[Steel]

Rakesh had to hold back a laugh as he walked into Kusha's office the next day. Bingo. Bullseye. It looked like he had scored a direct hit.

To the untrained eye, it might look like the lovely, confident woman behind the desk had the same dismissive expression of hate and disgust she had always worn when looking at Rakesh. But he knew better. There was an obsessive edge in her eyes now. Kusha still hated him, but after he had questioned her choice in men, she also felt like she had something to prove. An axe to grind. And that was why Rakesh was here today. He wanted to strengthen that reaction and mold it to his purposes.

That was exactly why he had sent his audacious request to Kusha last night.

"Mr. Kumar," said Kusha icily, "Welcome. Before we continue, I want to address the inappropriate remarks you made about my personal life yesterday. Let me make one thing perfectly clear. In order for me to work on this project, you and I need to have a professional relationship of utmost respect."

Rakesh sat heavily in the chair across from the beautiful, arrogant woman he planned to make his depraved submissive slut. She wouldn't be making demands from him soon... just asking sweetly. Begging. But for now, it didn't pay to be hasty. Pushing too hard too fast would spook her.

"I'm an unfiltered guy," said Rakesh in a flat voice, leaning back in his chair with his arms crossed over his unbuttoned chest. "I say what's on my mind. But I recognize that I run in social circles that might be a little less... polished than yours. So if you felt uncomfortable over what I said, then I'm sorry."

"You didn't make me uncomfortable," said Kusha sharply, leaning forward on her elbows with an intense expression.

"Then what's the issue?" asked Rakesh, raising a questioning eyebrow.

Kusha glared at him for a long moment, then blinked and shook her head, moving on quickly from the awkward exchange without even extracting a real apology from Rakesh. "...Anyway. I called you here today to give you some options for design elements. Let's get right to business."

Rakesh smiled and stroked his chin. "Excellent. I wanted to pick your brain on the design for my trophy case. I think that just having hooks in a glass case is a little, I don't know... boring? I was hoping you might have some fresh visual ideas."

Kusha's face had hardened into an angry scowl as he talked, and Rakesh had to repress a smirk. Kusha really was too predictable.

"I made myself quite clear in my response to your insane suggestion last night," snapped Kusha, playing with a lock of hair distractedly as she stared daggers at the infuriating man across from her. "I'm not designing anything of the sort for you. You can commission someone with looser morals to build your disgusting monument to misogyny after I'm finished. I won't have any part in it."

[Steel]

Rakesh's smile was wide and toothy as a shark's. Perfect. This was exactly what he wanted. A firmly drawn line in the sand that he could pressure Kusha to cross. Submission was a state of mind, and some women had never learned that way of thinking. Kusha was a prime example. She had always insulated herself from strong, dominant men, never putting herself in a position where she had to bend to someone else's will. Rakesh would need to patiently teach her how to surrender.

You couldn't rush to sexual submission first. That would flow naturally once Kusha learned to give in to Rakesh's desires in other ways. This was why he had sent Kusha a design request he knew she would refuse. It would be Kusha's first lesson in submitting to him when she finally gave in and accepted the request she had so firmly refused.

"My room is supposed to reflect my style," said Rakesh calmly, "and also be functional for my everyday life. This trophy case is important to me. It represents who I am. I'm not asking you to like it, but if you're designing a bedroom for someone like me, you had to have known sex would be involved."

Kusha stared him dead in the eye across her desk, her gaze blazing with contempt. "Rakesh, read my lips. I am not going to design a special case for you to display the underwear of women you tricked into having sex with you. It's not going to happen."

Rakesh stared back at her, sparks flashing between them in a battle of wills. Rakesh could see that there was no way Kusha would give in today. He hadn't expected her to, and honestly, he would have been a little disappointed if she had. He always had enjoyed a good chase.

"We can table the question for now," said Rakesh decisively. Kusha opened her mouth angrily to say that tabling the discussion wasn't necessary, but Rakesh raised a finger and cut her off... a victory in and of itself. "Ah! We won't get any further with this discussion today, I think. Let's sleep on it. In the meantime, I would like you to keep a space open for the trophy case in your design, even if you don't end up designing it."

Kusha took in a deep breath, then let it out in a frustrated sigh. "Ok. Fine. We can talk about it at our next meeting, where I'll tell you again that I won't do it. Now... as I mentioned, I have some options for design elements that I would like your opinion on. Alright?"

Rakesh enjoyed the fact that Kusha was now asking his permission rather than pushing forward confidently. The cracks were already starting to show.

"That sounds lovely," he said with a little smirk, settling back into his chair once again.

[Steel]

When Sharath got home that evening, Kusha didn't come to the door to greet him. She wasn't in the bedroom either. It was a little strange. No matter how busy she was, Kusha usually made a point to connect with him after he got home, at least for a few minutes.

He found her in the next most likely place: she was at her desk in her home office, muttering irritably to herself as she sketched on her tablet.

