Chapter 7: The Competition
The silence after Prem’s declaration did not heal. It festered. The house became a museum of withheld touch, the air thick with unsaid words and the ghost-scents of foreign perfume. Prema moved through the rooms like a careful conservator, tending to her pregnancy, to the children, to the impeccable surfaces of their life, all while feeling the foundation beneath her crack. Shilpa retreated into a watchful quiet, her earlier defiance muted by the brutal clarity of his words: She can’t give it.
Four weeks to the day after the doctor’s edict, Prem emerged from his study in the late afternoon. He found Prema arranging tuberoses in a vase in the living room, her profile softened by the diffuse light. He watched her for a moment, the deliberate care of her hands. A memory surfaced, raw and unbidden.
He walked up behind her, his presence announced by the scent of his sandalwood soap and the particular heat he radiated. She stiffened, her fingers freezing around a waxy white bloom. He didn’t touch her stomach. Instead, his palm settled firmly on the small of her back, a possessive, familiar weight that sent a jolt through her.
“Remember Rohan’s conception?” he murmured, his voice a low rumble near her ear. His hand slid lower, tracing the curve above her tailbone through the silk of her kurt. “Monsoon. The power was out for three days. No fans. Just heat and sweat. We didn’t leave that bed for forty-eight hours.”
His words were a deliberate invasion. Prema’s breath caught. She remembered. The oppressive humidity, the slickness of their joined skin, the frantic, bored, desperate coupling that had felt like the only way to breathe. It had been primal, exhausting, and deeply theirs.
“You couldn’t walk straight for a day after,” he continued, a dark amusement in his tone. His fingers pressed, possessive, into the memory held in her muscle and bone. “I couldn’t either. That took… dedication.”
From the doorway, a glass of water clicked against a marble side table. Shilpa stood there, frozen in the act of entering, her eyes fixed on Prem’s hand on Prema’s back. The intimate history being recounted was a wall she could not scale. A sharp, acidic jealousy flooded her mouth.
Prem’s gaze flicked to Shilpa. He saw the flare in her green eyes, the slight parting of her lips. He didn’t remove his hand. Instead, he smiled, a challenge.
Shilpa forced her body to move. She glided into the room, setting the water down with exaggerated care. “That sounds like a story for a film, Jiju,” she said, her voice lightly teasing, but strained at the edges. She came to stand beside him, too close, her arm almost brushing his. “All that drama. I would have just gone to a hotel with a generator.”
It was a dare. A suggestion that his passionate memory was merely a product of poor planning.
Prem laughed, a short, sharp bark. He finally removed his hand from Prema, turning his full attention to Shilpa. “A hotel lacks atmosphere, Saali. It lacks consequence.” His eyes swept over her, taking in the way her choli clung to her, the rapid pulse at the base of her throat. “But you’re right. Comfort has its virtues.”
He reached out and picked up a strand of her hair that had escaped its plait, rubbing it between his thumb and forefinger. The casual intimacy of the gesture was a slap to Prema, who stood clutching a tuberose, her spine rigid. “Your hair is always escaping,” he mused, his voice dropping to a confidential murmur meant to exclude the woman three feet away. “Like it has a mind of its own.”
Shilpa laughed, a bright, practiced sound. She tilted her head, offering him better access. “It’s untamable, Jiju. Like a jungle.”
The word hung in the air, charged with its old, filthy significance. Prema’s knuckles turned white around the flower stem. She saw the look that passed between them—a shared, secret understanding that bypassed her completely.
“Some men enjoy a challenge,” Prem said, his gaze locked on Shilpa’s. “Some men prefer to map a wilderness rather than stroll through a managed garden.”
The metaphor was brutal in its clarity. Prema, with her doctor’s notes and her careful arrangements, was the garden. Off-limits, orderly, sterile. Shilpa was the wild, forbidden, enticing territory.
A silent, electric competition ignited in the leather-bound room. Prema set the flower down, her movements precise. She stepped to the drinks cabinet, her pregnancy preceding her like a shield. She poured a tiny glass of pomegranate juice, though she wasn’t thirsty. “Prem, the contractor is coming about the roof tomorrow at ten. You’ll need to be here. It’s your domain, after all.” She emphasized your domain, reasserting her role as the manager of his fortress, the keeper of his practical life.
