The tap dripped, and I counted it. One. A pause long enough for the fan to pass overhead and come back around. Two. My hand lay flat on my belly, fingers spread wide, and under my palm there was only warmth — my own warmth, the ordinary heat of a body doing what bodies do, going on being itself in the grey light. Three. The drips ran together after a while, one long sound with a heartbeat in it, and I let them blur, let them become the room's noise instead of mine to count.

Behind me, Abdul breathed. Not sleeping — I knew the difference by now, the way his breath went shallow and even when he slept, the small catch at the top of each one when he was awake and thinking. He was awake and thinking. His hand lay on my ankle, the same warm heavy weight it had been for an hour, or two, or however long the grey had been coming up through the red silk at the window.

His thumb moved. Once, along the curve of the bone that stood out on the outside of my ankle, slow, from the joint down to the tendon and back. Twice. He did it the way a man does when he has decided something and is waiting for the room to agree with him.

"Kamala."

My name, not Kamlaji, not Bhabhi, not any of the words he had used in the months of coming up the stairs with a bottle and a grin. Just my name, low, the way he had said it in the dark with his body over mine. I did not answer. I watched the ceiling, where the fan's shadow turned and turned, and I felt the thing I was not going to tell him sitting in my chest like a swallowed stone.

"Turn around."

I turned onto my back slowly. Not because he had told me to — because I had decided to, and the deciding was mine, and I wanted him to see that in the way I moved. The sheet dragged across my thigh as I rolled, and the place where his seed had dried pulled at the hair there, a thin pale line from the inside of my knee up to the crease of my leg, and I did not wipe it away. I let him see it. I let him see all of it — my face in the grey light, my hair loose and tangled on the pillow, the small folds of my belly settling as I lay back, my breasts going flat and soft with the weight of the night in them.

He was propped on one elbow, looking down at me. The beard, the broad chest, the dark skin still carrying the sheen of the night. His eyes went from my face to my belly to the dried line on my thigh and stopped there, and something moved behind them that I had not seen before in all the months of him sitting at my table and not looking at my blouse.

"Ask me," I said.

The words came out flat and clear. No lilt in them, none of the teasing I had used on him across the table for months, no softness at all. Just the sentence, laid down between us on the sheet like a knife on a counter.

His jaw worked. The muscle at the hinge of it, under the beard, moved once and settled. He did not ask. He looked at me the way a man looks at a door he has been told is locked, and he did not put his hand on the handle. I watched him decide not to, and I watched him know that I had watched him decide it, and neither of us said anything about that either.

The tap dripped. The fan turned. Somewhere in the building a bucket was being filled, the water hitting tin, a sound that belonged to every morning of my life and had never once sounded like this.

He lowered himself over me.

His weight came down slow, one arm taking most of it, the mattress dipping along my side so I rolled a little toward the hollow he made. He was still in his lungi, the cloth loose and dark, and I felt the heat of him through it against my hip. His mouth came down on mine without a word — no answer, no question, just his lips on my lips, the pressure of them, the way his beard scraped the soft skin above my chin.

I let him. I lay under his mouth and let it happen, and I tasted the silence he was feeding me, the refusal in it, the way a man kisses when he has decided that the thing he wants to say is a thing he will do instead. His tongue touched my lower lip and I did not open for it. Not yet. I lay still and let him work at the seam of my mouth like a man working at a lock with the wrong key, and I felt my own breath come short through my nose, and I made him wait.

Then I opened.

His tongue came into my mouth and I met it with mine, and the kiss changed. It went from a question to a fact in the space of one breath. His hand came up and took my jaw, his thumb along my cheekbone, holding my head the way he had held it in the dark, and I let my hands come off the sheet and find his shoulders, the hard slabs of them, the muscle that shifted under my palms when he moved his weight. He tasted of the night — of his own mouth, of sleep, of the salt of my skin still on him from where he had put his mouth. I kissed him back and I did not give him anything I did not choose to give.

His mouth left mine.

A thread of spit stretched between us and broke, and I felt the cool of the room on my wet lip. His head went down, his breath on my throat, hot and slow, and I felt the pulse in my neck jump under it. He did not speak. He put his mouth on the side of my throat and pressed there, not a kiss, just pressure, the way a man presses his ear to a wall to hear what is on the other side. I swallowed against his mouth and felt my own throat move under his lips.

His hand slid down from my jaw, over my collarbone, and stopped at the top of my chest. He lay there a moment, his breath going down my breastbone, and I knew he was looking at me — at the slope of my breasts where they had fallen to the sides of my chest, at the dark grapes of my nipples standing up on their wide brown bases, at the small hollow of my navel in the middle of my belly. I lay and let him look. I had let men look at me for years, on the street and at the market and across my own table, and I knew what it did to them, and I knew what it did to me to be looked at.

"You are not going to ask," I said.

It was not a question either.

He did not answer with words. His mouth came down onto my breast, and he took the nipple in and sucked it, hard, and I felt the pull of it go all the way down into my belly like a cord being drawn tight. My back came off the sheet an inch and I made a sound I had not meant to make. He sucked again, and his tongue worked the flat of the nipple against the roof of his mouth, and his other hand came up and took the weight of my breast and lifted it toward his mouth, and I felt the whole soft mass of it move in his hand like dough.

"You are not going to ask," I said again, quieter, and it came out with a breath in the middle of it, and I hated that it did.

He pulled off the nipple with a wet sound and looked up the length of my body at me, his mouth still open, his breath coming fast on my skin. The look on his face — I had seen want on men's faces. I had seen it at my table for months, hidden under his grin, and I had seen it in the dark with my legs open. This was not that. This was something under the want, and I could not name it, and I did not try.

"No," he said. "I am not going to ask."

