She gave him time. That was the first thing—she gave him the room to come back to her, and she did it on her knees.

The rug was rough under her shins, worn thin in the middle where a man's feet had crossed it for twenty years. The lamp put her shadow up the wall behind him, long and bending, and she watched it move with her as she worked. Her hair had come loose from behind her ears and hung down over both shoulders, the ends of it dragging across his thighs when she leaned in, and she liked that—she liked the weight of it, the way it was hers to move.

He was soft in her hand. Still soft. He had finished inside her not ten minutes ago and his body had gone slack and honest, the way a body does, and now he sat on the edge of the mattress with his knees apart and his hands at his sides and his eyes on the ceiling, and he was soft.

"You don't have to," he said.

"I know." She turned her head and pressed her mouth to the inside of his thigh, high up, where the skin was thin and warm and smelled of her. "I want to. Put your hand in my hair."

He did. He was careful about it—he was always careful, that was the trouble with him—so she reached up, took his wrist, and closed his fingers in her hair herself, hard enough to pull at the roots. He made a sound.

"Like that," she said. "You won't break me. I'm not glass."

There was a lesson she had learned, and she had learned it from a woman who was not her mother and never would be. Maya had a room above a tailor's shop and a way of taking a man into her mouth that made him forget his own name, and she had told Nisha once, in the flat voice of a woman giving away something she no longer needed: Don't rush the beginning. A man's cock knows when you're impatient. Go slow and let him think he's the one deciding. Nisha had not understood it then. She understood it now, on her knees on the worn rug, with her husband's hand in her hair and the smell of lemon polish in her nose and the fan turning its slow blade overhead.

She took him in her mouth slow.

Not deep—not yet. Just the head of him, warm and soft against her tongue, and she held it there and breathed through her nose and let her lips close around the ridge of it. His fingers tightened in her hair. She heard the air go out of him, a long slow exhale that had a question buried in it.

She pulled back. Licked the length of him from root to tip, one long wet stroke with the flat of her tongue, and then did it again, and on the third pass she pressed the tip of her tongue against the place just under the head where he was most sensitive, and his hips jerked.

"Nisha—"

"Shh." She said it against his skin, and the vibration of it made him twitch. "Breathe, Papa. I have you."

The word came out of her without planning. She heard it land in the room and she did not take it back. He was her husband and he was also the man who had raised her, and both things were true, and she had decided a long time ago that a woman does not apologize for the truth of her own house. His hand in her hair went still. Then it moved again, slower, stroking the back of her skull the way he used to stroke her head when she was small and feverish, and something in her chest turned over and lay down.

She took him deeper.

Her breasts hung heavy when she bent like this—they always did, the weight of them pulling low, the nipples dragging against the fabric of nothing, because she had not put anything back on and she would not. She felt them brush his thigh. She felt the cool air of the room on the undersides of them and the heat of his leg against the tips, and that small contact went straight down through her belly and made her wet again, and she had to stop for a second and just breathe around him.

He was hard now. She felt it happen—the slow swell of it against her tongue, the way it lifted and thickened and filled her mouth like something waking up. She pulled off him with a wet sound and looked at it. Wet, dark, standing up off his belly, the vein along the underside standing out. She wrapped her hand around the base of it and squeezed, and a drop of clear fluid beaded at the tip, and she leaned in and licked it off, and he made a noise like a man who had been holding his breath for hours.

"There," she said. "There he is."

"God."

"No gods in this room." She stroked him, slow and firm, root to tip, twisting her wrist a little at the top the way Maya had shown her. "Only me."

He laughed—that same surprised laugh from before, the one she had decided she owned now—and it broke in the middle when she took him deep again, all the way, until he hit the back of her throat.

She had learned to do this without gagging. It had taken practice, and a hairbrush handle, and a great deal of patience with her own body in the bathroom with the door bolted. Now she took him to the root and held him there, her nose pressed into the coarse hair at the base of him, her throat working around him, and she stayed until her eyes watered and then a little longer, because the sound he made was worth it.

He pulled her off by the hair. Not rough—he didn't know how to be rough, not yet—but firm, and she came off him with a gasp and a string of spit still connecting her lower lip to the head of his cock, and she looked up at him through the mess of her hair and smiled.

"Why did you stop me?"

"Because I was going to—" He stopped. Swallowed. His chest was moving fast. "If you kept on, I was going to finish in your mouth."

"I know." She wiped her chin with the back of her hand, careless, and the wetness smeared across her jaw. "That's what I was doing."

He stared at her. There was something in his face she had never seen there before—not the fear from earlier, not the wonder, but a kind of helplessness that had a hunger in it. The lamp was behind her and the light came around her hair and she knew what she looked like: on her knees, mouth wet, breasts hanging, the red sindur line still on her forehead going soft at the edges with sweat. She knew exactly what she looked like. She had practiced it in the mirror for two years.

"I want you inside me," she said. "The other way. The way we did before."

"You said it hurt."

"It did. I liked it." She stood up off the rug, and her knees ached, and she didn't care. She put one hand flat on his chest and pushed him back onto the mattress, and he went, because he always went. "Lie down."