“Mm,” he acknowledged, not looking at her. He had taken a cigarette from his case but didn’t light it. He was toying with it, rolling it between his fingers as he continued to watch Shilpa. “Sarita will manage it.”
“Sarita manages the household accounts, not structural integrity,” Prema countered, her voice sharpening. “This requires the master’s eye.”
Shilpa saw an opening. She leaned over to pick a non-existent speck of lint from Prem’s kurta sleeve, her fingers lingering on the crisp cotton over his bicep. “Don’t trouble Jiju with such mundane things, Didi. He has a city to run. I can meet the contractor. I have a good eye for workmanship.” She smiled up at him, all false innocence. “I helped oversee the renovation on my… gift.” She paused just before saying ‘building,’ reminding him of the deed, of the tangible proof of his regard.
Prem’s lips quirked. He enjoyed this—the tug-of-war over his attention, his time, his authority. “She has a point, Prema. Shilpa is capable. And she’s right. My mind is on bigger things tonight.” He finally lit the cigarette, the flare of the match illuminating the hungry amusement in his eyes. He exhaled a plume of smoke toward the ceiling fan. “You both should relax. You look tense.”
The dismissal was galling. Prema’s possessiveness, a cold, hard stone in her gut, solidified into a tactical maneuver. She would ensure they were never alone. His growing lust for Shilpa was a palpable thing now, a third presence in the room that smelled of smoke and danger. The thrill it sparked in him was obvious; he was feeding on the tension, on the forbidden dynamic. She would starve it.
That night, after a dinner where conversation was a minefield of double meanings, Prema invented a headache. She asked Shilpa to fetch a specific box of herbs from the top shelf of the storage room—a lengthy, distracting task. She then insisted Prem review the children’s school projects with her in the study, trapping him in a performance of fatherhood until late. When Shilpa finally returned, dust-smudged and irritated, Prema was bidding Prem a pointedly wifely goodnight at the door to their bedroom, her body a clear barrier.
She saw the dark flash of frustration in Prem’s eyes as he was ushered into the master suite. It wasn’t desire for her. It was the irritation of a thwarted predator. The thrill she felt was cold and vicious. She had won the skirmish.
But the victory was hollow. Lying beside his snoring form hours later, the hollow yawned wider. She had managed his proximity, but she could not manage the want that coiled inside him. It was a living creature now, and it had been denied its preferred prey.
At half-past one, Prem slipped from the bed. He dressed in the dark with swift, efficient movements—dark trousers, a black linen shirt left open at the collar. He didn’t look at Prema. He was a shadow with purpose.
The Mercedes purred to life on the gravel, the sound cutting through the sleeping town. He drove with focused aggression, the city’s outskirts swallowing him whole. He navigated not to the neon-lit lanes of the red-light district, but to a quieter, residential neighborhood of modern, box-like houses. He pulled into the driveway of a neat, two-story villa with a well-kept lawn. A light was on behind drawn curtains in an upstairs window.
He let himself in with a key. The interior smelled of synthetic vanilla air freshener and new laminate flooring.
Sarika was waiting in the living room, perched on the edge of a plush, generic sofa. She stood when he entered, a nervous smile on her face. She was, as always, a shock to the system. The resemblance was uncanny: the same height and build as Shilpa, the same cascade of dark, wavy hair, the same shape to the mouth and the arch of the brows. She was Shilpa, stripped of her intelligence, her defiance, her complicated fire. She was a compliant echo.
“Jiju,” she breathed, using the title he’d instructed her to use, her voice a mimicry of reverence she’d learned from years of observing Prema’s old friend.
He didn’t greet her. He crossed the room, his eyes raking over her. She was wearing a cheap, satin nightgown, peach-colored, a deliberate choice he knew. It was the kind of thing Shilpa would never wear, which was somehow part of the point. This was the forgery, and its imperfections were perversely essential.
He closed the distance, his hands going to her waist, pulling her against him. He could smell the heavy, sweet jasmine perfume she doused herself in, a poor substitute for Shilpa’s subtle, natural scent. It didn’t matter. His mind was already rewriting the script.
“Say it again,” he commanded, his voice gravelly with unmet need.
“Jiju,” she whispered, her eyes wide, obedient.
