The knot swelled to its full, impossible size and caught, and the scream that tore out of her went straight down into the wool of the rug, muffled, swallowed, her whole face pressed into the rough weave as if she could push the sound into the boards. Her hands scrabbled at the rug's edge and found nothing to grip, nails skidding, and her knees slid wider on the planks without her telling them to. Above her, the dog's weight settled, front legs braced on her hips, its breath coming in hot ragged gusts against the back of her neck, and it stopped moving because it could not move, because they were locked, because the knot was doing what a knot was made to do.

It was too big. It was always too big, and every time it was too big in a way she had forgotten, a fullness that had nowhere to go, that pressed up through her belly and into her spine, that made the backs of her thighs shake.

"Yes—" Her voice cracked and she swallowed and tried again, cheek still flat to the rug. "Yes, yes, knot me, fill me up, don't you dare stop—"

The first pulse came. Hot, thick, sudden, and she felt it land deep inside her, a heat that spread outward like something poured, and she clenched around the dog's cock without deciding to, her body gripping down hard on the swollen knot, holding it, milking it. The second pulse came right behind the first, and then another, and it did not stop. It kept coming, that endless flooding heat, and her belly answered it, swelling heavier under her, a weight gathering low and spreading until the skin below her navel felt stretched tight and strange.

"Oh," she breathed, and it came out small. "Oh, God, look at that, look at my belly—"

She turned her head against the rug and the single dusty sunbeam lay across her back, a bright stripe through the mote-filled air, and the camera's red light blinked steady on its tripod in the corner of her eye. Patient. Unblinking. Recording all of it. The men were watching. Somewhere in the world men were watching her take a dog's seed on a barn floor with her ass in the air and her belly swelling under her, and the money was climbing, the lakhs climbing, and the thought of it pushed her hips back harder against the dog's weight, taking every drop of it, greedy for it.

"You see that?" she said to the red light, her voice thick. "You see how much he gives me? You see what I take?"

The dog whined, a low animal sound, and its hips gave a little useless thrust against her, locked, going nowhere, and she laughed — a broken, wet laugh that turned into a sob halfway through. The stretch was blinding. It had not eased. It simply sat there, that fullness, that impossible width holding her open, and beneath the burn of it there was a pleasure so deep it felt like it belonged to someone else, some woman she had not met, some woman who could take this and want more.

She wanted more.

Her hips ground back in a slow circle, testing the knot, and the pressure shifted inside her and her eyes went wide and wet and she made a sound she had no name for. "There. Right there. Oh, that's—" She bit down on the rug and her thighs shook and she came, just like that, clenching and shuddering around the dog's locked cock, her ass gripping and releasing and gripping again, her whole body a fist around the heat inside her. It rolled through her in waves, one after another, and she rode it out with her cheek in the wool and her fingers knotted in the rug's fringe, and when it finally let her go she was crying, tears running sideways down her face into the dust.

The seed kept coming. She could feel it, pulse after slow pulse, and her belly was heavy now, genuinely heavy, a fullness she could feel against the floor when she rocked forward, a weight she was carrying inside her. The pool beneath her thighs was wet and warm and spreading, and the smell of it filled the barn — that thick, animal smell under the dry hay and the dust and the old motor oil, and she breathed it in and it did something to her chest, something that was not shame, something that had stopped being shame a long time ago.

"I'm sorry," she whispered into the rug, and did not know, could not have said, who she was saying it to. Her husband's trusting face, maybe, the way he looked at her when she brought him tea. Her mother, maybe, somewhere in a house she had never seen, wearing some other woman's jewelry. Herself, maybe — the girl she had been at sixteen, swallowing that first pill at three in the morning with her heart going like a bird in a box. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

Then she pushed herself up on her elbows, as far as the knot would let her, and looked back over her shoulder at the dog. Its tongue was hanging. Its eyes were soft and stupid and patient. It did not know what it was doing to her. It did not know what she was. It was the only thing in her life, she thought, that had ever wanted her without wanting something from her — and even that was a lie, because it wanted the peanut butter, wanted the salt of her, wanted the hole she offered it.

Everyone wanted something.

"Fine," she said, and her voice was hoarse and steady. "Fine. Stay."

The knot softened by degrees, the way it always did, that slow deflation that felt like being let go by a hand she had not known was holding her, and then it slipped free with a wet, obscene sound and a rush of seed that spilled out of her and down her thighs and into the pool she was kneeling in. She gasped at the sudden emptiness, the cold air where the heat had been, and her legs gave out and she lay down flat on her side in the wet, trembling, her hand pressed to her swollen belly.

