Her mother's palm lifts off her back. The pressure that has been holding her into the mattress for the last however-long goes, and Maya's spine uncurls a half inch, her shoulder blades settling, her cheek peeling off the damp cotton with a soft wet sound she feels more than hears. The fan turns. The pipes tick somewhere down the hall. She waits for the next instruction with her eyes closed, hair across her face, come cooling in a palm-sized smear under her belly.

What comes is a hand at her hip. Both hands, actually — Sunita's fingers hooking into the soft meat above Maya's hipbone and pulling, lifting, turning her like a piece of furniture being repositioned for better light. Maya's knees drag over the sheets. Her cock, still half-hard and slick with the last of what she spilled, swings between her thighs and leaves a wet thread behind her on the cotton.

"Up."

Maya rises onto her knees. The mattress dips under her weight and she puts a hand down to steady herself, and when she looks up, her mother has already lain back against the pillows, her dark hair fanned out across the pillowcase, her arms loose at her sides. The white lace is still on her — Maya can see the wet of it from here, the whole crotch of the panties a darker gray where it has soaked through, the lips of her cunt showing through the fabric like something behind fogged glass. Sunita pats one thigh twice with the flat of her hand. The sound is small and definite.

"Cowgirl," she says.

Maya's hands have gone still at her sides. She knows the word. She has known the word since she was twelve and found things on the internet she was not supposed to find. But the word has never had a body attached to it before, and now the body is hers, and the woman beneath her is her mother, and the instruction is being delivered in the same tone Sunita uses for ordering groceries.

"You'll straddle him." Sunita's hand is still on her own thigh, thumb tracing a slow arc over the skin just above the lace. "You'll sink down on his cock."

Maya's throat does something. She swallows and the swallow is loud in the quiet room.

"And you'll learn that the slowest movement is the one that pays." Sunita's hazel eyes are on her, steady, no teasing in them, no softness either. "No grinding. No bouncing. You sit on him and you breathe, and you let him feel you open."

Maya's cock twitches between her thighs. She cannot help it. The words have gone into her somewhere behind her navel and her body has answered them without asking her permission first, and she hates that a little, and she is grateful for it a lot, and both of those things are sitting in her chest at once like two stones in the same pocket.

"Come here."

She crawls. That's the only word for it — her knees moving over the warm sheet in short steps, her palms finding the mattress ahead of her, her hair swinging forward over her shoulders and dragging its ends through the wet spot she left behind. The come on her belly has cooled to something tacky and she can feel it pull at the fine hairs she doesn't have, just the smooth skin, the skin she spent four years and a small fortune making smooth.

Her thighs come down on either side of her mother's hips. The lace is wet against the inside of her knee first, then her thigh, then the whole soft length of her as she settles. It's warm. It's warmer than she expected. The fabric is so thin that she can feel the shape of what's underneath it — the soft give of Sunita's cunt, the wet line of it, the heat coming up through the lace like heat coming off pavement.

Her cock lies against the fabric. The head of it, still slick, drags a short wet line across Sunita's belly and then rests there, an inch below her mother's navel, and Maya can feel the pulse in it, her own pulse, going fast.

Sunita's hands come up and find her wrists.

"Palms flat."

She presses Maya's hands down onto her own chest, one over each breast, and lets go. The breasts are full and warm under Maya's palms and they give a little, and through the soft weight of them Maya can feel her mother's heartbeat. It's slow. It's slower than hers. It's going along at maybe sixty beats a minute, steady and unhurried, the heartbeat of a woman who is not in any kind of rush, and Maya's own heart is going at twice that and she is suddenly, sharply aware of the difference.

"Breathe," Sunita says.

Maya breathes. In through her nose, out through her mouth, the way she was taught in a yoga class she took once when she was fifteen and still pretending she was doing it for her back. Her ribs expand under her own skin. Her palms rise a fraction with her mother's chest, then settle. The lace is hot against her cock now — not just warm, hot — and she can feel the wet of it spreading, or maybe that's her own wet, the slick that has been leaking out of her since the word cowgirl left her mother's mouth.

"Again."