It was the wrong pitch, the wrong texture. But it was the word. It unlocked the fury in him—the fury of a long-denied appetite, of a wife’s strategic barriers, of a woman who had “a good eye for workmanship” but was kept just out of reach.
He kissed her, hard, almost a punishment. His hands ripped at the flimsy satin, the sound of tearing fabric loud in the quiet house. She gasped, a sound of surprise that he willed into arousal. He backed her toward the stairs, his mouth leaving hers to trail down her throat, biting at the place where Shilpa’s pulse had hammered hours before.
“Upstairs,” he grunted.
In the bedroom—a room he paid for, in the house he had gifted her—he didn’t bother with the bed at first. He pushed her against the wall, her bare back meeting cool plaster. He freed himself from his trousers, his arousal thick and urgent. He hooked a hand under her knee, hiking her leg around his hip, and entered her in one rough, deep stroke.
Sarika cried out, her fingers scrabbling against his shoulders. Her body was willing, pliant, eager to please. He fucked her against the wall with a relentless, driving rhythm, his eyes open, fixed on her face. He saw Shilpa’s features contorted in a pleasure he was forcing into existence. He saw the green eyes, glazed not with clever challenge, but with submissive delight.
“Say it,” he panted, his thrusts jarring her words loose.
“J-Jiju… oh, Jiju…” she moaned, the name tumbling from her lips with each impact.
He squeezed his eyes shut. Better. In the darkness behind his lids, the fantasy cohered. The wilderness was his. The untamable hair was fisted in his hand. The clever mouth was gasping his familial title in the throes of a degrading, exquisite surrender.
He moved them to the bed, a tangle of limbs. He pinned her wrists above her head, watching her body writhe beneath him, a pale, enthusiastic ghost of the woman he craved. He drove into her, each stroke a calculated act of vengeance against the real woman’s unavailability, against his wife’s tactical maneuvers, against the doctor’s cold, clinical prohibition.
Sarika’s climax, when it came, was loud and performative, a series of sharp, shrill cries. “Jiju! Yes, Jiju!” He followed her over the edge with a low, guttural sound that was more triumph than release, spending himself inside this willing, paid-for replica, her name echoing in the cheaply furnished room a cruel, hollow echo of the one that truly haunted him.
Afterwards, he lay beside her, smoke from a hastily lit cigarette curling toward the ceiling. The room stank of sex, jasmine, and betrayal. Sarika traced idle patterns on his chest, chattering about a new saree she wanted. He barely heard her. The beast was sated, temporarily, but the hunger remained. It was no longer for just any release. It was specifically for the one thing his world, constructed of deeds and duties and doctor’s orders, had placed permanently, tauntingly, just out of reach.
He stubbed out the cigarette. The first grey light of dawn touched the window. He had to return to his fortress, to his garden, to the wilderness he was legally and morally forbidden to claim.
But as he drove back through the waking city, the memory of Sarika’s moaned “Jiju” fading into the hum of the engine, a new and dangerous calculus began to form in his mind. A man who could buy a lookalike and a house to keep her in was a man who could reshape rules. The thrill of the competition in his living room was a pale thing next to the forbidden prize. The game was no longer about management or frustration. It was about conquest. And Prem had never, in his entire life, walked away from something he had decided was his. The house he returned to was quiet, but the silence now felt like the calm before a very specific, long-planned storm.
The house he returned to was quiet, but the silence now felt like the calm before a very specific, long-planned storm. It clung to the mahogany panels and pooled in the corridors, a thick, expectant hush. Prem moved through it, his body still humming with the unsatisfactory echo of Sarika’s performance, his skin smelling of foreign jasmine. He needed a shower. He needed to scour the ghost of a forgery from his pores.
The following evening, the monsoon finally broke. Rain hammered the floor-to-ceiling windows, turning the view of the hills into a blurred watercolor. Prema had retired early, citing a deep fatigue from the pregnancy, her eyes lingering on him with a warning he chose not to decipher. The children were asleep. The cavernous living room was left to Prem, a bottle of single malt, and the simmering static that had followed him home.
Shilpa found him there. She drifted in, a vision in a simple cotton nightdress that did nothing to hide the outline of her body against the window’s stormy light. She had been waiting for this, for the manufactured intimacy of a trapped audience.