Last night had been a little strange, and Sharath had to admit he was getting concerned. When he got home, Kusha had been dressed in a tight, slutty little outfit, which was unusual all by itself. She had flirted with him aggressively in a way that left him equally bewildered and aroused. And then, for reasons that Sharath still didn't quite understand, she had got... annoyed? And despite that annoyance, she had demanded a kind of rough sex she normally didn't like.

It didn't add up. And Sharath was a little worried about what might be driving these sudden shifts in behavior. He approached his wife silently from behind and laid a hand on her shoulder.

She jumped with a gasp and closed the tablet, but not before Sharath saw the project label in the top corner: Rakesh Kumar, Bedroom. Sharath felt a prickle of anxiety. It was just a bedroom design, right? Why was she acting almost guilty for working on it?

"God! Don't scare me like that!" said Kusha huffily. She sighed and raked her fingers through her lovely, dark hair, losing a little of the tension from her body. "...Sorry. I guess I'm all over the place today. I didn't hear you come in." She wrapped one arm around him and pressed her head into his side in a half-hug.

"You've been working too hard lately," said Sharath, rubbing a hand over his wife's tense shoulders. "What you need right now is a glass of wine and some mindless TV, not more work."

"Honey, I..." she began reluctantly, staring sidelong at her tablet with an odd expression of annoyance mixed with longing. She let out an explosive breath. "You know what? You're right. A glass of wine sounds perfect. I'll meet you at the couch."

[Steel]

As Sharath uncorked the wine, his mind was racing. Rakesh. It had to be. Whatever plans Rakesh was trying in order to seduce Kusha were having some sort of effect on her. It still seemed impossible that Rakesh could succeed, but even the fact that he was influencing Kusha's behavior at all was disturbing. Sharath had worried in the past that Rakesh might succeed at his perverse bet, but it had felt like a terrifying, but impossible fantasy. Like imagining that a meteor would randomly fall and kill you dead. Or wondering what would happen if the bridge beneath you were to randomly collapse while driving. A horrible thought, but not something you actually expected to happen.

Sharath had avoided bringing Rakesh up to his wife the past few weeks, even though he knew she had begun work on his project. He thought it would be better not to call more attention to the sleazy pornographer than was necessary. Besides, he assumed that no news was good news.

But now, it felt important to dig a little into what was going on with that situation. If only for his peace of mind.

As they curled up into their usual positions on the couch and Kusha took a big sip of wine, Sharath casually asked, "So... how is that project for Rakesh going?"

Kusha almost choked and came up coughing from the swallow. She gave her husband a sidelong glare, then, when she finally got herself back under control, she said guardedly, "He's exactly what I thought he was. A rude, arrogant, misogynistic pig. So, I suppose just about as badly as I expected."

Sharath was relieved to hear that, but also a little confused. It was clear that Rakesh had done nothing to endear himself to Kusha over the past couple of weeks. She still hated the slimy little jerk as much as ever... so why did she seem frustrated and distracted lately? What was up with her strange sexual outburst last night? Coincidence?

"Well, if he's bothering you, you could always just decline the job. We're doing fine with money right now," he said casually. That would actually be the ideal solution. It would frustrate whatever plan Rakesh had, and more importantly, it would do so without requiring Sharath to admit the perverse bet he had been pressured into.

Unfortunately, Sharath could tell instantly that he had said the exact wrong thing. Kusha stiffened beside him, her lips drawing into a thin, angry line. "He's not bothering me, Sharath," she snapped. "A little worm like him doesn't have the ability to bother me. I don't need to run away the first time a man acts like an asshole. I'm a big girl, and I can deal with a slimeball like Rakesh no problem."

'Oh, I know you can," said Sharath hurriedly, squeezing his wife's thigh reassuringly, "I was just saying that if Rakesh is..."

"I don't want to talk about Rakesh anymore," said Kusha firmly."'Let's watch some TV like you said."

[Steel]

After a few minutes of watching TV silently, Kusha unwound a little, but she still had that same air of prickly annoyance all evening, and when Sharath tried to kiss her that night on the way to bed, she turned so that his lips contacted her cheek instead of her lips.

"I need to catch up on some work," she said coolly. "You should get some rest. I might get to bed late, so don't wait up."

Rakesh watched her head back to her home office with worried eyes. There was definitely something going on with her, and Sharath was just now realizing he didn't know enough about Rakesh's methods to understand what his plan even was.

...

About an hour later, Sharath lay in bed, doing a little research.

Now that it was becoming clear that Rakesh's plans were having an effect on Kusha, it was important that Sharath understand his enemy. And luckily for him, Rakesh had published a sort of online playbook that Sharath could sneak a peek at.

"Premium Maal" looked just as trashy as the name implied. Rakesh's porn site had an aesthetic of lurid neon lights against velvety blackness. The premise of the site was simple: Rakesh's performers weren't porn stars, allegedly at least. They were normal, average women who had been tempted away from their everyday life by the lure of sexual debauchery.

It was an interesting concept, although Sharath assumed that it had to be bullshit. Rakesh probably just hired amateur porn stars who weren't widely recognizable and sold them to the public as girls-next-door to increase the taboo appeal. But even if it was all fake, the sorts of things that Rakesh wrote about the performers on the website would hopefully tell Sharath a lot about how Rakesh thought these types of seductions should work in theory.

