The lamp had burned down to a low yellow and the room smelled of them — of sweat gone cool, of the cotton sheet, of the sindur's faint iron sweetness where it had mixed with everything else on the bed. Nisha lay with her ear on his chest and listened to the slow drag of his breath, in and out, in and out, until she could not tell whether he was asleep or only resting his eyes, and she did not care which. Her hand was flat on his stomach, fingers spread, feeling the rise and fall of him under her palm. Long nails, painted the color of dried rose, against the coarse hair that ran down from his navel. She had painted them herself two nights ago at the kitchen table with the door bolted.

She had not slept. She had lain awake through the small hours, watching the fan turn, watching the bulb waste its light, and she had made her list in her head the way her mother used to make lists before a market day — the washing, the sweets for Mrs. Sharma, the box of mithai from the shop near the temple, the card with the mother-in-law's name written in a careful hand. Kamla. She would write it herself if she had to. She would write it in her own hand and her father would not have to lie about anything he had not already agreed to.

Beside her, he shifted. His arm came off her back, and she felt the cool of the room find the place where his hand had been, and she almost reached for him to put it back. Then she heard the drag of his hand across the sheet, the small sound of skin on cotton, and she opened her eyes.

His fingers had closed over the rim of the sindur box.

She lay very still and watched him. He had lifted it off the nightstand — the lacquered box, dark wood with the faded gold flowers, the lid sitting a little crooked because the hinge had loosened years ago and no one had ever fixed it — and he set it down on the mattress between them with both hands, the way a man sets down something that belongs to someone else. The lacquer caught the lamp and held it. When his palm closed over the top, she saw his fingers spread to take the whole lid, and she knew the wood was warm there, warm from where her own grip had been, from where she had carried it up off the floor and put it on the nightstand, from where her hands had held it all night even in her sleep.

"You kept it," he said. Not a question.

"I put it where it belongs."

He looked at her. In the lamplight his face was all shadow and bone, the split nail on his thumb catching a thin line of yellow where he held the lid. He was not a handsome man. She had known that her whole life. His jaw was too heavy, his eyes were set too close, and there was a scar on the back of his left hand from a pan of hot oil that had tipped when she was nine and he had never once mentioned it after that night. But he was looking at her now the way she had wanted to be looked at for as long as she could remember, and she did not care what his face was shaped like.

"In the light," she said. "You said you'd look."

"I'm looking."

"Then look properly."

He lifted the lid. The hinge complained, a thin metallic squeak, and then the smell came up — the dry red smell of the sindur, old and new at once, the smell of the powder her mother had worn on her own forehead for the years of her marriage and then stopped wearing, the smell of the night before. He set the lid aside on the sheet and sat up against the headboard, and she watched his hand go into the box, two fingers, the index and the middle, the way a man reaches into a tin of tobacco. When he drew them out, the pads were coated to the first knuckle in red.

She had thought about this moment so many times that morning, lying awake with the fan turning, that she had almost ruined it for herself. She had imagined it in the dark and in the light and in the mirror and in the lane, and every version had been wrong, because she had imagined it as something done to her. What she had not imagined was this — that she would be the one to lift her chin and steady herself and wait, that she would be the one with her hands at her sides and her spine straight, and that he would be the one who hesitated.

His fingers came to her forehead. She felt the cool of the powder first, then the warmth of his skin under it, then the small drag of his fingertips parting her hair where it fell across her brow. He drew the line straight up, from between her eyebrows into her hairline, and she felt the powder catch in the fine hairs at her part and settle there. Then he drew it again, slower, and again, until the line was thick and even and she could feel the weight of it on her skin the way you feel a hand on your shoulder, through the cloth, through the muscle, all the way down.

"There," he said, low. "Now you're marked."

"Say it again."

"Marked."

"Not that." She opened her eyes and looked at him. The powder was still on his fingers and he had not wiped it off, and there was red at the corner of his thumbnail where it had caught under the nail. "Say the other thing."

He was quiet for a moment. The fan turned. Somewhere down the lane a dog barked twice and then gave up. Then he said, "Nisha."

It went through her like cold water on a hot day. She had heard him say it twice before — once in the kitchen with the dupatta still on her head, once in this room with the light on — and each time it had been a small shock, a thing she had to breathe through. This time it was not a shock. This time it was a fact. He had said her name with his fingers red with sindur and her forehead wet with it and the box open between them on the bed, and there was no taking it back, and she did not want to.

"Again."

"Nisha."

"Again."

"Nisha." His voice had gone rough on the second syllable, and she saw his throat move, and she knew — the way you know a thing in your body before your mind has caught up — that he was not saying it to please her. He was saying it because it was true now, because he had looked at her in the light and the word had come out of him and there had been nothing else to say.

She reached for the box. Her hand crossed the mattress and her fingers went into the powder the way his had, two fingers, and she felt the dry grit of it against her skin and the faint coolness of the lacquer at the rim. When she drew them out they were red to the second knuckle, and she did not wipe them either. She brought her hand to his chest instead.

