Nadia: Innocence Lost

The house in Defence Phase 3 was never quiet on Fridays. Laughter spilled from the drawing room, thick with the scent of Cuban cigars and aged Scotch. Nadia, eighteen in the summer of 1993, had learned to navigate the chaos like a cat through tall grass. She knew which uncles pinched cheeks and which ones let their eyes linger too long on the curve of her hips when she passed in her tight-fitting shalwar kameez. Her father, Eruj Sahib, held court in the veranda. A publisher of some renown, he collected people the way others collected stamps (poets with rumpled kurtas, politicians with gold watches, painters whose fingers smelled of turpentine). They came for the whiskey and stayed for the stories. Nadia came for the attention. She was beautiful in the way that made older men forget their wives’ names. Fair skin that caught the lamplight like porcelain, long brown hair that fell to her waist when she let it down, and a mouth that curved into trouble. Her stepmother, Rubina, tried (God knew she tried), but Rubina had her own children to chase and a household to run. Nadia raised herself on novels smuggled from her father’s library and the whispers of servants who spoke of things proper girls weren’t meant to hear. That night, the air was heavy with jasmine and the promise of rain. Nadia wore a tight emerald shalwar kameez, the short kurti ending just above her navel, the fabric clinging to her small pert breasts and generous hips like a second skin. She moved through the party like smoke, refilling glasses, laughing at jokes she only half-understood, letting fingers brush her waist when she leaned over to serve kebabs. Ahmed Khan arrived late. He was everything the others pretended to be (tall, broad-shouldered, with the kind of face that belonged on film posters). A painter who’d studied in Paris, he’d returned to Lahore with a French wife who’d left him within a year and taken half his money. The scandal only made him more desirable. Women wrote him letters in scented ink. Men bought his paintings to impress their mistresses. Eruj greeted him with a bear hug. “Ahmed, yaar! You remember my Nadia?” Ahmed’s eyes found her across the room. She was perched on the arm of a sofa, swinging her legs, the emerald kurti riding up to reveal a sliver of midriff. When their gazes met, she didn’t look away. Something electric passed between them, sharp as the first drop of rain on hot tin. “She’s grown,” Ahmed said, and his voice carried a note that made Nadia’s stomach flip. The party stretched into the early hours. Servants cleared away plates of biryani and bowls of kheer. The poets argued about Faiz versus Ghalib. Someone put on Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the younger guests began to dance. Nadia slipped away when no one was looking, her bare feet silent on the marble floors. Her room was at the end of the east wing, far from the noise. Moonlight spilled through the latticework, painting patterns on her bed. She left the door ajar. Ahmed found her there twenty minutes later. He closed the door softly behind him. The click of the latch sounded louder than gunfire in the quiet. “You’re not supposed to be here,” Nadia said, but she was smiling. She sat cross-legged on her bed, the emerald shalwar kameez stretched taut across her thighs. “Neither are you.” He moved closer, the floorboards creaking under his weight. “Your father thinks you’re asleep.” “He thinks a lot of things.” Ahmed sat on the edge of her bed. The mattress dipped. Nadia could smell his cologne (something expensive and French, mixed with the faint trace of paint that never quite left his skin). “You’re shaking,” he observed. “I’m not.” “You are.” His hand found her knee, thumb tracing circles through the thin cotton. “Cold?” “No.” His touch moved higher. Nadia’s breath caught. She should have stopped him. Should have screamed. Should have done any of the things good girls did when men twice their age touched them in the dark. Instead, she leaned forward and kissed him. Ahmed tasted like whiskey and secrets. His mouth was gentle at first, exploratory, as if she were a canvas he was afraid to ruin. Then Nadia made a small sound in her throat and he stopped being gentle. His hands were in her hair, tilting her head back, and she was drowning in the best way. They moved together with the urgency of the forbidden. Ahmed’s fingers found the drawstring of her shalwar, tugging it loose. The fabric whispered down her hips, pooling at her feet. The kurti followed, leaving her in nothing but moonlight and trembling anticipation. “Christ,” Ahmed muttered against her neck. “You’re perfect.” She wasn’t sure she was. Her breasts were small, barely more than handfuls, and she was all sharp angles and soft curves in the wrong places. But the way he looked at her made her feel like the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. His mouth moved lower, tracing the line of her collarbone, the slope of her breast. When his tongue flicked over her nipple, Nadia