She woke to gray. Not the wet slate of the window — that had been last night. This was the other gray, the one that comes before the birds, when the room has no color in it at all and the shapes are just shapes. His hand was still around hers. Loose now, the fingers not curled so much as resting, the way a man's hand rests on a rail he's forgotten he's holding. She lay still and listened to him breathe and counted the things she could hear: his breath, the fan's slow tick, a dog somewhere down the lane, and under all of it the first bird, testing its voice like a woman trying on a new bangle to see if it fits.

She turned her head on the blanket, slow, so the wool wouldn't rasp. The photograph was there on the nightstand, the woman in the sari, flat-eyed in her frame. Maya looked at her a long time. Then she looked at the man beside her — the salt in his stubble, the line between his brows that didn't go away even in sleep, the shoulder that had been a hand's width from hers all night and was now a hand's width from hers still, because neither of them had moved.

She slipped her fingers free. One at a time, the way you take a bangle off, thumb first. He didn't stir. She sat up on the edge of the bed and the wool came away from her skin with a small sound, and the cold of the room found her all at once — her shoulders, her back, the underside of her breasts where they hung heavy and full. She sat there a moment, naked, letting it find her. Then she stood.

The floor was cement, and cold, and she felt every step of it. Past the duty belt on the floor, past his boots standing at attention by the door, out into the narrow passage that ran the length of the house. The passage was darker than the room. She walked it with her hands out, one palm brushing the wall, until the wall gave way to a doorway and the doorway gave way to a kitchen the size of her almirah at home.

She found the light by feel. A single bulb, no shade, hanging on its cord. It came on yellow and showed her everything: a two-burner stove, a steel kettle with a dent in its side, a tin of tea, a tin of sugar, a small steel pot of milk on the counter with a saucer over it to keep the flies out. A shelf with three cups. Two were steel. One was ceramic, white, with a chip out of the rim the size of a fingernail. She picked up the chipped one and turned it in the light. This was his. You could tell. A man doesn't keep a chipped cup unless it's his.

She filled the kettle at the tap — the water came out cold and smelled faintly of iron — and set it on the burner and lit the flame with a match from the box beside the stove. Then she stood and watched it, the way she'd watched her mother do it, once, a long time ago, before the leaving. Her mother had made tea the way she did everything: fast, bored, one eye on the mirror. Maya made it slow. She warmed the pot first, the way the tea-seller at the corner did, swirling a little hot water around and pouring it out. She measured the tea leaves into the pot with the flat of her palm. Two spoons of sugar, level, not heaped. The milk she let come to a shiver at the edge of the pot and then poured it in a thin stream, watching it turn the color of wet clay.

The smell rose up and filled the little kitchen, and it was the smell of every morning she had ever known, and for a moment she was not in a soldier's house in a passage she had never walked, she was home, in the kitchen with the window over the sink, and her father was still asleep and the day was still hers. Then the kettle ticked as it cooled, and she was here. She poured the tea into the chipped cup through a strainer, and carried it back down the dark passage with both hands, the warmth of it coming up through the ceramic into her fingers.

He was awake.

She saw it the moment she crossed the threshold — the change in the room, the way the air had a witness in it now. He was on his back still, one arm under his head, and his eyes were open and on her. Not on the cup. On her. She was naked, and she had forgotten it until his eyes reminded her, and she felt it come over her skin the way the cold had come over it in the kitchen, only warmer, and lower. His gaze went down her, unhurried, the way it had gone down her at the door, and it stopped where it always stopped — at her breasts, heavy and swaying with her step, the dark of her nipples, the soft hairless mound below, and the small soft cock between her thighs, tucked and quiet, and the long smooth line of her legs.

She did not cover herself. She had stopped covering herself in this room a long time ago, somewhere between the first night and this one. She walked to the nightstand and set the cup down beside the photograph, and the china made a small click on the wood, and she sat on the edge of the bed, and the wool scratched the backs of her thighs.

"You made tea," he said.

"Yes."

"In my cup."

"It was the only one that looked like it was yours."

"You knew which one."

"I knew." She kept her eyes on the cup. "A man keeps the chipped one for himself. The good ones are for guests."

Something moved at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile. The place a smile would go, if he ever put one there. He reached for the cup, and she watched his hand — the square nails, the scar across the knuckle, the way he held the chipped rim to his mouth without looking at it, as if his hand knew the cup better than his eyes did. He drank. He set it down. And then his hand came off the cup and found her wrist.

"Come here," he said.

He pulled. Not hard. He didn't have to pull hard. She came down onto the bed on her side, and he rolled toward her, and his mouth found her throat before she had finished the breath she'd started. He kissed her there, under the jaw, where the pulse was, and she felt her own pulse against his lips and knew he felt it too. His stubble scraped. His hand came up the back of her neck and into her hair, and he gathered the long black weight of it and held it, not pulling, just holding, the way you hold a rope you don't intend to let go of.

"The tea," she said, into the ceiling.

"Let it cool."

"It won't be good cold."

"Then it won't be good." His mouth moved down her throat. "I'm not drinking it."

He moved down her throat to her collarbone, and lower. His mouth closed over her nipple and she felt the pull of it all the way down into her belly, a hot wire drawn from her chest to between her legs. She arched without meaning to. Her hand came up and found the back of his head and her long painted nails rested there against his scalp, and he sucked, and the pull came again, and she made a sound she didn't plan — low, in the throat, almost a word.

"Say my name," he said, against her skin.

She knew what he wanted. She had known it since the first night, and she had given it to him, and she would give it again. "Papa."

