The storeroom smelled of roasted beans and dust, and Saan's back hit the shelving hard enough that a tin of something rattled above his shoulder. Tina's hand was still on the latch behind her, the click of the lock settling into the quiet like a stone dropping into still water.

"You remember me," she said. Not a question.

He did. The lunch table yesterday, the way she'd laughed at something Meher said, the way her hand had found his arm and stayed a beat too long, her fingers pressing into the sleeve of his shirt like she was testing the fabric. Like she was testing him.

"Tina," he said, and her mouth curved.

"You said my name like you've been practicing."

She stepped in and the space between them went tight. She was taller than he'd thought, or maybe it was the way she moved, all easy confidence, her hips swaying as she closed the distance until her breasts pressed flat against his chest. Full and soft and warm through the thin cotton of her uniform, and he could feel the shape of her nipples against his ribs, could feel the slow push of her breath.

"I saw the way you looked at me," she whispered. "At the table. When Meher introduced us. You looked at my mouth and then you looked away, and I knew."

"Knew what?"

"That you were thinking about it." Her hand came up and her fingers traced the line of his jaw, light, almost teasing. "Thinking about what it would be like."

His throat was dry. "Tina—"

"Don't." Her thumb pressed against his lower lip, and her eyes were dark and steady. "Don't pretend you don't want this. I saw it. I've seen it a hundred times, that look, and I know what it means."

She dropped her hand to his belt, and the leather gave under her fingers with a soft sound. The buckle clicked. She worked the button of his jeans open, the zipper's teeth parting, and then her hand was inside, finding him through the cotton of his boxers, gripping him with a confidence that made his breath catch.

"There he is," she murmured, and her fingers curled around the shape of him, stroking once, slow. "God, you're already hard. Did you think about me all night?"

He couldn't answer. Her hand was moving, and the pressure was just right, and she was watching his face with a lazy satisfaction that made his stomach clench.

"I thought about you," she said. "After the table, I went home and I thought about that mouth of yours, the way you barely said a word all lunch. Quiet ones are always the hungriest."

She pulled his cock out and the air hit him cool, and then her hand was wrapped around him, stroking him slow, and he had to brace his palm against the shelf behind him. Flour dust drifted in the slant of light from the high window, hanging in the air like something suspended.

"Look at me," she said, and he did. And she dropped to her knees.

The storeroom floor was concrete and cold, and she didn't seem to care. She knelt in front of him with her mouth already open, and her tongue came out and traced the length of him from root to tip, slow and deliberate, her eyes never leaving his face. Then she took him in.

Her mouth was hot and wet and she went down on him like she'd been waiting for it, taking him deep in one smooth motion until her nose pressed against his belly, her throat opening around him, and he heard himself make a sound he didn't recognize. Her hands came up to grip his hips and she pulled back, slow, letting him feel every inch of the drag, and then she pushed forward again, deeper, her throat working around him.

"Tina," he breathed, and her eyes flicked up to meet his, dark and pleased.

She moaned, a low sound that vibrated through him, and the vibration ran down his spine like a current. Her mouth was so wet, so warm, and she was taking him so deep, her throat opening for him again and again, and the sound of it filled the little room — the wet, slick sound of her mouth on his cock, the muffled hum of her pleasure.

Her hands moved from his hips to his thighs, gripping the denim, and she pushed him back against the shelf and took him deeper still, until he felt himself hit the back of her throat and she swallowed around him, and his knees went weak.

"Fuck," he gasped, and she made a sound that might have been a laugh, muffled against his cock, and pulled off him just enough to speak.

"That's it," she said, her voice rough, her lips slick. "Say it. Tell me how it feels."

"Like—" He couldn't find the words. She was looking up at him from her knees, her mouth wet, her hand stroking him slow, and the sight of it was almost too much. "Like you're trying to swallow me whole."

"Maybe I am." And she took him back in, deep, and held him there, her throat working around him, her eyes watering just slightly, and she didn't pull away. She held him at the root, her nose buried in the coarse hair at his base, and swallowed once, twice, and the pressure of it made his hips jerk.

She pulled off with a wet sound and stroked him, slow, her thumb catching at the head, spreading the slickness of her spit down his shaft. "You taste good," she said. "I knew you would."

She went back down on him, and this time she set a rhythm, bobbing her head, her hand working the base of him, her mouth taking him deep again and again. The storeroom was warm and close, the smell of coffee and dust and her — something sweet, something like shampoo — and the only sounds were the wet suction of her mouth and the occasional rattle of a tin when his shoulder knocked the shelf.

"Tina," he said again, and she hummed around him, and the vibration made his hand clench on the shelf.

She pulled off, panting, her lips swollen and slick. "Not yet," she said. "I'm not done with you."

She stood, and she turned, and she bent over the sack of flour. It was a heavy burlap thing, waist-high, and she folded herself over it, her hands braced on the shelf beyond, her ass in the air, and she looked back at him over her shoulder.

"Come on," she said. "I know you want to."

Her uniform skirt had ridden up, and underneath she was wearing nothing. Nothing at all. Her ass was bare, full and round, pale against the dark of the storeroom, and he could see the wet shine of her, the glistening evidence of how much she wanted this.

"You planned this," he said, and his voice came out rough.

"I hoped." She reached back and spread herself for him, her fingers parting her, showing him the pink of her, the slickness of her. "I hoped you'd follow me in here. I hoped you'd want this as much as I do."

He stepped forward, his hands coming up to grip her hips, and she made a small sound of approval. He lined himself up and pushed, and she was so wet that he slid in all at once, buried to the root in a single thick thrust, and she cried out, a sharp sound that she cut off by biting her lip.

"Oh," she breathed. "Oh, god."

He pulled back and thrust again, and the sound of it — the wet slap of his hips against her ass — filled the little room. She was so tight, so hot, clenching around him, and she was looking back at him with her mouth open, her eyes dark.

"Harder," she said. "Fuck me harder."

