“Fuck!” I shouted.

It was quarter past three in the morning. Sarika and I were standing at the passenger pick-up area of the Mumbai airport. We were utterly exhausted from the eighteen-hour journey from Clinton State University in the US, but still had at least another hour to travel by car before we arrived at our hotel. I was looking forward to collapsing into a fresh comfortable bed, and getting a good night’s rest before meeting our hosts from the University of Mumbai later in the day. However, I was despairingly counting down the available minutes for precious sleep with each delay.

And now this fucking luggage! I’d just spent ten minutes unsuccessfully trying to wrestle way too much stuff into a tiny Tata. Sarika looked on from the curb, bridging the language gap between myself and the driver that had been hired by our hosts to transport us from the airport to the hotel.

Sarika was a small-framed twenty-six year old Indian woman with curious brown eyes, wavy hair, and smooth cinnamon-colored skin. She was wearing a comfortably loose green top and a pair of the clingy black leggings that seem ubiquitous among young women these days. Sarika was my doctoral advisee, and now my travelling companion.

If I wasn’t chairing her dissertation committee, I’d have said that she was without doubt possessed of an unassuming air of exotic innocence, peppered with just a subtle hint of coyness that suggested a deeper spring of unexplored sexuality bubbling beneath the cute surface, eagerly waiting to be tapped. But I was her chair, so I kept those thoughts to myself.

She’d started out as just another foreign student – I’d had a handful in each of my classes, so that wasn’t out of the ordinary. I usually appreciated the perspectives they brought to class, especially when they helped to illuminate the limited thinking of the American students who considered nuking a frozen chicken-tikka dinner after hot-hip-hop-goat-yoga class to be an authentic cultural experience. Sarika had not been shy about challenging these views, and she quickly became a standout among my students.

I suppose the general admiration must have been mutual. As she neared the end of her course work, and approached the beginning of the dissertation phase of her PhD, she asked me to take on the role of chair, overseeing and advising her on her research and managing the rest of the committee. That had been two years ago, and for the past two years I’d find myself looking forward with a mixture of excitement and terror to each of our regular meetings.

Excitement, because she had quickly become my favorite student. She was eager to learn and do the work, so I found that I didn’t have to police her like I did with many of my other advisees. In fact, she respected and valued my expertise. She was usually willing to accept my guidance, or at least have a deep thoughtful discussion when she held a different view. Despite the hierarchy between professor and doc student, our relationship became one of almost equals, more collaborative than supervisory.

As time went on, she let me know more about her personal life, too – feeling homesick for Indian culture, feeling lost in American culture, dating and then breaking up with an American boy, her stress at being so far away from family, and so on. We were becoming close. And though, I’d built wonderful friendships with previous students who are now my colleagues, this intimacy seemed to take on a different life, and that was what terrified me.

She started to take up more and more space inside my head. Even when we weren’t meeting, I found myself thinking about her.  More and more, those thoughts extended into my sexual fantasy life. About a year before Sarika arrived, I’d been through a difficult divorce after an even more difficult marriage of eight years. It left me shy to even start trying to build a new relationship with anyone else. I knew I had to work on healing myself first. Consequently, I’d had to engage in a regimen of ‘self-care,’ so to speak.

While I didn’t intend to summon Sarika’s image to my mind while I fantasized, it happened often enough that I couldn’t ignore it. It was, in academic parlance, statistically significant. That would have been fine if I could keep those discrete desires within the privacy of my thoughts. But I often found them returning when Sarika was physically present in my office to talk about research. Those meetings became sweet torture as I struggled with myself to monitor my behavior and make sure I didn’t betray my true feelings.

And then there was the moment.

On the surface of it, nothing happened. One day, I held open the door to my office for her and Sarika squeezed past me, brushing against me. It was only a brief moment of contact, but in that moment our eyes met. There was just the slightest lingering pause that seemed to go on forever, though it probably wasn’t longer than half a second.