“Can’t sleep, Jiju?” she asked, her voice soft as she padded barefoot across the rug. “The rain is so loud.”
“It’s not the rain,” he said, not turning from the window. He took a slow drink, the whiskey burning a path down his throat.
She stopped beside him, close enough that he could feel the heat of her arm near his. “Then what is it?” The question was a hook, baited with false concern. She looked at his reflection in the dark glass, her expression all wide-eyed inquiry. “Is Didi not keeping you company?”
He turned then, catching her in the act of studying him. The directness of his gaze made her breath hitch, a tiny, telling sound. “Prema is keeping exactly the company she chooses to keep.” He set his glass down with a definitive click. “She’s managing the situation. Very efficiently.”
Shilpa smiled, a slow, knowing curve of her lips. She reached out and touched the condensation on his glass, tracing a line through the wetness. “That must be frustrating. For a man like you.” Her finger moved from the glass to the back of his hand, where it rested on the windowsill. The touch was electric, a deliberate trespass. “A man used to taking what he wants.”
He watched her finger on his skin, a bold, exploring thing. “And what do you think I want, Saali?”
“What you can’t have,” she whispered, her gaze dropping to his mouth, then lower. “Everyone in town whispers about it, you know. About what you have. About what you need.” Her hand retreated, but her eyes held a challenge brighter than any touch. “They say your wife’s delicate condition is a prison for a man with your… appetites.”
It was a masterful taunt, weaving rumor with reality, stoking the frustration he’d spent the previous night trying to obliterate against a stranger’s wall. He saw the pulse fluttering wildly in her throat, betraying her excitement beneath the cool performance.
“You listen to too much gossip,” he said, his voice dropping to a low growl.
“I observe,” she corrected, tilting her chin up. “I see the way you look at the wilderness, Jiju. When you think no one is watching.”
That word. It detonated between them. The careful pretense shattered.
In one fluid, violent motion, he closed the distance. His hand shot out, gripping her wrist, his fingers pressing into the delicate bones. “You don’t know what you’re playing with.”
“I think I do,” she breathed, her eyes blazing, not with fear, but with a thrilling defiance. She tried to pull back, a token resistance that only inflamed him. “Prem, let me go. This is wrong.”
“You started this,” he said, and his other arm banded around her waist, hauling her against him. The feel of her, real and unyielding and Shilpa, was a shock after the compliant echo of the night before. She was all tension and intention, her heart hammering against his chest through the thin cotton.
“I didn’t start anything,” she gasped, squirming in his grasp, her movements only serving to rub her body against the hard proof of his arousal. “You’re my sister’s husband.”
“And you’re the one whispering about my cock in a rain-soaked room,” he snarled into her hair. He began walking her backward, out of the living room, down the dim corridor toward the wing that held her bedroom. She stumbled, but he held her up, his grip inexorable. Her pretense of resistance was a thin veneer; her body arched into his, a silent complicity.
He shouldered her bedroom door open and kicked it shut behind them. The room smelled of her—of sandalwood soap and the faint, clean scent of her skin. He released her wrist only to spin her and push her back against the closed door, his body caging her in.
“Stop,” she whispered, the word devoid of conviction. Her eyes were dark pools, fixed on his.
He didn’t answer with words. He claimed her mouth, a brutal, consuming kiss that silenced the last of her pretenses. Her lips parted under his, and a low moan vibrated in her throat. Her hands came up, not to push him away, but to clutch at the open collar of his shirt. He kissed her until they were both breathless, until the only sound was the drumming rain and their ragged gasps.
He broke the kiss, his hands moving to the neckline of her nightdress. With a sharp tug, he ripped it open, the soft cotton giving way without protest. The fabric fell apart, baring her to the waist. She shuddered, her eyes wide, but made no move to cover herself.
“So this is the wilderness,” he murmured, his gaze raking over her small, firm breasts, the flat plane of her stomach, the dark thatch of hair below. He palmed one breast, his thumb scraping over her nipple, feeling it peak instantly under his touch. “Not so untamable.”
“Jiju…” she moaned, her head falling back against the door.