He did. He gripped her hips and he fucked her, hard and deep, the sack of flour shifting under her weight, her breasts swinging beneath her uniform, her ass bouncing with every thrust. The sound of it was obscene, wet and rhythmic, and she was moaning now, loud, her fingers scrabbling at the shelf.

"Yes," she gasped. "Yes, just like that. Don't stop."

He reached around and found her clit, slick and swollen, and she cried out, her whole body jerking. Her hand came back and gripped his thigh, her nails digging in, and she pushed back against him, meeting his thrusts, taking him deeper.

"I'm close," she said, her voice breaking. "I'm so close. Please."

He fucked her harder, his thumb pressing on her clit, and she screamed — a raw, hoarse sound that she muffled by pressing her face against the shelf — and her cunt clenched around him, rippling, and the feeling of it, the tight pulse of her orgasm around his cock, was enough to push him over.

"Tina," he gasped, and he came inside her, his hips jerking, his come spilling into her in thick pulses. She moaned, long and low, her body still clenching around him, milking him, and he held her hips and rode it out until he was empty and shaking.

For a long moment neither of them moved. The storeroom was quiet except for their breathing, the dust still drifting in the light. He was still inside her, softening, and she was still bent over the sack of flour, her forehead pressed to the shelf.

Then she laughed, a low, breathless sound. "Well," she said. "That was worth the wait."

She pulled away from him, and his cock slipped out with a wet sound, and she straightened, turning to face him. Her lips were swollen, her cheeks flushed, and she was smiling — a slow, satisfied smile that made his stomach flip.

"I knew you'd be good," she said. She reached out and touched his chest, just above his heart. "I could tell. The quiet ones always are."

She tucked herself back into her uniform, smoothing her skirt down, and she walked to the door and unlocked it. The sound of the café beyond rushed in — the clatter of cups, the murmur of voices, the hiss of the espresso machine — and she looked back at him over her shoulder, her hand on the latch.

"Same time tomorrow?" she said. And she was gone, the door swinging shut behind her, leaving him alone in the storeroom with the smell of coffee and sex and the flour sack still dented where she'd bent over it.

He stood there a long moment, his hands still half-raised as if she might come back through the door. The lock had clicked behind her, and the sound of the café had swallowed her footsteps, and the storeroom was suddenly too quiet, too still, the dust hanging in the light like it had been frozen mid-drift. He let his arms fall and reached down to tuck himself back into his boxers, the denim rough against skin still slick with her, and the zip of his fly sounded loud in the silence.

His hands were not quite steady. He looked at them — at the faint tremor in his fingers — and he thought of the lunch table, of Meher's sharp eyes and her hand on his shoulder, and of Tina's hand on his arm, a beat too long, testing the fabric. Testing him. He had not known what she was testing for. He knew now.

The flour sack still bore the dent of her weight, the burlap creased where her hips had pressed it, and he could see the faint smear of her wetness on the sack's coarse weave, a darker patch in the pale dust. He looked away, and then he looked back, and he could not stop looking. The storeroom smelled of coffee and of her — something sweet, something like shampoo — and beneath it, the salt and musk of what they had done, hanging in the air like the flour dust.

He found his phone in his pocket and checked it without thinking. No messages. No missed calls. Just the time — mid-afternoon, the lunch rush thinning beyond the door, the clatter of cups growing sparser. He thought of Meher, of the way her hand had gripped his shoulder that morning, of the godown gate and the promise he had made. He thought of Tina's mouth, of the way she had looked up at him from her knees, and he felt the heat of it rise in him again, unwanted and undeniable.

He wiped his hands on his jeans and straightened his shirt, tucking it in with movements that felt too careful, too deliberate, as if the storeroom walls could see him. The tin that had rattled above his shoulder had gone still. The dust had settled. The flour sack stood dented and waiting, and the door was closed, and the lock was off, and the café beyond was loud with the ordinary sound of people drinking coffee, and none of them knew.

He pushed off the shelf and walked to the door, and his hand found the latch, and he paused there, one last breath in the quiet, the smell of her still on him. Then he opened the door and stepped out into the light, and the door swung shut behind him, and the storeroom was empty except for the dented sack and the drifting dust and the faint, fading smell of what had happened there.

The café hit him with its ordinary noise — the grinder's growl, a spoon against a saucer, two women arguing about a parking ticket at the window table — and Saan stood a moment in the doorway of the storeroom, letting his eyes adjust to the brightness after the dim. His knees still felt loose. His shirt was tucked wrong somewhere at the small of his back, and he could feel the damp of her on his thigh where he'd wiped his hand, going cool now in the air.

He started toward the front, meaning to leave, meaning to get outside and let the wind off the street take the smell of her off him before he had to be anywhere.

And then he saw her.

Tina was behind the counter with a cloth in her hand, wiping down the steam wand, and she was not looking at the wand. She was looking at him — had been looking at him, he understood in the space of one heartbeat, the whole time the storeroom door had been shut, waiting for it to open. Her eyes came up the moment he stepped into the room, as if he'd been on a string, and they found his and held.

Her lips moved. Not a full smile — something smaller than that, tucked into one corner of her mouth and kept there, private.

He stopped walking. He didn't mean to; his feet just did it, planted him there between the pastry case and the stack of takeaway cups, and the café went on around him as if nothing had happened at all. A man in a grey coat collected a flat white. The grinder screamed and stopped.

Tina set the cloth down, folded it once with two fingers, and came out from behind the counter.

She walked slowly. She had the kind of walk that made the room feel smaller than it was, all unhurried weight, and her apron was tied at the waist and her hair had come loose from its band on one side, a dark curl lying against her cheek. He noticed that — the curl, the way it moved when she tilted her head — and he noticed that he was noticing it, and that his mouth had gone dry again.

"You're still standing there," she said, when she was close enough that he could smell the coffee on her hands.

"I was going to leave."

"I know." She reached past him — her arm brushing his chest, deliberate, unhurried — and pushed the storeroom door shut behind him until the latch caught. "You forgot to lock it back. Anyone could've walked in on the flour sack."