We silently stood in the doorway, observing each other. Her eyes locked on mine, seeming to almost beg me to make my move. It felt like magnetic forces were drawing us together. It took everything in my power not to lean in and kiss her right there. I’ve told myself a million times that it was all in my head, but I’ve never been able to shake that sense of being so strongly pulled to her and how hard it had been to resist.

Then it was done.  I muttered some kind of apology and looked out my window as she slipped past. If she felt the force of attraction too, she’s never said anything. Nor have I. I figured it was for the best to let it be and move on. Whatever we might have felt in that moment – I’ve advised probably a dozen PhD students during my time at Clinton State and taught dozens more in my classes, but I’ve never felt that way before or since about anyone but Sarika – It was painfully obvious that nothing could ever come of it.

Thus, for the past two years, being around Sarika had been a delectable anguish as I battled internally for self-control. So far, I’d managed to master my baser impulses with a seemingly inhuman degree of self-restraint, but I knew that victory had been achieved by only the slightest of margins. There had been more than one occasion in which I’d immediately locked the office after she left, grabbed a tissue from the box on my desk and quickly relieved the desperate urge to cum that had been building in my testicles throughout our meeting.

In spite of all these private and dangerous thoughts and feelings, things seemed to be going well - at least on paper. Sarika made steady progress on her dissertation research, and was on track to graduate by the end of the semester, which meant that I was doing what I needed to do as a chair to support her.

Granted, she had built on my own research, focused on implementing community-based, crowd-sourced interventions to address and improve infrastructure in rural and neglected areas in the US – which is a fancy way of asking whether farming communities can fill their own potholes and fix their own bridges without government assistance - and more importantly, what kind of conditions need to exist for them to actually do so. Since her research was linked to mine, it made it easier to guide her.

Sarika had adapted my findings to Indian cultural and climatic contexts, generating a number of key new insights with potentially far-reaching implications. We’d recently published a paper on it which had received far more attention than any of my earlier work and rocketed both our names to semi-stardom (within a very narrow field). Now we’d been invited by the University of Mumbai to present our research. International recognition was going to be a nice addition to both of our CVs.

…But only if we could get our shit to fit into the car.

“Maybe if you turned it,” Sarika offered unhelpfully.

“We turned it every possible direction,” I fired back. “It’s too big. It won’t fucking fit.”

Sarika had packed two of the most massive, bulkiest suitcases I’d ever seen. To this she’d also added a large carry-on and an oversized laptop bag stuffed nearly to the point of bursting. There was barely any room left over for my own luggage, which not being quite as large as hers, still took up a considerable amount of room in the car.

"He keeps moving everything," I complained uselessly to Sarika.

“We should have asked for a bigger car,” Sarika said.

“No ma’am,” the driver disagreed, sensing his fare slipping away. “It will fit. I know we can make it all fit. Please do not worry, ma’am.”

I threw up my hands in frustration and stepped back to give the driver full access to our bags. Another waiting driver came over to lend his advice, and the two bantered back in hurried Hindi. Sure enough, with some creative maneuvering and a lot of grunting and muttering, the cases were finally loaded into the car, filling the trunk, the front passenger seat, and the back seat.

“Where are we supposed to sit?” I asked. “If we shove everything over in the back, there’s room for maybe one of us.”

“No, no, there is room for two,” the driver argued.

“Maybe two small children,” I argued back. “But I’m an American. They make us super-sized.”

“Let’s see,” the driver said, and gestured to the little space left in the back seat.

“Should we try to get another car?” I asked Sarika, thinking that I could fit two of the little Tatas into the SUV I’d left back at the Clinton City Airport, and weirdly missing American traffic.

“Come on, Dr. Turner, it’s too early in the morning. Who can we call?” Sarika whined. “I’m so tired. Let’s just go. It’ll be fine.”

I sighed and resigned myself to a miserable ride to the hotel. At least it was the final leg of our journey. “Fine,” I agreed. “But you get the middle.”