“Don’t ‘Jiju’ me now,” he said, his voice rough with lust. He dipped his head, taking her other nipple into his mouth, sucking hard until she cried out. His hand slid down her stomach, through the coarse, thick hair he’d only imagined, and found her wet and already swollen. “You’re dripping for your sister’s husband, you filthy little saali. Is this what you wanted when you watched me? When you touched my arm?”
“Yes,” she gasped, the admission torn from her. Her hips bucked against his invading fingers. “God, yes.”
He worked her with his fingers, rough and expert, watching her face contort with a pleasure that was real, unperformed, and entirely his to give. “You wanted this big cock everyone whispers about, didn’t you? Wanted to see if the rumors were true.” He pressed a finger deep inside her, curling it. Her inner muscles clenched around him, a silken, searing grip. “You’re tight. Tighter than I thought.”
“Prem, please,” she begged, her nails digging into his shoulders.
“Please what?” He added a second finger, stretching her, a deliberate mimicry of what was to come. “You want your Jiju to fuck you? To ruin you for any other man?” He leaned close, his mouth against her ear. “You want me to plant my flag in this wilderness so deep you’ll never forget who owns it?”
She could only nod, a frantic, helpless movement. He withdrew his fingers, slick with her, and brought them to his mouth, tasting her. The act was so profoundly vulgar, so possessive, that a fresh wave of wetness soaked his hand. He unfastened his trousers, freeing himself. He was thick and heavy, fully erect, the reality of the rumors made flesh.
He fumbled in his pocket for the foil packet he always carried. The rustle of it seemed to snap her from her trance. Her hand flew out, catching his wrist.
“No,” she said, her voice suddenly clear, desperate. “Not that. I want you. Raw. I want to feel all of you.” Her eyes locked with his, burning with a crazy, risky fire. “I want what you gave that call girl. Give it to me.”
The demand stunned him. It was the ultimate surrender and the ultimate power play. It was a claim staking of its own. He stared at her, the condom packet crumpled in his fist. The risk was monumental. The intimacy, absolute.
He let the packet fall to the floor.
He lifted her then, his hands under her thighs, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. He carried her to the bed, following her down into the tangle of her sheets. He kissed her again, a slower, deeper kiss, as his hand returned to her cunt, stroking her, preparing her. “This will hurt,” he warned against her lips.
“I don’t care,” she breathed.
He positioned himself at her entrance, the broad head of his cock pressing against her soaked, resisting flesh. He pushed, a slow, inexorable invasion. Her body yielded, then clenched, a sharp, tight ring of pain. She gasped, a sound swallowed by his mouth. He held still, letting her adjust, his own body trembling with the effort of restraint.
“You’re mine now,” he whispered, a filthy, tender declaration. He began to move, shallow strokes that gradually deepened. The pain in her eyes melted, transforming into something else—a dazed, overwhelming wonder. Her hips rose to meet his, and the rhythm found itself, a hard, driving tempo syncopated by the rain.
The door shuddered under a sudden, furious blow. A fist hammering against the wood. “Prem! Open this door! I know you’re in there!” Prema’s voice, shrill with panic and rage, cut through the sound of their bodies and the storm.
He froze for a fraction of a second, looking down at Shilpa. Her eyes were wide, but her legs tightened around him, pulling him deeper. A silent plea. A challenge.
Another bang on the door. “OPEN IT!”
Prem’s jaw tightened. He drove into Shilpa, a deep, punitive stroke that made her cry out. He didn’t stop. He set a new, relentless pace, each thrust a brutal answer to the banging on the door. The bedframe began to knock rhythmically against the wall, a counterpoint to Prema’s blows.
“Ignore her,” Shilpa moaned, her voice thick with pleasure and sin. “Don’t stop, Jiju. Please.”
He obeyed. He lost himself in the feel of her, in the hot, slick, condomless clutch of her body, in the raw truth of this betrayal. Prema’s shouts became a distant, muffled thing. Shilpa’s cries were the only music. She arched beneath him, her back bowing off the bed, her climax tearing through her with a series of sharp, broken gasps of his name. The violent clenching of her around him pushed him over the edge. His release was a raw, guttural roar, a flood of heat as he emptied himself deep inside her, claiming the wilderness with a final, irreversible seal.
They lay entangled, breathless, listening. The banging had stopped. There was only the sound of the rain, and a stifled, broken sob from the other side of the door. Then, the soft, retreating sound of footsteps.