"Tina."

"Mm." She was looking at his collar now, at his throat, and there was something in her face that he couldn't read and couldn't look away from. "You've got dust on you. Here." She lifted her hand and brushed at his shoulder, once, twice, her palm flat and warm through the cotton, and then her hand stayed there, resting on the bone of his shoulder the way Meher's had that morning, only it wasn't the same at all. Meher's grip had been a warning. This was something else. This was a hand that had decided to keep him a moment longer.

"I should get back," he said.

"Should you."

"I have work."

"You had work an hour ago too." Her thumb moved along his collarbone, slow, and she watched her own hand do it as if it interested her. "And you didn't go. You followed me in there instead. So don't stand in front of me now and talk about work."

He had no answer for that. She was right, and the rightness of it sat in his chest like a swallowed stone.

She let her hand drop. "Come and sit," she said. "I'll make you a coffee. On the house. You look like a man who needs to sit down."

"I don't—"

"Sit down, Saan."

He sat. There was a small table by the window, the one with the chipped edge, and he took the chair that put his back to the wall without thinking about why he chose it. Through the glass the afternoon was going grey early, the way November does in this city, the light thinning out like something being poured away.

Tina worked the machine with her back to him, and he watched her shoulders move under the uniform, watched the small efficient turn of her wrist as she tamped the grounds, and he thought about the way those same hands had gripped his hips and pulled him deep, and he had to look down at the table.

She brought the cup over and set it down in front of him and did not go away. She pulled out the other chair and sat, her elbows on the table, her chin on her folded hands, and looked at him across the steam.

"So," she said.

"So."

"Tell me something." Her eyes were steady. "When you were in there — when I had you in my mouth — were you thinking about me? Or were you thinking about getting out?"

He picked up the cup. The heat of it went into his palms. "What kind of question is that."

"An honest one. I told you what I saw at the table. I told you I went home and thought about your mouth." She tilted her head, and the curl moved again. "I'd like to know if I was the only one doing the thinking."

He drank. The coffee was bitter and good and it gave him a moment. "You weren't the only one," he said, into the cup.

"Good." She sat back, satisfied, and something in her shoulders let go. "I don't like being the only one. It makes me feel foolish, and I don't care for it."

He set the cup down. "Why did you lock the door?"

"Because I wanted you." She said it plainly, no flinch in it at all. "Because yesterday I watched you all through lunch and you barely said a word, and Meher kept her hand on your shoulder like she owned it, and I thought — well. If she can do that, I can do this. And I wanted to know what you'd do if I did."

"You planned the whole thing."

"I planned some of it." A small shrug. "I didn't plan on how you'd look at me when I went down. That part was a surprise. You looked at me like I was the only thing in the room."

His throat worked. "You were."

She smiled then — a real one, wide and quick, and it changed her whole face, made her look younger and warmer and a little dangerous. "There," she said. "That's what I wanted to hear."

A chair scraped behind them. The two women at the window table gathered their coats and their argument and went out into the grey, and the door swung shut and the bell above it chimed, and the café was quieter now, only a handful of people left, the afternoon thinning toward the dead hour before the evening rush.

Tina leaned forward again, and her voice dropped. "Will you be here tomorrow?"

"Tina—"

"I'm not asking for anything." She turned her cup around on the table, once, twice. "I don't want a thing from you. I'm not the kind of woman who sits by the phone. But I'm here every day, six to four, and I know what I like, and I liked today." She looked up. "So. Will you be here?"

He thought about the godown gate. He thought about Kusum and Meher and the morning light on their faces. He thought about the promise he'd made — I won't leave you at the gate — and about how far away that morning already felt from this small table by the window, with the steam rising and her eyes on him.

"I don't know," he said. Which was the truest thing he'd said all day.

Tina nodded slowly. "That's an honest answer. I can work with honest." She stood and took his empty cup, and her fingers brushed his on the handle, and neither of them pretended it was an accident. "Drink it before it goes cold next time. You let it sit too long."

She went back behind the counter, and he watched her go — the swing of her hips, the cloth picked up again, the steam wand wiped down with the same unhurried competence — and he understood that he had been dismissed, gently, and that he would think about it the whole way home.

He stood. He got his coat from the hook by the door, and he was reaching for the handle when a customer came in — a man in a hurry, phone to his ear, wanting a double shot — and Tina turned to the machine, and the moment stretched and broke.

But before she turned, her eyes came back to him one last time. Held. The smile at the corner of her mouth, tucked away and kept.

Then she was pulling the shot, and the grinder was screaming again, and Saan pushed out into the cold.

The wind hit him like a flat hand. He stood on the pavement with his collar up and his hands in his pockets, and the street went on around him — a bus sighing to a stop, a man selling roasted peanuts from a cart, the smell of them mixing with the smell of her that was still on his fingers, and he pulled his hand out of his pocket and looked at it, at the faint shine of the coffee on his knuckle, and he did not know what he was supposed to do with the rest of the day.

His phone was in his other pocket. He took it out and looked at it, and there was still nothing on it — no messages, no missed calls, the screen bright and empty in the grey light — and he thought about the godown gate in the morning, and Kusum's hand on his misbuttoned shirt, and Meher's grip on his shoulder, hard, undecided.

He put the phone away.

Behind the glass, Tina had her back to him now, working, and the café was warm and gold and full of ordinary people, and none of them knew. He turned and walked, and the cold went through his coat, and the smell of coffee and of her went with him down the street.

He got ten steps before he stopped.

Not because he'd decided anything. His feet just quit, the way they'd quit in the café doorway, and he stood in the middle of the pavement with the cold coming up through his soles and the crowd splitting around him like water around a stone. A woman with a bag of vegetables knocked his elbow and said something he didn't catch. He stepped aside, into the lee of the café's front window, and turned.

Through the glass, past the gold light and the slanted reflection of the street, Tina was at the counter with her back half-turned — and her head was up, her chin lifted, her eyes finding him through the window as though she'd known exactly where he'd be standing. She hadn't looked up at the door. She'd looked up at the glass.

