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His hand is still warm on her knee where she pressed it there. She feels the heat of it through the salwar, a damp weight that has stopped trembling now that she has told him what she is. Wife. For the hour. The word sits in the dim air between them like something poured.

She watches his throat move. He swallows, and she feels it in her own throat, that same dry click. The clock on the wall ticks. The fan turns. The room smells of old cigar smoke and his loneliness, and she knows she could leave now, take the money, walk the three lanes home and buy her husband's tea with it. She has done that before. She knows the way.

But his hand is still on her knee, and she is not done being looked at.

"You said you wanted to look at me," she says, soft, her voice the one she keeps for rooms like this. "So look."

She reaches down and takes his hand off her knee. His fingers are thick, callused at the pads, the hand of a man who has gripped handles and carried sacks and done nothing softer than this in eight years. She holds it a moment, feeling the weight of it, then she lets it go and stands.

The dupatta slides off her shoulder first, a whisper of black silk that pools on the worn carpet at her feet. She does not pick it up. She watches his eyes follow it down, then come back up to her face, and she is already reaching behind her, finding the knot of her salwar at her hip.

"You can watch," she says, and she undoes it herself. The drawstring comes loose, and she steps out of the salwar, letting it fall, standing in her petticoat with the gold chain across her bare chest. The petticoat is thin cotton, white, and it clings at her hips where the salwar was. Her breasts are full above the low neckline, the gold chain lying between them, and she watches his throat move again.

"Nisha," he says. Just her name. Like he is testing it.

"Yes," she says. "That's who I am."

She crosses to him. Three steps across the worn carpet, and she can smell him now, the sweat that has gathered at his collar, the faint soap he used this morning. She takes his hand again and pulls him up from the armchair—he comes easily, too easily, like he has been waiting to be moved—and she walks him backward to the sofa. He goes. His hips hit the low green cushions and she pushes, and he sits down hard, looking up at her with his eyes gone wide and dark.

She remembers pushing her husband onto the bed that first night. The same weight of a man giving way. The same look on his face, that mix of fear and wanting that she has learned to read like a line of text. She knows what to do with it.

She swings her leg over and straddles him.

His thighs are under hers, the heat of him through his trousers, and she settles her weight onto him and feels him already hard against her. She does not move yet. She takes his face in both hands, her painted nails against his jaw, and she holds him still and makes him look at her. At the sindur line in the middle of her forehead. At her eyes. At the woman who has taken his money and his room and is about to take the rest.

"You wanted a wife," she says. "Here I am."

His hands come up, hesitant, and land on her hips. She feels the tremor in them, the same tremor that was in his voice, and she does not move them. She lets him hold her.

"Tell me what you want," she says.

His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. "I want—" He stops. Swallows. "I want to be looked at too."

The words land in her chest like a stone in still water. She knows that wanting. She has carried it her whole life, the hunger to be seen and not corrected. She looks at his face, the soft middle-aged lines of it, the loneliness pooled in his eyes, and she understands him in a way that makes her throat tight.

"Then I'll look at you," she says. "But first I'm going to take what I came for."

She reaches down and undoes his trousers. His hands stay on her hips, gripping, and she feels him jump under her fingers when she finds him, takes him out, holds him. He is thick and warm and already wet at the tip, and she strokes him once, slow, and watches his head fall back.

"Oh," he breathes. "Oh, god."

"Not god," she says. "Nisha."

She lifts her petticoat, rucking it up around her waist, and she is bare under it. She has not worn anything else. She settles over him, guides him to her, and sinks down onto him in one slow movement that makes them both gasp.

He fills her. She feels the stretch of it, the fullness, the way her body opens for him like it knows what to do even when she is not sure she does. She sits still for a moment, her thighs against his hips, his hands gripping her waist, and she looks down at him and sees his face gone slack with wonder.

"You feel—" he starts.

"I know," she says. "Now look at me."

She begins to move. Slow at first, a rock of her hips that makes him groan, his fingers digging into her waist. She rides him the way she has learned to ride, the way her husband taught her, the way Maya showed her in the room above the tailor's shop. She finds the rhythm and she takes it, and she watches his face the whole time, the way his eyes go dark, the way his mouth falls open, the way he looks at her like she is the first woman he has ever really seen.

