I scrambled out of bed and staggered into the bathing area, then climbed into the pool. My body felt hot as if set on fire. I almost expected the cool water to hiss from the heat radiating from me. I dove under the water, then opened my mouth under the trickle of the waterfall. Instead of gulping, I tried to drink it slowly, hoping to calm my nerves.
What was happening to me? And why was it getting increasingly worse with every passing moment?
My heart sped up. I breathed in short shallow gasps. My muscles tensed with the strain I couldn’t ease. Heat throbbedbetween my legs. But when I pressed down on my swollen clit, I felt only pain with no relief.
I needed Timur to touch me.
My vision blurred, and I didn’t think that even finding my glasses would help it. Bright light alternated with deep darkness. My nerves seemed to come to life all at once, making my skin crawl with a multitude of bizarre sensations. The water in the pool only made everything worse, its glide and splashing against my body added to my arousal.
I accidentally slipped in the pool and went under again. Terror struck me that I might drown here, burned by lust and lost to insanity.
Panicked and disoriented, I climbed out of the water. The warm air of the cave slithered around my wet, naked body, amplifying the torture of desire. I moaned, kneading my breasts, then trying to rub between my legs again—all to no avail whatsoever.
“Fuck me…please, please somebody fuck me,” I begged the darkness.
And the darkness answered.
“Come out here, Sweet One, and we will help you,” it replied in a soft, coaxing voice.
I twisted, turning toward the voice.
“Comewhere?Where are you?”
“Come to the doors.”
What doors? Where were the doors? I stumbled forward with my arms outstretched. My hands touched something hard and rough—the rock of a wall.
The trickling of the water in the bathing area was the strongest sound in the cave. It came like a whisper of a traitor. Timur and I had closed all the doors and warded all the gaps to make this cave a safe space. But the water source was outside of the cave. Outside of our control. And I had drunk from it freely.
Alarm pierced through the fog of confusion in my mind. Fear filtered in, but it didn’t last long.
“Water…Something is wrong with the water…” I wanted to ask a question, but I already forgot what it was.
Silence scared me even more than the darkness, more than the menace that had entered my sanctuary in the shape of drinking water.
“Are you still here?” I called out, afraid to be left alone to my torture.
“Yes, we’re still here. We’re still waiting. Come closer,” the voice beaconed.
“Who are you?”
“Someone who can help.”
I longed to believe this promise. I had no choice. My legs shook, and I feared my knees would buckle, and I’d fall and wouldn’t be able to get up again. I’d die here alone in the darkness, burned from inside out by this all-consuming need.
“I can’t…I can’t take it anymore,” I whimpered.
Tears burned my eyes. My nails scraped against the rock wall in front of me. I took another wobbly step to the side, and the rock under my palms was now wood.
“You’re so close,” the voice praised. “You don’t have to suffer, poor sweet thing. Open the doors.”
Open the doors?
“Don’t ever open the doors for anyone but me,”another voice sounded in my head. The beloved voice of someone who wasn’t here and couldn’t help me.
I knocked the rounded metal thing from the hook in the wood and pushed the doors open.
“I need…” I moaned, stumbling out into the cool evening air.
