He pulled out of her with a wet sound that made her flinch, and before she could draw a breath he had her by the hip, flipping her onto her stomach. The silk slid against her breasts, cool and slick, and then his hand was in the small of her back, shoving down, dragging her hips up until her ass was in the air and her face was pressed into the ruined sheets.

"Stay."

She stayed. She had no choice — his palm was flat on her lower back, pinning her, and her knees were already sliding apart on the wet silk. She could feel him behind her, the heat of him, the thick head of his cock nudging against her slick, swollen flesh, and she whimpered into the sheets, her fingers curling into the fabric.

He didn't ask. He just pushed.

The head of his cock stretched her open, sliding into her cunt in one long, slow thrust that made her gasp, her back arching, her mouth opening against the silk. He was so deep — deeper than before, impossibly deep — and she felt herself clench around him, felt the wet heat of her own arousal coating him as he seated himself fully inside her.

"You're so fucking wet," he said, his voice low and rough. "You were waiting for this, weren't you? Waiting for me to fill you again."

She couldn't answer. She could only moan, her face buried in the silk, her hips trembling as he pulled back and thrust into her again. Hard. The slap of his hips against her ass cracked through the room, and she cried out, her fingers digging into the sheets.

Then his palm came down on her ass.

The crack of it echoed, sharp and stinging, and she yelped, her whole body jerking forward. He didn't stop. He thrust into her again, his cock driving deep, and his hand came down on the other cheek, a second crack that made her see white.

"Count," he said.

"O-one—"

Another slap. Harder.

"Two." Her voice broke on the word, but she said it. "Two."

He thrust into her, a steady rhythm now, his hips slamming against her ass with every stroke, and his palm kept time with it. Crack. Thrust. Crack. Thrust. Each slap landed on a different cheek, alternating, and she felt the heat building, the sting blooming across her skin until she couldn't tell where the pain ended and the pleasure began.

"Three."

Crack.

"Four."

Crack.

She was sobbing into the silk, her voice muffled, her body rocking with every thrust. He was so deep, so thick, and every time he drove into her she felt herself clench around him, felt the wet heat of her own arousal dripping down her thighs. She was a mess. A ruin. His.

"Five," she gasped, and he slapped her again, harder, and she cried out his name into the sheets.

"Arshad—"

"Say it," he growled, his hand fisting in her hair, yanking her head back. "Say what you are."

He pulled her up by the hair, her spine arching, her throat exposed, and she felt his cock still buried inside her, felt him pulse, felt the heat of his body against her back. His other hand came around her throat, not squeezing, just resting there, the weight of it a promise.

"Say it," he said again, his voice low and dark. "Say you're my randi."

She opened her mouth. The words were there — they were always there now, living on her tongue, waiting to be spoken. She was his randi. She had been his randi since the first night, since the red lace, since the moment she had knelt for him in her husband's house and opened her mouth and taken him inside her.

"I'm your randi," she whispered.

His hand tightened in her hair. "Louder."

"I'm your randi." Her voice cracked, but it was louder now, carrying through the room. "I'm Arshad's randi."

He pulled her head back further, his mouth finding her ear, his breath hot against her skin. "Good girl."

She shuddered. The praise undid her more than the slaps ever could, more than the sting of his palm or the stretch of his cock. She felt herself clench around him, felt the wet heat pooling in her belly, and she moaned, her head falling back against his shoulder.

He held her there for a moment, his cock still buried inside her, his hand still in her hair, his breath still hot against her ear. Then he let her go, shoving her forward, and she collapsed onto the silk, her face in the sheets, her hips still up, still open for him.

He pulled out.

The emptiness was sudden and sharp, and she whimpered, her cunt clenching around nothing, aching for him. She heard him spit, heard the wet sound of it, and then his hand was between her cheeks, slick and cold, spreading her open.

"You're going to take me here," he said, and his thumb pressed against her asshole, circling, teasing. "You're going to take all of me."

