By the time I've secured basic shelter, the tonic has progressed from demanding to screaming. My inner thighs are slick despite my attempts to ignore it. Every breath makes my breasts ache. The hollow ache between my legs has become actual pain, cramping emptiness that makes me double over.
Night falls fast. Within an hour, the jungle transforms. Phosphorescent organisms create paths of blue-green light.Night sounds rise: chirring insects, distant howls, something dying violently to the south.
I strip off my soaked shirt. The fabric is torture against my skin, and modesty is pointless when everything here can smell my arousal from kilometers away. The night air on my bare breasts makes me gasp, nipples tightening further.
My hand drifts between my legs without conscious thought. Even through the wet fabric, I can feel how swollen I am. How ready. But my own touch brings no relief. If anything, it makes the ache worse. My body has been programmed to need something specific. Something only they can provide.
I try anyway. Fingers pressing through fabric, seeking the relief that won't come. My hips rock desperately, grinding against my own hand. The tree bark is rough against my back as I arch, chasing sensation that stays just out of reach.
A sound escapes me. Frustrated. Desperate. Animal.
Something responds from the darkness. Not quite a call. More like acknowledgment. He's out there. Watching. Waiting for the tonic to do his work for him.
I force my hand away, biting my lip until the pain overrides the need. For now.
The night stretches ahead. No sleep will come, not with my body like this. Every nerve firing, every cell screaming for what it's been programmed to crave. The moss beneath me is soft, and I find myself grinding against it, hips moving without permission.
Another wave hits, so intense my vision whites out. My back arches completely off the ground. Internal muscles spasm, clenching rhythmically on nothing. When it passes, I'm sobbing. Not from fear or anger but from pure frustrated need.
Twenty-nine days, twenty-three hours to go.
My body won't last that long. Not like this.
But I've survived worse. Kandahar when my unit was pinned down for sixty hours. Somalia when the extraction failed. Cairo when the building came down.
I can survive this.
Even if my body screams otherwise with every breath.
The watcher in the darkness shifts position. I can't see him, but I feel his presence like atmospheric pressure. Patient. Confident. He knows what the tonic is doing to me. Knows time is on his side.
But he doesn't know I've been trained to function through pain. Through distraction. Through everything the enemy can throw at me.
I'm not just another desperate woman dropped into his territory.
I'm a soldier.
And soldiers adapt.
My hands shake as I update my mental map. The portal site is my zero point. This shelter is approximately two hundred meters northeast, thirty meters elevation. Tomorrow I'll expand my reconnaissance. Find water sources. Identify threats. Build contingencies.
Another wave of need crashes through me. This time I don't fight it, just ride it out, letting my body convulse while my mind stays separate. Observing. Learning the patterns.
The tonic creates waves approximately every twenty minutes. Each one lasts between thirty seconds and two minutes. Between waves, I can function. During waves, I'm helpless.
Information. Data. Variables to factor into planning.
Something large moves through the underbrush to the east. Not him, the gait is wrong. Four legs, possibly six. It sniffs around my shelter then moves on. Whatever marks this territory is stronger than my human scent.
His marks. His protection, even though I haven't seen him yet.
The game has rules. Boundaries. He's not just a mindless predator. He's something more complex.
I can work with complex.
My body clenches again, hard enough to hurt. The empty ache has become a constant companion, baseline pain that spikes into agony during waves. My pussy is so swollen that sitting certain ways creates pressure that nearly makes me scream.
But pain is information. Discomfort is data.
