She shifted, stirring from a dream of swimming in ice cold water, something large and inhuman coiling around her, tidal desires flooding back and forth between them.
Also pain, terrible hunger, and thirst.
Her throat was so dry it hurt. She swallowed, fighting the self-adhesion, her tongue a swollen and parched awkwardness half-choking her. An ache deep in her skull made itself known, as did a general, less severe ache in every muscle.
A hollow, sharp cramp in her gut brought her further awake, and she shifted position. That made her bladder add its note to the chorus of complaints.
Her head lay on something living. Something with a deep, strong heartbeat, and the rushing whisper of blood through its veins. Her right hand splayed on a firmly muscled chest, fingers nestled in curls of hair. A lower, humming vibration shuddered through everything.
She was starving, too.
With a shock that brought her abruptly alert, she realized she was lying naked against a man.
Wait. Don’t move. Gather data.
Keeping her eyes shut, she forced herself to relax, letting sensory information flood in like she’d been trained to do. Trained? That thought sharpened the dull ache in her head, yielding just the wisp of an idea of tattoos. It faded.
She ground her teeth.
He was naked, too. Asleep, his chest rose and fell steadily under her arm. His scent clear, sharp, and masculine. She lay on her side, pressed up against him. A warm, light quilt covered them. She tensed, feeling a swaying movement of the bed. No, not the bed, the whole room: rocking, though they themselves were both motionless. She sniffed and smelled salt: the sea. And the deep hum: some kind of engine.
A boat? I’m on a boat? Why am I on a boat?
She slitted her eyes, careful not to move. The man sprawled on his back, with her draped against him. Snuggling him.
Who is he?
Searching her memory, no name surfaced. She shifted her head, gently, mimicking the movements of a sleeper casually shifting position before stilling again to study him. Dark hair, firm jaw stubbled with dark whiskers. Generous lips, strong nose and eyebrows. The face was appealing somehow, tiny wrinkles at the corners of the eyes and mouth suggesting sternness measured with humor.
The room – in fact, everything she saw – was monochrome, the light flat. But that was normal, for night. She looked around. Opaque windows, unlit lamps; smooth white walls, gray bedding; the man’s dark hair. But… didn’t people need light, to see?
The room, everything, vanished, replaced by solid black.
No!
The mysterious blindness ended as suddenly as it had begun, the room snapping back into sight while her heart pounded. What just happened? She swallowed. Was there something wrong with her eyes? Or had her thoughts somehow caused that? Frowning, she set the questions aside, examining as much as she could of the small room while moving her head minimally. She noted the lighter rectangle of a doorway and another room beyond it, and on the far side of that… a cabin?
A short series of ladder-like steps led up to an odd right-angled hatch set in the corner where wall met ceiling.
Sniffing, she smelled traces of food, and felt another surge of hunger. Thirst, too. Apart from that she felt a little battered. Because of him? But her bladder: that was bursting. So much so, her muscles were clenched like steel. Jaws tight, she forced her attention back to the man. Her companion.
He lay sound asleep, and she moaned before rolling away from him, disengaging to flop bonelessly beside him, still touching his side in a carefully planned imitation of a sleeper’s random movement. She smelled herself, and him: the pungent aroma of sex.
She waited for the memory of their lovemaking to surface, but nothing came. There was just a blankness, a pervasive and woolly nothingness, and she cast her mind further back. How did I get here? For a moment, the dream returned – cold dark water, and something immense cradling her, sharing…
Sharing what?
But the memory slithered away, slipping from her grasp when pain stabbed through her head to skewer it, shattering it with such force she felt her muscles lock. She had to bite down on a gasp of agony.
Steeling her nerve, she forced herself to relax into the pain lest her tension wake the man. The moment she did, the pain eased – only to be replaced by the now desperate need for a toilet.
She locked that physical necessity away, trying once more to remember how she got here; their lovemaking; but again drew a blank. Warning pain stabbed in her head.
He drugged me! Her hand drifted between her legs, fingers testing for damage. A crusty residue told its tale with brutal clarity. That explained it: her memory loss, the pains… everything.
Swallowing again, she tried again to moisten her mouth against the awful dryness, nursing a swelling burn of anger: a towering dark wave of justice that dwarfed her drug-induced headache, a gently-throbbing ache between her legs, and that more pressing urgency.
Opening her eyes fully she turned her head to study her rapist in the unlit cabin, a weird tingle shivering through her fingertips. It spelled his death, she knew.
Just one decision. Talk to him first, or kill him – now?