I did what I do best for the next five days. I assimilated into the cadence of routine, being safe, steady, and measured.

Get up. Take a bath. Prepare food. Sign in. Grin and talk. Control. Take the lead. Log off. Go to sleep. Do it again.

Updates, goals, and dashboards were all over the office chat. I answered them all. I used exclamation points and emojis in my response. I worked effectively. Expert. Steady.

I appeared to have everything together on the surface. However, my heart beat a little quicker each time my phone buzzed. My thumb twitched toward the tiny green icon that said "1 unread message" each time I saw it. And each time, I stopped myself.

CaptainAmerica on WhatUp. One message. Unread.

I refrained from opening it, not because I did not want to know, but because I was afraid.

Instinctively, I knew that I would be unable to close the door once I had opened it. It would be difficult and perhaps not without repercussions.

I lay beside Ronnie at night, his arm slung over me as if it had just occurred to him. I gazed into the night and considered that one unread message as if it were a matchbox in my pocket...small and innocuous, but one thoughtless flick.

“Are you still being cautious, Mrs. Bose?” Rimi had messaged once. She addresses me as 'Mrs. Bose' when she is teasing me; otherwise, she uses my first name... Alta.

I could not figure out a reply, so I did not respond to her either.

Between days three and four, I began to have fragmentary dreams about faceless voices, nonstop elevators, and lips saying my name as if it were a secret.

And by the fifth night, I realized something.

I hadn’t read the message. But I had felt it. Every day, and by looking at the watch, I could tell it had been more than sixty hours that I was still holding it, like a letter tucked into my blouse...unread, but burning through the fabric.

I decided to sexually excite Ronnie. We have not had sex for over a week now. I knew he would sleep like a baby after that, leaving me free to make my next move.

I stood by the mirror and slowly stripped myself bare...not just of clothes, but of hesitation.

My body looked softer than I remembered. The curve of my hip, the tired fullness in my eyes, and the line of my collarbone that used to make me feel beautiful. Somewhere inside, a woman stirred...watching me. Approving.

Ronnie was already in bed, lying with his back to me, breathing in that deep, rhythmic way that meant he was close to sleep but not quite there.

I slipped under the covers and let my fingers trail across his stomach. He stirred faintly. I leaned closer, pressed my lips to his neck, and whispered his name with a sweetness I hadn’t used in weeks. He responded. Not with words, but with instinct. The way men often do when the invitation is physical and uncomplicated. It wasn’t slow or romantic. It wasn’t deep or meaningful. But it was sex.

It was enough. I made sure he reached his release, that he collapsed into that familiar stillness, limbs heavy, breath slow. I knew he would sleep like a baby now, as always. I slid away gently, wrapping myself in a loose robe, and padded barefoot to the living room.

The clock on the wall blinked at 2:17 AM.

The lights were dim. The fan turned lazily. And my phone… it was still where I had left it. Still glowing faintly. I picked it up. I opened WhatUp. The message from Captain America was still unread.

I tapped the chat. It opened, and there it was. It was just a simple 'Hi' sitting like a landmine ready to explode for more than sixty hours.

At that very moment, there was an explosion. It was not the phone, but it was the clouds. Massive lightning tore through clouds, and it thundered with a violent clap that reverberated not only through the city but also my heart and soul! It started to rain in a heavy downpour.

All the restraints and shackles that I had been entangling myself with till that moment seemed to have vanished. I felt a very girlish delight. I stared at the blinking cursor for a while, still feeling the echo of everything I hadn’t said. In the end, I chose simplicity and safety.

I typed, ‘Hi, how are you?’

I clicked send. 

Then three dots appeared, indicating that William was typing, but then they disappeared. The silence stretched...thick, deliberate. For a moment, I wondered if I had been too late. There was no reply for a few minutes, and that seemed like an eternity. 

Maybe he had already moved on. Perhaps my hesitation had sent a message louder than my words ever could. I placed the phone face down and leaned back, pretending not to care.

But every part of me was tuned to the device beside me, as if it were wired to my pulse.

There was a ping and another thunder and lightning. I turned the phone over.

William:

There you are.

A second message followed almost immediately.

I was beginning to think I’d imagined you.

Another one:

I'm better now. And you? Are you still pretending you're not the most interesting woman I’ve met in months?

I felt my breath catch slightly. It wasn’t what he said. It was the way he said it...like I had walked back into a room where I’d left something behind. Something alive, breathing. and dangerous.

I gathered my hair and hastily tied it back in a bun halfway up my head.

I started typing but stopped, wondering, what did I want to say? Should I tell him the truth? That I missed the thrill of him?

That I still smelled Ronnie’s skin on mine, but wanted to wash it off?

That I was scared of where this would go… but more scared of never knowing?

I typed:

I wasn’t sure if I should text you back.

His reply came instantly.

Then don’t waste time doubting it now.

And then...

William:

Tell me something real, Alta. Something your husband doesn’t know.

I stared at the screen.

The night around me held its breath.

The words glowed against the dark screen, quiet and incendiary. I sat still for a long moment, the silence around me dense, the air against my bare skin suddenly more noticeable. My husband’s steady breathing still echoed faintly from the bedroom.
Something he doesn’t know? There were many things. But only one that mattered tonight.
I typed slowly.
Sometimes when I speak to certain clients… I don’t pretend to sound warm. I actually enjoy it.