She breathes again. The second one is easier. Her shoulders drop a little. The fan turns above them and the light from the lamp on the nightstand catches the gold of her mother's earring and throws a small moving point of it across the wall.

"Good," Sunita says. "Now — this is the part nobody teaches you. The slowest movement is the one that pays." Her thumb finds Maya's wrist again, rests there, doesn't press. "A man will pay for a woman who moves like she has all night. He'll pay more for a woman who moves like she has all night and means it. So you don't grind. You don't bounce. You sit on him and you breathe, and you let him feel you open."

Maya's hips shift. Just an inch. Just the smallest thing. Her cock slides a half-inch along the wet lace and the friction is enough to make her eyes go half-closed and she catches herself and opens them again.

"That," Sunita says, "was almost a grind."

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Be slower."

Maya's palms press flat against her mother's breasts. She can feel the nipples hard under the heels of her hands, small and definite, the same way her own nipples get hard now that the hormones have made them tender — sore in a way that is not quite pain, sore in a way that wants to be touched. She wonders, for one second, whether her mother's nipples are sore too, whether that's a thing that happens to all women or only to the ones on estrogen, and then she pushes the thought away because it is not the thought she is supposed to be having.

"Now," Sunita says. "Nobody's counting. Nobody's watching. There's no lens. Just try it. One inch."

Maya moves her hips. One inch forward. The head of her cock drags across the soaked lace and the drag is not smooth, it's a small wet catch-and-release, and the feeling goes up through her belly and into her chest and settles behind her sternum like a swallowed coin. Her breath comes out of her in a sound she didn't plan.

"Again."

She does it again. One inch back this time. The lace is so wet now that the drag is gone and it's just glide, just heat, just the soft give of Sunita's belly under the head of her cock and the wet line of Sunita's cunt underneath the fabric, so close that if the lace weren't there — if the lace weren't there — Maya stops the thought. She doesn't finish it. She lets it sit there half-built and moves her hips again instead.

"Slower," Sunita says.

"I'm going slow."

"You're going slow like a girl who wants it." A pause. "You want to go slow like a woman who knows she'll get it."

Maya's eyes sting. She doesn't know why. It's not a mean thing to say. It's not even really about her. It's about the job, about the men, about the thing she said yes to on a Tuesday afternoon with her mother's phone in her hand. But her eyes sting anyway, and she blinks it away before it can become anything, and she moves her hips again.

This time it's different. This time she doesn't move an inch. This time she moves a half-inch, and then holds, and then moves another half-inch, and the half-inches are doing something the inches weren't. Her cock is pressed flat along the lace now, the whole length of it, and the head is resting right at the top of Sunita's cunt through the fabric, and the wet from the lace is soaking into the head of her cock like water soaking into paper, and her hole — the one her mother's finger was in not an hour ago — her hole is doing something she has no word for. It's not clenching exactly. It's more like opening. Like it's reaching for something that isn't there.

"There," Sunita says. "There it is."

"What?"

"Your face."

Maya doesn't know what her face is doing. She can't see it. But she can feel it — the small tight thing her mouth has become, the way her eyebrows have drawn together, the way she is looking down at her mother's chest instead of her mother's eyes because she is not sure she can look at her mother's eyes right now.

"Breathe," Sunita says again.

She breathes. The breath goes down into her belly and the belly presses against the lace and the lace presses against Sunita and Sunita makes a small sound — not a moan, not quite, more like the sound a person makes when they've been holding their breath and finally let it go. Maya's palms rise with her mother's chest and fall again.

"That's it," Sunita says. "Keep doing that. Half-inches. Breathe on every one."

Maya does it. Half-inch forward, breathe. Half-inch back, breathe. Half-inch forward, breathe. The rhythm is so slow that it barely registers as movement at all, and yet every half-inch is doing something to her, every half-inch is dragging the head of her cock across the wet lace and the wet lace is dragging back, and her hole is opening and closing around nothing, and her nipples are hard against the fabric of her own camisole, and she can feel the sweat starting at the small of her back where the sheet is still warm under her knees.

"Good girl," Sunita says.