He lay down. His scarred hand—the burn scar on the back of it, the one he had never explained—rested on the sheet beside him, and she saw it and did not ask about it, because she had decided years ago that some things a man carries he carries alone. She climbed onto the bed and put one knee on either side of his hips and hovered there, not sitting, not yet, her weight on her knees, the wet heat of her hanging just above him.

He looked up at her. His hands came up and found her hips—both of them, the wide curve of them, his fingers spread as far as they would go and still not reaching around her—and he held her there, suspended, and she felt the strength in his grip and the tremor underneath it.

"Ride me," he said.

His voice was thick. His eyes were open and on her face, the way he had promised, the way he had said he would keep them. The sindur box lay tipped on its side by the pillow, a red dusting of powder on the sheet where it had spilled, and the lamp burned low, and the fan turned, and her hair hung down around both their faces like a curtain she had drawn herself.

She stayed there. Poised. The head of him just touching her, not in, not yet—the first consequence of everything still hanging in the air between them, unspent. Her thighs were already trembling from holding herself up. Her breath came shallow. Under her, her husband waited, and his hands tightened on her hips, and he did not push her down, because she had not told him to.

"Say please," she said.

He blinked. Something crossed his face—the ghost of a man who had once been a father and was not one anymore—and then it was gone, and what was left was only the man under her, hard and wanting and hers.

"Please," he said. "Nisha. Please."

The word sat between them, small and enormous, and she let it sit. She did not move. Her thighs burned with the holding, the fine tremor running up through her hips into her belly, and she stayed exactly where she was, the head of him kissing her where she was wettest and going no further, because she had learned that a thing given too fast is a thing not felt.

His hands on her hips tightened. Loosened. Tightened again. She watched his face the way she watched a door she had locked herself—looking for the give, the moment it would open. His jaw worked. His eyes stayed on her, open, the way he had promised, and there was sweat in the hollow of his throat and she wanted to put her tongue there, and she did not, not yet.

"You said please," she said. "Good."

"Nisha—"

"I heard you." She reached back and took him in her hand, guided him, held him steady against her, and still she did not sink down. She rocked instead, an inch, no more—the head of him dragging over her slick and the small tight place below it, wetting him, wetting herself, the friction of it going up through her spine and loosening something at the base of her skull. "You want to be inside me."

"Yes."

"Say what I am first."

He swallowed. The fan clicked at the top of its turn. Somewhere out in the lane a dog was barking at nothing, and a scooter went past, and the ordinary night went on outside the window as if nothing in this room had ever happened or ever would. He looked up at her from the pillow, his grey temples dark with sweat, and his voice came out wrecked and certain at the same time.

"My wife."

"Again."

"My wife."

She sank down on him.

Slow—she took him slow, because she wanted to feel every part of it, the first blunt stretch of him opening her, the way her body resisted for one heartbeat and then gave, the way he filled her so completely that for a moment she could not tell where the ache ended and she began. Her breath went out of her in a long broken sound she did not try to hold back. Her hands came down flat on his chest, over the sindur she had smeared there earlier, red on his skin, red on her palm.

He groaned. Low, from the chest, the way a man groans when something he has been bracing against finally happens to him.

"God, Nisha—"

"All the way," she said. "Don't stop till you're all the way."

She took the last of him, settled, sat full and still on him with her hair hanging down around both their faces, and she stayed there and breathed and let her body learn the shape of him all over again. He was harder this time. Thicker. The first round had taken the edge off him and left something steadier underneath, and she felt it, the difference, the way he pressed up into the deepest part of her and stayed.

She began to move.

Slow at first, a long roll of her hips, forward and back, the wet drag of him inside her and the slap of her thighs against his when she came down. Then faster. Her breasts swung with the rhythm of it, heavy, the nipples dragging across his chest each time she leaned in, and she caught her own hair in one hand and lifted it off her neck because the room was hot and she wanted to feel the air on her skin.

"Look at them," she said. "Look at what I have. All of it for you."

His hands came up and took them—both of them, cupped and lifted, his thumbs dragging over the nipples, and she arched into it and made a sound that was half laugh and half cry, because two years of swallowing pills in a bolted bathroom had grown these on her and now a man was holding them like they were the whole world. He pulled her down and put his mouth on one, and she felt the wet heat of his tongue close around her nipple and her whole body clenched around him, hard, and he grunted against her breast.

"There," she said. "Suck. Like that."

He did. He sucked like a man who had been thirsty for years, and she rode him through it, and the pull of his mouth went straight down the line of her to where he was buried in her, and the two sensations met somewhere in her belly and doubled. She moved faster. The bed complained under them, the old wood legs knocking against the floor, and she did not care who heard it now, not after last night, not after the woman next door had already put her ear to the wall.

"Harder," he said against her breast. "Nisha, harder—"

"You want it harder?" She straightened up, planted her hands on his chest, and gave him harder—riding him down, taking him to the root every stroke, her ass slapping against his thighs, her breath coming in short hot bursts through her teeth. "Like this? Is this what you want, Papa?"

"Yes—yes—"

"Say my name."