He watched her do it. He did not stop her. She laid her red fingertips on his sternum, just above the place where his heartbeat was, and she drew a line down the center of him — slow, deliberate, the way he had drawn the line on her forehead — and then she drew another, and another, until there was a red streak down the middle of his chest and a smaller one curving off toward his left nipple, and the powder had caught in the hair there and turned it a dull rust color.

"Now you're marked too," she said.

His hand came up and closed around her wrist. Not hard. Just enough to hold her there with her fingers still against his chest, the red smeared between their two skins, and she felt the heat of his palm all the way up her forearm. His thumb moved once across the inside of her wrist, over the pulse, and she knew he could feel how fast it was going, and she did not care.

"You don't know what you're asking for," he said.

"I've known since I was fourteen."

He looked at her then — really looked, the way he had not looked at her in the dark, the way he had not let himself look at her before tonight. His eyes went from the line of sindur on her forehead down to her mouth and then down further, over her throat, over the swell of her breasts where they lay against the sheet with their dark nipples and the fine down of hair she had never had to shave, over the dip of her waist, over the wide flare of her hips, and then further, to the place between her thighs that was smooth and flat and quiet and had not changed in two years no matter how many pills she swallowed every morning with her tea.

She let him look. She had decided that in the small hours too. She would not cover herself, not with her hands, not with the sheet, not with the lies she had been taught to tell. If he was going to be her husband, he was going to see all of her, and if he could not — if the thing between her legs was the thing that broke him — then better to know it now, in this room, with the lamp on, than in the lane tomorrow with the whole town watching.

"Say what you see," she said. Her voice came out lower than she meant it to.

He was silent for a long moment. His hand was still on her wrist. Then he said, "I see my wife."

Something in her chest cracked open. She had not known it was still there to crack. She had thought she had spent all of it — the hoping, the wanting, the long years of standing in front of the mirror in her mother's room pressing her flat chest together with her palms and whispering the name she had chosen for herself into the glass. She had thought there was nothing left in her that could still be surprised by kindness. And here it was, cracking open at four in the morning in a room that smelled of sex and sindur, from a man with a split nail and a scar on his hand who had never once in nineteen years said a gentle thing to her without a bottle in him.

"Then take me," she said. "In the light. Like this."

He moved. His hand left her wrist and found her hip instead — the same hip, the one with the bruise on it, the bruise shaped like his hand from the first night — and he pulled her toward him across the mattress, and the sindur box tipped between them. She heard the small sound of it going over, the dry slide of powder spilling out onto the sheet, and she did not look. His other arm came under her shoulders and he laid her back against the pillows, and the powder scattered where her hair fell into it, and she felt the grit of it under her shoulder blades and along the back of her arm and she did not care.

He came over her. His weight settled onto his elbows on either side of her head and his hips found the cradle of her thighs and she felt him there — the heat of him, the length of him, the way he was already hard and pressing against the soft flat place between her legs, and she felt her whole body go liquid at the contact. Her breath came out of her in a rush. Her hands came up and found his shoulders and her nails — the long painted nails — dug into the muscle there, and he made a low sound in his throat that she had never heard from him before, not in the dark, not in the kitchen, not in her whole life.

"You feel that," she said. It was not a question.

"I feel it."

"Say it."

"I want you."

The words went through her like a hand. She arched up against him, and his mouth came down on her throat, and she felt his teeth graze the place where her pulse was still hammering, and she tipped her head back into the powder on the pillow and let him. His mouth moved down — over her collarbone, over the swell of her breast, and then his lips closed over her nipple and she felt the pull of it all the way down into her belly, a hot wire drawn tight. She gasped and her fingers went into his hair and held him there.

"Harder," she said.

He sucked harder. His tongue flattened against her and his teeth came down on the edge of it, and she felt her hips rock up against his without meaning to, and the friction of his cock against her through nothing — there was nothing between them, no cloth, no sheet, just his skin on hers — made her whole body clench. She was wet. She could feel it, the slick heat of herself where he was pressed against her, and she knew he could feel it too, because his hips had gone still against her and his breath had stopped against her breast.

He lifted his head. His mouth was red from her skin and his chest was streaked with the sindur she had painted on him, and his eyes in the lamplight were black and wide and fixed on hers.

"Nisha," he said. Just the name. Like he was checking it was still true.

"Yes," she said. "Say it when you're inside me. Say it the whole time."

He reached down between them. She felt his hand move, felt the head of his cock find the slick place where she was open and wet, and she held her breath. He did not push in. He held there, at the entrance, the blunt heat of him pressing against her, and she felt her body give a long slow clench around nothing, wanting him, and she made a sound she had not planned to make.

"Look at me," he said.

She looked at him. His face was close enough that she could see the sweat at his hairline and the small cut on his lower lip where he had bitten it and the way his eyes were not black at all but a very dark brown, almost amber at the edges where the lamp caught them. She had never been this close to his face in her life. She had never wanted to be. And now she was, and he was looking back at her, and neither of them looked away.

He pushed in.