She did not wave. She did not lift a hand or mouth a word. She simply held his eyes over the pastry case with the cloth stopped in her fingers, and the small smile came back into the corner of her mouth, slower this time, the way a match catches when it's been struck twice.

Saan stood there with his collar up and his hands jammed in his pockets and did not move. The wind pushed at his back. The peanut cart hissed somewhere behind him. And he understood, in a way that sat low and warm in his stomach, that she had been watching him walk away the whole time, and that she had waited for him to turn around, and that he had turned around.

Then the bell over the door chimed, and a woman in a wet headscarf came in shaking the weather off her sleeves and calling out an order, and Tina's eyes came away from the glass — but not before she'd let the smile finish, unhurried, as if she had all afternoon and he had nowhere to be.

The bell kept chiming for a moment after the woman in the headscarf came through it, and Saan stood on the pavement with his hands still jammed in his pockets, watching Tina's back as she reached for a cup from the stack. She set it under the group head and pulled the shot without looking at him, and he understood that the window moment was over, that she had given him the smile and the held look and now she was working, and that it was his move.

He didn't make it. He stood another thirty seconds, long enough for the cold to get through his coat and into his shoulders, long enough for the peanut cart to hiss and the bus to sigh past, and then he turned and walked. He got as far as the corner of the block before his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he took it out expecting nothing, expecting the bright empty screen, and instead there was a message from a number he didn't have saved.

It said: You looked back. Come to the alley door. It's unlocked.

He read it twice. The wind moved over the screen and his thumb was cold. He thought about the godown gate, about Kusum's hand on his misbuttoned shirt, about Meher's grip on his shoulder, hard, undecided. He thought about the flour sack and the dent of her weight in it, and about the way Tina had looked at him through the glass with the cloth stopped in her fingers, the smile like a match struck twice.

He put the phone back in his pocket. And then he turned around and walked back the way he'd come.

The alley ran along the side of the café, narrow and dark, the grey of the afternoon cut off by the walls. There was a steel door at the end of it, painted the same green as the trim, and when he tried the handle it gave under his hand. The door opened into a short passage lined with sacks of beans and a stack of crates, and at the end of it the café opened out, warm and gold, the grinder growling somewhere beyond a half-wall.

Tina was there, half in the light, her apron off now, her uniform shirt untucked on one side. She had her phone in her hand and she was looking at it, and she looked up when the door clicked shut behind him, and she didn't smile this time. She just looked at him.

"You came back," she said.

"You told me to."

"I didn't tell you to. I asked." She put her phone down on a crate. "There's a difference."

He stood in the passage with the smell of roasted beans around him, and she came closer, and the space between them went tight the way it had in the storeroom. Her hand came up and found his collar, and she turned it down flat, smoothing the fabric, and her fingers brushed the skin of his throat.

"You've got dust on you still," she said. "In your hair."

"Tina."

"Mm." She was looking at his mouth. "I close in twenty minutes. The other girl's already gone. It's just me and the machine, and I can leave it." Her eyes came up. "I live a block from here. Top floor. There's a bed with a real mattress, and I don't have to bend you over a sack of flour to have you."

His throat was dry. "You're asking me—"

"I'm telling you where I'll be." She stepped back, and her hand dropped from his collar. "You can come with me now, or you can walk away, and either way I'll finish my shift and go home and sleep. I'm not going to chase you down the street." She turned toward the counter. "Door's still unlocked. You know where to find me."

She walked back into the gold light of the café, and he stood in the passage with the sacks of beans and the smell of her still on his fingers, and he knew, in the low warm way he'd known at the window, that he was going to follow her.

He waited. He didn't plan to; his body just did it, standing in the passage with his back against the crates while the café went through its last twenty minutes around him — the grinder growling and stopping, the hiss of the steam wand, the clatter of cups being wiped down and put away. Through the half-wall he could see her moving, her shoulders under the uniform, her hair loose on one side, and he watched her the way she'd watched him through the glass, and he did not move.

She locked the front door at four. She turned the sign to CLOSED and pulled the shade down over the glass, and then she came back through the passage to where he stood, and she looked at him with her head tilted, the curl against her cheek.

"You waited," she said.

"You knew I would."

"I hoped." She reached past him and took her coat off a hook, and she shrugged into it, and then she took his hand. Her fingers laced through his, warm and sure, and she pulled him toward the steel door. "Come on. It's cold out."

The walk was one block, and she held his hand the whole way, her thumb moving over his knuckles, and the city went past them grey and indifferent. Her building was old, a walk-up with a buzzer that she opened with a key, and the stairs creaked under their feet, and she didn't let go of his hand once.

Her apartment was small and warm. A living room with a couch and a lamp, a kitchenette with a kettle, a door at the end of the hall that was open, showing the foot of a bed. She locked the door behind them and took off her coat and hung it, and then she turned to him and took his coat off his shoulders and hung it beside hers, and her hands came up to his collar again, turning it down, smoothing it, and she looked at him in the low light of the lamp.

"You're still here," she said. "You walked a whole block with me, and you're still here."

"I told you I would be."

"You told me you didn't know." Her hands moved down his chest, flat on his shirt, and she stepped in until her breasts pressed against him, the same pressure as the storeroom, only softer now, the hard edge of the shelf gone. "You said you didn't know if you'd be here tomorrow. But you're here now."

He didn't answer. Her hands found the buttons of his shirt and undid them, one, two, three, and she pushed the fabric off his shoulders, and it fell to the floor behind him. Her palms came to rest on his chest, warm and flat, and she looked at him with her head tilted, the way she'd looked at the steam wand, the way she'd looked at him through the glass.

"You're even better up close," she said. "I knew you would be."

She stepped back and pulled her own shirt over her head, and she wasn't wearing a bra. Her breasts came free, full and heavy, the nipples dark and already tight in the warm air, and she didn't hurry, didn't cover herself. She let him look, and then she reached for his belt and undid it, and the buckle clicked the way it had in the storeroom, and she worked his jeans open and pushed them down his hips, and his boxers went with them, and he stood bare in the low light with her hands on his hips.

