Somehow he doubts it, but it’s a nice thought.

They’ve never been alone at night before, and it wasn’t his intention to manufacture this particular situation when he knocked on the door of the staff house. There are supposed to be two dayworkers and two live-in servants in the compound. The other live-in, Anto, hasn’t been here since yesterday.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

She smiles and pretends she doesn’t speak English. It was the same when he asked where Anto was.

Doesn’t matter.

He didn’t hire the staff of the villa—compound, really—but he knows who they are. Like Riya, here, who he is pressing into the mattress. Her employment file gave her age as twenty-four. She looks a lot younger until you meet her eyes and see the old soul that lurks behind them. Which he’s doing now, maybe for the first time.

He knows she speaks English, because it is a requirement of their employer that all staff need to understand when they’re shouted at in a common language.

Looking down at her, Dao feels no desire. The flare of initial heat is gone, replaced with nothing. In this void of sexual excitement, he wonders about her reason for bringing him to her bed. When he started asking about Anto, she had taken off her dress.

Why doesn’t she want him asking about the resident landscaper-slash-handyman?

It’s clear the sex is supposed to be a distraction, but all things considered, it isn’t very distracting.

Dao rolls off her and puts on his clothes. “Where’s Anto?” he asks again.

It’s too late for this shit. He’d come back to slick floors and a burst pipe under the kitchen sink. He could fix it himself, but it isn’t his job. And he’s got too much on his mind to be doing other people’s work. Like this lazy bastard Anto.

What, is he taking a nap or something?

Dao goes to the door and looks down the narrow hall. There’s another bedroom on this floor and two more upstairs. Nice digs. Maybe a little too nice, and maybe Anto got a little too comfortable.

Well, that’s about to change.

He goes to search the next room, but the little maid grabs his hand and tries to pull him back into bed. There’s a sudden stitch in his side, a flash of pain, and he finds himself collapsing next to her. She takes the opportunity to straddle his hips and press her naked body against him.

“Wait,” he says, trying to catch his breath. The pain in his belly is unbelievable, and he’s fresh out of the pills that take the sharp sting of it away.