She put her ice cream bowl down on the table. “The kids need me.”

“Not this again.”

“I need the money.”

“We’ve gone over this. I told you I’d pay for everything.” He held her hands, and she looked at him. “Please,” he said.

His face was round and soft, and she wished she could crawl onto his lap and rest her cheek on his, but instead she looked at her hands. “I can’t.”

“Fine,” he said, and switched off the TV. “I’m going to bed.”

“Devesh,” she called after him, but he ignored her, and she sank down into the couch and sighed. She knew he saw beneath the excuses, that he could feel her pushing away with every rationalization, but she would go the next time, would meet his family and see the house he had grown up in. He had a small album of black-and-white pictures she had looked through again and again. It sat on the coffee table, and she picked it up now and opened it. The album was full of formal pictures of serious-looking people—Devesh and his family posed under large leafed trees, Devesh in his cricket uniform amid a group of gangly looking boys—but her favorite pictures were a series of Devesh as a chubby three-year-old. In one, he was posed with his brother and sister. An older girl held a baby brother on her lap, and Devesh stood beside them, his eyes round and huge, staring straight at the camera. The little boy’s gaze was so clearly Devesh’s, penetrating and powerful. It unnerved her, and she found herself covering his eyes with her finger, trying to make him look more childish. She closed the album and laid her head back on the couch. Next time she would go with him; next time she wouldn’t be so afraid.

Two days later, she was sitting on Devesh’s bed, looking at the photo album, wondering what kind of elaborate sexual fantasies he had constructed in his head as a child. She was staring at Devesh’s little-boy face and trying to get inside his little-boy head when he ran his hand down her back, and she shivered.

“Cold?” he asked.

“No.”

His fingers grazed her thighs, and she let out a breathy sigh.

“Sexy girl,” he said, and lay down facing her.

She smiled and nosed her face into his neck. He pushed his other hand through her hair, turned her head to him, and kissed her softly. Lately, their lovemaking had been softer, sweeter. To anyone else, the change would have been unnoticeable, but Josie could sense the shift, and although she liked it, liked his strength coupled with the new tenderness, at times she missed feeling as completely at his mercy as she did that first night they had played.

“Have you been a good girl?” he asked.