He pulled out of her slowly, and the sound of it was wet, obscene in the quiet room — the slick drag of his cock leaving her, the soft suck of her cunt closing on nothing. She felt the loss as a hollow ache, a sudden emptiness where he had been, and the cool silk of the sheets rose up against her overheated back like water. Her thighs were wet. His seed was sliding out of her, slow, thick, finding the silk beneath her hips.

She could not move. Her arms lay where they had fallen. Her breath came in shallow pulls, her ribs fluttering, and the collar sat heavy at her throat, the leather warm from her own skin. The lamp on the nightstand threw his shadow across the wall — enormous, hunched, moving — and she watched it without turning her head, the way a small animal watches from the grass.

His hand found her hip.

"Turn over," he said.

She did not obey at once. Her body would not answer her. But his hand was already working under her, palm flat against her belly, and he rolled her onto her stomach as easily as he might have rolled a sack of grain. Her cheek met the pillow. The silk was cool there, and she smelled herself on it — the musk of her, the salt of her sweat, and under it the sandalwood from his skin.

He pressed her face down into the pillow, not hard, just enough to hold her there, and then his knee pushed her thighs apart. She felt the blunt head of him against her, sliding through the wet mess he had left, and she made a sound into the pillow that was not quite a word.

"Breathe," he said, from somewhere above her.

She breathed. And he pushed into her.

The stretch of it tore a gasp out of her, high and thin, muffled by the pillow. He was deeper this way, or it only felt deeper — the angle of him running along a place inside her that made her toes curl against the sheets and her hands scramble for something to hold. She found the edge of the mattress. She held it.

He did not wait for her to be ready. He pulled back until she felt the ridge of him at her entrance, and then he drove in again, and the slap of his hips against her ass was a sound she felt in her teeth. Again. Again. The bed frame knocked softly against the wall, and she thought, distantly, the way one thinks of weather, of the husband asleep four feet away through the plaster, and the thought did something to her that she did not want to name.

"You'll understand everything before the night is over," he said against her ear.

His voice was low, unhurried, as though he were not moving inside her at all, as though his hips were not slapping against her, as though the whole house were not listening. He gathered her hair in his fist and pulled her head up off the pillow, and the collar bit into the front of her throat, and her back arched to follow it, her spine curving like a bow.

"Say it back to me," he said.

"I—" Her voice cracked. His hips had not stopped. Every word was jolted out of her. "I'll understand—everything—before the night is over."

"Good girl."

The words went through her like a hand. Her cunt clenched around him, hard, and she heard him exhale — the first sound he had made that was not a command — a short, rough breath, and his grip on her hair tightened.

Then his other hand came around and closed on her throat.

Not choking. Just holding. His palm covering the collar, his fingers finding the pulse there, and she felt her own heartbeat against his hand, fast and stupid, and she felt how small her throat was under it, how easily he could close it, and her whole body went loose and hot at once, the way it did, the way she hated and needed.

"You feel that," he said. Not a question.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Say what you feel."

She could not. Her face was hot. The words were somewhere behind her teeth and would not come, and he tightened his hand, just slightly, just enough that her next breath had to work for itself, and she felt the edges of the room go soft and dark and far away.

"I feel—" Her voice was a thread. "I feel you. In me. All of you."

He made a sound low in his chest. His hand eased. Air came back into her in a rush, and with it everything else — the slap of his hips, the wet noise of him moving in her, the creak of the bed, the fan turning overhead with its slow patient click.

He fucked her harder then. There was no rhythm to it now, no patience — just the long hard drive of him and the pull back and the drive again, and she was making sounds into the pillow that she could not have stopped if the whole world had been listening, and perhaps it was, perhaps the old woman in the back room had her ear to the wall, perhaps the husband had stirred, and she found she did not care, she found the not-caring was its own hot thing in her chest.

The silk was bunched under her stomach, twisted into a rope of red. Her cheek was wet against the pillow — she did not know if it was sweat or the other thing. Her thighs were shaking. She could feel it building in her, that slow climb, the tightening low in her belly, the way her cunt was gripping him now without her leave, pulling at him, wanting him deeper.

"Arshad," she gasped. "Arshad, I'm—"

"I know." His hand found her throat again, and this time he held it, and his hips never stopped. "Give it to me."

She came with a broken cry, her face pressed into the pillow, her whole body pulling tight around him — her cunt clenching in long waves, her thighs locking, her hands tearing at the mattress edge — and she heard herself sobbing into the silk, three short ugly sounds, and she could not stop them, and she did not want to.

He drove into her twice more, deep, and then he was coming too, a low groan breaking out of him, his hips jerking against her ass, and she felt it — the hot pulse of him inside her, spilling into her again, filling the place he had already filled, and the wrongness of it and the rightness of it were the same thing now, they had been the same thing for a long time.

He held himself there until the last of it was spent, and then he did not pull out. He came down over her, his chest against her back, his weight settling onto her, pinning her to the mattress, and she felt the whole heavy length of him pressing her into the silk, the sweat of his skin slick against hers, his breath hot and slow at her ear.

