Priya did exactly as she had been told.

She climbed the stairs on trembling legs, the soft cotton of the salwar still bunched around one ankle where he had shoved it down. In her room she stripped the rest of the way—kameez pulled over her head and dropped to the floor, salwar kicked aside. Naked, she lay back on the charpoy that still smelled of last night’s sex and spread her thighs wide. The fading evening light slipped through the blue shutters in thin stripes across her body, painting gold over her breasts, her stomach, the wet, swollen flesh between her open legs.