“Oh, fuck!” Julia gasped. “Oh, god, don’t—”
“Turn around,” Van commanded again. Julia did, sagging weakly against the wall, wobbly in her high heels. Both of them were breathing hard. Van fell to her knees on the rough pavement, no doubt wrecking the new trousers, but she was beyond caring. She dragged Julia’s bit of underwear down and off, over her shoes—another thong. She tucked that one in her pocket too. She pressed her hands against Julia’s inner thighs to open them farther, and Julia hauled her dress up to her waist and shook and moaned as Van rubbed her whole face against Julia until it was wet. Van was delirious. It was almost enough to make her come. She had tasted Julia’s cunt before but only on her own fingers. Van grasped Julia’s hips to angle it harder against her mouth and licked the length of her, thrusting her stiff tongue into her lover. Finally Van sucked her clit and Julia came in her mouth, crying out her release.
They sat in Van’s car near the front of the club under a streetlamp. It lit up the interior enough to show both of them, disheveled and flushed and sweaty.
“Quite the butch, aren’t you,” Julia said, examining Van with eyes still hazy from sex. Her hand lay on her lover’s thigh.
“Told you. How about staying at my place tomorrow night?”
“If you come and see me dance first.” Julia’s eyes drifted to Van’s mouth.
“I’ve been wondering,” Van said, before she lost her concentration, “did you wear anything when you chatted up the tables after?”
“Ah, you should have stayed longer. Find out tomorrow.”
Van took the thongs out of her breast pocket and held them out to Julia, a white one and a black one. “I think these belong to you.”
Julia looked surprised. “Two?”
“I caught the other one. Did you throw it to me?”
“I didn’t see you. It’s too dark on the floor.”
Julia shifted on her seat and turned her head away, looking out the side window. Van could see the outline of her jaw clench as if she were suppressing a smile. She reached out and stroked the back of Julia’s neck very lightly and was rewarded with a shiver.
Grinning, Van shifted the car into gear.
LADIES’ COUPE
Anamika
The Lucknow mail train came to a halt with a big jolt. Priya looked out of the window, but it was pitch dark outside. Someone must have pulled the emergency chain, or maybe the driver had suddenly discovered that he had strayed onto the wrong track. It was drizzling when she boarded the train at the New Delhi Railway Station, and now it was pouring heavily, the rain hitting the window with a vengeance. Priya was the only passenger in the ladies’ coupe; her two companions from Delhi had disembarked half an hour ago at Itwah. She pushed open the door by a few inches to ask the burly man sitting near the carriage door why the train had to be stopped in the middle of nowhere.
“Someone has pulled the chain, madam,” he informed her. “The railway police will not allow the train to start until they find out who has stopped it and why.”
“Oh, shit!’ Priya groaned, pulling the door shut. A thorough investigation of twenty-odd coaches, each carrying fifty or more passengers, could take hours. Priya took out her copy of Femina from her overnighter and flipped it open to an article on the lifestyle of single career women in the metropolis. Not bad, she thought. When she finished her business management course next year, she would have to seek employment in a place like Mumbai, Bangalore or Hyderabad, away from her home at Lucknow.
She had almost finished the article when, with another sudden jerk, the train started moving again. Good, Priya thought. According to her watch, it was five minutes past eleven. Bedrolls were not provided for the second-class passengers in the ladies’ coupe, so Priya pulled out a bedsheet and an air pillow from her bag and set about making her bed for the night.
She was about to stretch out on her bunk when someone rapped on the door. She ignored the knock, but it continued, so Priya shouted, “Who’s that?”
“Police! Open the door!” The voice was harsh but distinctly feminine.
“What do you want?”
“Open the door, or I’ll arrest you for not cooperating with the police!”
Priya pulled the door open. A woman in a khaki uniform entered the coupe, closing the door behind her.
“Aren’t you aware that Channa Devi has escaped from the Itwah prison this afternoon?” the policewoman demanded, sizing Priya up with her small, sharp eyes. She was a dark, tall woman with a square, weather-beaten face.
“Who is Channa Devi?”
“You don’t read the papers, do you?” The woman frowned. “She’s the notorious bandit who was caught last year after gunning down ten of her rivals in a gang war. She’s escaped and we have to track her down.”
“Oh, my god!” Priya’s fingers rose to her lips. “Do you think she’s on this train?”
“Not unless she’s riding on the top,” the other woman told her. “We’ve checked the compartments.” The policewoman took a peek at the upper bunks and then under the lowers, to check that no one was hiding. Then she plopped down on the empty bunk opposite Priya’s and motioned her to sit. “I will be your companion for the next couple of hours till I get down at Kanpur,” she declared.
Priya was glad about that. At a time like this, there couldn’t be anything more assuring than having a policewoman as a copassenger.
The woman removed her peaked cap and tousled her close-cropped hair.
“I am fagged out after checking all the ladies’ coupes, including this one,” she said with a sigh. “It’s a terrible job, chasing a dangerous dacoit in this foul weather, even though she’s one of our kind.”
Priya nodded. She knew that social and caste discrimination in India’s poorer states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar often pushed the dispossessed women from the so-called lower classes, like Channa Devi, toward banditry.
“But the law is the law,” the policewoman said.
Priya nodded. She suddenly noticed that the policewoman was not only well built, she was also well-endowed. In fact, her ample breasts seemed to be straining hard to pop out of her tight police uniform.
“Going home on a vacation?” the officer asked.
Priya nodded. “My parents are in Lucknow. I study business management at Delhi.”
“It’s good that women are competing with men these days in every sphere of life,” said the policewoman, as she started unlacing her boots, which were caked with mud. “Do you have any plan for marriage?” she asked with a twinkle in her eyes.
“Not in the near future,” Priya told her. “I will get a good job first and then…” Priya didn’t finish. The policewoman seemed struggling hard to get her feet out of her boots.
“My uniform caught a splash of rain,” she said, after she extracted her feet from her boots, which also looked a size too small. “I will put it on the upper bunks to dry.”
“But you don’t carry a spare uniform,” Priya pointed out.
“Could you spare me a sari or something to wrap around my body for a couple of hours?” the other woman said. “I had to rush out of the police station and jump into the jeep when the news of jailbreak reached us.”
Priya took out a red and green synthetic sari that she had bought from Chandni Chowk for her younger sister.
The policewoman thanked her, as she stripped to her bra and panties. Priya couldn’t help looking at her. The other woman had a tight, compact body with a flat tummy, broad shoulders and sumptuous breasts that all but popped out of her ill-fitting black bra. She had two scar marks, one on her left hip and the other on her right flank.