She sobbed. "Arshad—"

"I know." His voice was almost gentle. "I know it hurts. But you'll take it."

He pressed forward, and she felt the head of his cock against her asshole, felt the stretch, the burn. She cried out, her fingers clawing at the sheets, her whole body tensing.

"Relax," he said. "Relax for me."

She tried. She forced her body to loosen, forced herself to breathe, and she felt him push inside her, felt the slow, agonizing stretch of her asshole around his thick cock. She cried out, tears streaming down her face, but she didn't tell him to stop. She couldn't. She didn't want to.

He pushed deeper, inch by inch, and she felt herself opening for him, felt the burn give way to something else, something full and deep and overwhelming. He was so big — bigger than anything she had ever taken — and she felt herself stretched around him, felt every ridge and vein of his cock as he seated himself fully inside her.

"There," he breathed. "There you go."

He didn't move for a moment. He just stayed there, buried inside her, his hands on her hips, his breath ragged. She could feel his heart hammering against her back, feel the heat of his body, feel the pulse of him inside her.

Then he pulled out, almost all the way, and thrust back in.

She screamed into the silk. The pain was sharp, blinding, but beneath it was something else — a fullness, a stretch, a pleasure so deep it made her dizzy. He thrust again, and she felt the slap of his hips against her ass, felt his palm come down on her cheek, and she cried out, her body jerking forward.

"Count," he said.

"O-one—"

Crack.

"Two."

Crack. Thrust. Crack. Thrust.

He fucked her ass with the same steady rhythm he had used on her cunt, his palm cracking down on her cheeks with every stroke, and she sobbed into the silk, counting through her tears. Five. Six. Seven. Her voice broke on every number, but she said them all, because he told her to, because she was his randi and this was what his randi did.

"Eight," she gasped, and he slapped her harder, and she felt herself clench around his cock, felt the pleasure spike through the pain, felt her own wetness dripping down her thighs.

"You like that," he said, not a question. "You like being fucked in the ass, don't you?"

She couldn't answer. She could only sob, her face in the silk, her body rocking with every thrust.

"Say it," he said, his hand cracking down on her ass again. "Say you like it."

"I—" Her voice broke. "I like it."

"Louder."

"I like it!" She screamed it into the silk, her body trembling, her cunt clenching around nothing, aching to be filled again.

He thrust into her ass one final time, deep and hard, and then he pulled out, and she collapsed onto the bed, sobbing, her body shaking, her ass burning, her cunt dripping.

She didn't have time to recover. His hand was in her hair, yanking her up, pulling her to her knees on the ruined silk. She blinked through her tears, her vision blurry, and then his cock was in front of her face, thick and hard and glistening with her own wetness.

"Open," he said.

She opened her mouth.

He shoved his cock inside, deep, and she gagged, her eyes watering, her hands flying up to his thighs. He didn't give her a moment to adjust. He fucked her throat, his hips thrusting, his hand in her hair, holding her steady as he drove into her mouth again and again.

She choked, tears streaming down her face, but she took it. She took all of it, her throat working around him, her tongue pressing against the underside of his cock, her hands gripping his thighs for balance.

"That's it," he growled. "Take it. Take all of it."

She moaned around him, the vibration making him shudder, and he thrust deeper, his cock hitting the back of her throat, and she gagged again, but she didn't pull away. She couldn't. She was his randi, and this was what his randi did.

He fucked her throat for what felt like hours, his rhythm steady and brutal, his hand in her hair, his breath ragged. She felt the tears running down her face, felt the drool dripping from her lips, felt the ache in her jaw and the burn in her throat, and she loved it. She loved every second of it.

"Look at me," he said, and she looked up at him through her tears, her eyes red, her face a mess. He stared down at her, his eyes black and depthless, and he thrust into her mouth one final time, holding himself there, his cock buried in her throat.

Then he pulled out.

