"It was years ago, in university. It was my academic adviser, both times. I needed to get into a particular class to graduate, you understand."
"Doctor Ghosh, that's not sex, that's rape you experienced. A man used his position of power and your vulnerable circumstances to violate your body and abuse you."
Zach sat transfixed as the seconds ticked by. Aanya, still facing away from him and braced against the pallet, carelessly tormented him with an exquisite view of her tight slot and mildly soiled anus. The devils in his head were cursing him forcefully for rocking the boat and were shrilly urging him to have her as offered and beg forgiveness later if need be.
Even this torment would never tear him out of what he cared about, though, what he stood for. Even so, he didn't know what to do and just knelt there on the deck and let her have her moment. She started sniffling. She turned around and looked down at him. Tears were streaming out of her eyes. "Now that you put it that way, I suppose you have a point. I did get my class, though. But it felt wrong, like a violation, like you said. It hurt the first time. The second time, I was so afraid it would hurt that it was almost worse. I've never told anybody."
Zach approached her on his knees and held her to him gently. On his knees like this, the top of his head came to just under her chin. He heard her heartbeat. "I feel terrible you had to go through that," he said. He felt her relax into him. Tears were streaming out of his eyes. Even so, he worried that he was making her uncomfortable. He was acutely aware that she was bare from the waist down. He was so close to delight. It didn't seem like she had noticed.
"It was years ago," she groaned, still obviously in tears. "This is different. I want this. The violation part, I mean. It's a necessary part, you know, for this."
Zach felt another sting for the damage the rapes caused in her life. He backed off and stood up, now towering over her. He said soothingly, professionally, "There is artificial insemination, you know. You don't need to let a man inside you to have a child anymore. It's quite reliable nowadays. You can have what you want in your life regardless. You have a choice." He looked down and could see her face twisted in anguish. Wow, he was only making it worse, maybe, more fool he. What a situation! "Don't get me wrong. I would be honored to be your lover. I'm just making the point that you're not trapped anymore. The baby you want is not the class you want, and I am not your academic adviser."
"You remind me of my father," Aanya observed quietly. "That's the kind of thing he would say to me."
"Thank you," Zach said, making an effort to keep his eyes up. "I want to apologize for touching you... intimately... before I was aware of your situation. I misunderstood."
"No, don't apologize. Of course you misunderstood. I apologize for presenting my private parts to you. I'm a disgusting whore," she sobbed. Now Aanya was really crying, "and I've abused and dishonored you, a kind, gentle man. I've ruined everything." Her face twisted and she burst out with more tears.
Zach approached and held Aanya apart from him a bit, a bit more of a professional distance so that he could look her directly in the face.He wasn't feeling very professional, though. Tears were streaming down both their faces. "Aanya, listen to me. You are not disgusting. You are not what you said; I'm not going to repeat it. You have not hurt me. I'm crying because it upsets me to see that you've been badly hurt. I know I'm a physician, and I deal with hurt people all the time; I'm not in that role right now. You haven't dishonored anything. You haven't ruined anything. Look, can we go somewhere and talk? Or after you attend to your pallets..." He broke eye contact and looked down, and couldn't help but catch an electric glimpse of her black tuft, her petite naked bronze hips. He shut his eyes. Jesus Christ he was going insane.
"Fuck the pallets!" Aanya screamed.
Zach drove Aanya to the Houston Arboretum and they walked around the lake, sat, and talked. She was very much in her element, and saw interesting things, and pointed them out to him, because she was an educator. He had hoped this place would be a refuge for her, and it appeared to be. She knew everything here, and she was surrounded by what she loved. As she gained comfort and strength, the conversation naturally came to what had happened. They spoke about her sexual history, such as it was. He found out that she'd never masturbated, and that she'd never experienced an orgasm.
