The seventeenth night the sitting room of the haveli smelled permanently of sex, oil, leather, and the faint metallic scent of the iron ring that had held her for so many hours. Priya had spent the day in the same blank, obedient haze—wrists bound for long stretches, allowed only brief moments of freedom to drink water from Vikram’s hand and swallow the small pieces of food he pressed between her lips. The residual ache in both holes never left her. Every movement sent a dull, filthy reminder through her body of how thoroughly she had been stretched and shared. By evening her cunt was already wet, a thin, continuous trickle of arousal sliding down her inner thighs and leaving shiny paths on her bare skin.

Rohan returned from the office different again.