Sarika climbed into the vehicle, squeezing her small body against the piled luggage. Her leggings had bunched around her crotch, revealing the shape of her labia beneath. No underwear? I wondered before I could stop myself from thinking it. I think the colloquial term is ‘camel toe.’ I hadn’t been staring exactly, but I certainly did notice. The sight of it sent a thrilling shiver through my body, making me suck in my breath involuntarily.

Sarika noticed me looking down at her and realized what had hooked my attention. Caught! Shit! I blamed it on being so tired from the flight that I’d not taken enough care to remain guarded. Sarika discreetly pulled her blouse down to cover herself, and picked at the thin fabric to straighten out the unintentionally immodest garment. Meanwhile, I felt myself blush at the insinuation that I was interested in what lay beneath it.

However, the difficult truth of it is that I was interested. Even though I knew it led to nothing but trouble, it was becoming increasingly difficult to shake the temptation to slip my hand down the front of those leggings and rub her clit with my fingers until she cried out in ecstasy.  

The last eighteen hours that I’d been seated next to her on the plane had been especially agonizing. Sarika had fallen asleep with her head resting on my shoulder. Her loose shirt sort of fell away from her chest as she leaned against me, providing me with an ample view of her well-proportioned breasts, and the pink bra that held them in place. I knew it was doing me no good, but I couldn’t help stealing glances every few minutes.

It was fortunate that I had a blanket to cover my lap or the arousal that image conjured in my pants would have been very obvious to the flight attendant or anyone else walking by on the way to the toilet. I couldn’t escape the forbidden depraved fantasies that bloomed like weeds in my mind. I was only tormenting myself, I knew, but what deliciously sweet torment it was.

“Sir,” the driver invited, gesturing to the remaining sliver of seat with just the slightest hint of impatience. I slid into the remaining space left in the car, managed to get both my feet onto the floor, but my shoulder and hips continued to dangle over the edge of the seat.

“You can move closer,” Sarika said.

I looked at her for a moment, considering everything that had gone unsaid between us. But there was no detectable hint of seduction in her invitation. Rather it was an acknowledgement of the obvious solution to our immediate problem: I needed to get all the way in the car. I inched my body closer to her, so that we were touching.

“Sir,” the driver said motioning me to draw my elbow in. I moved it, but not far enough as he slammed the car door into my funny bone.

“Ow, fuck!” I cried out.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, sir. Sir, I’m so sorry,” the driver exclaimed in a panic.

“It’s fine,” I lied. It hurt like a motherfucker. But there wasn’t really anything he or anyone else could do about it.

“What if you put your arm around back, like…” Sarika grabbed hold of my sleeve and lifted my arm to place it around the back of her shoulders. “Is this okay?”

I could sense an anxious tightening in my chest letting me know that no, it was not okay. But I couldn’t figure out how to explain it to Sarika without admitting how I was a hair’s breadth from violating all kinds of professional and personal ethical boundaries. So, I scooted another couple of inches closer until I could feel the warmth of Sarika’s body pressed firmly into my side.

“Sir, please, careful,” the driver said, alerting me that he was going to make another attempt at closing the door. I pulled my arm tight across my chest, inadvertently brushing my hand against her breasts, and squeezed even further into Sarika.

“Oh, oh!” Sarika protested.

“Sorry,” I apologized. “Just a second.”

The driver once again tried to close the car door against me, taking care to be gentler this time. It nearly worked but wouldn’t quite latch.

“Look, it’s not going to-” I started to complain, but then the driver gave a quick hard hip-check to the door, and we heard the unmistakable sound of the locking mechanism clicking into place.

“You okay?” I asked Sarika. She was crushed between myself and the luggage, with her shoulders squeezed tight in front of her. She looked very uncomfortable, but I also couldn’t help but notice the effect it had on her chest, pushing her breasts together until they were nearly bursting out of her top.

“I’m okay,” Sarika lied. “What about you?”

“It’s not ideal,” I admitted. “But I think I can manage for an hour.”

