tickling my neck, her breath hot on my back.