Kerris #2
He selected each bone carefully. Tested weights, tested angles, set some pieces aside to choose others. When he found the right one, he lifted it like it weighed nothing and carried it to the structure he was building. A wall, I realized. Another section of maze.
The joins were invisible from this distance, but I could imagine what they looked like up close. Precise. Interlocking. Built to last centuries.
There was something hypnotic about watching him work.
The steady rhythm. The patience. The obvious satisfaction when a piece fit exactly as intended.
My own hands itched to be useful, to build something, to solve a structural problem.
I'd spent fifteen years doing exactly what he was doing, just with different materials.
I shouldn't relate to him. Shouldn't see myself in his methods. Shouldn't feel anything but fear and rage.
But I did. And that was almost as terrifying as the tonic.
Jonah had never finished anything. Had never cared enough about the end result to see a project through.
Had started a hundred ventures and abandoned them all the moment they required any type of sustained effort.
My parents had always made excuses for him.
Still working out the details. Still finding his path. Still needing a little more support.
They'd never made excuses for me. I'd never needed them to.
This creature, this alien hunter who was herding me through a bone maze, had more craftsmanship in one wall than my brother had shown in his entire life.
The comparison made something twist in my chest. I wasn't supposed to admire the thing that was hunting me, and I wasn’t supposed to see my own values reflected in his work. I wasn't supposed to feel a kinship with the monster who was slowly, patiently, inevitably herding me toward his bed.
When he finally moved out of sight, I realized I'd been holding my breath.
My body was a disaster. Soaked through, shaking, desperate.
But I'd watched. I'd learned. I'd stayed still when every nerve screamed at me to go to him, to crawl across the bone field and offer myself to those hands that built such beautiful things.
Small victory. I'd take it.
I carved my three lines into the wall I'd been hiding against and kept walking.
Night fell. I found another hollow bone to shelter in, smaller than the first, barely big enough to curl up in.
I'd made maybe two miles. Two miles in twelve hours of walking, because the maze doubled back on itself, because dead ends forced retreats, because every shortcut I tried to take led to walls that hadn't been there an hour before.
Because my body kept stopping me, kept making me pause and press and plead with itself to just fucking let me come.
Before I stripped, I carved my mark into the entrance. Three horizontal lines. Proof of passage. Proof of survival. Proof of one more day.
Then I peeled off my ruined clothes and looked at what the tonic had done.
Worse than yesterday. My pussy lips were puffy and dark, almost purple with blood, spread so far open that I could see my inner flesh without spreading my legs.
My clit protruded from its hood like a small cock, swollen and rigid and throbbing visibly with my pulse.
When I touched it experimentally, my whole body jerked like I'd been shocked.
Everything was wet. Not just damp but dripping. Slickness coated my inner thighs, and I felt it pooling beneath me when I sat. The scent of my own arousal filled the small chamber, sweet and musky and desperate.
I tried anyway.
My fingers found my clit, and I gasped at the intensity. So sensitive now that even light pressure was almost painful. I circled it carefully, building sensation that climbed toward something, feeling the familiar tension gathering in my core.
Yes. Yes. This time. Please, this time.
Build. Build. Build. Peak.
Nothing.
I pushed three fingers inside myself, felt the walls clamp down around them, hungry and desperate. I fucked myself with my hand, grinding my palm against my clit, trying to give my body what it wanted. The wet sounds were obscene. The pleasure was real, climbing, spiraling—
Peak. Stall. Nothing.
I added a fourth finger. Stretched myself wider than I ever had before, felt the burn of it, welcomed the pain as something different from the endless aching emptiness. My other hand found my nipple, pinched hard, twisted.
Build. Peak. Stall. Nothing. Build. Peak. Stall.
Nothing.
Thirty minutes. An hour. I lost track. My wrist screamed. My fingers cramped. I was sobbing, begging myself, begging my body, begging anything that might be listening.
"Please. Please. I need to come. I need to fucking come. Please."
Nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
I pulled my hand away and curled into a ball on the bone floor, shaking with frustration, my pussy clenching in angry spasms that felt like punishment for the false promise.
"You see the patterns."
The voice came from the darkness outside my shelter.
I jerked upright so fast I cracked my head on the curved ceiling. The voice was deep, rough, like grinding stone against stone. Not the smooth voice of a human male but something ancient.
"Good."
I pressed myself against the back of my hiding spot, suddenly aware of how naked I was, how I smelled, how obvious my desperation must be. What was the point of hiding? He could smell exactly how desperate I was. Could probably smell every failed attempt I'd made at relief.
"Who are you?" My voice cracked.
Silence stretched. Then: "You know what I am."
"I know what you're supposed to be. I don't know who you are."
Another pause. When he spoke again, there was something different in his tone. Interest. Approval.
"Dozens of females have come through the portal over the cycles. You are the first who climbed for high ground."
First. Out of dozens. I'd done something different, something that mattered to him, and I didn't even know what test I'd passed.
"What did the others do?"
"Ran. Hid. Screamed. Begged." A pause. "Broke."
Broke. Dozens of females, and they'd all broken. The tonic had done its work, and they'd surrendered to biology, to the creature hunting them, to the desperate need that was even now making my thighs press together and my inner walls clench.
"I won't break."
The sound he made might have been a laugh.
"You'll choose. There's a difference."
"Show yourself," I said.
"Tomorrow. When you reach the spring at the center of the territory. I'll be there."
"Why? Why not now?"
"Because you're not ready to see me yet. You'll look and you'll fear. Tomorrow you'll look and you'll want."
The arrogance should have enraged me. Instead it sent a pulse of heat between my legs so sharp I gasped.
He heard it. Had to have heard it.
"To help you remember what you're walking toward," he said, and something pressed through the gap in my shelter entrance. Fabric. A piece of cloth that carried his scent so strongly my body convulsed the moment I touched it.
The smell hit my brain and my pussy responded before I could even process what was happening. Clenching. Flooding. Preparing.
And then he was gone.
I sat in my shelter, naked, dripping and shaking, holding a piece of fabric that smelled like him. Every breath I took sent another wave of arousal through me. My pussy clenched and released, clenched and released, trying to grip something that wasn't there.
I should have thrown it away, dropped it outside, and gotten as far from his scent as the maze would allow. I should have done anything except what I actually did.
I pressed it to my face and breathed deeply.
The response was immediate and devastating. My whole body seized. My back arched. My hips rocked against nothing. I buried my face in the fabric and inhaled his scent while my free hand found its way between my legs, fingers sliding through wetness that had reached new levels of desperation.
I stroked myself with his scent in my nose, building toward something that might really crest this time, might actually tip me over—
Build. Peak. Stall.
Nothing.
But I didn't stop. Couldn't stop. I spent the rest of the night grinding against the bone floor with the fabric pressed to my face, edging myself over and over, getting so close and never quite falling, until the sky began to lighten and I was ruined, desperate, and one day closer to breaking.
But I'd stopped counting.