"There he is," she murmured, and her fingers found his cock, already hard, and she stroked him once, slow, the way she had in the storeroom. "Still ready. You didn't lose it on the walk."

"Tina."

"I like saying your name." She walked him backward toward the bedroom, her hand still on him, and the bed was there, the foot of it against the wall, and she pushed him down onto it. He sat, then lay back, and she climbed over him, her knees on either side of his hips, and she looked down at him with the lamp light behind her, her hair falling forward.

"I thought about this," she said. "After the table. I went home and I got on my bed and I thought about having you under me, and I didn't think it would happen this fast." She reached down and found him again, stroking him slow, and she was already wet — he could feel the heat of her, the slickness of her thighs against his hips. "But you followed me into that storeroom, and you came back when I asked, and here we are."

She lifted her hips and reached down and guided him to her, and he felt the head of his cock press against her, slick and hot, and she held him there a moment, her eyes on his, and then she sank down.

She sank down onto him in one slow, deliberate motion, and the heat of her closed around his dick like a fist unclenching around it. Her eyes stayed on his the whole way down, watching his face as she took him, and when she was seated fully, her thighs pressed against his hips and her breasts hung heavy over his chest, she let out a long, shuddering breath through her nose.

"God," she whispered. "You feel like you were made to be in me."

He gripped her hips, his fingers finding the soft give of her waist, and she rolled her pelvis once, slow, a full circle that dragged the whole length of him against the inside of her. The wet heat of her gripped and released, gripped and released, and his back arched off the mattress before he could stop it.

"That's it," she said, and her hands came down flat on his chest, her nails pressing crescents into his skin. "I want to feel you lose it a little. I want to know I did that."

She lifted herself almost to the tip, the head of his cock catching on the rim of her, and then she sank back down, harder this time, taking him to the root. The sound of it was wet and obscene in the small room, and she made a noise low in her throat that was almost a laugh.

"You hear that?" she said. "That's what you do to me. I've been wet since the storeroom. Since you looked at me through that glass and didn't look away."

She rode him slow at first, a long, rolling rhythm that let him feel every inch of her, the way she clenched around him when he was deepest, the way she loosened on the way out. Her hands moved up his chest to his shoulders, and she leaned forward, her breasts brushing his mouth, and she kissed him, open and hungry, her tongue finding his.

"Touch me," she breathed against his lips. "I want your hands on me."

His hands came up from her hips, over the curve of her waist, and closed over her breasts, and she gasped into his mouth when his thumbs found her nipples. She broke the kiss and sat up, and she rode him harder, her head falling back, her hair swinging against her spine, and he watched her — the long line of her throat, the way her breasts moved with the rhythm, the flush spreading up her chest.

"Look at you," she said, her voice gone rough. "Flat on your back under me, and you're looking at me like I'm the only thing in the room."

"You are," he said, and it came out strangled.

She smiled at that, a slow, knowing curve of her mouth, and she slowed down again, taking him deep and holding, rocking her hips in a tight circle that ground her clit against the base of him. Her eyes drifted half shut, and her lips parted, and he felt her clench around him in a long, rolling wave.

"I'm close," she said, and it sounded like a confession. "I've been close since you followed me up those stairs. I've been close since you put your hands on my hips in that storeroom."

She moved faster, her thighs trembling with the effort, and she braced her hands on his chest and drove herself down onto him, hard and fast, the slap of skin filling the room. He reached down between them and found her clit, slick and swollen, and she cried out, her whole body going tight.

"Yes," she gasped. "Right there. Don't you dare stop."

He worked her with his thumb in time with her riding, and she came apart over him — her back arching, her mouth open on a sound that was half sob, half cry, her cunt clenching around his dick in wave after wave. She rode through it, grinding down on him, and the sight of her — flushed and shaking and utterly undone above him — pulled him over the edge with her.

"Tina," he said, and her name came out broken.

"Come in me," she said, her voice fierce. "I want to feel you come in me."

He did. His hips drove up into her once, twice, and he emptied himself inside her, his hands gripping her thighs hard enough to bruise, his whole body shuddering under the weight of it. She stayed seated on him, taking all of it, and when he finally went still, she was looking down at him with her hair stuck to her forehead and her chest heaving.

"Well," she said, and her voice was wrecked. "That was worth closing early for."

She leaned forward and kissed him, soft and slow, and then she rolled off him, settling onto her side in the warm dark of the room, her hand coming to rest on his chest over his heart.

"You're going to be a problem, aren't you."

He laughed, and it surprised him — a low, cracked thing that came out of the dark before he could stop it. "I don't know yet," he said. "Ask me in a week."

Her thumb moved over his heart, slow, and she was quiet a moment. The lamp threw their shadows up the wall, two shapes lying tangled in the warm yellow light, and somewhere below in the street a scooter coughed and died.

"There's something I should tell you," he said.

Her hand stilled. "That sounds like the kind of thing a man says before he gets up and puts his shirt on."

"I'm not getting up." He turned his head on the pillow to look at her. Her face was close, her hair across her cheek, one eye catching the lamp. "But there's a woman. Meher. You met her yesterday — she introduced us at the table."

Tina lifted her head off the pillow. "The one with her hand on your shoulder."

"That one."

"I know that one." She propped herself up on an elbow, and the sheet slid off her hip. "I watched her all through lunch. She's got a way of sitting in a chair like she's deciding whether to buy it." Her eyes narrowed. "Are you telling me you're married? Because you don't wear a ring, and I checked."

"No. Nothing like that." He drew a breath. "It's — we're not simple. Her mother and I — there's something there too. And Meher and I, last night, before any of this. It happened. And she doesn't know about you, and she's going to find out, because she's the kind of person who always finds out."

Tina was silent for a long moment. Then she lay back down, slowly, and looked at the ceiling.

"Say that again," she said. "Slower. The mother part."

