The room was small and hot and smelled of rosewater gone stale, of skin, of something sweeter underneath that Maya could not name. A lamp on the bedside table threw a low honeyed light across sheets the color of milk, and there was a mirror on the far wall, dull at the edges, that had seen this room a thousand times. She stood near the foot of the bed, her mother's dupatta still knotted at her shoulder, her saree feeling suddenly like something borrowed from a woman she had never met.

Shilpa came through the curtain first, her bangles making a small bright sound, and behind her the man.

He was older than Rohan. Fifty, maybe more. Thick through the shoulders, soft through the middle, a gold ring on his little finger and another in his ear. His shirt was tucked in and his shoes were good leather and he smelled of cologne laid over sweat, the way men smell when they have hurried to get somewhere they wanted to be.

He stopped when he saw Maya.

His mouth did something. Not a smile. The jaw loosened and the lips parted and the tongue came out quick to wet them, and his eyes went down her body and back up, slow, the way a man reads a price tag he already knows he will pay.

"This is for you," Shilpa said, and her hand opened toward Maya like she was presenting a dish at a table.

The man did not answer her. He was still looking.

"Five thousand," Shilpa said, and her voice had gone flat and businesslike, the silk pulled out of it. "You said five. Cash."

He pulled a fold of notes from his shirt pocket without looking away from Maya. Shilpa counted them with her thumb, quick, and folded them into her blouse, and then she turned to Maya and her face softened into something almost kind.

"I'll be in the front room," she said. "The door is thick. Nobody hears anything in this house. You can cry if you want. You can make any sound you want. Nobody will come."

She looked at the man then, and something passed between them that Maya did not understand and did not want to.

"Enjoy," Shilpa said, and went out, and the curtain swung, and the door beyond it closed with a small wooden sound.

They were alone.

The man stood where he was for a long moment. He did not move toward her. He looked at her the way a man looks at a house he is thinking of buying — the windows, the walls, where the light comes in, what it will cost to fix. His breath came through his nose, slow and audible, and his thumb turned the gold ring around his little finger, around and around.

"What is your name," he said. Not a question. The voice low and even, a man used to being answered.

"Maya."

He nodded slowly, as if the name confirmed something he had already decided. He stepped closer. One step, and then another, and the lamp light moved across his face and she saw the small broken veins in his cheeks, the grey in his stubble, the eyes that were not unkind and not kind either — just hungry, and patient with the hunger.

His thumb came up and traced her collarbone, once, from the hollow at her throat out to the bone, slow, the way you would touch something in a shop to see if it was real.

She did not move. Her breath had gone shallow and she made herself breathe deeper, made her shoulders stay down, made her chin stay up the way she had practiced in the mirror for two years.

"You are very beautiful," he said. "Do you know that."

"Yes," Maya said.

He laughed then, a short breath through the nose, surprised. "Good," he said. "I don't like false modesty. It wastes time."

His hand dropped to the knot of her dupatta and he worked it loose, and the cloth slid down her shoulder and pooled at her elbow, and he looked at the bare skin of her arm the way a thirsty man looks at water. Then he stepped back and sat down on the edge of the bed, and the mattress sighed under him, and he looked up at her from there.

"I want to tell you something first," he said. "Before we begin."

Maya waited.

"I have a daughter," he said. "She is married now. She lives in Pune. She does not call me." He said it flatly, no self-pity in it, just the fact. "I miss her. That is all. I miss her, and when I saw your picture I thought — this one. This is the one."

Maya's hands had gone cold. She folded them in front of her, one over the other, the way she did when she was nervous, and her nails pressed into her own palm.

"I want you to call me Papa," he said.

The word landed in her chest like a stone in still water. She did not move. She did not look away either. She looked at him, at his grey stubble and his good shoes and the ring he kept turning, and she understood that he was not asking her to pretend. He was asking her to give him something he had lost, and he had paid five thousand rupees for it, and Shilpa had promised him the door was thick.

"And what do I call you," he said. "When I speak to you."

"Whatever you want," Maya said. Her voice came out steady. She was proud of that.

"I'll call you Beti," he said. "My daughter. My little one."

He stood up again and came to her, and this time he did not stop at touching. He took the end of her saree where it was tucked at her waist and he pulled it, one long slow pull, and the pleats came loose and the cloth fell, and the red silk slid down her legs to the floor in a heap, and she stood in her petticoat and her blouse and her mother's black lace brassiere showing through the thin white cotton, and her sindur still red in the parting of her hair.

He looked at the sindur. His thumb touched it, light, the red powder coming away on his skin.

"Married," he said.

"Yes."

"Where is your husband."

"At home. Sleeping."

He smiled then, a real smile, small and crooked and almost sad. "Good," he said. "Then you are mine for tonight."

He reached behind her and unhooked her blouse, and it came open, and he pushed the cotton off her shoulders and down, and then he was looking at the black lace of her mother's brassiere and the heavy weight of her breasts inside it, and his breath came out of him in a long slow sound that was almost a groan.