He sucked harder. His hand came up under her other breast and lifted it, weighing it, his thumb dragging across the nipple until it stood up hard and dark, and she felt the drag all the way down her spine. "Again."

"Papa."

He lifted his head. "You're wet," he said. It wasn't a question. He had his knee between her thighs now, and he had felt it — the slick heat of her against his skin, the way she had opened for his knee without being asked.

"Yes," she said.

"Say it."

"I'm wet."

"Wet for who."

"For you." Her voice came out lower than she meant it to. "For Papa."

He pushed her thighs apart with his knee. Slow, the way he did everything — the way he'd cleaned her with the handkerchief, the way he'd drunk from the chipped cup. He settled between her legs and his cock came up against her, hard and hot and already wet at the tip, and he dragged it along her — up the length of her slick, over the small soft cock that lay tucked against her belly, and back down — and she felt every inch of the drag, the wet sound of it, the way her hips followed him when he pulled away.

"Don't move," he said.

"I'm not."

"You are. You're following me."

"Then stop pulling away."

He did it again — the long slow drag, tip to root and back, and this time when she followed he let her, and she felt him smile against her throat, the smallest shift of his jaw, and she wanted to hit him for it and wanted him inside her more.

"Look at me," he said.

She looked. His eyes were dark brown and steady and they did not leave hers. He put the head of his cock against her and pushed, and she felt herself open around him — the stretch, the slow give of it, the way her body took him in one long inch at a time until he was seated to the root and his hips were flush against the backs of her thighs. She gasped. Her nails dug into his shoulders and left four small crescents, and he did not flinch, and she felt the weight of him inside her, filling her, and she clenched around him just to feel it — the way he twitched when she did.

"There," he said. "That."

"You like that."

"Do it again."

She did it again — the slow clench, the grip and release — and watched his jaw go tight, the muscle jumping under the stubble, and she did it a third time and he caught her hip in his hand and held her still. "Enough," he said. "You'll make me finish before I've had you."

He pulled back, almost all the way out, until just the head of him was still inside her, and then he pushed in again, slow and deep, and she felt the whole length of him slide through her wet, and the sound it made, and her own breath going out of her in a rush.

"Again," she said.

"Say please."

"Please."

He did it again. And again. Slow, deep, unhurried, the same rhythm every time, and she lay under him and took it and felt her cunt grip him on every stroke and her thighs begin to shake at the edges. His hands came down onto her hips and held her there, thumbs in the soft hollows, and he watched her face the whole time — her mouth open, her eyes half shut, the long hair spread out on the wool beneath her like spilled ink.

"You wanted to be awake before me," he said. His voice was low and even, the same voice he used for everything, and it did something to her that the thrusting didn't.

"Yes."

"Why."

"So you'd see me first." She said it before she could weigh it, and it came out true, and she felt her face go hot with it. "So the first thing you saw would be me."

"And not the photograph."

She turned her face away, into the wool. He caught her chin and brought it back. "Answer me."

"Not her." The words came out small and hot. "I don't want to be the second thing you look at in the morning. I want to be the first."

He looked at her a long moment, still moving inside her, slow. Then he pulled out and sat back on his heels, and his cock stood up from his body slick and dark with her, and he took her by the hips and turned her, and she understood and came up onto her knees. She straddled him. She took him in her hand — the heat of it, the wet, the pulse she could feel under her palm — and she guided him back to her and sank down onto him, and he filled her all the way to the hilt in one long slide, and she heard herself moan, and did not stop it.

"That's it," he said. "Take it all."

"I am."

"All the way down. Don't hover."

"I'm not hovering." She settled onto him, hip to hip, and felt him bottom out inside her, and her breath caught. "There. That's all of it."

She rode him. Her hands on his chest, her knees on either side of his hips, her heavy breasts swaying with every rise and fall, the long hair swinging down over her shoulders and brushing his chest. He lay beneath her and watched her and let her work, one hand on her hip and one hand moving up her belly to her breast, and she ground down on him and felt him hit something deep inside her that made her whole body tighten like a fist. The wool was scratchy under her knees. The tea was going cold on the nightstand. The birds were loud now, all of them, the whole gray morning full of them.

"Sir," she said. She didn't plan it. It came out of her the way the moan had.

"Say it again."

"Sir."

"Both," he said. "Give me both."

"Sir. Papa." Her voice broke in the middle of it. "Papa, sir—"

His hips came up to meet her, and the rhythm changed — faster now, harder, the slap of their skin loud in the small room, and she leaned back and put her hands on his thighs behind her and let him fuck up into her, and the angle was deep and wrong and perfect, and she felt it start low in her belly and climb. He watched her face. He always watched her face. He wanted to see it happen.

"Don't look away," he said.

"I'm not."

"You're close. I can feel you."

"So are you."

"Not yet." His hand came up and closed around her throat — not squeezing, just holding, the heel of his palm on her pulse. "You first. That's the rule."

"Come," he said.

She came. Her cunt clenched around him in long waves and her thighs locked and her nails dug into his thighs and she made a sound that had no shape to it, and he drove up into her through all of it, watching, and then he came too — she felt it, the jerk of him inside her, the heat of his seed spilling up into her, and she stayed seated on him, taking it, her body still gripping him, and she felt him pulse again and again until he was done.

She did not get up. She stayed there, on him, filled with him, both of them breathing hard in the gray light, and she looked down at his face and he looked up at hers, and neither of them said anything. His hand came up and pushed the hair back off her face and held it behind her ear, and his thumb moved once along her jaw.

The tea sat on the nightstand, cold now, in the chipped cup. The birds had won.