The silence in the baithak was a living thing, thick with the scent of their sweat and sex and the sharp, metallic hint of his lingering anger. Siya hadn't moved from the divan. The cotton cushion was cold and damp beneath her cheek, her torn sari a crumpled, ruined heap around her. Her body was a map of aches—the deep, throbbing emptiness in her ass, the tender bloom of bruises on her hips, the sting on her backside from his slap.

Thakur's footsteps returned, measured and heavy on the sandstone. She flinched, a tiny, involuntary tremor she couldn't suppress. He stopped beside the divan, a dark pillar of white cotton and simmering control. She kept her eyes shut, pretending, for one childish second, that she could disappear.