"Kusum. Her mother. I'm helping her with something tomorrow morning — a property thing, a gate, a brother who's been stealing from her. It's not — I'm not explaining it well."

"You're explaining it like a man who's got too many women and not enough hours in the day." But there was no bite in it. She turned her head and looked at him. "And Meher doesn't know I exist."

"No."

"Because you went home with her mother, and then her, and then me, and none of the three of us has the whole picture." She said it flat, like she was reading out a list of groceries. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed — a short, dry sound. "God. You really are a problem."

"I know."

"No, you don't." She sat up, and the sheet fell away entirely, and she pulled her knees up and folded her arms on them, looking at him with her head tilted. "You think the problem is that you've been with three women. That's not the problem. The problem is you're sitting in my bed telling me the truth about it, which means you're the kind that can't hold a lie, and that's going to get somebody hurt." She paused. "Probably me."

He had nothing to say to that, so he said the thing he'd come to say.

"I want to call her."

Tina's eyebrows went up. "Now?"

"Now. She's owed the truth. Not tomorrow, not after the gate — now, before I lose my nerve." He sat up too, the sheet pooling at his waist. "But it's your flat, and it's your phone, or mine, and I'm not going to put you in the middle of it without asking. So I'm asking. Will you let me call her? And will you stay in the room while I do it?"

She looked at him for a long time. The lamp hummed. Down in the street someone was arguing about a parking space, the voices carrying up through the old glass.

"Why do you want me in the room?" she said at last.

"Because if I'm alone I'll soften it. I'll make it sound like less than it is." He met her eyes. "And because she'll hear your voice in the background either way, and I'd rather she hears it because I told her, not because I hid it."

"You want me to be the evidence."

"I want you to be the witness."

Tina chewed the inside of her cheek. Then she reached over to the nightstand and picked up her phone and held it out to him, screen dark, her thumb over the home button. "It's locked," she said. "I'll open it. But you dial. And whatever she says to you, you take it. You don't hand me the phone and make me explain your mess."

"I won't."

"And if she asks whether I knew about her—"

"I'll tell her the truth. That you didn't. Not until ten minutes ago."

Tina pressed her thumb to the button and the screen bloomed white, and she turned it in her hand and gave it to him. He took it, and his palm was damp, and he wiped it on the sheet before he typed.

Meher's number was in his phone, and he knew it by heart anyway — she'd made him say it back to her that morning, standing in Kusum's kitchen with her hand on his shoulder, watching to see if he'd remember. He typed it slowly, digit by digit, and then he sat with his thumb over the green key and did not press it.

"You're stalling," Tina said.

"I'm thinking about what to say first."

"Don't." She reached over and put her hand flat on his thigh, warm and steady. "Say her name first. Whatever else you've got, say her name first, and then say the rest. It's the only thing she'll actually hear."

He pressed the key.

It rang once. Twice. A third time, long and hollow in the small room, and he could hear it ringing somewhere else in the city, in a room he'd left that morning with the light coming up grey over the rooftops.

"Hello?" Meher's voice came through sharp and alert, no sleep in it. "Who is this?"

"Meher." His own voice sounded strange to him. "It's Saan."

A pause. When she spoke again the sharpness had gone somewhere and left something cooler in its place. "You're calling me from a number I don't know. At this hour. That's a particular kind of call, Saan. What's happened?"

"Nothing's happened. Nobody's hurt." He looked at Tina. She was watching him, her hand still on his thigh, and she nodded once, small. "I'm at someone's flat. A woman's flat. Her name is Tina. You met her yesterday — she was working the counter at the café."

The silence on the other end went on so long he thought the call had dropped.

"Meher—"

"I'm here." Her voice was flat now, carefully flat. "The café girl. The one with the arms." A breath. "Go on. Say the rest of it. You've started, don't stop halfway and leave me to guess."

"I'm in her bed. I came here after the café closed. It's been — it's happening, Meher. It's already happened. I'm not calling to ask permission. I'm calling because you were owed the truth before you heard it from someone else, and I'd rather you heard it from me."

"And she's there? Right now? Listening?"

"She's sitting next to me. She knows about you. She knows about your mother too."

He heard Meher exhale, long and slow, the way she'd exhaled that morning in the kitchen. "You told a woman I'd known for one lunch about my mother."

"I told her because she asked me a straight question and I couldn't find a straight lie."

"That's either the most honest thing anyone's said to me all year or the stupidest." A pause, and then, quieter, "Put her on. Tina. Put her on the phone."

He looked at Tina. She'd heard — she was already holding out her hand, palm up, her face unreadable.

"She wants to talk to you," he said.

"I gathered." Tina took the phone. "This is Tina."

He couldn't hear Meher's side of it, only Tina's, and Tina gave very little away — a few words, a hm, a long stretch of listening with her eyes on the wall. Then she said, "No. He told me himself. Ten minutes ago, sitting right here. I didn't know a thing before that." Another pause. "I don't want anything from him. I'm not the kind that collects men. He came in for coffee and he stayed, and I let him stay, and that's the whole of it."

A longer pause. Tina's mouth twitched at something. "You're not wrong about that," she said. "He's got a face that tells on him."

Then she held the phone away from her ear and looked at Saan. "She wants to know where we are."

"Tell her."

Tina gave the address, the block, the walk-up, the buzzer that stuck. She listened again, nodded once, and said, "The door's at the top of the stairs. I'll leave it on the latch." Then she took the phone from her ear and pressed the red key and set it down on the nightstand.

"She's coming," she said.

Saan sat very still. "Now?"

"Now. She's got a car outside her mother's. She said she'll be twenty minutes, maybe less, the roads are empty this hour." Tina swung her legs off the bed and stood, and reached for her shirt where it had fallen, and did not put it on — she held it, looking at him. "You should get dressed. Not because I want you dressed. Because she's going to walk through that door and she'll need to see you sitting up and looking honest, not lying in my sheets like a cat that got the cream."