The driver raced around the front of the car and leapt in behind the steering wheel. Within seconds the little Tata purred to life and pulled away from the curb. The radio played Bollywood dance music. I didn’t know what they were singing about, but it had a nice energizing beat that seemed to fit well with the passing urban night scape. I gazed out the window, hoping to distract myself with the sights of a new city.

My first impressions of Mumbai were that it doesn’t sleep. Even at half-past three in the morning, the roads were what I thought of as being full of traffic. Of course, I wouldn’t find out what Indian traffic was really like until we set out the next day.  But I was still surprised to see how lively early morning in Mumbai can be.

We travelled through a maze of crowded city streets densely lined with stalls where vendors sold all manner of goods during the day. At the moment, though, they stood empty, dark and shuttered. At every stop light, mobs of transgender prostitutes and beggars filtered through the traffic soliciting rupees. The driver warned us not to give money to them. Most were respectful, but when they got too aggressive, our driver would shout at them. I didn’t need Sarika’s translation to get the gist of what was said: “Fuck off.”

Apart from cars and people, the roads of Mumbai were littered with random traffic barriers, presumably to discourage speeding or street racing. Our driver swerved wildly from one side of the road to the other, to avoid them, braking only at the last minute, and only when absolutely necessary.

“Oh fuck, ow!” Sarika cried suddenly as we made a suddenly sharp lane change. The centrifugal force threw me into Sarika’s smaller frame which was squished uncomfortably against the luggage.

“Shit are you okay?” I asked.

“My arm,” Sarika said, bending her elbow to check flexibility.

“Sorry,” I apologized again. “I don’t know that this is working.” She wasn’t the only one in discomfort. My shoulders were getting sore and the arm draped behind Sarika was quickly going numb from being held at an awkward angle too long.

“What can we do?” Sarika asked.

“I don’t know that we can do anything,” I said, aware of the tone of misery creeping into my voice.

“What if…” Sarika started wiggling in her seat. “Hang on.”

“What… what are you doing?” I asked.

Sarika answered my question by raising her body off of the seat and shifting sideways before lowering her weight onto my lap. “Is… is this okay?” she asked uncertainly.

“Um…” I said. No, it wasn’t fucking okay. It was the opposite of okay. At the same time, it was everything I’d ever wanted. My mind and heart were both racing. “I’m fine.” I said, realizing that any other response would reveal too much. “Just let me know if you get uncomfortable.”

“This is so much better,” Sarika replied.

“Good thing we’re designed to be so stackable,” I joked lamely after Sarika had settled herself on me.

“Tell me, if I get too heavy,” she said. 

“Okay,” I said, thinking that her weight was not the issue. But if she stayed just like that and didn’t move around too much, I thought maybe – just maybe – we’d get through this ride without any major embarrassments. 

The driver sped around another barrier, and Sarika was nearly thrown off of me - not that there was much space for her to be thrown off into. But the motion made her rebalance herself on top of me. She wiggled her little butt in my lap and leaned back against me. The hair on the top of her head pressed against my cheek. I inhaled the scent of her a little too deeply and told myself she was just making herself comfortable. I had to summon every ounce of focus to will my treacherous cock to stay quiet.

“Here,” Sarika said, taking hold of my arms, and wrapping them around her waist. “You can be my seatbelt."

For such a small body, Sarika’s chest was well proportioned. As the car bounced and jostled towards our destination, I was acutely aware of the lower part of her breasts brushing against my arm. I hugged her tight, ostensibly to keep her from being thrown around, but mostly allowing myself to give in - just a little – to my need to feel her body as close as possible against mine.

Oh god, I was so tired. I could feel all the energy I’d mustered to resist Sarika quickly becoming depleted. Every bump in the road sapped a little more away – and there seemed to be so many bumps, I had the insane thought that the driver was intentionally aiming for them. The stacked luggage blocked him from our sight and obscured most of our view of the road, so it was hard to be certain, but surely the roads in Mumbai couldn’t be that bad.