Despite this, Aanya was an avid reader of romance novels. She liked the idea that things could work out this way, that there could be intimacy closer than friendship, including romantic physical intimacy. The idea did interest and even excite her. It was a connection she'd seen modeled by her parents, who seemed always in each other's arms according to her. She figured it was unusual. The details were never discussed in her family. By all indications, including her six brothers and sisters, some seemingly happily married with children of their own, physical intimacy worked between her parents. In the meantime, Aanya had thrown herself into her work, and Zach could see she was a workaholic. She used her work to distract herself from and avoid having to face the violence she'd suffered and her emotional life in general.
This conversation had brought them very close. "I'm ready to try to have what I want," Aanya declared, "I want what my parents had, and my older sister, and what all those books were pointing to, which I know the books are all made up, but the feeling of it, you know. If you're saying I could have it, I want to try to have it."
"You can have it!" insisted Zach. "Absolutely, you can have it."
"You're the only man since my father I've ever felt truly safe with, Zachary. Either men hated me or were jealous of me or worse yet, indifferent. Or they wanted to rape me. No man other than my father ever cared about me as much as you cared about me in that plane. Your first instinct was to care for me. That's one quality I admire in my own father. That's the kind of man I want as the father of my child. That's the kind of man I've always wanted to be with, but thought I never could."
They were sitting on a bench near the lake at the moment, and Zach leaned over and kissed Aanya gently on the lips. She didn't back away. He kissed her some more. When it got to the point where they were touching tongues and things, she backed away, and said, "I feel dizzy."
"Good dizzy or bad dizzy?"
"Good dizzy," she answered and smiled. "I should get back to work."
"Dizzy like in the romance novels?"
"Maybe there's something to those crazy things," Aanya said, and Zach started kissing her again. Soon they were tongue wrestling. That happened for a while, for a long while, and she broke the kisses again. "I think I'm feeling it," she proclaimed.
"I think we can make it work," Zach began, "and I have a concern. In your world, I want to point out, you'll be going from zero to a very sophisticated relationship. Our other crewmates, not universally, but for the most part, have had the chance to work out in their lives how they feel about romantic intimacy and what works and doesn't work for them. I'm not talking about the physical part. I'm talking about the emotional part, like jealousy and exclusivity, about how to fight fair; oh, there are so many things."
"I'm ready," she insisted. "Do you think I was born yesterday? Do you think I didn't see how they fought over you, how they jockeyed for position? And my attitude was, as usual, I can wait my turn. But I was intrigued, I'll admit it. Then the reports started rolling in. First the suggestive message from Alexis and Charisse, which was not off-putting, but I was indifferent. Then Colby said you really turned out to be the man of her dreams, like she always knew. Still I said to myself, she was in love with him already, of course she would say that."
"Then came the video Alexis took of you fucking Charisse. The amount of pleasure she was feeling was almost frightening. I knew this was nothing like what I'd experienced. It was overwhelming. And then the message from Colleen taking down the video and saying tone it down, girls, this was not a porn site, but we had all watched it and commented on it already anyway." Aanya noticed that Zach's expression had changed from interest to concern.
Zach had known that the women had been speaking to each other in a back channel, and probably even trading salacious comments, but he'd never imagined this. "All I want to know is does any of it disturb you, make you fearful?" he asked.
"I read all the reviews. They mattered more to me. Berte was very reluctant beforehand even though we were all encouraging her. After her evening with you, Berte said you touched her soul. She said she was in love, and she never thought she would get to be in love. It was so moving. But I scoffed at it and never really believed it could apply to me any more than the romance novels. When you appeared on the plane and interrupted me, I was afraid. I wanted to deny you and your power over women as I'd been denied. I wanted to use you like I'd been used. But you wouldn't let me."
"And the video didn't disturb you? You'd said you felt overwhelmed."
"I was disturbed at first, but then I realized that her screams were not screams of pain, and that she was begging you, begging you to do that to her, begging for it, the nasty slut. But now I also know from Berte's post that you can be gentle, are gentle. Alexis explained to me that Charisse wanted it, whatever, this way. I don't pretend to understand it."