He got up. His clothes were scattered where she'd pulled them off him, and he gathered them and dressed, and his hands were not steady, and the button at his collar took him three tries. Tina watched him the whole time, her shirt still in her hands.

"You didn't have to do that," she said. "Call her. You could have gone home and slept and let tomorrow sort it out."

"Tomorrow's the gate." He tucked his shirt in. "There's no room in tomorrow for this."

"There's never room. That's how people end up with three of everything and no idea which way is up." She pulled her shirt over her head and smoothed it down. "Do you want me to leave the room when she comes? I'll go and sit in the kitchen. It's a small kitchen but I've sat in smaller."

"No." He looked at her. "You said you'd be the witness. Stay."

She held his eyes a moment, and something in her face shifted — not softening exactly, but settling, the way a scale settles when the weight's been placed. "All right," she said. "But I'm making tea. If I'm going to watch a man get read out by a woman he's wronged, I'd like something hot in my hands."

She went into the kitchenette and the kettle began to mutter, and Saan sat down on the edge of the bed with his elbows on his knees and looked at the floor. The lamp hummed. The shadows had moved up the wall. He could hear Tina opening a cupboard, the chink of cups, and beyond the window the city was going about its evening as if nothing at all were about to happen in this small warm room at the top of the stairs.

The kettle began to whistle. Tina turned it off before it could climb, and poured, and the smell of it came through — strong, plain, nothing like the coffee downstairs.

Then the buzzer sounded from the street door, one long push, and Tina set the cup down and went past him down the hall, and he heard the click of the latch and the creak of the stairs.

He stood up. He put his hands behind his back and then took them out again because it looked like he was standing at attention. He put them in his pockets and took them out. He looked at the lamp, at the two cups on the counter, at the bed with its sheet thrown back and the dent in the pillow where Tina's head had been, and he thought: whatever she says, I take it. Whatever she says.

The footsteps came up the last flight. Two sets. Tina's unhurried, and another, quicker, sharper in the heel.

The door opened. Meher stepped in with her coat still on and her hair still wet at the temples from the street, and her eyes went past Tina and found Saan standing by the bed, and they stayed there.

Tina closed the door behind her, and the latch clicked into place.

Meher didn't move. Her coat hung open, the wet hem of it dark against her jeans, and she stood with her back to the door and let the room go quiet around her. The kettle had stopped muttering. The lamp hummed. Somewhere below, a scooter went by with its exhaust popping, and then even that was gone.

Saan watched her eyes come off him and go to Tina, and stay there.

"You said you don't want anything from him," Meher said.

"I said it."

"Say it again. To my face, in your own flat, with him standing there in his socks."

Tina had her cup in her hands, both of them wrapped around the warmth, and she didn't put it down. "I don't want anything from him. I'm not the collecting kind. I told you that on the phone and I'll tell you again — I liked him, I took him to bed, and I'm not asking him for a thing past that." She sipped. "You want the rest of it? I'll give you the rest. He's got a face that tells on him and hands that don't know when to stop, and he was honest with me when he could have kept quiet, and I respect that more than I respect most men I've met. None of which is a claim on him."

Meher's jaw worked once, a small private movement, and then she looked back at Saan. The coat was still on her. She hadn't unbuttoned it, hadn't set down her bag, and she came no further into the room than the mat inside the door.

"You called me from her bed," she said.

"I did."

"You could have waited till morning. You could have come to the gate and told me after, when there was something more important in front of us than your conscience."

"There's no room at the gate for this. You said it yourself — you're the kind who always finds out. I'd rather you found out from me."

"That's not what I said. I said you're not built for lying. Different thing." She took her coat off then, slowly, and hung it on the hook by the door, and her hair was flat where the collar had pressed it. "Sit down."

He sat. The edge of the bed, where it dipped, and his hands went to his knees because there was nothing else to do with them.

Meher looked at Tina. "Put your cup down."

Tina's eyebrows came up a fraction, but she set the cup on the counter and turned back, and she was smiling that small private smile, and Saan understood that she had decided to enjoy this.

"Now," Meher said, and she folded her arms. "Take his shirt off."

The room went tight. Saan's fingers curled against his knees.

"Meher—"

"I'm not talking to you." She didn't look at him. "Tina. You had him in a storeroom this afternoon and a bed an hour ago, so don't stand there and pretend you're shy. Take his shirt off. Slow. The way you did it before, if you did it before — button by button, and don't you dare rip it."

Tina looked at Saan, and there was a question in it, plain and unhurried, and he read it and gave her the smallest nod he had ever given anyone.

She came across the room. Her bare feet made no sound on the boards, and she stopped in front of him with her knees almost touching his, and she smelled of coffee and the tea she'd just poured and underneath it the warm sleep-smell of the bed.

"Sit up straight," she said, and he did, and her hands came to his collar.

The first button gave easily. She rolled it through the hole with her thumb and forefinger and smoothed the placket flat, and then the second, and her knuckles brushed the hollow of his throat, and he felt his pulse jump against them. She worked down without hurry. The third. The fourth. The cotton parted and the air of the room came in cool against his chest, and he heard Meher's breath change — not much, a shallow catch she'd have denied, but the room was small and quiet and he heard it.

"Stop there," Meher said.

Tina's hands stilled at the fifth button, half turned in its hole.

"Open it. Don't pull it off."

She opened it, and the shirt hung apart, and she drew the two halves back from his chest with her palms flat and let them fall to his sides. His skin came out of the cotton pale in the lamplight, and the bruise on his collar had faded to a yellow-green smudge he'd stopped noticing days ago.

Meher came forward then. Not all the way — three steps, four, until she stood at the foot of the bed with her arms still folded, and her eyes moved over him the way they'd moved over the kitchen that morning, taking inventory. The flat of his chest. The line of hair down his stomach disappearing into his waistband. The way his hands were gripping his own knees.

"You're shaking," she said.

"I'm not."

"Your hands are." She tilted her head. "I didn't ask you a question, so don't answer one."