gasped and arched into him. The sound seemed to break something in Ahmed. He pushed her back against the pillows, following her down, his weight settling between her thighs. “Wait,” she whispered. He froze. “Do you want me to stop?” Nadia thought about it. Really thought about it. Her father’s laughter drifted through the walls, mingling with the music. Somewhere downstairs, a glass shattered and someone cheered. The world was carrying on without them. “No,” she said. “Don’t stop.” Ahmed kissed her again, slower this time. His hands mapped her body like he was memorizing it (the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips, the soft skin of her inner thighs). When his fingers slipped between her legs, Nadia bit her lip to keep from crying out. She was wet, embarrassingly so, but when Ahmed tried to ease a finger inside her, she tensed. He paused, pressing gentle kisses along her jaw. “Relax, jaan. Let me in.” She tried. God, she tried. But she was untouched, her body unaccustomed to anything but her own curious fingers in the dark. Ahmed worked with infinite patience, stroking her clit in slow circles until she was panting, until her hips chased his hand of their own accord. Only then did he try again (one finger, barely past the first knuckle), and Nadia whimpered at the stretch. “Too much?” he asked, voice rough. “No. Just… slow.” He was slow. Achingly, maddeningly slow. By the time he’d worked that single finger fully inside her, Nadia was trembling, sweat beading between her breasts. Ahmed added his thumb to her clit and she came with a sharp cry, her body clenching around the intrusion like it never wanted to let go. “Good girl,” he murmured, kissing her through the aftershocks. “So tight. So perfect.” He shed his clothes with practiced efficiency (shirt unbuttoned to reveal a chest dusted with dark hair, trousers kicked aside). His cock jutted heavy and flushed against his stomach, and Nadia’s eyes widened. She reached for him instinctively, fingers wrapping around the thick length. Ahmed hissed, hips jerking into her grip. “Careful,” he warned. “I’m not as patient as I pretend.” She stroked him once, twice, marveling at the velvet-over-steel feel of him. Ahmed let her explore for a moment, then gently pushed her hand away. He settled between her thighs again, the head of his cock nudging at her entrance. “Look at me,” he said. She did. His eyes were dark, almost black in the moonlight. There was lust there, raw and unfiltered, but also something clinical (an artist assessing his subject). “This will hurt.” “I know.” He pushed in slowly (agonizingly slowly). Nadia hissed at the burn, her nails digging into his shoulders. Ahmed stilled, letting her adjust, whispering things in French she didn’t understand but felt in her bones. The stretch was immense, a pressure that bordered on pain, but beneath it was a fullness that made her want to weep. “Breathe,” he reminded her. She did. In and out, matching his rhythm until the pain ebbed into something else (something hot and urgent). When he was fully seated inside her, they stayed like that for a long moment, breathing together. Then he started to move. It was nothing like the fumbling she’d imagined with boys her age. Ahmed knew what he was doing (knew how to angle his hips so he hit that spot inside her that made stars explode behind her eyelids, knew how to use his thumb on her clit in time with his thrusts). Nadia wrapped her legs around his waist and met him stroke for stroke, the bed creaking beneath them, her body adjusting to the impossible stretch of him. He took her through it with relentless precision. First slow, deep thrusts that had her gasping his name. Then faster, harder, until the headboard knocked against the wall in a rhythm that matched the wet slap of skin on skin. Nadia’s second orgasm built slower, deeper, until it crashed over her like a wave, her back arching off the bed as she clenched around him. Ahmed followed moments later, burying himself deep and spilling inside her with a groan that sounded like her name. He collapsed onto her, sweat-slick and trembling, his weight a delicious anchor. They lay tangled together afterward, the party’s distant noise a muffled heartbeat. Ahmed traced lazy patterns on her stomach, his touch lighter now, almost reverent. “Your father will kill me,” he said eventually. “He won’t know.” “He might.” Nadia turned to look at him. “Do you care?” Ahmed considered this, then kissed her forehead. “No. I really don’t.” Downstairs, the party was winding down. Car doors slammed. Engines started. Eruj’s voice carried through the house, slurred but cheerful, saying goodbyes. Ahmed dressed quickly, his movements economical. At the door, he paused. “This doesn’t have to be just once,” he said. Nadia pulled the sheet up to her chin, suddenly shy. “I know.” He left as quietly as he’d come. Nadia listened to his footsteps fade down the corridor, then rolled onto her stomach and buried her face in the pillow that still smelled like him.