I see you, and you are removing your shirt. Button by button. Slowly opening it while I stand there watching you, pretending that watching you isn’t already undoing something inside me. One button. Another. Then another.

Your shirt falls open, and beneath it I see skin. Your bare chest. Your strong arms. Your abs. Your belly button. My eyes move shamelessly over you before I finally force myself to look up at your face.

And that almost makes it worse.

You have changed so much since I last saw you like this. Ten years. It has been ten years since we last slept together. Ten years since I touched you. Ten years since your body was close enough to mine that I knew its warmth.

Your jawline is chiselled now. Your face is harder, more defined. Your body has changed too—the cuts and curves sharper, stronger, unfamiliar and yet somehow still yours. I shouldn’t be looking at you this way. You shouldn’t be standing in front of me half-naked. We absolutely should not be here.

But looking at you makes me want to submit to you in every way I resisted back then. And I hate that you can probably see it on my face.

You run your hand through your hair and start walking towards me. My heartbeat changes immediately. You come close enough for your fragrance to reach me and I close my eyes. God. Whatever luxurious perfume or body mist you’re wearing is bliss to my nostrils. I breathe it in and instantly regret doing so because now you aren’t only in front of me. You’re inside my senses.

You don’t kiss me. You don’t even touch me properly. You simply walk past me, deliberately caressing my hand through my fingers. Such a small touch. Such an unfair fucking touch.

Then you draw the curtains. The AC blasts cold air through the room. You dim the lights to a romantic yellow, and when I look around, the white curtains seem to glow.

You put on the music.

Then you turn towards me. You don’t immediately come closer. You’re waiting for something. Permission, perhaps. Or surrender. You are waiting for me to decide whether we are actually going to do this.

I look around because looking directly at you has suddenly become difficult. It’s difficult to breathe around you. Ten years ago, I knew how this ended. Tonight, I know better. That’s the problem. We aren’t young enough anymore to pretend there won’t be consequences tomorrow.

And still, you hold out your hand.

Your body begins moving with the music. I look at your hand, then your face. I should say no. Instead, I place my hand in yours.

You twirl me around, and before I can steady myself, you pull me backwards towards you. My back meets your body, and I know immediately: I am stuck with you tonight.

I want to let go, and I also desperately don’t want to let go. My mind is still trying to decide whether I can allow myself one night of joy with you—one stupid, reckless, unforgivable night—and you seem to know exactly what is happening inside me. So you don’t force the decision. You dance. You wait.

My back remains against your body. I feel your warmth despite the freezing room. Your hands settle against my belly button. Your lips touch the back of my neck, slowly. A kiss. Then another, moving towards my ear, my cheek. I close my eyes.

Ten years disappear frighteningly quickly.

Your hands begin undressing me, and I DON’T STOP YOU.

That is the moment everything changes. Because I could. I could put my hand over yours. I could turn around and tell you this has gone too far. I could leave. Instead, I let you continue.

Your fingers touch me in places where I used to feel everything, and somehow you remember my body like it was yesterday we slept together. That terrifies me.

Your fingers move across my collarbone as you remove my wine-red dupatta. Wine red. Of course. You always loved me in wine. It always turned you on. You look at the colour for half a second and then at me. I know immediately that you remember.

“You always loved this colour,” I whisper.

“I still do.”

Those three words shouldn’t affect me. They do.

You undress me flawlessly, and for the first time, I don’t feel conscious about my body. This isn’t the body you knew. This body went through so much in these ten years. It changed. It lived. It survived. There are parts of this body you have never known. There are stories written into it that you weren’t there to witness.

For one second, I wonder whether you’re comparing me to the woman I was ten years ago. Then I see your face. You’re not remembering her. You’re looking at me. The woman standing in front of you now.

And something inside me snaps.

I don’t want careful anymore. I want the wild you. The aggressive you. I want all the might, the anger, the force you’ve been keeping under control since you walked into this room. Maybe I want to punish you for disappearing from this part of my life. Maybe I want you to punish me for letting ten years pass. Maybe neither thought makes any fucking sense.