The three dots appeared immediately.
William:
Of course you do.
You have a voice that can undo a man. Do you ever hear yourself laugh, Alta? It’s dangerous.

I bit my lower lip.
Alta:
I didn’t laugh much until recently.

William:
And now?

I hesitated, then wrote.

Alta:
Now I laugh a little more when I think of you sometimes, when I imagine how you look when you talk to me.

William:
Then let’s be honest. You don’t imagine me at a desk in a suit, do you?

I felt a tingle up my spine. The thrill of this game, its slow unfolding, was like tracing the edge of something sharp and silk-wrapped.

I typed: No.

William:
What do you see then, Alta? Tell me.

Alta:
I don’t know…

Then I typed, and I swallowed. My body felt warmer now, the robe loosening around me.
You, in bed. Shirt half-open. Your voice is lower and slower. Watching me but not saying anything. Like you're letting me speak first… with my body.

But I deleted the text.

He waited for some time, then he wrote.

William:
God. I knew you were dangerous.
You know what I imagined while waiting for your reply?
You're in that maroon saree again. Only without the blouse. Just the drape. Loose around your chest. Mouth slightly open. Your luscious, long hair is unbound and flowing, and you are walking towards me with nothing polite in your eyes.

My breath got caught.

Alta:
Why that saree?

William:
Because that photo is seared in my mind. Your arms were crossed, your smile too formal...but your eyes… they were betraying everything else. I’ve undressed that version of you in my mind a hundred times. But I prefer this version. Now. Real. Awake. Needing.

His words pressed against me like hands...firm, unapologetic.
I pulled the robe tighter, not to hide but to hold myself together.

I typed.

Alta:
I’m not sure how far I can go with this.

William:
Then don’t go far. Just go deep. Tell me what you’re feeling right now.

Enough was enough! I didn’t think. I just answered.

Alta:
Wet. Trembling. And alone with a phone that knows more about me tonight than my husband has in years.

Three dots. Still typing…

I read it back the moment I hit send.

I had never written anything like that before. Not to anyone. Not even to Ronnie, back when we were new and daring.

But now, as I stared at those words, I didn’t feel shame. I felt… release. Like something deep inside me had just taken its first breath after being underwater for too long.

William saw the message.

He didn’t reply for a few seconds. Maybe he was reading it twice. Maybe he was picturing me exactly as I was...curled on the sofa, the robe half-falling, the fan circling above my flushed skin.

Then it came:

William:

I want you to touch yourself for me. Not for your husband. Not out of frustration. Just for me. Because I see you. And I want you to feel that.

My breath hitched.

Alta:

I don’t know if I can.

William:

You already have.
When you typed that message.
When you stripped your panties off last week and slid into bed with a man who couldn’t read the hunger in your eyes.
You were already halfway to me, Alta.

My hand tightened around the phone. How does he know? It is impossible… it must be a wild guess or just a form of speech.

Alta:

Tell me what you want me to do.

There it was.

At that moment, I stopped pretending.

He replied within seconds.

William:

I want you to let the robe fall. I want your thighs parted...like the night you said you spread them wider just to feel something different. I want your fingers right where it aches, Alta. And I want you to whisper my name when you come.

I closed my eyes.

The robe slipped from my shoulders without resistance. The cool air kissed my skin. My legs shifted...slowly, almost instinctively...opening like petals to a sun I had tried to hide from.

The room was quiet, except for my breath and the soft buzz of a man’s attention blooming inside my body from half a world away.

My fingers obeyed.

And for the first time in years, I felt like me again.

Not a wife, not a team lead. Just a woman. Naked in every sense of the word.

And yes...when it happened…

I whispered his name.

It was not a voice or a video call. No speakers were playing, and no audio notes were exchanged. No cameras.

And yet, somewhere between the flicker of my phone screen and the pounding in my chest… I could feel a connection that seemed to be stretching beyond the borders of the land and the depths of the seas… Yes, I swear I heard something.
A breath… A sigh. So soft, it could have been imagined. So real, it felt like it came from the other side of the room.
I froze, just for a second, fingers still caught in the act of surrender. The ceiling fan continued its lazy spin. The digital clock blinked past 3:00 AM. It was raining heavily outside, accompanied by thunder and lightning. The city outside slept.

But inside me? Something had awakened.

I could feel him. Not as text. Not as a fantasy. As presence. I imagined him shirtless, sprawled across expensive sheets, the phone in his hand glowing just like mine. His chest rising and falling, his breath ragged, his eyes locked on the message I had just sent.

I imagined his other hand gripping the heat of his manhood between his legs.

I imagined him saying my name. Not out loud. But with parted lips. With a whisper into the dark.

And I knew...I knew...that when he came, he had done so holding my name in his mouth like it meant something.

Alta.

A name I had grown tired of hearing from Ronnie’s indifferent lips.

Now, it was reborn, spoken in desire. In reverence. Across a continent and a time zone. I stayed very still afterward. Naked, spent, glowing...not from shame but from something dangerously close to pride.

There was no “goodnight” from William. No “thank you.” Just one final message.

William:
Sleep well, my Bengali beauty. I’ll be thinking of that robe all day.

I did not reply. I did not need to.

I placed the phone beside me like one might place a lover’s hand. And as I pulled a throw over my bare body, I smiled. I had been touched. Reached. Claimed...not by flesh, but by words and for the first time in years… I did not feel alone.