The arousal had become a permanent state. Not waves anymore, not peaks and valleys, just a constant burning need that saturated every cell of my body. My nipples were hard against my ruined shirt, aching points that sent sparks straight to my core with every brush of fabric. My clit protruded from its hood, swollen and rigid, catching on the seam of my pants with every step. Between my legs, everything was hot and swollen and so wet I could feel it running down my thighs.
I was leaving a trail. Arousal dripping onto the bone with every step, marking my path as clearly as his scent marked the water sources. Anything with a nose could follow me now. Could track my desperation through the maze like a beacon.
I'd tried to masturbate again last night. Four times. The first attempt had lasted an hour, my fingers working desperately, trying to recreate what his hands had done. The angle was wrong. The pressure was wrong. The temperature was wrong. Everything about my own touch was wrong, and my body knew it.
Build, peak, nothing. Build, peak, nothing. Build, peak, nothing.
I'd sobbed until my throat was raw and beaten my fists against the bone floor in frustration. I’d finally given up and curled around the fabric he'd left me, breathing his scent while my body clenched and wept for something I couldn't give it.
The tonic had won. I was programmed, conditioned, reduced to a creature that could only be satisfied by the monster waiting at the end of this maze.
I hated it. Hated him. Hated myself for the way my body responded every time I thought about the weight of him pinning me to that wall, the way his fingers had curled inside me, theway his cock had pressed against my entrance like a promise of things to come.
A structure that doesn't collapse. He'd said that. Right before he walked away and left me empty.
At least this monster was honest about trapping me. My family had used love and obligation and guilt, had wrapped their manipulation in the language of kinship. Jonah had smiled and promised and asked me to trust him, and I'd been stupid enough to believe that blood meant something.
The memory surfaced through the tonic haze, sharp-edged and bitter.
I wastwenty-two when Jonah came to me with his business proposal.
He'd done the whole performance. The presentation slides. The market research. The five-year projections that looked so professional I'd assumed someone competent had helped him create them. He'd sat across from me in my tiny apartment, the one I'd worked three jobs to afford while finishing my engineering degree on a thirty-percent scholarship that my parents had complained wasn't as good as Jonah's full ride.
Jonah, who'd dropped out after two semesters. Jonah, whose full scholarship had covered a year of parties and bad decisions before the grades caught up with him. Jonah, who'd never worked three jobs or twenty-hour days or any of the things I'd done to get where I was.
He'd explained how this venture was going to change everything. How the market was ready. How he just needed a little help from his brilliant sister.
"I just need a co-signer for the startup loan," he'd said. "The bank requires collateral, and you're the only one with enough credit history."
I should have said no. Should have remembered all the projects he'd started and abandoned, all the schemes that had fizzled out the moment they required actual effort. The band in high school. The podcast in college. The "freelance consulting" business that had been an excuse to not look for a real job.
But he was my brother. My parents had spent my entire childhood telling me how special he was, how talented, how he just needed the right opportunity. How I should support him. How family meant sacrifice.
Maybe this was the opportunity. Maybe I could help him succeed. Maybe if I helped him enough, my parents would finally look at me the way they looked at him.
"How much?"
"180,000."
I'd co-signed the loan on a Tuesday. By Friday, Jonah had already spent 40,000 on office space he didn't need and equipment he didn't understand. By the end of the first month, he'd hired three friends who knew nothing about the business and leased a company car he couldn't afford.
The business collapsed in eight months. Jonah, who had structured the whole thing on the advice of a lawyer our parents paid for, emerged with his credit intact. The bankruptcy protected him.
It did not protect me.
180,000 credits of debt. At twenty-two, with a starting engineer's salary, with three years of student loans already crushing me. The bank didn't care that I'd never seen a cent of that money. I'd signed. I was responsible.
I'd paid off maybe 60,000 in the three years since, living in a converted storage unit because real apartments cost too much. I ate meal replacement bars because groceries cost too much, took every overtime shift, every extra project, every opportunity to earn more money that I could funnel toward the debt.
My parents called a week after the bankruptcy finalized. First time I'd heard from them in six months.
"Jonah's having a hard time," my mother said. "He needs a place to stay while he gets back on his feet. You have that spare room?—"
I'd hung up. Blocked her number. Blocked all of their numbers. Blocked Jonah on every platform I could think of.
That was three years ago. I hadn't spoken to any of them since.
The memory fadedas another wave of arousal crashed through me.