Tina had stepped back a pace and was watching them both, her arms loose at her sides, and she said, mildly, "He does that. Goes still in the face and shakes in the hands. I noticed it in the storeroom."

"Did you." Meher's mouth moved. "What else did you notice in the storeroom?"

"That he says please without meaning to. That he watches your face when he's got his hands on you, like he's checking the road before he takes it." Tina's eyes slid to Saan and away. "And that he doesn't finish first if he can help it. He waits."

Meher was quiet a moment. Then she said, "Take his belt off."

Saan's head came up. "Meher."

"I told you. I'm not talking to you."

Tina crouched. It put her below him, her face level with his stomach, and she reached for the buckle and her fingers found the tongue of it and worked it loose. The leather slid through the frame with a sound like a strap being drawn, and she pulled the end free and laid it across her own thigh, and then she looked up at him, and her eyes were warm and steady and entirely without mercy.

"Lift," she said, and he lifted his hips, and she drew the belt out from the loops, one, two, three, four, slow, and set it aside on the floor.

The button of his jeans showed. The zip beneath it, the little brass pull. Her thumb rested on the button and did not move.

Meher's voice came from the foot of the bed, and it had gone quiet in a way he hadn't heard from her before. "Stop."

Tina took her hand away.

Meher walked around the bed. Her footsteps were the only sound, and Saan turned his head to follow her and she did not look at him — she looked at Tina, and then at the floor, and then she came to a stop in front of him, between his knees, close enough that the denim of her jeans brushed the inside of his thigh.

"Up," she said, and he stood, and the shirt hung open on him, and she was near enough that he could see the small scar through her eyebrow and the wet at her temples and the way her throat moved when she swallowed.

Her hands came to his waist. She found the button and turned it through the hole, and the denim went slack, and she took the tab of the zip between her thumb and finger and drew it down — slow, tooth by tooth, the sound of it loud in the little room — and she stopped with her hand at the bottom of the track, and the backs of her fingers resting against the front of his boxers where they'd gone tight.

She looked up at him.

"You don't get to touch either of us until I say so."

Her voice stayed in the air after she'd spoken, and Saan felt the weight of it settle across his chest like something physical. She was still holding his jeans open, her fingers at the bottom of the zip, and she hadn't taken her hand away. The backs of her knuckles pressed against him through the cotton of his boxers, and he could feel the heat of her skin through the thin fabric, could feel the way his own body had already answered the question she hadn't asked.

Tina had risen from her crouch. She stood to one side, her arms crossed now, and she watched them both without the smile. Her bare feet were pale against the dark boards, and the hem of her kurta brushed her thighs, and she was perfectly still in a way that told him she was reading the room the way she'd read him in the storeroom — watching the road before she took it.

Meher's hand moved. Not away — down. She slid her palm inside the open fly of his jeans, the backs of her fingers still turned, and she pressed the flat of her hand against him through the cotton, and he drew a breath that caught somewhere in his throat and stayed there. Her palm was warm and dry, and she held it there without pressure, without motion, just the weight of her hand against the shape of him, and she watched his face while she did it.

"Look at that," she said, and her voice was low, almost conversational. "You don't get to touch either of us, but you're already hard. That's not a question. I'm not asking you anything. I'm telling you what I see."

She took her hand away. Slowly, palm flat, dragging the cotton with her, and his dick jumped against the fabric where her hand had been, and he couldn't stop it, couldn't hide it, and she saw it and her mouth curved at the corner.

"Turn around," she said. "Face the bed."

He turned. The mattress hit the back of his knees and he stopped, and he could feel them both behind him now — Meher's breathing, steady and unhurried, and Tina's lighter, quicker, a thread of something held in check. The shirt hung open on his shoulders. The jeans hung loose on his hips. He was standing in a stranger's room with his belt on the floor and his zip open and two women watching his back.

Meher's voice came from behind him. "Tina. Come here."

Her footsteps crossed the boards. Light, bare, the sound of her coming up beside Meher, and then Meher said, "Put your hands on his shoulders."

Tina's hands landed. Warm, light, her fingers finding the bone of his shoulder through the open shirt, and she didn't grip, didn't pull, just held him there with her palms against his skin.

"Now take his shirt off the rest of the way."

Tina's hands moved. She slid the cotton back from his shoulders, guiding the fabric down his arms, and he lifted his arms without being told and the shirt came away and the air of the room hit his bare back and he heard the sound of it falling somewhere behind him. Her hands stayed on him. They came back to his shoulders, found the same place, settled there.

"Good," Meher said. "Now your hands on his chest. Front. Slowly. I want to see his face when you touch him."

Tina came around him. She moved in a slow curve, her hand trailing across his shoulder blade, his side, the dip of his waist, and she came to a stop in front of him and looked up at him, and her eyes were dark and steady and she wasn't smiling now either.

Her hands came up. She pressed her palms flat against his chest, her fingers spread, and the skin of her hands was cool against his and he felt his breath go shallow and felt the way his heart was beating against her palms and knew she could feel it.

"You're shaking again," Meher said, and her voice had moved — she was closer now, just behind his left shoulder, and he could smell the rain still in her hair and the soap she'd used that morning. "But you're not saying anything. That's good. That's what I wanted to see."

Tina's hands stayed on his chest. She didn't move them, didn't slide them lower, just held him there with her palms flat against his skin, and she was watching his face the way she'd watched it in the storeroom, the way she'd watched it in her bed, and he understood that she was waiting for something — for Meher to tell her what came next.

Meher stepped around him. She came into his field of vision, her face level with his, and she stopped close enough that he could see the flecks of gold in her irises and the small scar through her eyebrow and the way her lips had parted just slightly.

"I want to see something," she said. "I want to see if he looks at you the way he looked at my mother in the kitchen this morning."

She was talking to Tina. She didn't look away from Saan while she said it.

"Look at her," she said to him. "Look at her the way you looked at Kusum. I know you can do it. I saw it in your face when you didn't know I was watching. So look at Tina and give her that look, and I'll watch your eyes while you do it."