His mouth went down my body. He did not rush it. He put his lips on the underside of my breast where the skin was pale and thin, and he kissed there, and then lower, into the soft fold where my belly began, and he took the fold of fat in his mouth and bit it, gently, and I felt my whole middle flinch and then loosen under him. He worked his way down with his mouth, kissing and biting and licking, and his hands came under me and took my hips, and I felt the strength in them — the grip of a man who had held many women and knew exactly where to put his fingers — and he moved me on the sheet the way he wanted me, my hips tilting up, my knees falling apart.

His mouth reached the place where his seed had dried on my thigh.

He stopped there. He put his tongue on the pale line on my inner thigh and licked up it, slowly, all the way from my knee to the crease of my leg, and I felt the rough wet drag of it, and I understood that he was tasting himself on me, his own leavings, and that he was doing it on purpose, and that he was doing it instead of asking the question.

My hand came down off the sheet and found my belly, low, and pressed there, fingers spread wide, the way it had been pressing all night. The warmth under my palm was the same. The slow steady nothing of my body going on being my body was the same. I lay with my hand on my belly and my eyes on the ceiling and I felt his mouth come up the inside of my thigh and I did not tell him anything.

His tongue found my cunt.

I was wet already — I had been wet since the first press of his mouth on my throat, since before that, since the moment I turned onto my back and decided to let him see my face. He licked up the length of me, from the bottom of the slit to the top, and my hips came off the sheet and my hand on my belly pressed down hard, and a sound came out of me that was not a word. He did it again. And again. His tongue flat and wide, then pointed, then flat again, and his beard scraped the soft skin of my thighs and I felt the burn of it and did not move away from it.

"There," I said. It came out of me before I decided it, and I heard it in the room, and I did not take it back.

He stayed there. His mouth worked at the top of me, on the small hard place, and I felt it build — the pull, the tightening, the whole low weight of me drawing in toward the point of his tongue. My heels dug into the mattress. My hand came off my belly and went into his hair, into the thick black of it, and I held his head there, and he let me hold it, and his tongue did not stop.

I did not come. Not yet. I held at the edge of it and I made him work, and I made myself wait, and the fan turned overhead and the tap dripped and I lay with my hand in his hair and my eyes open and I did not let go.

Then he pulled his mouth away.

I heard myself make a sound — a small, angry sound, the sound of a woman who has been brought to a door and then held at it. He came up my body, his weight settling over me again, his knees pushing my legs wider, and I felt the cloth of his lungi against the inside of my thigh, and under the cloth the hard length of him, and he did not put it in. He lay over me with his cock against my cunt and he did not put it in, and he looked down at my face, and I looked up at his, and the silence between us was the loudest thing in the room.

"Ask me," I said, a third time, and this time it came out with my breath ragged in it and I did not care.

He reached down between us. I felt his hand move, felt the cloth of the lungi pulled aside, felt the blunt head of him come up against the wet of me and rest there, not pushing, just resting, the way his thumb had rested on my ankle. My whole body went still under him. My hand came back to my belly and lay there, flat, fingers spread, and I felt the heat of my own skin and the weight of his cock at the entrance of me and the grey light on both of us, and I waited.

He pushed in.

Slow. He was thick, and I was tight with the night and the waiting, and I felt every inch of it — the stretch of the first push, the way my body gave way around him, the wet give and the fullness that came up into my belly and made me feel the whole length of him inside me. He stopped when he was all the way in, his hips against the backs of my thighs, and he held there, and I felt the pulse of him inside me, deep, against the wall of my cunt, a beat I could count the way I had counted the tap.

"Say it," he said. His voice was low and rough and it was not the voice he used at the table.

"No," I said. "You say it."

He began to move.

Slow at first, long strokes, pulling almost all the way out and pushing back in to the root, and I felt the drag of him along the inside of me like something being drawn out of me and put back. My hands came up and took his shoulders and I held on. His beard was wet with me and he put his mouth on my mouth and I tasted myself on him, salt and musk, and I kissed him back and I did not stop kissing him.

Then faster. His hips found a rhythm and I found it with him, my hips coming up to meet his, the slap of our skin a small wet sound in the grey room. The headboard knocked the wall once and neither of us cared. He was heavy and he was strong and he fucked me the way a man fucks a woman he has decided is his, deep and steady and without hurry, and I took all of it and gave it back.

"Kamala," he said, into my throat, and it was not a question and it was not an answer, it was just my name, and I felt it land on my skin.

My hand lay on my belly. Under his weight and mine, under the push of him inside me, I felt the place where the child was — or was not — and I pressed there, and the pressing did something to me, and I felt the whole thing draw up tight inside me like a fist closing. I came with my hand on my belly and my eyes open and his name not on my lips, no name at all, just the sound of it coming out of me and the clench of my cunt around his cock and the long shudder that went from my cunt up through my middle and out into my arms and legs.

He felt it. His breath broke. He pushed in deep and held and I felt him come — the jerk of it, the heat of it, the pulse after pulse of his seed going into me on top of the seed that was already there, a new warmth spreading inside me where the old line had dried on my thigh. He groaned into my shoulder, low, and his hips worked once, twice, three times, emptying himself, and then he went still.

His weight came down on me. His breath was loud in my ear, wet and fast, and I lay under him with my hand still pressed to my belly, and I did not move it, and I did not tell him anything.

The fan turned. The tap dripped. The grey light through the red silk had gone from old iron to something paler, and I could see the wall now, the small crack in the plaster above the almirah, and I lay and looked at it while his breathing slowed against my neck.

He had not asked. I had given him three chances and he had not taken one of them, and now his seed was inside me, and the question was still in the room, and the two of them — the seed and the question — lay in me together, and I did not know which one would be the one to grow.