I don’t care anymore.

You pin me against the wall, locking your fingers with mine. Then you kiss me. Passionately. Deeply. Your whole body presses against mine and I feel your strength, your warmth, the unmistakable familiarity of you.

You pin me a little harder. You keep kissing me. My lips. My neck. My collarbones. Lower. Every kiss makes thinking harder until thinking becomes something I no longer want. My breathing changes. A moan escapes me.

And suddenly I hate you for remembering exactly how to do that.

I pull your face back towards mine. Then I reverse us. Your back hits the wall. Now I pin you there. I kiss your lips. Your neck. Your chest. I remember where you liked to be kissed.

That is my revenge.

Because apparently I’m not the only body with a memory. I remember the reactions. The breathing. The places that once made you lose yourself. And when I hear that familiar sound of pleasure escape you, satisfaction runs through me.

There you are.

The man I remember, still somewhere inside the man standing before me.

The rest becomes frantic. Hungry. Ten years of absence compressed into minutes. We touch each other with the strange combination of memory and discovery—knowing and not knowing, recognising and learning again.

At some point you lift me and carry me towards the bed. I barely register the mattress beneath me before you’re there again. Close. Too close. Not close enough.

My legs separate as you move between them, and soon all I understand is rhythm, heat, breath, pressure, your hands holding me and the sound of my own breathing breaking apart. I gasp for air. You drop closer over me. Your hands find mine. Your fingers tighten around them.

But your eyes—your eyes don’t leave mine.

I close my eyes because suddenly this is too much. Not physically. Emotionally. Because bodies are easy. Bodies can be blamed on lust. Bodies can make mistakes.

Eyes cannot.

“Look at me.”

Your voice cuts through everything.

I keep my eyes closed.

“Look at me.”

This time it sounds almost like a plea.

I open them.

And there you are. No decade between us. No excuses. No pretending this is meaningless. Just you, looking at me exactly the way you used to.

My fingers tighten around yours. My body shudders with pleasure as I cry out, your name disappearing somewhere inside the sound.

Eventually you collapse over me. We’re both breathing as though there isn’t enough air in the entire room. For several seconds, neither of us moves.

Then you roll slightly and pull me with you. You hug me close. I grab you instinctively. My head rests on your shoulder. My legs tangle over yours. Your hand rests against my butt, pulling me closer beneath the sheets. Our bodies are damp and exhausted. The room smells like perfume, sweat and us.

The music continues humming somewhere beyond the bed.

And I look at your face.

Your eyes are closed. There is peace there. After all that rage. All that hunger. All that desperate lovemaking.

Peace.

And that’s when fear finally reaches me.

Because I could have survived the sex. I could have called it a mistake. I could have blamed the music. The wine-red dupatta. The darkness. The perfume. Ten years of curiosity. Loneliness. Lust. Anything.

But this?

Lying tangled around you afterwards as though ten years never happened? Watching you sleep against me and feeling something inside my chest become unbearably tender?

This is the dangerous part.

Oh, how much I have missed you.

The thought comes before I can stop it. And I realise, with horror, that I don’t mean your body.

I mean you.

Fuck.

I missed you.

I lean forward and kiss you. Softly. Your eyes open. You look at me for a long second.

Neither of us says what we are thinking.

What happens tomorrow? What does this mean? Why did we do this? Why did we wait ten years? Are we going to regret it?

We leave every question unanswered.

Because you kiss me back.

Then you turn me around beneath you.

And I let you.

Because apparently once wasn’t enough. Apparently ten years cannot be erased in one night. Apparently we are going to make the same mistake again. And again.

Until morning comes and forces us to remember that this room isn’t the whole world.

But right now the curtains are closed. The lights are low. The music is still playing.

Your mouth finds mine.

And tomorrow can fucking wait.