Added to the bouncy ride, Sarika kept shifting her weight on top of me. It seemed whenever she found a comfortable position, a sudden turn would throw her off balance again, and she’d need to readjust. Against all of my better judgment, I felt an involuntary twitching and tightening sensation begin to stir in my groin.

“Umm…” I said.

“What?” Sarika asked. Was she being coy, or was she really totally oblivious to the distress she was causing me? 

“Nothing,” I said, barely above a whisper with my mouth next to her ear.  

Shit! It was all going to blow up very quickly if I didn’t do something. But I had no idea what I could do. I was trapped and helpless and too tired to keep fighting my desire. My anxiety began to morph into irritation with Sarika. If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be feeling like this sense of panic. If it weren’t for her, we wouldn’t even be in this tiny car in India. If it weren’t for her, I could just go about my life calm and unbothered as ever.

The worst thing about it was that she hadn’t meant any of it. At least I don’t think she intended to put me in this dire predicament. I was sure it was all innocent on her part… maybe… But then why wouldn’t she stop wiggling and just sit still? Why did she lean her weight into me? Why did her head seem to keep nuzzling against my neck?

Well, enough is enough, I thought to myself, petulantly. Turnabout is fair play. With the next bump we hit, I allowed the arms around Sarika’s waist to lift upwards towards her breasts by maybe half a millimeter. Not so much as would constitute an obvious ‘move,’ but over the next five minutes or so, my arms ascended her abdomen at a glacial pace, until they were fully supporting the weight of both of her breasts. I acknowledge that it was juvenile and stupid, but I hadn’t felt so shy around a girl since I was a teenager. It was making me crazy.

Sarika gave no protest or even an obvious sign that she noticed, though it seemed impossible for her not to. Instead, she continued to move on top of me, though I was starting to doubt whether those movements were entirely due to the motion of the car. And regardless of all the rational reasons to keep control of myself, my body had other ideas. The tightness in my groin was becoming a tingly electric sensation as blood swelled the capillaries of my penis. Pretty soon my arousal was going to be evident.

I recognized that there was nothing left for it. I’d fought the good fight against nature, but in the end, I knew I’d have to surrender to it. I let out a sigh of resignation and allowed my body to relax into the seat for the first time since getting into the car. Nature would just have to take its course. Nature always wins. My cock grew hard. Within a minute its awakening became impossible to ignore.

“Dr. Turner?” Sarika asked with a slight tone of surprise.

“Mhmm,” I said, bracing for the inevitable backlash.

“Um, I think… you’re um… poking me.”

“I’m sorry,” I apologized. “I um…” I trailed off, looking for the words to explain.

“No, you don’t have anything to be sorry about,” Sarika said before I could conclude whatever it was I was going to say. “I know it happens to guys. It’s normal. It’s not something you can control.”

If she only knew how long and hard I’d been trying to control myself around her. How she’d been driving me mad for much longer than just this trip.

“You can move back over beside me if you want,” I said.

Sarika shook her head. “We tried that,” she said. “It didn’t work.”

“We can try to make it work,” I offered.

“It’s…” Sarika took a pause to think over her response. “It’s okay. I think I’d rather deal with a little poking.” She rubbed the arm that she’d hurt earlier and turned her head towards me to favor me with a small forgiving smile. 

I thought with our little problem acknowledged, Sarika would take more care to keep her body steady on top of me. For a few minutes that was the case, but it wasn’t enough to calm my insistent erection, pushing through the fabric of my slacks, against her leggings, and knocking on the door of her womanhood.

While from above, I’m sure we looked innocent enough to any passing motorist looking through our window, below we began a dance of subtle twitches and muscular movements. Under her weight, my cock throbbed with desperation, pushing insistently against her. In response, I’d feel her bottom tense up and relax, subtly massaging and encouraging my unruly length.

I let my hands unwrap themselves from high on her abdomen and to fall to her hips. Sarika’s grinding became more obvious and intense. I also noticed her breathing become heavier, and after a moment tiny, barely audible moans began to emanate from her chest. As she moved over me, she allowed my hands to guide her body to just the right spot.