Slow. Slower than the first night, slower than she had known a man could move. She felt the stretch of him at the entrance, the resistance of her own body, and then the give, and then the long hot slide of him filling her inch by inch, and her mouth came open on a sound that had no shape to it. Her nails dug into his shoulders. Her heels came up and locked behind his back. And all the while he watched her face — watched her forehead crease and her lips part and her eyes go wide and then narrow — and he did not look away once.

"Nisha," he said, when he was all the way in.

Her name. Not her mother's. Not Ambiance. Not the wife who had left with her heels in her hand. Her name, in his mouth, with his cock buried to the root inside her and the sindur smeared between their two bodies and the lamp burning over them both.

"Again," she said.

He began to move.

Slow at first. Long strokes, pulling almost all the way out and then pushing back in, and each time he pushed in he said it — Nisha — low in his chest, right against her ear, and each time she heard it she clenched around him and he made a sound and his next stroke came harder. She wrapped her legs tighter around his waist and met him, pushing up as he pushed down, and the bed creaked under them and the fan turned and the powder on the pillow smeared into her hair and along her cheek and she did not care about any of it. There was only this — the heat of him inside her, the drag and the fill and the wet sound of their bodies meeting, the way his breath was coming faster now against her throat.

"Harder," she said. "I'm not made of glass."

He gave her harder. His hips snapped against hers and the slap of skin filled the room and she cried out — not softly, not the way she had cried out in the dark the first night, but loud, from the belly, a sound she had never let herself make in this house. His hand came up and covered her mouth and she bit his palm and he groaned and drove deeper, and she felt the head of him press against something inside her that made her whole body jerk.

"There," she said against his hand. "Right there. Don't stop."

He didn't stop. He found the angle and kept it, and she felt the pressure start to build low in her belly, a tight hot coil winding itself tighter with every stroke. Her hands left his shoulders and went to his chest instead, and she smeared the sindur on him with her palms, spreading the red across his nipples and down his stomach, marking him everywhere she could reach, and he let her, and his eyes stayed on her face the whole time like he was memorizing it.

"Say it," she said. Her voice was coming apart now. "Say who I am."

"My wife."

"My name."

"Nisha."

"Again."

"Nisha. Nisha. Nisha."

Each time he said it he thrust into her and each time he thrust into her the coil wound tighter and she felt her thighs start to shake where they were locked around his back. She was close. She could feel it there, right at the edge, a hot white thing waiting for her, and she held it off, held it off, because she wanted to be looking at him when it happened. She wanted to see his face. She wanted to know what he looked like when she came apart under him with his name in her mouth.

"I'm going to come," she said. "Look at me. Look at me when I come."

He looked at her. His jaw was set and his breath was ragged and there was sweat running down his temple into the powder on his chest, and he did not look away, and she felt the coil snap.

It went through her whole body. Her back arched off the bed and her heels dug into his spine and her nails raked down his chest leaving four red lines in the sindur, and she came with her eyes open and her mouth open and his name on her tongue — Nisha, she heard herself say, as if she were the one being named, as if saying it out loud were the same as being it — and she felt her cunt clench around his cock in long rolling waves, again and again, until her thighs were shaking and her breath was sobbing in her throat.

He came with her. She felt it — felt him swell inside her, felt his rhythm break, felt the first hot pulse of him spill deep in her belly and then the second and the third, and he was saying her name still, saying it into her throat with his face buried there, saying Nisha, Nisha, Nisha, and his hips were jerking against her and his hand was fisted in the sheet beside her head and she held him through all of it, her legs still locked around him, her hands flat on his back, taking every last shudder of him.

Then it was quiet.

The fan turned. The bulb burned. Somewhere far off in the lane a bicycle bell rang twice and faded. She lay under him with his weight on her and his breath hot and wet against her neck and she felt the slow leak of him out of her, warm down the inside of her thigh, and the grit of the sindur powder under her shoulder and in her hair and smeared across her cheek. Her forehead was still wet with it. She could feel it there, the line he had drawn, thick and even and straight up into her part, and she did not wipe it off.

He lifted his head after a while. His face was close to hers and his eyes were soft now in a way she had never seen them, and he looked at the line on her forehead and then at her eyes and then at the line again.

"It's smeared," he said.

"I know."

"Tomorrow—"

"Tomorrow I'll put it on again," she said. "In the morning. In the mirror. And then I'll walk down the lane to the shop and I'll buy the sweets for Mrs. Sharma and I'll write Kamla's name on the card myself, and when she comes to the door I'll stand there in the red dupatta and you'll stand beside me and you'll say the same thing you just said."

He was quiet. His thumb came up and touched the corner of her mouth, where a little of the powder had caught, and he rubbed it away — gently, the way you'd wipe a child's face — and then he left his hand there, cupping her jaw.

"And if I can't?" he said. "If I lose my nerve."

"Then I'll stand there anyway."

He looked at her for a long moment. Then he lowered his head and pressed his mouth to the line of sindur on her forehead — not a kiss exactly, just his lips resting there, against the red, against the mark he had put on her — and she closed her eyes and felt the heat of his breath on her skin and the weight of his body still on hers and the fan turning overhead, counting down the dark toward morning.