Day Three - Pre-Dawn
The spasms wake me before sunrise.
My pussy clenches in violent waves, muscles contracting around nothing. The emptiness has gone from ache to actual pain, these cramping seizures that make me curl into fetal position. Wetness pools beneath me on the cave floor, my body producing lubrication for something that isn't here.
I count through the wave. Thirty-seven seconds this time. Getting longer.
When it passes, I force myself to standing. My legs shake constantly now, exhausted from three days of tension. The tactical pants are still damp from yesterday, the crotch stiff with dried arousal. Every movement makes the fabric scrape against swollen flesh.
First priority: reassess the gifts.
He's been leaving them at the same spot each dawn. Water in those grown gourds. Fruit with purple-black skin. Meat wrapped in strange leaves. The volcanic glass knife. Medicine that dulls the edge but doesn't stop the need.
Pattern recognition is basic military training. He's establishing routine. Making me dependent on his provisions. Classic conditioning.
Time to use that against him.
I gather what he's left over three days. Arrange them in my own pattern. Bait for the hunter who thinks he's been baiting me.
The clearing I choose sits fifty meters from my cave. Open ground with limited cover. Trees too thin for canopy approach. Ground too rocky for silent movement. If he wants the gifts back, he has to expose himself.
I arrange everything deliberately. The medicine vials in a half-circle. The water gourds at compass points. The meat at the center because that's what draws predators. Each item positioned to create specific approach vectors. To control where he can step.
Then I coat certain spots with the phosphorescent fungi juice I collected yesterday. Nearly invisible when wet, but it'll mark anything that touches it. Show me his exact path even if I don't see him.
The trap set, I retreat to my observation point. A natural blind created by fallen trees, thirty meters from the clearing. Good sight lines. Multiple escape routes. And downwind, so my scent doesn't give away my position.
A wave builds as I settle into place. The pressure starts low, behind my pubic bone, then spreads outward like heat. My nipples harden to painful points. Between my legs, fresh wetness flows. I press my thighs together, trying to counter the clenching, but it only makes the sensation worse.
I bite down on my own forearm, using pain to focus through the need. Thirty-nine seconds this time.
The sun rises, painting the jungle in shades of green and gold. Morning sounds begin. Birds that aren't quite birds.Insects with too many wings. And underneath it all, the ambient noise of a living ecosystem that evolved without humans.
Movement.
Not where I expected. He doesn't come from his usual approach. Instead, he emerges from the opposite direction, already inside my theoretical perimeter. He's been here longer than I thought. Watching me set the trap.
My first clear daylight view of him stops my breathing.
Seven feet of lethal grace. The purple-black scales shift between dark and iridescent depending on angle, creating patterns that confuse the eye. His body moves wrong for anything terrestrial. Too fluid. Joints that bend in ways that shouldn't work. Four arms, the secondary pair folded against his torso.
The tail is what I hadn't properly appreciated before. Thick as my thigh at the base, tapering to a point that moves independently. It tests the ground as he walks, reading vibrations maybe. Or temperature. Or something my human brain can't process.
His face is almost human in basic structure but alien in proportion. The eyes are too large, taking up more skull real estate than ours. The iris shifts between gold and green depending on pupil dilation. The jaw is wider, accommodating teeth I glimpse when he parts his lips to taste the air.
Between his legs, natural armor plating bulges with his arousal. Two distinct shapes press against the scaling. The larger one is massive, distorting the plates around it. The smaller one moves independently underneath its covering.
He approaches my trap slowly. Not cautious. Curious.
The fungi juice works perfectly. His footprints glow faintly where he steps in the treated spots. Creating a map of his movement I can track later.
He crouches beside the arranged gifts. The position makes muscles shift under his scales in ways that highlight his inhuman flexibility. His tail curves around his body, the tip swaying slightly as he examines my pattern.
“Clever,” he says, though I shouldn't be able to hear him from this distance. The translator makes his sounds into words, but underneath I hear the real voice. Clicks and rumbles that bypass my ears and resonate in my bones.
He picks up one of the medicine vials. Rolls it between fingers that have too many joints. His nostrils flare, and I wonder what information scent gives him that sight doesn't.
He knows it's a trap. Has to. But he continues examining each item, touching them in an order that seems random but probably isn't. His secondary arms unfold, allowing him to handle multiple objects simultaneously.