Emboldened, I took a chance. Slowly, I let my fingers play beneath her blouse around the elastic waist of her leggings, delicately brushing her smooth brown skin as they moved inward towards their meeting below her bellybutton. Sarika again made no move to stop me, and in fact continued to intensify her motions above me. I pushed gently into her lower stomach, just enough so that the tips of my fingers gained clearance beneath her waistband.

Sarika turned her head and breathed heavily against the side of my neck. Having gained access, I slowly slipped my fingers further inside her leggings.  First, I felt nothing but smooth skin radiating heat. However, as my fingers descended further, they encountered the slippery dampness of her arousal soaking into her leggings. Finally, my middle finger crossed over the excited button of her clit and sank into her wet folds.

Sarika slouched in her seat, giving me better access as my knuckles worked beneath the black fabric of her leggings. She grabbed my wrist, and I thought she was going to stop me, but instead she moved my hand to where she needed to feel it most: Her clit. I stroked and kneaded it at a steady pace until Sarika was absolutely wriggling on top of me.

“Don’t change anything,” Sarika whispered urgently. “Don’t stop.”

She clutched my wrist hard to hold it in place, as her orgasm approached. I maintained the same speed and intensity as I rubbed my fingers up and down along the length of her clit. After a minute, she turned her face into shoulder and bit it through my shirt to keep from crying out as her body jerked and spasmed with the force of her climax.

“Ow!” I shouted.

“Shh!” Sarika reprimanded me, looking towards where the driver was seated on the other side of our luggage barrier. As far as we could tell, he was still completely oblivious to what was happening in the back seat of his little Tata. In fact, the only sign of his presence was an occasional cough or grunt. Otherwise, he seemed content to drive on in silence.

As Sarika’s body came down from the orgasm I’d given her, I removed my hand from her pants. My fingers were covered with her sweet slick juices. I began to suck them clean one by one, but before I could get as far as my middle finger, she took my hand from me and inserted the finger in her own mouth. As she sucked, I felt her tongue swirling suggestively around it.

While Sarika cleaned my hand, savoring the taste of herself, I felt her move once more on top of me. It seemed that she wasn’t finished. After a minute or so of rubbing herself against me, she shifted forward, almost to my knees. Her hands reached behind her, tracing the length of my erection until she found my zipper. With a deft motion of her fingers, she managed to pull it down and slip inside.

While feeling her through my pants had been exciting enough, now there was only the thin cotton layer of underwear separating her from me. I couldn’t help but groan as she took hold of my shaft and began to stroke me. However, the movement was awkward and restrained by my pants. It was only a minute before she stopped again.

“A little help,” she suggested, tapping at the buckle of my belt. 

Eagerly, I pulled at the clasped and released the leather strap. Without waiting, I felt her fingers go to the top button of my pants and pop it open.

“Up,” I ordered.

She raised herself a little way off of me, and I lifted my butt a little way off of the seat – just enough to slide my pants down around my thighs. My stubborn erection hooked onto the waist of my underwear and then sprung back, slapping into the wet crotch of Sarika’s leggings. Her hand went to it and pressed it against herself, stroking the underside. My cock demanded more.

I hooked my thumbs into the rear waist of Sarika’s leggings and tugged them downward. Sarika lifted herself once more, and I lowered the pants just enough to reveal her beautiful ass and wet pussy. Sarika dropped her body onto me again, now making skin to skin contact. My cock throbbed needily, and Sarika pressed it again into her pussy, grinding against it. This time, with no more barriers between us, it slid easily into her slippery wet slit and over her clit.

As much as I was enjoying the sensation, I was desperate to feel more of her. I needed to be deep inside of her, to feel her all around me, taking me in, surrounding me. I reached around Sarika to where my cock rested between her thighs and guided my head towards her opening. Sarika shifted her position with a quick little motion, straightened up, and suddenly, I was in! Sarika gave a small excited gasp as I entered her, and then settled her full weight back on top of me.

