Page 4 of No Other Love

Anika finally looked up at me. And two years of misery and torture and the sheer horror of watching the person you love become a hollow shell of themselves, were revealed in that look. There was also anger and recrimination in that look, but she wasn’t alone in that.

The only thing missing in that look was tenderness. Affection. Goofiness.

‘What’s the point, Vikrant?’

Then Anika picked up her heavy backpack, slung her hospital ID around her neck, and walked away.

Leaving me more alone than ever.

Two

Anika

Almost a year later….

‘You give the best back massages in the whole world, you know,’ Vikrant murmured.

‘I know.’ I dug my fingers at the edge of my husband’s vertebra where L4 met L5, and he let out a groan that mingled pain with pleasure. I kneaded at the knot lodged firmly there which came from hours bent over patients in the ICU, marveling at his taut skin and sexier back.

It didn’t have too much hair but was ‘dusted’; which made it all the more fun when he was on top, and I could run my hands all over the territory I called mine.

I grinned …it was fun now too.

I ran a lazy hand down one side of his oiled back.

‘I should give up paeds and go become a professional masseuse,’ I mused out loud.

He squirmed under me. All lean muscles and hard length.

‘Fuck, no.’ Vikrant reached out with one long hand and caught my knee with his rough fingers. He squeezed. ‘This is all mine. I am not sharing.’

His voice was sleepy, pleasure-filled; a little lazy. He was rarely like this, my intense husband.

I still could not believe that Vikrant and I were actually married. And that too, straight out of medical school. It was themost divine of fates that the hospital we both applied to had accepted us both, so getting married made the most sense. Since living together was a problem for Vikrant’s conservative parents and kind of frowned upon in Mumbai, the most progressive city in the country.

Vikrant ran light fingers over my knee. ‘Right?’ he asked.

‘You know I don’t like it when you get all possessive alpha male.’ I kneed him in the back as I slid away to the side of the bed.

Vikrant yelped and glared at me. Looking, for all the world, like how a doctor on TV would look like – sexy and smoldering and intense - with an unshaved beard and pitch-black eyes gritty from lack of sleep.

I winked at him. Ran my tongue over my lips, suggestively.

Then I leaned in close and whispered right in his ear, my breath blowing hot into the soft shell. ‘I love it.’

In a move that never failed to delight and arouse me, Vikrant whipped me under him, catching my hands in a tight hold so our bodies were lined up perfectly. He pressed his center to mine; he was aroused too (I’d been massaging his glutes for ten minutes) and I went wet.

I moaned.

‘You’re the devil,’ he muttered. ‘This is the on-call room, you know. We can’t just…’ He shrugged impressive shoulders that had me squirming now.

‘So what?’ I raised my head, inviting him in for a kiss.

I could see the intent in his eyes. And even though we were both fully clothed and exhausted from working double shifts,that massage had heated things up nicely. ‘It’s legally allowed. I have a marriage license in my backpack that says this is okay.’

‘You know, it would also work if you wore that mangal sutra my mother gifted you.’ He named the chain of gold I’d been gifted, on my visit home to the in-laws. The chain was a Hindu symbol of my marriage to Vikrant. As if I needed one! ‘It’s such a small thing, isn’t it?’

I shrugged. ‘I am a doctor, idiot. We aren’t supposed to wear that kind of jewelry, no?’