Chapter 22: The Proud Saalis
The blue light from Prem’s laptop cast jagged shadows across the planes of his face. He was in bed, propped against the headboard, the dark oak a stark frame for his silhouette. The financial reports on screen were meaningless glyphs; his attention was turned inward, metabolizing the day’s victory. The faint, acrid scent of Zarina’s nausea still seemed to linger in the hall, a perfume of his potency.
Nurjahan entered without knocking. She had changed into a simple cotton nightdress, her hair loose. She carried a small bottle of sandalwood oil, its sweet, woody aroma cutting through the electronic haze. She didn’t speak. She simply climbed onto the vast crimson expanse and knelt beside him, pouring a golden pool of oil into her palm.
Her hands went to the tight cords of his shoulders first, working with a knowledge born of five years. Her fingers dug into the muscle, finding the stubborn knots of tension he carried like armor. He grunted, a sound of approval, and closed the laptop lid, plunging the room into near-darkness save for the spill of town lights from the window.
She worked in silence, her thumbs circling down his spine, then up again. She moved to his chest, her slick palms sliding over the dense thatch of hair that fascinated and repelled her in equal measure. It was a terrain she knew intimately, a map of his body where she had once been the sole explorer. Now it felt like contested land.
His breathing deepened. Under her ministrations, under the deliberate, rhythmic pressure, his body relaxed into her touch. And, inevitably, it stirred. Through the thin material of his pajama pants, his cock hardened, a thickening presence against her wrist as she worked the oil into the firm plane of his lower abdomen.
Her hands stopped. Froze. The clinical massage was over.
“You defile everything you touch,” she whispered, her voice raw in the quiet room. It wasn’t a shout. It was an accusation laid bare.
Prem’s eyes opened. In the dim light, they gleamed. He didn’t move away from her stilled hands. “Defile?” he echoed, the word tasting curious on his tongue. A slow smile spread. “Is that what you call it? I saw their faces today, Nur. Zarina’s… there was fear, yes. But beneath it? Pride. A fierce, shocking pride. Naaz is just scared. But she’ll learn. They aren’t defiled. They’re claimed. They’re full of me. There’s a power in that for them, too. You just don’t want to see it.”
Her palm was still on his chest, over his heart. She could feel its steady, relentless beat. “You use words like ‘claim’ and ‘right’ to dress up what you’ve done. My sisters. In this house. While I sleep down the hall.”
He moved then, swift as a snake. He caught her wrist, pulling her so she sprawled across his chest, her nightdress riding up. The rough hair scratched her thighs. “My house,” he breathed into her ear, his voice a gravelly vibration. “My family. My jiju right. I didn’t just marry you. I married into your bloodline. I honor it by making it stronger. By planting my seed in its finest soil.”
She twisted, a futile rebellion. “You’re a villain.”
He caught her other wrist, pinning her hands above her head with one of his. With his free hand, he gripped her jaw, forcing her to look at him. “Yes,” he growled, no playfulness left. “I am the villain jiju. The one who took their wide-eyed innocence and replaced it with this.” He ground his hips up against her, the hard length of him pressing insistently through the fabric. “And now, I’ll take my loyal wife, who massages her villain husband while her sisters carry his babies.”
“Don’t,” she gasped, but her body was already betraying her, a traitorous heat pooling low in her belly. She enacted a struggle, a pantomime of the outraged sister. “Jiju, please… I’m just your saali…”
The old, forbidden word, saali—wife’s sister—acted on him like a spur. A dark excitement flared in his eyes. “My innocent saali,” he mocked, his hand releasing her jaw to tear at the neckline of her nightdress. The cotton gave with a soft rip. “Let’s see how innocent.”
There was no more pretence of seduction. He yanked her underwear aside and entered her in one brutal, claiming thrust. She cried out, a sound swallowed by his mouth as it crashed down on hers. It wasn’t a kiss; it was a seizure. He fucked her with a possessive, rhythmic fury, each drive a punctuation to his words. “You… will… always… be… first…” he grunted against her lips. “But… they… will… always… be… mine…”
The jealousy was a live wire inside her, and he was fucking her right against it. The image of Zarina’s proud, pale face, of Naaz’s terrified one, flashed behind her closed eyelids. They had him in a way she no longer did. They carried his new secrets, his fresh legacy. And that thought, vile and undeniable, coiled with the relentless friction of his body, and snapped her into a climax that ripped through her with silent, shuddering violence. Her inner muscles clenched around him in rhythmic pulses. A ragged sob escaped her throat—of shame, of release, of terrible, complicit pride.
He followed with a guttural roar, spilling into her, his body a dead, heavy weight pinning her to the bed. For long minutes, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing mixing with the distant hum of the town.
