Benign Flame: Saga of Love - Page 35/278

“Looks like you’re a voracious reader,” he said as she took the Digest again on her return.

“I do read a little here and there.”

“I think you’re being modest.”

“What about you?” she enquired.

“My reading is more of a time-pass,” he said. “Maybe I can have the pleasure of hearing you read.”

When he downed the shutter of that coupe-for-two, and switched on the blue lamp, she found herself culled in his eager embrace, and as the receptivity she inculcated in her mind imparted a sense of reciprocity to her body, her motions in his mount seemed to synchronize with the vibrations of the carriage. While their nocturnal journey progressed, she felt that in due course she could be on course on the beaten track of married bliss.

~~~~~~~

As day broke out, Roopa awoke to reach for her purse in which she kept the silver anklets that Sathyam goaded her to remove during the night. Not finding the pair therein, she raised an alarm that awoke him.

“See if they fell down,” he said drowsily.

“I’m sure I’ve kept them here,” she said, unfolding her purse nervously. “Oh, Sandhya presented them at our wedding.”

They uncovered their air-pillows and upturned the basket of eatables to no avail but in

the end, to her immense relief, he found them underneath the berth.

“You could have left them on the berth,” he said, handing the pair to her.

“No way,’ she said as she wore them on her wondrous legs, ‘I know I’ve put them in my purse. Wonder how they landed on the floor!”

Looking down again, he found part of the baggage protruding from underneath the berth. Realizing that he pushed back the luggage as he picked up the anklets, he recalled that during the night he pushed in the luggage a couple of times only to find it protrude in time. Preoccupied as he was then, he thought amusedly, ‘The jolts and jerks are at work on the luggage as well.’

Now, seized by curiosity, he crouched on the floor and pulled out a suitcase only to be unnerved at finding a grown-up lad lying behind the rest of the baggage. Though he quickly regained his wits, as the import of the trespass on their privacy began to sink into him fully, he remained speechless.

“Hey come out,” he shouted, as he recovered at length.

The sight of a well-built lad of around twenty, crawling out from below the berth stunned Roopa out of her wits even before the echoes of Sathyam’s shout could die down in her ears.

“When did you get in?” Sathyam questioned him.