She gasped, air flooding into her lungs, and she saw him stroking himself, his hand moving fast over his slick cock. She knew what was coming. She closed her eyes.

The first pulse of his cum hit her face, hot and thick, splashing across her cheek. The second hit her lips. The third hit her closed eyelids, dripping down her lashes. He came in hot pulses across her face, her lips, her eyes, and she knelt there, trembling, dripping, his cum running down her skin.

When he was done, he let go of her hair, and she slumped forward, her hands catching herself on the ruined silk. She could feel his cum on her face, feel it dripping from her chin, feel it pooling in the hollow of her collarbone.

She looked up at him through the mess, her eyes still wet with tears, her lips parted, her breath ragged.

He looked down at her, his chest heaving, his cock still hard, still slick. His eyes were still black, still depthless, and there was something in them she couldn't name — something that made her heart stutter in her chest.

"Now you know what you are," he said.

She knelt there, dripping, ruined, his cum on her face, his words in her ears. She knew. She had known for a long time.

She was his randi.

The silence after his words was the loudest thing in the room. The fan turned overhead, its blades stirring the thick air, carrying the sandalwood scent she had grown to know as his — dark and heavy, the same smell that clung to his skin when he came through the window at night. She knelt on the ruined silk, his cum cooling on her cheeks, on her lips, on her closed eyelids, and she did not wipe it away. She did not move at all.

Her knees ached against the bed. The wet of the sheets had soaked through to her shins, and she could feel the dried slickness of her own arousal on her inner thighs, the sting of his slaps still pulsing in her ass, the deep, hollow ache where he had filled her. Every part of her hurt. Every part of her was his. She heard him move — the creak of the bed frame, the soft pad of his weight shifting — and she braced herself for his hand in her hair again, for another command, for anything.

But he only stood there. She could feel his gaze on her, heavy and black, and she kept her eyes closed, the cum drying on her lashes, gluing them together. She did not want to see what was in his face. She was afraid of what she might find — afraid it would be nothing, just the flat black of the demon that wore his skin, or worse, afraid it would be something human, something that looked at her like she mattered.

The fan clicked on each rotation, a small, rhythmic sound that filled the silence. Somewhere in the house, the old woman's clock ticked — she had heard it from her room all these weeks, the slow, patient counting of hours. The marriage bed beneath her knees was a ruin of silk and sweat and cum, and she knelt in the middle of it, her face a mess, her body marked, her throat raw, and she understood, at last, what the demon had meant when he said she would know everything before the night was over. She was his randi. Not his victim, not his toy — his. And she had chosen it, every time, with her mouth open and her knees on the silk.

Her lashes came apart first — a small, wet tearing, the salt of him stinging the corners of her eyes. She blinked, blinked again, and the room swam back into shape: the fan, the dark window, the flat of his belly where he stood over her, gathering his breath. Cum had gone tacky on her cheekbone, a thin skin tightening as it dried. She could feel the rest of it sliding, slow and heavy, down the side of her jaw.

She lifted her hand.

It shook — she noticed that from somewhere outside herself, the way you notice weather. Two fingers, the middle and the ring, came up to her cheek and dragged through the mess. It came away thick and white and clinging, smeared across her knuckles, filling the seam of her skin. More than she had thought. There was always more than she thought with him.

She looked at it. Turned her hand over in the low light, the fan moving the smell of it up into her face — salt and something darker under the salt, the smell of him that had soaked into the pillow beside her for weeks. Her stomach turned over, and it was not revulsion. She knew the difference now. She had learned it the hard way, on her knees, with her husband asleep through the wall.

She raised her fingers to her mouth.

Her tongue came out and touched them, flat, and the taste of him broke across it — salt, iron, the faint bitterness at the back of the throat. She closed her lips around her fingers and drew them in, slow, cleaning them one by one, the way she had learned to clean him. The wet sound of it was loud in the quiet. She did not hurry. She dragged her thumb along her lower lip where a streak had dried, worked it loose, swallowed.

