The bangles pressed together.

"What are you doing here—" Her voice. Attempting the voice of someone who has a position and is maintaining it. Finding it harder than expected. "What have you done to him — go — you have to go — my father—"

"Is outside," Raven said, walking toward her. "Laughing about something with your uncle."

"If he comes in—"

"He won’t."

"Raven—"

She pushed.

Both hands on his chest — the full, physical attempt of a woman who has made a decision and is trying to implement it with her body — and he caught both her wrists and turned and the bed arrived at the backs of her thighs and she went down.

The flower petals scattered.

The jasmine and roses and the white sheets and her red dress and his hands still at her wrists — all of it landing together on the decorated wedding bed of Preet Mehta’s arranged marriage.

She looked up at him.

He looked down at her.

The expression on his face was the warm, privately amused expression of a man who has arrived at a situation he finds genuinely entertaining.

He raised the milk glass.

Looked at it.

Looked at her.

Poured.

The milk over his own body — over his chest, running down his abdomen, finding the lines of the muscle and following them downward — arriving at his cock and running along the length of it in thin, warm rivulets.

He held the glass over her.

"Suck it."

She stared.

At the cock.

At the milk running from it.

At the memory of the island arriving in her body with the full, unhelpful force of a thing that had been filed under ’over’ and was now refusing to stay filed.

He poured the remaining milk on her.

The red dress.

The silk going immediately, completely transparent where the milk landed — the fabric pressing against the dark circles of her nipples through the wet, the full, heavy outline of her breasts visible through the ruined silk — and she gasped.

"You’re wet," he said. "Strip."

The bangles.

The jewelry.

The lipstick.

The full, assembled appearance of a woman who had been prepared for three days for this night — and now the dress soaked with milk on a decorated wedding bed, looking up at him with the expression that her body was producing whether she was authorizing it or not.

Her lip between her teeth.

The lipstick pressing color into the skin.

He reached forward and grabbed her hair.

One fist — the full, gathered-up handful of the elaborate wedding arrangement, the pins and flowers that had taken an hour and a half to set — and pulled.

Her face came forward.

His cock at her lips.

"Come on, Preet." His voice. Warm. Unhurried. The voice from the island, the voice she had been hearing in the dark for eighteen months. "I don’t have time. Act like what I made you."

Her eyes.

Filling.

The tears arriving from the specific location in a woman where humiliation and longing share a wall and the wall has become very thin — and she cried, and she opened her mouth, and she took him in.

The sounds.

The specific, dense sounds of Preet’s mouth doing what her mouth was being asked to do — the wet, slick, layered noise of it in the decorated quiet of the bridal room — and the sounds of the party still going outside, distant, the specific dissonance of a celebration happening on the other side of a wall while something else entirely happened on this side of it.

His hand moving.

Finding the strings of her skirt while his cock was in her mouth — the specific, navigational efficiency of a man doing two things simultaneously and not treating either of them as the lesser priority — and the string pulling, the skirt loosening at her hips.

His fingers.

Downward. Finding her.

The hair. The specific, natural, untreated fact of her — no preparation, she had not prepared for this, no one had been expecting this — and his fingers pressing into the thick, warm folds of her with the easy certainty of something returning to a place it knew.

"Ah."

His voice.

The low, honest, involuntary sound of a man whose fingers have just received information they find genuinely satisfying.

"Good," he said. "You didn’t prepare for someone else here."

His fingers pulling gently at her hair — the pubic hair, the faintest, careful pull — and she cried around his cock, the muffled, wet sound of her distress traveling up his shaft.

His hand gripping her face.

Fingers at her jaw — not roughly, the specific, firm pressure of positioning — and he began to move.

The face-fuck.

Not the gentle kind. The kind that had its own pace, its own rhythm, the specific momentum of a man who had decided what he wanted and was proceeding toward it — his hips driving forward in the slow, steady, comprehensive strokes of someone who was, in fact, not in a hurry, who had all the time in the world and was using it.

"Mphh~—MMPH~—"

Her throat.

The bulge visible from outside — the obscene, unmistakable distension of a throat accommodating something it had been built to accommodate even though no one had consulted it — appearing and disappearing with each stroke, her bangles clinking against his thighs as her hands came up instinctively and found his legs.

Gripping.

"Shit," he said.

The specific, honest, low exhale of a man who is experiencing something he had underestimated.

"Is this what they call wedding night in India."

The pace deepened.

Her eyes rolling.

The mascara running — the full, comprehensive destruction of a bride’s makeup in real time, the black running in lines down her cheeks, her lipstick pressed into the skin of his shaft, leaving its mark there.

PAH! PAH! PAH!

The wet, dense sounds of his hips finding her face.

Her hands gripping his thighs.

Her bangles.

Clinking.

"What a—" He inhaled sharply. "Kill."

The release arrived.

The first wave of it — thick, immediate, the specific, dense flood of him — and her eyes rolled back fully, the whites showing, her throat receiving it with the choking, overwhelmed response of a woman who had been building toward this without building toward it.

The seed.

Running from her nose.

He pressed inward and held for a moment — the full, final depth — and then withdrew.

She fell.

Not backward — forward, her hands going to the bed, her face over the flowers, gasping in the specific, desperate way of someone who has just been returned their own air supply.

He used the magic.

The warm, immediate pulse of it — Mira’s healing, the borrowed ability that sealed damage before it could become damage — running through her in a wave that her body received with the involuntary, confused pleasure of tissue being repaired.

She gasped again.

Not from distress.

From the healing, which had its own sensation.

He reached forward.

The blouse.

The soaked, transparent, milk-heavy blouse of a woman who had been sewn into it three hours ago by her mother’s hands — he grabbed the front and pulled and the fabric came apart with the specific, declarative tear of silk surrendering to intention.

Then the bra.

The full, dark weight of her landing in the room air — the heavy, natural drop of breasts that had been contained all day and were now not — and the dark nipples, thick, wide, already hard, catching the lamplight.

He looked at them.

The specific, honest look of a man who is looking at something he has missed.

"Ah, shit," he said.

Both hands.

Finding both breasts.

Pressing them together — the full, magnificent press of two large breasts being pushed toward each other, the skin compressing, the dark nipples pointing forward — and his cock settling in the channel between them.

"These dark nipples." He pressed inward. "I really missed these."