She lay beneath him, spent. The smell of sex and sandalwood oil was thick. Her jealousy hadn’t vanished; it had merely fused with a new, grim understanding. She was the cornerstone. Without her quiet management, his empire of flesh would collapse into scandal. That gave her a leverage more subtle than tears or rage.
He rolled off her eventually, standing beside the bed, a dark giant against the window lights. He pulled on a robe. “I’m going to check on them,” he said, as casually as if announcing he was getting a glass of water.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Nurjahan didn’t move. She listened. She heard his footsteps pause outside their room. Not heading toward the guest wing. Just… pausing. Then, a minute later, the soft, unmistakable sound of the main bathroom door opening and closing down the hall. He wasn’t checking on them. He was giving space. For what?
A shadow detached itself from the deeper darkness of the hallway and slipped into the bedroom. Zarina. She stood just inside the door, backlit by the faint ambient light, her slender form visible through the sheer nightgown she wore. Her hand was pressed to her stomach. Her eyes were on Nurjahan, a fierce, unreadable glow in them.
“You enjoyed that,” Zarina stated. Her voice was low, husky.
Nurjahan pulled the torn nightdress around her, sitting up. “Get out.”
“I listened. I heard every word. Every moan.” Zarina took a step closer. The scent of Prem was still heavy on the sheets, in the air. Zarina inhaled deeply, as if tasting it. “You called him a villain. But you came for him. Just like I do. Just like Naaz will.”
“It’s not the same,” Nurjahan hissed.
“Isn’t it?” Zarina moved to the foot of the bed, her fingers tracing the crumpled silk. “You think your marriage license makes it pure? I’ve wanted him longer than you know, Didi. With a sickness that used to shame me.”
Nurjahan went still. “What are you talking about?”
Zarina’s gaze turned inward, captured by the memory. “The first time I saw him. You brought him home to meet Abbajaan, when they were still refusing. He wore a white kurta. It was slightly open at the neck. I saw the hair there, just a shadow. He was so… big. Not just tall. The width of his shoulders. The way his hand wrapped around a glass of water, like he could crush it. He spoke so calmly to Abba, but his eyes… they were like a tiger’s. Restless. I was helping Ammi in the kitchen, peeking through the curtain. I saw the way he looked at you. Like he’d already decided you were his. It didn’t feel romantic to me. It felt like… like being hunted. My skin prickled. I felt hot and cold. I hated him for it. And I dreamed of him for weeks.”
She paused, her breathing quickening. “Then your wedding. The rukhsati. He lifted you into that car like you weighed nothing. His suit stretched across his back. I cried, everyone thought it was for losing you. It was because I was losing him. The idea of him.”
Nurjahan listened, a stone settling in her gut. This was an older betrayal, roots sunk deep into the past.
“You came back after the first night,” Zarina continued, her voice dropping to a confessional whisper. “Remember? You stayed for a week. Your old room was next to mine. The wall… it was thin. That first night here, in this very house, I heard. I was supposed to be asleep. I heard your whispers, then his. A low rumble. Then the bed. It wasn’t just sounds, Didi. It was… impact. Rhythm. Your cries weren’t little sounds. They were gasps, like you were drowning and loving it. Once, I couldn’t bear it. I crept to your door. It wasn’t fully closed. A slice of light.”
Zarina’s eyes were wide, unfocused, seeing the past projected onto the dark bedroom wall. “I saw his back. A sculpture of muscle, glistening with sweat. That carpet of hair. It was darker, wet. He was moving over you, a powerful, relentless piston. His hand was tangled in your hair, not gentle. Possessive. And his… I saw him, Nur. When he shifted. Just for a second. Thick. Veined. A part of him that looked as powerful and untamed as the rest. I stifled a sound. I was soaked between my legs. I had never seen a man like that, never imagined… that… was what went inside. It wasn’t the polite, hidden thing from whispers. It was a weapon. An animal. And you were taking it. Welcoming it. I went back to my room and put my fingers inside myself, pretending they were yours, pretending it was me under all that weight and heat and hair. I’ve been pretending ever since.”
The confession hung in the air, ugly and undeniable. The roots of Zarina’s jealousy weren’t in Nurjahan’s marriage, but in her marriage bed. She hadn’t just wanted Prem’s money or status. She had wanted the visceral, physical reality of him. The crushing dominance, the raw sexuality Nurjahan had once had exclusive claim to.
Nurjahan found her voice, but it was hollow. “So all this… your helping me, your staying here… it was just to be near him.”
“Yes,” Zarina admitted, no shame left. “And then he looked back. And then he touched me. And it was better than my wettest dream because it was real. His hands are so rough. His chest hair scratches my skin raw and I love the marks the next day. And his cock, Didi… you know… it’s like being split open and remade. And now,” her hand spread over her own belly, a gesture of terrible triumph, “a part of him is growing inside me, where only he has been. It’s the most real thing I’ve ever felt.”