It had been so long since I’d enjoyed sex – not since my divorce – that I’d almost forgotten what pussy felt like.  Sarika’s pussy was hot, wet, tight, and incredible. I was sunk as deep as my balls inside her, and I could feel her internal muscles hugging and massaging me.

“Fuck,” I couldn’t help but groan softly into her ear.

“Mm, yeah,” Sarika agreed.

The sex we had in the back seat of that Tata was certainly muted. However, what it lacked in vigor, it made up for in the excited knowledge that we were in public and could be caught any moment. With me inside of her, we kept our bodies more or less still as we allowed the motion of the road to guide our fucking. Above the window, we passively watched the traffic pass by outside. But no one could tell what was going on just below their line of vision. Our excitement built with every little bump and jostle of the vehicle.

I wrapped my arms around Sarika’s stomach, and my hands once again went searching for her clit. I wanted to feel her cum again while I was buried inside of her. I began to rub her much the same way I’d done earlier. Before long, I could feel her fingers digging into my thighs as she tried to stifle the urge to moan or scream in pleasure. The pain mingled with the pleasure becoming some other-worldly sensation. Sarika began to subtly rock back and forth over me.

“Just let go,” I whispered in her ear, my voice becoming deeper and more authoritative. “Cum all over this fucking cock.”

As if on demand, Sarika’s body seemed to go all stiff for a second. She picked up my forearm and placed it in her mouth, biting down on it to stay quiet. The muscles of her pussy spasmed and clenched all around my cock. It was too much to bear. I felt my own orgasm wash over me in a tidal wave of pleasure. My cock pulsed and throbbed and shot cum deep into Sarika’s warm, welcoming pussy.

After a minute of doing everything in our power to remain quiet, the wave of ecstasy broke and rolled back. Both of us leaned backwards into the seat, breathing heavily, but feeling relaxed and deeply satisfied. Thoughts about the implications of what had just happened threatened the edges of my mind, but I refused to engage with them, deciding to just enjoy basking in the afterglow for now. There would be time enough to figure everything out later – and if not, I’d accept the consequence, whatever they were.

With me still inside of her, Sarika leaned forward past the luggage to get the driver’s attention. She asked something in Hindi, and received a response in the same language. I considered that Sarika might have a bigger wild side than I’d ever given her credit for. A little bolt of excitement surged through me, finally coming face to face with the naughtier version of my favorite student that until now had existed only in my fantasies. 

“He says the hotel is just ten more minutes away,” she informed me.

“Not too much longer,” I said.

Sarika shook her head, and then bent forward again. This time, she retrieved her purse from the floor of the car. After a few seconds fishing around inside of it, she produced a small travel pack of tissues. She took a few for herself, and then handed the pack to me to clean up before we arrived. The remainder of the trip passed quietly, the way the rest of it had - except without the sex, obviously. It was almost if it had never happened, and I wondered if I’d actually drifted off to sleep and dreamed the whole thing.

As promised, we arrived at our hotel roughly ten minutes later. I checked the time on my phone. It was almost five in the morning. All I wanted was a soft surface to lie down on immediately. I wasn’t even sure that I could wait to get to the room, as the sofas in the lobby were looking very appealing.

“I can’t wait to get to bed,” I said.

“Me too,” Sarika agreed. “It’s been a very long trip.”

“But a good one?” I asked.

“Some parts better than others,” Sarika answered with a knowing glance and slight grin. Then she touched my arm. “I’m always happy to return to my country. And I’m glad you’re with me. You’ve given me a very wonderful home-coming.” She lingered on the last word.

“I don’t think that’s what they mean when they say that,” I corrected her.

“It’s what I meant,” she corrected me in return, and gave me a flirty smile while the clerk was busy checking our reservations. “And maybe when we get back to the US, I can return the favor.”

“Come on,” I said, side-stepping the suggestion. I was still trying to fend off the anxiety arising from the immensity of my professional transgression. “We’d better get whatever sleep we can. Tomorrow is a big day.”