Zia #2
I'm studying the tracks when the wave hits.
Stronger than before. My knees buckle and I fall forward, catching myself on hands and knees.
My back arches, hips grinding against air, seeking something to fill the emptiness that's become agony.
The sounds I make aren't human. Desperate whines and moans that echo across the swamp.
When it passes, I smell him stronger than ever. Close. Maybe twenty meters. Watching me on all fours like an animal in heat.
Which is what the tonic has made me.
I force myself to stand, turn slowly. Scanning the jungle but seeing only green shadows.
“I know you're there.” My voice cracks, throat dry despite the humidity.
No response, but the air shifts. He's moving, circling maybe. I catch a glimpse of something dark against the green. Purple-black that doesn't belong in this palette. But when I focus, it's gone.
The southern boundary draws me back. Those bone arrangements mean something. The spirals are too deliberate, too precise. I study them from different angles, trying to parse the pattern.
Shadow cat kills. Has to be. The claw spacing matches what the briefing described. But shadow cats don't arrange bones. This is something else. Message or warning or marker.
I'm so focused on the bones that I almost miss the new gift.
Three scales, purple-black, each the size of my thumb. His scales. The edges are sharp enough to cut, and they smell like him. That musk and ozone that makes my pussy clench so hard I gasp.
I run my finger along one scale and nearly orgasm just from the scent intensifying. My body recognizes this as part of what it needs. Part of him.
Why give me pieces of himself?
The sun climbs higher, heat becoming oppressive. My skin is slick constantly now, sweat and arousal creating a sheen that catches light. I find the cave again, the one he marked with advice. It's cooler inside, and I decide to modify it. Make it mine.
I work through the afternoon, setting up defensive positions, creating sight lines, establishing early warning systems with vines and the few supplies I have. Every twenty minutes I have to stop, dropping to the cave floor to writhe through another wave.
During one, I find myself with my hand between my legs, grinding against my palm while my other hand squeezes my breast. The pressure helps but doesn't satisfy.
My body knows this isn't what it needs. It wants something specific.
Something thick and hard and not human. Something that's been watching me for two days.
“Please,” I whisper to the empty cave. “Please, I need...”
But I can't finish. Can't admit what my body is screaming for.
By evening of Day Two, I've established my new position. The cave is mine now, modified with my improvements. I have water, defensive positions, sight lines. Everything tactical training says I need.
Except relief from the torture burning through every nerve.
I strip completely as darkness falls. Clothing is pointless agony against oversensitive skin. The night air makes my nipples tighten further, if that's possible. They're dark now, swollen like the rest of me. Changed by the tonic into something hypersensitive.
Between my legs is worse. In the phosphorescent light, I can see how swollen my pussy has become.
The lips are puffy, dark with blood, spread open from the constant swelling.
My clit is visible, enlarged, throbbing with my heartbeat.
Wetness leaks constantly, stringing between my thighs when I move.
Another wave builds. I know the pattern now, feel it starting in my core and spreading outward.
This time I don't fight it. I lie back on the cave floor, legs spread, and let it take me.
My hips buck against nothing. My inner muscles seized in a desperate, empty rhythm.
The emptiness is agony, cramping muscles seeking something to hold.
The wave peaks and I scream. Not from pain but from frustrated need that won't be satisfied.
When it passes, he's at the cave entrance.
I can't see him clearly, just a massive shadow blocking the phosphorescent light. But I can smell him. That musk and ozone that made my thighs instantly slick, preparing for what it craves.
“Two days,” his voice is nothing like human speech. The translator converts rumbles and clicks into words, but meaning bleeds through beyond language. “Most females beg by now.”
I force myself to sitting, not bothering to close my legs. He can see everything anyway. How swollen I am. How wet. How desperate.
“I'm not most females.”
“No.” The shadow shifts, and I catch a glimpse of eyes that reflect gold-green. “You map territory. Set traps. Plan escape routes.”
“Survival requires preparation.”
“Survival here requires surrender.”
“Surrender to what? You? Chemistry? This torture you call preparation?”
He moves slightly closer. Still shadow but now I can make out more. Tall, maybe seven feet. Broad in ways that aren't human. And something moving behind him. A tail, thick and powerful.
“Surrender to need. Body knows what it wants.”
“My body wants lots of things. Doesn't mean I give in.”
“No? Then why do you leak for me? Why do you clench on nothing? Why do you scream my scent?”
Heat floods my face. He's watched everything. Every desperate moment. Every failed attempt at relief.
“Because chemistry doesn't equal choice.”
“Choice.” He makes a sound that might be laughter. “You think you have choice? After two days? Wait until day five. Day ten. Day fifteen. Watch choice disappear as body takes control.”
“Is that the game? Wait until I'm mindless with need?”
“Game is more complex. But time favors hunter, not hunted.”
He sets something down at the cave entrance. Another bundle.
“Eat. Drink. Tomorrow gets worse.”
Then he was gone, absorbed back into the jungle's darkness.
Inside the bundle: meat seasoned with something that makes my mouth water. More of the clear liquid that dulls the edge of need. And something new. A piece of fabric that smells intensely of him. His scent concentrated enough that holding it makes my pussy clench in violent spasms.
A comfort object or a torture device?
I spend the night alternating between trying to sleep and writhing through waves that come every ten minutes now. My body is exhausting itself with constant arousal. Muscles fatigue from clenching. Dehydration from the fluids I'm losing. The human body isn't meant to be this aroused for this long.
Twenty-eight more days.
The impossibility of it sits heavy. My body is already breaking down. The inflammation alone will cause damage. But the alternative is surrender. Giving in to what the tonic has programmed me to crave.
I hold the fabric he left, breathing his scent while my hips grind against the cave floor. The smell makes everything worse and better. Worse because my body recognizes him as what it needs. Better because at least there's something real to focus the need on.
Not just anonymous chemistry but him. Specific. The hunter who provides medicine with the torture. Who gives tactical advice while watching me fall apart. Who could take me anytime but waits.
Waiting for what?
For me to beg? Or for something else?
The questions haunt me as another wave builds. I grip the fabric, breathing his scent as my body convulses with need. The empty ache has become my entire existence, broken only by waves that provide no relief.
But I'm still thinking. Still planning. Still maintaining who I am despite what my body has become.
The game continues.
And I refuse to lose.
Even if winning might be impossible.