Above her, the floorboards did not creak. He had not moved.

She lifted her eyes.

He was watching her. His cock still stood out from his body, slick and dark and half-hard, and his chest was going slow and deep, and his eyes — his eyes were black, but they were not flat. They were fixed on her mouth. On her fingers. On the way her tongue had come out. There was a pulse working in his jaw, and his hands hung at his sides, and she saw them flex once, the knuckles going pale, before they stilled.

"Again," he said. Low. Barely a sound at all.

She found another streak at the hollow of her collarbone, gathered it on her fingertips, and brought it up. This time she did not look away from him while she did it. She put her fingers in her mouth and sucked them clean and let him watch her throat move when she swallowed.

His breath came out of him in a rush. He turned his head, just slightly, as though the sight of her had cost him something, and when he looked back the black had gone deeper.

"You're a greedy little thing," he said.

Her face burned. She wiped the last of it from her chin with the back of her wrist and licked that too, and the taste was gone now, only her own skin left, warm and saltless. Her mouth was dry. Her knees had gone numb against the wet silk. She knelt there with her hands in her lap and her face clean and her eyes on him, and she did not know what to do with her hands now that there was nothing left to clean.

He crouched, and the bed dipped, and his face came level with hers. Close. She could see the small scar under his eyebrow, the one she had never dared ask about. She could see the sweat drying on his upper lip.

"Say it," he said.

She knew what he wanted. She knew it the way she knew the tick of the old woman's clock. But something in her had gone quiet and stubborn, and she made him wait for it — one breath, two — and she watched his eyes narrow.

"I'm your randi," she said.

He didn't smile. He reached out and took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned her face to one side, then the other, examining her. Looking for what was left of his cum on her skin, she realized. Checking that she had taken all of it.

"Good," he said. He let her go. "Waste nothing. Not a drop of me goes to waste in this house."

"No," she said. Her voice came out scraped and thin. "Nothing goes to waste."

He stood, and the mattress lifted with him, and she felt the cold come into the room where his body had been. He crossed to the window, and she watched the flat of his back — the muscle moving under the dark skin, the old thin scars across his shoulder blades that she had traced with her finger in the dark and never asked about either. He pulled the curtain back a finger's width and looked out into the black of the courtyard.

"The old woman's light is still on," he said.

Neha's stomach dropped. She gathered the sheet up over her breasts without thinking, though there was no one to hide from, and then felt foolish and let it fall again.

"She's awake?"

"Awake or pretending." He let the curtain drop. "Either is a problem. She has been sitting in that room all night with her phone in her lap and her clock ticking, and she is not a patient woman. She will want to know what happened tonight. She will want to see it."

"She can't—" Neha started, and stopped. She did not know what she meant. She can't see me like this. She can't see what I let you do. She can't know that I liked it.

He came back to the bed. He did not sit. He looked down at her kneeling there, the sheet half across her thighs, and something moved through his face that she could not read.

"She already knows what you are," he said. "She made you. Don't forget that. She put the collar in your hands and the lace on your body and she thinks she holds the string." He paused. "Tomorrow, before she wakes, you get the box. Under the third floorboard. You know the room."

"I know the room."

"And if she stops you in the hall — if she asks why you're up so early, why your face looks like that, why your throat is bruised—" He tipped his head. "What do you tell her?"

Neha thought. The lies came easier now than they had at the start. That frightened her more than anything his hands had done.

"I tell her the servant won't leave me alone," she said. "I cry. I say I'm frightened of you. I say I don't know what to do."

"And?"

"And I ask her to help me." She lifted her chin. "I ask her to save me from you."

He laughed. It was the first time she had heard it all night, and it was not a kind sound, but it was real, and it made the hair stand up on her arms.