The barn was very quiet. The dog's claws clicked on the planks as it turned a circle and lay down in the straw, panting, its tongue lolling, done with her for now. The ring light hummed. Somewhere a board creaked in the heat, settling. And her own breathing sounded loud in the mote-filled air, loud and ragged and alive, the only thing moving besides the red light.

She lay there and let herself feel it — the ache, the emptiness, the wet cooling under her thighs — and she thought about the money. She thought about the number on the phone. She thought about the farmhouse deed with her name on it, the name she had chosen, the name that was hers, and about the husband who weighed rice with his burned hand and did not know where she was.

Then she rolled onto her hands and knees, and the seed ran out of her again, and she reached for the jar.

"One more," she said, and the dog lifted its head. "One more, and then I go home and make his tea."

The peanut butter was thick and gritty on her fingers. She scooped a handful and smeared it over her hole, over the raw, stretched, swollen ring of it, and she hissed at the touch, her whole body flinching, and then she got her knees under her and dropped her shoulders and reached back and spread herself open with two fingers for the dog to see.

"Come on," she said, and her voice did not shake at all now. "Come on. One more."

The dog's nostrils flared. It rose from the straw.

It came at her without hurry, the way it always did, and that was somehow worse — the slow click of its nails across the planks, the shadow of it swelling over her back before anything touched her. She held herself open with her fingers and watched its shadow on the rug and felt her whole body go tight as a fist. Then its chest pressed warm against her shoulder blades and its front legs came up over her hips, settling, finding their balance, and the blunt wet of its nose pushed into her hair and down the back of her neck, snuffling at the salt there, and she shuddered and dropped her forehead to the wool.

"That's it," she said into the rug. "Good boy. Get it in me."

The first push found her and missed, sliding up over the slick of peanut butter, and she reached back and took it in her hand — hot and blunt and half-hard, the skin of it soft as a mouth — and guided it down, and this time it went. Not the whole of it, not the knot yet, just the first thick length of it opening her up again, and she made a sound low in her throat that was almost a laugh, because her body had taken so much of this that it knew the way now, it gave way like a door that had been opened too many times to ever be stiff again.

It worked into her in short, driving strokes, its hips slapping her raised ass, and she braced her knees apart on the planks and let it set the rhythm. The peanut butter made it slick and easy and the sound of it was wet and obscene in the quiet barn, and beneath the sound of that her own breathing came faster and she caught herself pushing back to meet it, greedy, her nails digging into the rug. "Harder," she said, though it could not understand her, could not understand anything. "Harder, you dumb animal, give me the knot—"

And then it swelled. She felt it coming before it locked, that gathering width at the base of its cock, pressing and pressing at the ring of her, and she bore down against it and cried out because it was going to happen, it was going to lock inside her a third time, and there was nothing on earth she could do but take it. The knot popped through the tightness with a hot tearing sensation that was not pain and was not not-pain, and the dog surged forward and stopped, locked, its weight falling heavy on her hips, its breath gusting hot and ragged against her shoulder.

She screamed into the rug. It went down into the wool and the boards beneath and came back muffled and small, and her fingers clawed at the fringe and her knees slid out wider and she was pinned, she was impaled, she was held on the swollen thing like a fish on a hook and it was the fullest she had ever been, that impossible width, that pressure up through her belly and into her ribs until she could not draw a proper breath.

"Yes—" she gasped, her cheek flat to the weave, tears already coming. "Yes, yes, knot me, fill me up, don't you dare stop, don't you dare—"

The first pulse hit. Hot and thick and sudden, landing deep, and she clenched down around it without meaning to, her whole body a fist around the dog's cock, gripping and milking it. Another pulse came behind the first and another, and it did not stop, that endless flooding heat, and her belly answered it, swelling heavier under her, the skin below her navel pulling tight and strange, and she sobbed and ground her hips back into the weight and took every drop of it.

"Look at that," she whispered, and turned her face against the rug toward the red light. "Look at what he gives me. You watching? You see my belly?"

The camera blinked steady. Patient. The men were out there somewhere behind that little red dot, watching her take a dog's seed on a barn floor with her ass in the air, and the lakhs were climbing, and the thought of it pushed her back harder onto the knot, hungry for it, and she came — clenching and shuddering around the locked cock, her ass gripping and releasing, her thighs shaking, a pleasure so deep it felt like it belonged to someone else, and she rode it out with her face in the wool and her fingers knotted in the fringe until it let her go and she lay gasping in the dust.