Morning light cut through the gap in her curtains, a blade of pale gold that fell across the tangled sheets. She surfaced from sleep in stages, her body registering the world before her mind caught up. The cotton nightgown had ridden up again, twisted around her ribs. Her thick thighs were slick, pressed together against the residual ache of the night before.

And the dream.

She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes, trying to smother the images that still moved behind them. His mouth. His hands. His weight pinning her into the mattress, the slow, deliberate roll of his hips. The dream had been so lucid, so tactile, that her body had responded as if it were happening. The wetness cooling on her inner thighs was evidence of that.

“Fuck,” she whispered to the empty room.

The word hung there, small and profane in the morning quiet. Outside, the courtyard was just beginning to stir. A pigeon cooed on the windowsill. A tea kettle whistled in some distant kitchen. Normal sounds. Innocent sounds. They did nothing to calm the heat still radiating from her center.

She threw the sheets off and sat up. A fresh wave of heat rolled through her. Not embarrassment this time. Something sharper. Need, pure and undiluted, with all its teeth.

She thought of herself. Saanjh Gupta. The scholar. The girl her family proudly called the sensible one. The same girl her cousins teased for being painfully boring. If they could see her now... If they could see the way her body had betrayed every careful rule she'd ever lived by.

Almost without realizing it, her hand drifted lower, gliding over the soft curve of her stomach before slipping between her thighs. Her fingers found the slick warmth waiting for them, and a shiver rippled through her.

A soft, helpless moan escaped her lips—a fragile sound she couldn't hold back.

In the dream he’d pushed her knees apart and settled between them. He’d spoken against her skin, words she couldn’t remember now, only the vibration of them. Then his tongue had found her, flat and hot, lapping up through her folds, and she’d grabbed the headboard and—Her own fingers mimicked the memory. Two of them, slick and curling. Her hips lifted off the mattress to meet the pressure.

The orgasm was already close, stoked by hours of imaginary fucking. She thought of him above her, hips driving, his body glistening like it had been under the bathroom steam. The muscles in his forearms cording as he braced himself. The way his jaw tightened when he was close.

“God,” she whispered, rolling onto her side, fingers still tangled in the damp mess between her legs. “What am I doing?”

But the question had no teeth. She knew what she was doing. The dream had shown her exactly what she wanted. Not just to watch anymore. To be touched. To be seen.

Her parents weren’t coming home for a week. One  week of this empty house, this bachelor-woman existence she’d been so proud of but which had started to feel like a waiting room. She was supposed to be preparing for her thesis defence. The thought made her laugh, a low, unsteady sound. Her thesis. On a good morning she could barely focus on a headline.

She took a deep breath and decided to shower first, hoping the warm water would steady her before she did what she'd resolved to do..

The cold water hit the back of her neck first, then the curve of her shoulder blades, and saanjh let it run the full length of her spine before reaching for the lavender body lotion. The soft floral scent mingled with the steam, and she couldn't help but think it was exactly how a woman about to make a reckless decision should smell. She pressed the lotion into her skin slowly, palms sliding over her stomach, between her thighs, across the tops of her breasts. Not thinking about him. Not yet.

The black off-shoulder top slipped over damp skin, and she tugged the leggings up over her hips, studying her reflection in the fogged mirror. A thumb cleared a streak through the condensation. There she was. Flushed cheeks, high ponytail, pulse already jumping at the base of her throat.

Downstairs, the house was empty. Her parents had left for their trip before sunrise, and the kitchen still held the faint ghost of her mother's perfume. Saanjh  poured coffee she didn't drink. Stirred it. Dumped it down the sink.

The back door to the garden stuck against its wooden frame, and when Saanjh finally shouldered it open, the morning heat closed around her like a damp palm. Her gasp caught somewhere between her chest and her mouth.

Vikram.

Shirtless. Barefoot in the wet grass. A hose draped over one shoulder, water arcing from the nozzle in a silver ribbon, and his back—god, his back—flexing with every small adjustment of his grip. Tattoos crawled up his forearms and disappeared over his shoulders, dark ink against sun-bronzed skin, and she stood frozen on the patio steps, watching the muscles in his ribcage shift as he turned to water a bed of marigolds.

She had seen men at the gym. At college. At those unbearable family weddings where some cousin's friend would flex for the camera. None of them had ever made the backs of her knees prickle with heat just by existing in their own garden.

Her bare feet carried her forward without permission, the grass cool and damp between her toes. She stopped a few feet behind him and coughed. Nothing. He kept watering, humming something low under his breath, and she coughed again, louder, adding a little throat-clearing for good measure.

The water shut off. He turned.

Sweet mother of—

"Can I help you?"

The hose fell to the grass, still leaking a slow thread of water, and Saanjh watched a drop slide down the curve of his pectoral muscle, over the ridge of a rib, and vanish into the waistband of his shorts. Tattoos across his chest, a dark serpent coiling around a sword, and she couldn't force her eyes higher. His hand landed on his hip. "You lost, Miss?"

He didn't even know my name. I was practically a stranger, and somehow I'd found the courage to come here and ask him for something no sane woman would ever ask a man she'd barely spoken to.

She swallowed, the sound loud enough to be embarrassing, and extended her hand. "I'm Saanjh Gupta. Your neighbor."

He took her hand, and his grip was exactly what she'd imagined during a hundred midnight fantasies: strong, calloused at the palm, deliberate. He held on a quarter-second too long before releasing her, and her fingers tingled when he let go.

"Gupta's daughter." His expression shifted, the suspicion at the edges softening into something like recognition. "He mentioned you. You're the one moving to the city soon."

"Yeah." The word came out thin. She forced herself to meet his eyes. "Vikram, I want to talk to you about something personal. Can we go inside?"

The flicker of curiosity across his face made his eyes darken, and he studied her the way a cat studies a bird. One eyebrow lifted.

"Something personal." He reached for the hose and twisted the spigot off. "All right, Saanjh. Come in."

Inside, his living room smelled like sandalwood and coffee. Books lined one wall—more than she'd expected—and a leather sofa faced a low wooden table scattered with motorcycle magazines. He motioned for her to sit, but she didn't. The floor felt steadier, even though her legs weren't.

He leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed, and waited.

I will die if not pleasured by Vikram.

The thought wasn't hers and it was.

It had lived in her ribcage for two years, growing roots, climbing her throat. Two years of listening to stories about him. Stories of his partners, his stories—of women who came back to their friends with shaking legs and whispered details that burned through every girl who pretended not to listen.

"I have a proposition." Her voice surprised her with its steadiness.

"I'm listening."

"Vikram, I want you to fuck me."

The word hung in the room, and the silence that followed was thick enough to taste. Traffic outside. A ceiling fan above, squeaking on its axis. His breathing—slow, steady, unchanged. Then he moved. Two strides and he was in front of her, so close she could count the drops of sweat still drying on his collarbone.

"What the fuck, Saanjh?"

She flinched at the volume, but didn't step back.

"You don't look like a whore to me." His jaw was tight, his eyes hard. "So what the hell is this?"