She finally looked directly at Nurjahan, her face a mask of shared complicity and unbridgeable rivalry. “You called him a villain. He is. And we’re his willing prisoners. All three of us. The only difference is, I’ve stopped pretending I want to escape.”
Zarina turned and left as quietly as she had entered, leaving Nurjahan alone in the spoiled bed, the graphic echo of her sister’s childhood lust and the phantom sounds of her own wedding night sex now a permanent part of the room’s atmosphere. The cornerstone felt less like foundation stone, and more like a sacrificial altar.
The cornerstone felt less like foundation stone, and more like a sacrificial altar. Morning did not bring clarity, only a grim routine. Nurjahan found herself in the sun-drenched kitchen, mechanically assembling a breakfast she knew none of them truly wanted.Zarina entered first. She moved with a new, deliberate languor, a hand resting on the still-flat plane of her belly. She poured herself a glass of milk, her eyes finding Nurjahan’s over the rim. “He slept well,” she said, a casual invasion.“Snored like a bull. I could hear him through the wall.”
“Eat something solid,” Nurjahan replied, her voice stripped of tone. She turned back to the sizzling pan. “The baby needs more than spite.”
Prem’s arrival cut the taut silence.He filled the doorway, freshly showered, damp hair dark against his forehead. He wore a crisp white kurta and grey lounge pants that hung from his hips. The morning light caught the silver at his temples, the corded strength of his forearms. He smelled of soap and latent power.
“Smells good,” he announced, his gaze sweeping over both women, a landlord assessing his properties. He settled at the head of the table, the newspaper rustling as he opened it.Zarina brought his coffee, black, the way he always took it.
As she leaned to place the cup before him, her movements were a slow ballet.Her hip brushed his shoulder. A loose strand of her hair fell forward, trailing across the back of his hand on the table. She let it linger there for a beat too long. “Sugar, Jiju?” she asked, though she knew the answer.“No,” he said, not looking up from the paper. But he didn’t move his hand.Nurjahan watched from the kitchen island, a knife suspended over a tomato. She saw the point of contact, the casual intimacy of the stray hair on his skin. A cold knot tightened in her stomach. Zarina straightened slowly, her fingers, light as feathers, grazing his shoulder as if to steady herself.They traced the line where the cotton kurta stretched over the muscle.
“A thread,” Zarina murmured, her voice a soft, shared secret. She pretended to pluck something invisible from the fabric.Her knuckle brushed the side of his neck.
Prem finally looked up.He lowered the newspaper, his eyes meeting hers. A silent current passed between them, thick and unmistakable.A slow, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips.He said nothing. He didn’t need to.Nurjahan’s breath hitched. The knife came down with a soft thud, slicing the tomato. The sound was absurdly loud in the quiet room.Zarina, emboldened, did not retreat to her seat. She lingered beside his chair, one hand now resting on the table, leaning into his space. Her breast pressed against his upper arm. She was talking about nothing, the quality of the coffee beans, the heat, her words a meaningless veil for the proximity. Her thumb stroked a small circle on the wood, inches from his elbow.Prem shifted in his chair.It was a subtle adjustment, a settling of his weight. The loose fabric of his grey pants tightened across his lap. A distinct, growing bulge became apparent, outlined against the soft material.He made no attempt to hide it. He leaned back slightly, granting the observation, his gaze locked on Zarina’s now-flushed face.
“You should sit, Zarina,” Nurjahan heard herself say.Her voice was strained, thin.
“In a minute, Didi,” Zarina replied, her eyes still on Prem. Her tongue darted out to wet her lower lip. Her hand left the table and, with breathtaking audacity, came to rest lightly on the back of his chair, her fingertips just brushing the kurta covering his shoulder blade. “Jiju was just telling me about the new mall project. Weren’t you?”
“I was,” Prem said, his voice a low rumble. He angled his body towards her, a movement that accentuated the prominent swell in his pants. It was a blatant, silent response to her flirtation, a physical proclamation aimed at both women.“It requires a firm hand. To shape the raw space into something useful. Something that serves its purpose.”
His words hung in the air, layered with meaning.Zarina’s breath quickened. Nurjahan felt a treacherous heat bloom within her own core, a vivid, unwanted echo of the night before. The jealousy was acid, but beneath it surged a darker, addictive thrill. She was witnessing her own displacement in real time, and her body was reacting to the raw contest of it.
Zarina’s gaze flickered down to his lap, then back to his face, a spark of triumphant fire in her eyes. She finally slid into the chair beside him, her posture preening. Prem picked up his coffee cup, his knuckles white, the casual display of his arousal a finished statement. He took a slow sip, his eyes meeting Nurjahan’s across the room. They held a challenge, and a deep, smug satisfaction.He had not touched Zarina.Not once. Yet he had claimed her, and taunted his wife, with nothing more than a look and the unashamed response of his own body. The silence that followed was thicker than any argument, charged with a new and volatile grammar.