His hand was still at her throat. He let it rest there, loose now, his thumb moving once, slowly, along the line of her jaw.

"Listen," he said.

She listened. The fan. The pipe in the wall. Her own breathing, slowing. And beyond all of it, thin and grey, a sound she had not expected — birds, somewhere outside, beginning.

She turned her face on the pillow, just enough, and through the gap in the curtains she saw it: the first grey light of dawn, the colour of ash, colour of the inside of a shell, creeping in at the edge of the window and laying itself across the far wall.

The night was over.

She did not know if she had understood everything. She did not know if she understood anything at all. She only knew the weight of him on her back, and the seed of him inside her, and the grey light coming, and the collar still buckled at her throat, and the husband asleep on the other side of the wall, and the long day ahead that she would have to walk through in her saree with her hair combed and her voice soft and her throat covered.

"Arshad," she said, into the pillow. It was not a question. She did not know what it was.

He lifted his head, and she felt him look at her — she could not see his face, but she felt the weight of his gaze on the back of her neck, and she felt him decide something.

"The box," he said quietly. "Today. Before the old woman wakes."

He eased off her then, and she felt the cold come in where his body had been, and she turned her head to watch him — the dark shape of him moving through the grey room, finding his clothes, pulling them on without hurry. His back was to her. The muscles moved under his skin as he bent for his vest.

"The third floorboard," she said. Her voice was raw. "You said the third."

"The third." He pulled the vest over his head and turned, and his eyes in the half-light were black and flat and nothing at all like a man's. "You'll sleep now. You'll sleep beside your husband and you'll say your throat is sore from a cold. You'll say nothing else."

"And if she—"

"She heard nothing. She'll tell herself she heard nothing. An old woman in the dark, telling herself stories." He crossed to her, and she did not move, and he crouched beside the bed so his face was level with hers. "But if she comes to you before I come back — if she puts her phone in your face and asks you what you've been doing — you cry. You cry and you say you're frightened of the servant and he won't leave you alone, and you beg her to help you. You understand?"

She stared at him. Her throat worked. The collar was still on her, and his eyes were on it.

"You want me to lie to her."

"I want you to survive her until I'm done." His voice did not change. "There's a difference. You'll learn it."

He stood. At the door he stopped, and for a moment he was only a shape against the grey, and then he said, without turning, "Wash before he wakes. The silk too. He'll notice the silk."

The door closed behind him, soft as a breath.

Neha lay still in the bed. The grey light was stronger now, and it showed her everything — the twisted red silk, the wet dark patch beneath her hips, her own hands lying open and empty on the sheet, the thin gold of her wedding ring on the third finger. She reached up, slowly, and touched the collar at her throat. The leather was warm. Her pulse was under it, still going.

She got up. Her legs were unsteady, and something inside her ached with every step, and she stood in the grey room with her husband's breath coming slow through the wall and did not know what she was anymore. Then she went to the bathroom, and she ran the water, and she began to wash.

She started with her hands, because her hands were the only part of her that still felt like her own. She held them under the stream and watched the water run off her knuckles, pink at first where the lace had cut her thigh, then clear. The soap was the sandalwood one Vikram's mother had sent from Jaipur at Diwali, and it smelled like the temple and like her mother-in-law's approval, and she lathered it into her palms and pressed them to her face and breathed through her fingers and did not cry.

The collar was the problem. She had to work the buckle blind, her chin tucked, her fingers clumsy and wet, and it took her three tries before the tongue slipped free and the leather loosened. It came away from her skin with a soft tacky sound, and she stood there with it in her hands and looked at it — the worn edges, the crease where her throat had been, the little brass ring at the front where his finger had hooked. She did not know where to put it. If she left it on the basin, Vikram would see it in the morning when he shaved. If she threw it in the bin, the old woman might find it. In the end she folded it small and pushed it down into the pocket of her nightdress, and the weight of it hung against her hip like a stone.

The water was going cold. She stepped into the shower and let it run over her shoulders and down her back, and she watched the drain, and she watched the thin grey water go round and round and disappear. Between her legs there was sandalwood soap and his seed and her own wet, all of it sliding out of her and away, and she pressed her palm flat against her belly and held it there as though she could feel the place he had filled. The mirror above the basin had fogged. She wiped a stripe through it with the side of her hand and looked at herself — the wet hair stuck to her cheek, the red mark on her shoulder where his teeth had been, the small dark bruise at her throat that would need a high collar and a story about a hot iron.

She turned the water off and stood dripping on the bathmat and listened. The house was silent in the way a house is silent at four in the morning — not empty, but holding its breath. The fan in the bedroom. The pipe in the wall. And through the plaster, her husband's breathing, slow and even and untroubled, the breathing of a man who had come home from his tour and made love to his wife and slept the sleep of the just. She wrung out her hair and reached for the towel and thought, with a clarity that frightened her, that she was going to have to lie to him before the sun was properly up.