"Do you think less of Charisse for wanting this kind of intimacy?"
"I'm sorry, that was my parents talking for a moment. I'm not the moral police, nor do I want to be. Actually, can I tell you something?"
"Of course, anything."
"I think I got excited. I started to sweat when I saw it. It was not what I wanted, but it had such intensity! My stomach fell out from under me. And then later, I saw that I'd wet myself, not that I felt myself pee at all, I was just wet. And there was this thrill of excitement, in my abdomen. I'm feeling it now, sitting next to you."
Zach kissed her again. They lashed tongues for a while, then he stopped and said, "When I want to be with a woman, it's because I'm excited, and also, I want to know her better, I want to explore her, how she feels in my hands, but also how she thinks and her feelings, what she cares about."
"So you want to be with me?" Aanya asked hopefully.
"Yes."
"What do we do then?"
"Are you sure..."
In a fit of frustration, Aanya put one of her tiny hands over Zach's big mouth to stop him. "Stop arguing before I lose my nerve!"
"Yes, ma'am." He called the hotel and made reservations, and also dinner reservations. He texted Alexis, "Missing dinner. May be late or absent again."
"What another virgin?" Alexis texted back.
"Even more tricky," Zach responded.
Alexis immediately texted back, "Let's be honest. Are we smothering you?"
Zach texted back, while Aanya waited impatiently, "Not at all. I love sleeping with all three of you. It's like a dream life, seriously. I hope that we can keep it up on Mars and you won't all drift away as more men become available."
Alexis texted, "If you keep pulling shit like this, you know we will."
"I'm sorry. I'll keep you posted." Zach knew Alexis was just upset. He knew she knew it really was important.
Zach drove Aanya back to the plane. She fussed with her pallets for another half hour until she was mostly satisfied. She called the transport people and told them the cargo could now be unloaded and stored where instructed. They grabbed her overnight stuff, drove to the Hilton, and checked in. Zach had a thought, and asked, "Can we have some plants put in her room?"
"This room doesn't come with plants, sir, but there is the garden suite."
"Tell me about it."
"It's very exclusive. The common area includes a private solarium filled with all kinds of plants, see?" he showed them a picture.
"She'll take it. Bill it to me, as usual. Thank you."
As they sat on the couch in the solarium. Aanya said, "This is very arranged, but it's nice, I like it." Zach began kissing her. They got to the point of wrestling tongues again pretty quickly. As they were kissing, he ran his hands over her body, and she didn't seem uncomfortable about that. He felt her nice, round breasts and ass through her clothing.
Aanya pressed and squirmed against Zach's body and hands as they kissed, obviously getting excited. He was getting excited, too, and not just by her sexy body. People were always so blasé about kissing after junior high school or so. This was like taking a kid to Disneyland, if that wasn't too creepy an analogy, he thought. The point being, you're enjoying it a lot more because they're enjoying this new experience so much.
Zach whispered into her ear, "Stop me if you get scared or uncomfortable, okay?"
Aanya said, "How could I stop you if...? Or if you can't...? I mean, I don't know what I mean..."
Zach stopped, thought, and realized that this was a woman who appropriately had great fear around matters of consent. Specific was great, though. He looked her in the eyes. "People have the ability to stop themselves at any point during sex. It's all very dramatic for people to say something like, 'oh I'm so close I can't stop myself,' but that's never really true. Also, good lovemaking requires clear communication, especially about when to stop, so I'm glad you brought this up. How about if you want to stop the action, say 'red,' or if you have something in your mouth, shake your head."
"Why would I have something in my mouth?" she asked, a little frightened.
"It happens during sex, believe me," Zach assured her, trying to think of an explanation that would not frighten her more. "Okay, for example, say we are kissing, like we just were, and my tongue is in your mouth. Say I'm also stepping on your foot by accident and it's hurting. You can shake your head to let me know to stop kissing you so you can tell me I'm stepping on your foot and it's hurting. Does it make sense now?"
