What Dreams Are Made Of: Episode 26

#Episode_26

 

 

 

Nikloi was shocked with the sudden change in her but he stopped immediately. Releasing her completely, he stepped back looking at her questioningly. Her breath had still not returned to normal. She moved away from him, taking support from the car. She was too mortified to face him

 

What had happened to her? When did she become so weak to give in to such desires? That too with Nikloi Swaroski.

 

 

Even though she had turned away, she could feel Nikloi’s eyes digging holes in her back. He had questions which she didn’t want to answer. Struggling to calm her racing heart, she hugged herself with both her arms folded in front of her. She knew it was wrong of her to kiss him back and then tell him to stop but there was nothing else she could have done once she realized her mistake. Because that’s exactly what it was.

 

It was a mistake and she couldn’t let it go any further. Bracing herself to face him, she said apprehensively, “I am sorry. I shouldn’t ha..” . But Nikloi cut her in between, “Are you? Really?”

 

His voice was as cold as a glacier.

 

 

She was finding it difficult to hold herself together. He had shaken her to her core. She could still taste his lips on her mouth, his hands on her body. Her body wanted to fling herself onto him without bothering about what he would think.

 

As much as she wanted to live in those moments, she still knew it would only mean hurting herself more in the future. She had not forgotten the way he had kissed Susan in Mrs Clark’s party nor that they had shared their first kiss only as a mean to avoid Susan. But then he had gone back to the same Susan in couple of months.

 

It only meant that such things were not important for him. He could kiss girls without meaning a thing. God knows how many girls he had been with. They sure were ready to give their arms away to be held by him but she was not one of those girls. For her, this was not a regular thing. She didn’t go around kissing men. She hadn’t even kissed any man, apart from her weird experiences with him.

 

She wanted more, much more but she couldn’t tell him that. It was her deepest secret which she had not even accepted to herself, not until their kiss today. Now she knew she had lost her heart and no matter what she did she would never be able to teach her heart not to love him. But that didn’t mean she had to share her secret with him. He would never understand her. They were poles apart and nothing could bring them together.

 

She drew a deep breath, sucking her swollen lips within. Obviously, she had no clue of the impact of her simple action was causing to him. He felt something tighten in his throat.

 

Turning away from her, he tried to gulp down the lump in his throat while Chrissy struggled to get the words out of her mouth.

 

“I am sorry. It was a mistake”.

 

“You are saying it was a mistake after kissing me like that?” he taunted incredulously. Displeasure was clear in his voice.

 

Chrissy was getting upset too. “It is the truth. I don’t go around kissing men. I didn’t come to kiss you”, she answered helplessly.

 

“Oh yes, you only kissed me back when I kissed you”, Nikloi added sarcastically.

 

“I don’t want to talk about it”.

 

“Why not? You didn’t mind kissing me. What’s wrong in talking about it?”

 

He pulled her arm towards him.

 

“Let me go!”

 

“Afraid, you will kiss me again?”

 

“No! I don’t want to kiss you”

 

“Then what are you afraid of?”

 

Chrissy’s heart was beating loudly in her chest. The fact was that he was right. If he did anything, would she be able to control herself? Her past actions had proven otherwise.

 

She didn’t want to go weak again but his arms were not helping. She looked into his deep blue eyes beseechingly and said, “Why are you doing this?

 

 

Something changed in his eyes but he quickly covered them. When he looked at her again, his eyes had gone completely cold. He said, “You know what you are Ms Smith?”

 

 

Chrissy couldn’t understand the sudden change in him. Before she could say anything, he comment

 

ed, “You pretend that you are an innocent soul in matters concerning a man and a woman but your actions speak differently. May be you were seeking something else in a kiss or should I say some one else?”

 

He didn’t wait for her response and went around the car to get into it. Chrissy was speechless. Such was her state that she wasn’t sure what she had heard was true.

 

“I dd..don’t know what you mean”

 

“I think you do. But let’s leave it at that, shall we?” He said with a blank expression on his face. She knew he wasn’t asking a question. He had already stated it what he thought of her.

 

And that’s what it really was.

 

He had always criticized her for actions, especially when it came to men. According to him, she was a farce, a hypocrite and a tease and today’s kiss had proved that beyond any doubt. Her character assassination was complete and she herself had given him the ammunitions to do so. Nothing she could say or do now to make him see how wrong he was.

 

He was already seated inside the car. She was not comfortable getting inside the closed vehicle with him so soon after what had happened but she couldn’t just keep standing here in the parking lot. Quietly she opened the door and sat in the passenger seat, huddled up at her side. If he saw her squeezing in her seat, he didn’t react.

 

Putting the car in motion, he started driving. Chrissy looked outside the window to look at the now reddish blue sky. Far off in the distance, she could see the Sarsen stones wishing her goodbye and she felt a deep ache in her heart. Would she ever be able to think of those stones without thinking about the man in whose arms she had lost herself?

 

 

The man who was as hard as those stones themselves.

 

She felt a tear push itself across her eye lashes and she turned further away to hide it from Nikloi. Her heart was aching but she couldn’t tell why. Was it because of the hurt, hearing his low opinion of her, or was it because she had denied her heart what it craved for and until now, had thought unattainable.

 

Life had been so much less complicated before she had met Nikloi Swaroski. She had never imagined any man would kiss her but then she had met him and he had proved her wrong.

 

Later she had come to know him and his society – how sharing a kiss was not of special significance for most of them. And so she had thought they would never

 

 

share a real kiss. A kiss wanted by both of them, but he had proved her wrong again.

 

They had kissed. In every sense a man and woman can share a kiss. And this time she had found him really within her reach. In her arms. His living, pulsating, and breathing self on her lips.

 

But then, she had denied what it might have been. She had refused her heart to live the fantasy she was even afraid of dreaming. She had refused her own desires. And that’s what hurt the most.

 

But what other choice she had , she thought. Controlling her emotions she told her heart to be strong. What they had shared today was not frivolous but was it enough? Was it worth the price?

 

Great Nikloi Swaroski, who never really saw her more than a lowly resource in his team, had acknowledged her as a woman!

 

She would be fooling herself if she didn’t accept that she liked the attention. And that there was a possibility of getting carried away in that attention.

 

But she had known him for long now. She knew that while he may have noticed her, she was still no more than one of the multiple women in his life. She may be different from those who were willing to jump at the snap of his fingers but she was not anyone special either. She would not hold his attention any longer than the femme fatale Susan Malkovich.

 

Ohh that name again. She felt the terrible pain again at the memory of two of them kissing each other at Mrs. Clark’s party. She had to stop thinking about them. She had to stop thinking about him. Period.

 

She resolved the thought internally. She would not be anyone’s plaything. Something to interest him today and to be forgotten tomorrow. Her self-respect was more important to her than anything else. The pain she felt now would go away

 

eventually but if she let him any closer, she would be straddled with an agony for all her life.

 

 

She looked at him to know what was going through his head but his face was blank. He was looking straight ahead focussing on the road. He had already wiped her out of his thoughts.

 

 

 

 

 

____

 

▶Story_Continues