"Nisha," he says, and his voice is cracked, raw. "Nisha, you're—"

She puts her hand over his mouth.

"Shh," she says. "Don't say my name like that. Not yet."

His eyes go wide over her fingers. She can feel his breath hot against her palm, his mouth open against her skin, and she keeps her hand there and rides him harder. The sofa creaks under them. The clock ticks. The fan turns. She is wet and hot around him and she can feel herself building, that coil low in her belly that she has learned to chase and catch.

"You wanted a wife," she says, her voice coming out in a breath. "A wife who would look at you. A wife who would touch you. A wife who would—" She rocks down on him, hard, and feels his whole body jerk. "—take you."

He makes a sound against her palm. A muffled groan. His hands slide from her waist to her hips, gripping her, and she feels him start to move beneath her, thrusting up into her, and she lets him. She lets him take some of it, lets him drive into her, and she keeps her hand over his mouth and watches his face and feels herself climb.

She is close. She can feel it, that bright edge, and she wants to fall off it with him, wants to feel him come inside her while she comes around him, wants to be that woman, the one who takes what she wants and leaves with the money folded in her waistband.

"Look at me," she says, and she takes her hand off his mouth and cups his face instead, makes him look at her. "Look at me when I come."

His eyes are wet. She sees that, the shine of them, and it undoes something in her. She rocks down on him, hard, and she comes with a sound that is almost a sob, her thighs shaking, her body clenching around him, and she feels him follow her a moment later, feels him spill into her, his hands gripping her hips so hard they will leave bruises.

She stays on top of him. She does not move. She can feel him pulsing inside her, and she can feel her own heart pounding, and she looks down at his face and sees the tears running down his cheeks.

"Oh," he says, his voice wrecked. "Oh, Nisha."

She does not wipe his tears. She does not move off him. She sits on him, full of him, and she looks at his face and feels something shift in her chest, something she does not have a name for.

"You're crying," she says.

"I haven't—" He stops. Swallows. "I haven't been touched like that in eight years."

She knows. She knew before he said it. She can feel it in the way he held her, the desperate grip of his hands, the way he looked at her like she was water and he had been dying of thirst.

"You will be again," she says. "If you want."

His eyes go wide. "You'll come back?"

She looks at the money on the table, still stacked under the glass paperweight. She can see the edge of it, the green of the notes. She can feel him still inside her, softening now, and she knows she should get up, should dress, should walk the three lanes home and buy her husband's tea.

But she does not get up.

"I haven't decided," she says. "But I will."

She says it like a promise, and she watches his face change, watches hope move into the loneliness, and she knows she has given him something he will not be able to put down.

She lifts herself off him slowly, feeling him slip out of her, feeling the emptiness that follows. She stands, and her legs are shaking. She looks down at herself, at the petticoat rucked around her waist, at the gold chain across her chest, at the sheen of him on her thighs, and she feels like a woman who has been claimed and who has claimed something back.

"I need to dress," she says.

He nods, mute, still lying back on the sofa with his trousers open, his hands limp at his sides. She can see the tears still wet on his cheeks, and she does not look away from them. She picks up her salwar and steps into it, does up the drawstring, and the black silk settles around her hips like armor.

She reaches for the dupatta on the carpet and drapes it over her shoulder. She does not put it back over her head. She lets it hang, a fall of black silk against the gold thread of the salwar, and she crosses to the table and picks up the money.

Five thousand rupees. She can feel the weight of it in her hand. She folds it and tucks it into her waistband, and she turns to look at him one last time.

He has sat up. His trousers are still open. His face is a ruin of wanting and gratitude, and she sees the question in his eyes before he speaks it.

"Will you come again?"

She stands in the middle of the worn carpet, the money against her skin, his seed still cooling on her thighs, and she hears the door of her own life close behind her and a new one open in front of her.

"Yes," she says. "But next time, I'll tell you my real name."

She watches his face go blank with confusion, and she smiles, a small private thing, and she walks to the door and lets herself out into the dim afternoon, the gate creaking shut behind her.

She walks the three lanes home with the money folded in her waistband, the sun on her sindur line, and she does not know yet what she will tell her husband. But she knows this: she is not done being looked at. And the man on the green sofa will look at her again.