"Nisha—"

"Say what I am."

"My wife." His voice cracked in the middle of it. "My wife, my wife—"

She came first.

It built low and slow and then all at once, a tightening that started in her thighs and rolled up through her belly and broke somewhere behind her ribs, and she locked both hands in his hair and ground down on him and let it take her. Her spine bowed. Her mouth opened and nothing came out for a second and then everything did, a long shaking cry that had his name in it and no name at all. He held her hips and pushed up into her through it, again and again, chasing the last of it, and she let him, because it was hers and she could share it.

When she came back to herself she was lying forward on his chest, her cheek against the sindur smear, his heart going under her ear like a fist on a door. He was still hard inside her. Still moving, small shallow pushes, patient, waiting.

"Not yet," she said.

"What?"

"Don't finish yet." She lifted her head and looked at him, and her hair was stuck to her face with sweat and she did not push it away. "I want it the other way. Turn me over."

He blinked up at her. "The way we—"

"The way we did before. On my front." She climbed off him, and the loss of him inside her was its own small grief, and she did not sit with it—she turned onto her knees and elbows, put her face down on the ruined sheet, and reached back with one hand to pull her hair up off her back, holding it in a rope against her skull so he could see all of her. "From behind. Hold my hair."

He moved behind her. She heard him, the shift of weight on the mattress, the breath he took. His hand found the rope of her hair and closed around it, not pulling, just holding, and she felt the heat of his body come up close behind her and the blunt weight of him rest against the back of her thigh.

"Like that," she said into the sheet. "Now put it in."

He pushed into her from behind and it was different—deeper, somehow, a fuller stretch that pushed the breath out of her in one short sound. She felt her whole back arch to take it. Her breasts hung down against the sheet and her nipples dragged on the cotton with every movement and the red sindur powder smeared under her cheek and she did not care, she did not care, she wanted to be marked by this room and everything in it.

"Fuck me," she said. "Don't be gentle."

He pulled her hair.

Just a little, at first—testing, the way a man tests ice at the edge of a pond—and she pushed back against him hard in answer, and that was all the permission he needed. He drove into her. His hand stayed in her hair, holding her head up off the mattress so her throat was open and her back was a long bow, and every thrust rocked her forward and he pulled her back onto him by the hair, and the pull at her scalp ran down her spine and met the thrust inside her and made one line of heat out of both.

"Yes," she said. "Yes—there—"

"You're so—" He could not finish the sentence. He tried again. "You feel—"

"I know. Harder."

He went harder. The bed knocked. The lamp trembled on the low table and the shadow of them both swung huge and tangled up the wall and she watched it and saw two animals and did not know which one was her. His balls slapped against her with every stroke. Sweat ran down the crease of her back and he leaned over her and licked it off, one long stripe of his tongue up her spine, and she shuddered and pushed back into him.

"Nisha—" His voice was going. "Nisha, I'm close—"

"Not yet."

"I can't—"

"You can." She reached back and put her hand flat on his hip, holding him deep, making him feel how she had opened for him. "Say it first. Say what you're going to do to me."

He was panting now, wrecked, past the place where a man is careful with his words. His hand tightened in her hair. His hips stuttered and then found their rhythm again and he drove in deep and stayed there and spoke into the back of her neck, low and rough and honest.

"I'm going to make you pregnant," he said.

She closed her eyes.

"I'm going to fill your belly with my seed," he said. "You hear me? Every time. Until it takes. I'll make you a mother, I'll put a child in you—"

She knew what it was. She knew exactly what it was—she had learned the words from a woman in a room above a tailor's shop, she had heard men say them to girls who could not have children and girls who could, it was talk, it was a thing men said at the end when the body was doing the thinking for them, and it meant nothing and it meant everything. She knew her body could not do the thing he was saying. She knew what she had between her legs and what she did not have. And none of it mattered, because he was saying it to her, and every word of it landed somewhere below her ribs and caught like a spark in dry grass.

"Yes," she said. "Yes. Do it. Put it in me."

He came. He pulled her hair hard and buried himself to the root and came with a sound that came up from under his ribs, and she felt him spill into her, hot and deep and pulsing, and she stayed arched and open and took all of it, every last pulse of it, and said his name and did not let him pull out.

When it was over he let go of her hair and fell forward over her back, his full weight on her, both of them breathing like they had run a mile. His cheek was against her shoulder blade. His hand came down and lay flat on her belly, low, just above where he was still inside her, and he held it there.

"Nisha," he said. Not a question.

"Mmm."

"I meant it."

She turned her face on the sheet and looked at him sideways, one eye, her cheek red with sindur. "I know you did."

"I don't know how it works. What you—" He stopped. His hand stayed where it was, on her belly. "I don't know what I'm saying."

"You're saying you'd give me a child if you could." She reached back and laid her hand over his, pressing it flat to her skin. "That's what you're saying. I heard it."

He was quiet. The fan turned. Outside, the dog had stopped barking and the lane was still and the lamp burned low enough that the shadows had gone soft at the edges.

"Stay in me," she said. "A little longer."

He stayed.