"Save you," he said. "That's good. That's very good." He reached down and caught a strand of her hair where it had stuck to her cheek, and tucked it back behind her ear, and the gentleness of it after everything was somehow the worst thing he had done to her. "She'll believe it. She wants to believe it. A woman like that needs to be the one who saves you, or the whole game falls apart. Let her have it."

"And the box?"

"The box comes to me. Not to her. Not to your husband. Me." He let his hand fall. "You understand what's in it?"

"Letters," she said. "Cards. A photograph."

"And other things. Things she has kept for years, waiting for the right moment to spend them." He turned away and picked up his vest from the floor and pulled it over his head, and the dark of him disappeared under the thin cloth, and he became a servant again, ordinary, invisible, the man who brought the towels. "She has been collecting coins against everyone in this house. Tomorrow we take her purse."

Neha watched him dress. The vest. The loose drawstring trousers. The way he pushed his feet into his sandals without looking. It was like watching a man put on a costume, and she thought — not for the first time — that she did not know which of the two was the costume and which was the man.

He came to the bed one last time. He put his hand on the top of her head, not rough, not gentle either, just there, a weight.

"Sleep," he said. "You'll need it. Tomorrow the old woman will want her performance, and Mr. Verma will want his, and your husband will come home from the club expecting a wife." He pressed down, just a little. "Three of them, all wanting something out of you. And me wanting the fourth thing."

"What's the fourth thing?"

He looked at her for a long moment.

"Everything else," he said.

Then he took his hand away and went to the door, and the door opened without a sound, and he was gone, and the room was only the fan and the clock and the smell of him on the ruined sheets.

Neha sat for a while. Then she got up on legs that did not want to hold her, and she went to the bathroom and washed her face with cold water from the tap, and she looked at herself in the mirror over the basin. Her eyes were red. Her throat was bruised in the shape of a thumb. Her mouth was swollen. She touched her lower lip with her finger, and she could taste nothing now but water and the cold metal of the tap.

She went back to the bed and pulled the sheet up over her body and lay down on her side, facing the wall, and she listened to the fan turn and the clock tick and the old woman's light go out at last, sometime in the small hours, with a click she heard all the way through the wall.

The click of the light going out left a ringing in the room, a small pressure in her ears that the fan could not fill. She lay with her knees drawn up and her hands tucked between her thighs, and the sheet against her skin was the only thing in the world that was not his. She counted the fan. One turn. Two. She had counted it before, in the beginning, before she knew what her own body could be made to do.

Her mouth still tasted of nothing, which was somehow worse than the taste of him. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, to the back of her teeth, hunting for a trace the water had missed — the salt, the iron, the faint bitterness. It was gone. She had taken it all, and now there was only the cold tap and the clean, hollow inside of her cheeks.

She turned over onto her back. The ceiling had a crack in it she had never noticed, running from the corner of the fan box out toward the window, thin as a hair. She looked at it for a long time. It had been there the whole of her marriage, she supposed, and she had lain under it night after night and never once lifted her eyes.

Her hand found her own throat. The bruise was not sore to the touch, only tender, the way a fruit is tender just before it turns. She traced the shape of it — his thumb, she thought, and the thought did not frighten her the way it should have. That was the thing she could not make sit still in her chest: not the fear, which she understood, but the absence of it. She had knelt on her husband's bed and licked a servant's seed from her own fingers, and she was lying here now with her heart going slow and even, and she could not find the part of herself that was supposed to be weeping.

Somewhere down the hall a door moved — not the old woman's, further off, the small sound of a hinge giving and settling again. She went still and listened, and the sound did not come again, and after a while she let her breath out. The house was full of these sounds at night, she had learned. It had been full of them all along, and she had slept through every one.

She got up once, near dawn, and went to the window and put her fingers through the gap in the curtain. The courtyard was grey and empty, the flagstones wet with dew, and the old woman's window was dark and shut. Nothing moved. She stood there until the cold came up through her feet, and then she went back to the bed and lay down, and this time when she closed her eyes she did not count the fan at all.