Maya's eyes sting again. This time she doesn't blink it away. This time she lets it sit there, and she keeps moving, half-inch, breathe, half-inch, breathe, and the tears don't fall, they just sit at the edge of her lower lashes and blur the light from the lamp into a soft gold smear.

"Now here's the thing," Sunita says, and her voice has gone quieter, and her hands have come up to rest on Maya's hips, light, not guiding yet, just there. "The man is going to want you to move faster. He's going to want you to bounce. He's going to want to grab your hips and pull you down onto him. And you're not going to let him. Not at first. You're going to keep your own rhythm. You're going to make him wait for yours."

"And then?"

"And then when you give it to him, he'll pay for the next one."

Maya's hips move again. Half-inch. Breathe. The head of her cock is pressed right against the top of the lace-covered cunt now, right where the clit would be if she could feel through the fabric, and she can't feel through the fabric, but she can feel the shape of it, and the shape is doing something to her that she can't quite name. Her hole clenches. Opens. Clenches. Her cock is leaking — she can feel the wet on her own belly, fresh wet, new wet — and the wet is mixing with the come already there and the whole thing is becoming one continuous slick surface from her sternum to her knees.

"Sunita," she says. She doesn't mean to say it. It comes out anyway.

"Mm."

"I think I'm —"

"I know." Sunita's hands close on her hips, firmer now, not pulling, just holding. "Go ahead."

"I don't want to —"

"Go ahead."

Maya's hips move one more half-inch. Her cock slides along the wet lace and the head catches on the seam of Sunita's panties and the seam drags across the underside of the head and that's it, that's the thing, that's the one small specific thing that tips her over. Her hole clenches hard around nothing and her cock pulses against the lace and she comes — a thin wet line of it shooting up her mother's belly and landing in the soft hollow between Sunita's breasts, and then another, and then another, each one shorter than the last, and her whole body curls forward with it, her palms sliding off Sunita's chest and her forehead coming down onto Sunita's shoulder and her hair falling over both of them like a curtain.

She stays there. Her breath is loud in the hollow of her mother's neck. Her cock is still pressed against the lace, softening now, the head still slick, and under her belly and under her softening cock she can feel the wet of Sunita's cunt through the fabric, hot and steady, going on without her.

Sunita's hands are on her back. One flat between her shoulder blades. One cupping the back of her skull, fingers in her hair.

"That's three," Sunita says quietly.

Maya doesn't lift her head. She can feel her own come cooling on her mother's chest and her own breath coming back at her off her mother's throat and the small steady beat of her mother's heart, going along at maybe sixty, maybe fifty-five, unhurried, patient, the heartbeat of a woman who has all night.

"Cowgirl," Sunita says into her hair. "That's the one they think they're in charge of. That's the one they're not."

Maya's fingers curl into the sheet on either side of Sunita's ribs. The anklet on her left ankle has slid down again and is resting against her heel. The fan turns. Somewhere down the hall the pipes tick once, and then once more, and then go quiet.

She lifts her head. Just enough to see. Sunita's face is turned toward her, close, the gold earring moving slightly with her breath, and there is something in her mother's hazel eyes she has seen before, something she can't quite name, something that is not pride and not hunger and not love exactly, but is made of all three of them mixed together and left to sit.

"Tomorrow," Sunita says, "side. And then you'll have all four."

Maya nods against her shoulder. Her cock has gone soft against the wet lace and her come is drying in a thin line up her mother's belly and she can feel the shape of tomorrow sitting somewhere just past the end of the bed, patient, waiting, the way her mother waits.

"Do I get up?" she asks.

"Not yet," Sunita says. Her hand stays in Maya's hair. "Stay."

So she stays. Her knees are starting to ache against the mattress and her back is beginning to feel the hour and the wet spot under her belly is going cold and none of it matters, because her mother's hand is in her hair and her mother's heartbeat is steady under her ear and somewhere in her chest the small tight thing that has been clenched since she was fourteen years old has loosened by exactly one notch, and she can feel it, the way you feel a knot in a muscle you didn't know you were holding.

Outside, a car goes by. The light from its headlights sweeps across the ceiling, once, and is gone. The fan turns and turns.

Maya closes her eyes.