Toward him. Toward the Keep. Toward the empty nursery that had been waiting twelve cycles for a purpose.
Could I choose that? Really choose it?
I didn't know.
But lying there in the dark, empty and aching and finally honest with myself, I was starting to think the answer might be yes.
KERRIS
Day nine.
My body was shutting down.
I woke with a fever. Not the heat of arousal, which had been constant for over a week, but actual illness. My skin was hot and dry. My muscles ached in ways that had nothing to do with desire. When I tried to sit up, the chamber spun around me.
The withdrawal. The orientation materials had warned about it. Repeated edging without completion could trigger a systemic response, the body's desperate attempt to force mating before it was too late. Most females surrendered before it reached this point.
I'd outlasted three edging sessions. My body was making me pay for it.
I managed to get upright, swinging my legs over the edge of the sleeping platform. The movement sent waves of nausea through me. My pussy clenched, but weakly now, as if even that involuntary response was running out of energy.
He was across the chamber. Watching. He'd been watching all night, I realized. Had seen me thrash and sob and try uselessly to satisfy myself. Had watched my fever rise and done nothing.
Waiting. Always waiting.
"You need water," he said.
"I need you to fuck me." My voice was a rasp. "That's what I need."
"You need water first. You're dehydrating faster than the tonic can compensate."
He crossed to me, and even in my weakened state, my body responded. A flutter between my legs. A tightening of my nipples. The desperate recognition of the only thing that could save me.
He pressed a cup into my hands. I drank because I didn't have the strength to refuse. The water was cool and clean, and I could taste his scent in it, faint but present. Even that was enough to make my pussy clench.
"You're burning up," he said. His hand touched my forehead, checking my temperature. Clinical. Careful. "The withdrawal is accelerating."
"Then stop it." I grabbed his arm with what little strength I had.
"Stop making me suffer. You know what I need. Just give it to me."
"You know what you have to say."
I did know. He'd been clear. Not what I was running from. What I was running toward.
The words wouldn't come. I'd spent my whole life building walls around that kind of wanting. Admitting I wanted to stay, wanted this, wanted him—that meant tearing down defenses I'd built over thirty years.
"I can't."
"You can." He pulled his hand back. "When you're ready."
He walked away. Left me sitting on the edge of the platform, fevered and desperate and too weak to follow.
The day passed in fragments.
I tried to eat. Couldn't keep it down. Tried to drink more water. It helped, but not enough. My fever climbed. The cramps in my lower belly intensified, my body punishing me for refusing to complete what the tonic had started.
I tried to stay on the sleeping platform. Tried to create distance between us. Tried to prove to myself that I still had some control over my own body.