"Take it off," he said. "The earrings first."

Maya's fingers went to her ears. They were shaking. She could feel it, the small tremor in her knuckles, and she hated it and she could not stop it, and she worked the first earring loose and it came free and she set it on the small table by the bed, and then the other, and her mother's gold jhumkas lay there in the lamplight like two drops of something spilled.

"Now the rest," he said.

She reached behind her and unhooked the brassiere herself. It slid down her arms and her breasts came free, heavy and full and warm, the nipples already drawn tight from the cool of the room and from something else she did not want to name, and the man made that sound again, low in his throat, and his hands came up and took their weight, one in each palm, and he held them like that, just held them, weighing them, his thumbs moving slow across the nipples.

"Beti," he said.

"Papa," Maya said. The word came out of her before she had decided to say it, and once it was out it sat in the room between them, and she felt something in her chest go loose and something else go tight.

He groaned. His hands tightened on her breasts, not rough, just firm, and he bent his head and took one nipple in his mouth and sucked, hard, and Maya's whole body jerked toward him and a sound came out of her that she had not planned.

He sucked and licked and pulled, and his other hand kneaded the other breast, and Maya stood with her head back and her mouth open and her hands at her sides, not knowing where to put them, and the lamp light was warm on her skin and the rosewater smell was drowned now under the smell of him, cologne and sweat and the faint sourness of a man who had hurried.

"Say it again," he said against her skin.

"Papa."

"Again."

"Papa, please. It's my first time."

The words came out shaking and true, and they were not entirely a performance, and the man lifted his head and looked at her with something in his eyes that was almost tenderness, and he said, "I know, Beti. I know. Papa will be gentle."

He took her by the wrist and drew her to the bed and sat her down on the edge of it, and then he stood in front of her and began to undress himself. He did it slowly, methodically, the way a man undresses at the end of a long day, and Maya watched. The shirt came off and there was grey hair on his chest and a soft belly above his belt, and the belt came unbuckled and the buckle hit the wooden floor with a clatter that made her jump, and then the trousers came down and he stepped out of them and stood in his shorts, and the shape of him was plain through the cotton, thick and dark and already straining.

He pushed the shorts down and his cock came free, heavy and thick and standing up from a nest of dark hair, the head of it wet already, and Maya looked at it and her mouth went dry and her cunt clenched around nothing, once, hard, the way it did when she was afraid and wanting at the same time.

"Come here," he said, and sat down on the bed beside her and pulled her onto her knees on the mattress, facing away from him, and arranged her the way he wanted her — bent forward, her hands braced on the sheets, her hips up, her legs spread, and her petticoat still on and her mother's black lace panties underneath, the only two things he had not taken.

He pulled the petticoat down over her hips and it pooled around her knees, and then he hooked his thumbs in the waistband of the panties and drew them down slow, over the curve of her ass, down her thighs, and off, and she was naked now except for the sindur in her hair and the bangles on her wrists and the anklets she had not taken off.

His hand came down on her ass, not hard, just a flat warm weight, and he rubbed it there, slow, and then his fingers slid between her legs and found her.

She was wet. She had been wet since he said Beti. Her cunt was slick and open and his fingers moved in it easily, two of them, sliding up and down her slit and then pressing in, one knuckle, two, and Maya's back arched and she made a sound into the sheets.

"My daughter is wet for her Papa," he said, and his voice had gone rough. "Say it."

"I'm wet," Maya said, her face in the silk. "Papa, I'm wet."

He pulled his fingers out and she heard him spit, and then his hand was on her ass again, and then the head of his cock was there, blunt and hot, pressing against the tight ring of her ass, and Maya's whole body went rigid.

"No," she said. "Not there. Papa, not there—"

"Shh," he said, and his hand came around and covered her mouth, palm flat over her lips, and his other hand held her hip, and he pushed.

The head went in and the pain was white and bright and tore a choked cry out of her throat, muffled under his palm, and her fingers dug into the silk sheet and twisted it, and her whole body tried to pull away and could not, and he held her there, not moving, letting her feel the stretch of him.

"That's a good daughter," he whispered. "That's my good girl. Breathe."

She breathed. It came out of her nose in short hard bursts against his hand, and slowly the white pain eased into something else, a deep full burning pressure, and her body stopped fighting and started, against everything she knew, to open.

He pushed in further. Slow, an inch at a time, and she felt every inch of it, the thick drag of him through her, the way he filled her until there was no room left, and her tears came then, hot and sudden, running down her cheeks and over his fingers and onto the silk.

"Papa," she sobbed against his palm.

"I know," he said. "I know, Beti. It's the first time. It will feel good soon."

He pulled back, almost all the way out, and then he thrust in again, and the first real thrust landed and she moaned, loud, and his hand pressed harder over her mouth and he began to move.