Silent Love

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Shehnaaz

I could see how impatient he was growing with each ticking second. Perhaps he was looking forward to this conversation as much as I was. Although I partly dreaded it, I was the kind of person that would rather
get done with something like this as it was ultimately inevitably and only little good came from postponing it.

Blowing my cheeks out, I played with the fork in my hand. Looking into the plate at his delicious dish, I realised that my appetite had almost vanished by now. I was too nervous to relish the taste of it. It had to wait.

"I'm glad you stopped me from going further," I said. "You know, from escalating things.”

“Are you?" He asked, somewhat disappointed. I couldn't quite understand if he was really gutted to hear that or was only mimicking
my reaction from last night. Because if it was the latter, I didn't appreciate his teasing at a moment like this where I was trying my best to make a sensible conversation.

"Yes," I said. "I can handle alcohol, and it generally never messes with my mind. I think it just gives me a push to do something I wouldn't have the courage to do had I been sober. But I can assure you, although I wouldn't have done it, my intentions would have been same had I been sober last night."

Nodding his head, he shrugged back at me, “Same with me. And I meant everything I said last night."

Sighing, I felt the hair on my arms rise up in tension. I clearly remembered what he said last night. That he would love to continue this the next day. Upon the reminder, I felt as though the room had grown awfully hot, or perhaps it was just my insides that seemed to be set up on a flame.

Burning with desire, I was worried if it was going to affect my choice of words.

"Well," I said, clearing my throat. "I think we're going awfully fast. I mean, we are not strangers. We are married, and live under the same roof - it is not practically possible for us to have something like a one night stand to tend to our urges and then forget about it all the next morning."

Arrant confusion poured out of his eyes upon hearing my words. Worried if I had said something wrong, I replayed what I just said, only to realise that I had put my intentions rather aptly in words. I couldn't understand why the subject seemed so foreign for him.

"A one night stand?" He repeated my words. "I'm sorry, but when I said I intended to continue this later last night, I didn't mean for it to be a one-time thing. I hinted at wanting to do it more than once."

I was stunned. More than once?

I simply had no idea what I wanted. I was definitely into him, that I was sure of, but I couldn't understand the magnitude of it. Would my cravings be sated once I had sex with him, or were my romantic feelings unimaginably involved too?

I was at a loss of words when he stared into my eyes intently with his. Trying to form words that would best describe what I had in my mind, I utterly failed when I found myself in a deep complex mess of overwhelming emotions.

Sighing, he hung his head low, dejected. "I know you're not there yet." he mumbled, "But I know that I'm not just drawn toward you because of mere lust. I'm more invested in this. Honestly, Shehnaaz, if we were not married, this is the stage where I'd ask to be your boyfriend."

Seeing how his words were just adding to my misery, I burst, "Sidharth, this is way too fast." I said, "We don't know anything about each other and-"

"Which is precisely my point." He cut me off.

"I want to get to know you before we label this relationship with a more concrete status. Don't think that this isn't tough for me, because it is. I've never had the time to view our relationship in this angle, which is probably why I never tried to pursue you. To be completely honest, I was drawn to you the moment I laid my
eyes on you but I had quickly suppressed the idea because I had too much on my plate to worry about then. I had more pressing issues that needed my immediate attention. But now that my feelings for you are becoming more and more coherent, I'm finding it hard to suppress them further.”