It wasn't necessary for Sharath to pay for an account to browse through the performer profiles, which were part of the "free tour'. Which was lucky, because Kusha monitored their bank statements closely. There was a high chance she would notice if he paid for a porn subscription.

Sharath scrolled through the profiles. Each had a gorgeous desi woman staring at the camera with a smile, wearing clothes ranging from translucent chiffon sarees, plunging blouses, thigh high slit dresses, lingeries to women in empty beaches wearing sarongs, bikinis, or nothing, with an arm strategically covering their breasts. They objectively looked much better in comparison to actresses from adult webseries such as Ullu, Alt balaji, etc., that Sharath used to watch and fap to before meeting Kusha.

Clicking into a few of the profiles, Sharath found that many of the women were married, and a good number of them had been highly-paid professionals like Kusha before entering the world of porn. Or so Rakesh claimed at least. But it was harder than he thought to find useful information in the small blurbs about the various women. It usually just briefly commented that Rakesh had "taught them how to be a slut", or "put them in their place", or other degrading language, before encouraging the reader to "watch their videos to find out more!".

Sharath couldn't help feeling a little aroused by the content of the website, even as it made him uncomfortable. It was a compelling fantasy, even if it was dark and twisted. That an ugly, crass man like Rakesh had some sort of irresistible sexual magnetism. That something about him could turn proud women into sluts, desperate for his cock.

[Steel]

Sharath scrolled a little further down, then his eyes went wide. It felt like he had been dunked in ice water. He couldn't believe what he was looking at.

It was Laila. Unmistakably. Staring at the camera with her usually confident, toothy grin, and dressed in a fancy swimsuit under a translucent sarong, in her signature feather cut hairstyle. There wasn't even a fake pornstar name; "Laila" was printed right there next to the erotic picture.

It wasn't possible. Sharath's mouth was suddenly dry, and perversely, his cock was suddenly throbbing, tenting up the sheets. Laila had been a friend of his in college. And also the subject of a desperate, embarrassing crush for him from freshman year up through graduation. It wasn't until he met and began dating an amazing woman like Kusha after college that Sharath was able to fully get over her. Despite being utterly in love with his wife, Sharath still kind of kicked himself for not making a move on Laila during freshman year. By the time he finally got up his courage, Laila was already dating an older guy. The man she eventually married.

Right. Laila was fucking married. And had a kid. Sharath had fallen out of touch with her after her wedding, but he still saw updates from her occasionally on social media.

And, most importantly, Laila had always hated Rakesh. They had both been members of the same loose friend group, but Laila had made frequent complaints to Sharath about how obnoxious Rakesh was during college, and it may have been because of Rakesh that Laila eventually drifted away to hang out more often with her boyfriend's social circle during senior year.

Sharath clicked into the page for Laila on the porn site, feeling both oddly numb and pulsing with arousal at the same time. He scanned the short blurb with uncomprehending eyes.

"This one is close to my heart... an old friend from college! Laila could never stand the sight of me when we hung out on campus, and I've got to admit it hurt my feelings. So when I happened to run into this hot little married slut years later, I couldn't resist turning her into my personal whore. Laila started out wanting nothing to do with me, but by the time I got done with her... well, you'll just have to watch her videos to find out!"

Sharath unconsciously pressed the "Watch Here" button, but was taken immediately to a payment screen. With a grunt of annoyance, he exited the page and tossed his phone onto his nightstand. He lay back in bed, staring up at the ceiling with a new sense of panic rising in his heart.

Maybe it was a trick, or Photoshop, or something. The Laila Sharath had known was a smart and snarky woman who didn't take shit from anyone (he had always had a thing for strong-willed women). If Rakesh had somehow managed to lure or trick her into a sexual relationship, even though she hated him... Well, the parallels with Kusha were troubling.

Sharath decided to put Laila out of his mind for now. Maybe he could try to snoop on social media and see if there were any hints that she had actually been corrupted by Rakesh. Right now, he had to concentrate on things at home, find a way to counter whatever hold Rakesh seemed to have over his wife.

When the idea came to him, it felt obvious. Whatever plans Rakesh was working on, it clearly involved frustrating Kusha and getting her mentally wrapped up in the project he had hired her to work on. The best way to counteract Rakesh's plan would be to take Kusha's mind off work and reconnect with her. Break the focus on Rakesh that his former friend was trying to foster.

That was an excellent plan: a date. A chance for Kusha to unwind and unplug. And Sharath knew just where to take her. Kusha had been so tense tonight, Sharath had felt it in her shoulders. Kusha had a favorite ritzy spa she went to when the mood struck her, and Sharath knew they had couples' packages. They’d gone there for Valentine’s Day a couple of years ago, and although it wasn't Sharath's favorite thing in the world, he knew Kusha had loved it. In fact, she still occasionally brought it up to him as something they should do again sometime. A day of couples' massages and skin treatments would be a great way to soothe Kusha's annoyance and frustrations, and hopefully get her mind off that ugly douchebag trying to seduce her.