Pheromone Overdose
Ethan Mercer hunched before his monitor, the world trimmed to the perimeter of a twenty-seven-inch screen and the sickly rectangle of light that bled across his cluttered desk. He scrolled without blinking, fingers crawling over the touchpad with an insectile delicacy, eyes half-shielded by the oil-slick curtain of his hair. The bedroom was an oubliette—clothes in piles, ramen bowls calcified to the carpet, one oscillating fan whining in its doomed attempt to recirculate the air. The only clean thing in the room was Ethan himself, though “clean” was a charitable term. He reeked faintly of detergent and something vaguely medicinal, the result of a recent but half-hearted shower.
He prowled his usual forums first—gaming, then torrents, then the various boards of escalating sketchiness. It was the fifth or sixth link down on the /vice/ thread where he found it: Deseo Incontrolable, block-lettered and blacklisted, the vendor’s name rendered as a string of punctuation and wingdings. Ethan’s lips twisted at the name. He hovered, then clicked.
The listing was nothing. Two blurry photos—one of a small vial in a palm, the other a screenshot of a DM, the text blacked out except for a block of testimonial: makes them want you like nothing else. Full refund if unsatisfied. Buyer beware.
He read it again, then again, dissecting every sentence for sincerity, for tells. There were no specifics. No chemical breakdown. No legal disclaimers. Not even a price. Instead, a single paragraph in the body copy: “From deep jungle, developed for conquistadors. True primal. Odorless, untraceable. Effects on target immediate. Results compounding with exposure. Supply limited, do not resell.”
A staccato thump in his chest. He smirked, almost embarrassed, but already the back of his neck tingled with a shameful little thrill. The vendor had a link for encrypted messaging—an old Tox client, the sort of thing Ethan’s circles used for trading hacks or arranging meetups for prohibited substances. He copy-pasted it, opened a burner tab, and let his cursor blink.
He didn’t send a message that night. He didn’t even try to sleep. Instead, he opened three more tabs and started tracing the vendor’s presence—posts in obscure subreddits, a couple of shill reviews in mid-tier darknet drug bazaars, one YouTube comment chain in butchered Portuguese. The pattern was predictable but efficient: a sudden flurry of posts, then disappearance. A new alias, rinse and repeat. No one ever seemed to get more than one vial.
He lay on his back and stared at the popcorn ceiling, composing a half-dozen messages in his mind before he even considered what he’d do with it if he managed to buy it. He knew, of course. But he didn’t let himself think the whole thought yet, not directly.
It took two weeks to get a reply from the vendor, and another three days to negotiate the price. The figure was sickening—four weeks of his pay from the copy shop, plus another sixty he begged off his parents for “textbooks.” By the time the order was placed, he’d convinced himself this was, if not scientific research, then at least a proof of concept. He used his mom’s Amazon for shipping, a calculated risk, and spent the next six days oscillating between dread and manic anticipation.
The package came on a Friday, sandwiched between two shipments of dog food and a bulk box of peanut butter crackers. It was unmarked except for a customs label and a string of blocky Chinese, which Ethan read as “toiletries” with a snort of amusement. Inside: a smaller cardboard box, inside that, a vacuum-sealed pouch, and inside that, the vial. It was smaller than he expected—a thumb-sized cylinder of thick glass, filled with an amber fluid so viscous it clung to the sides. The cap was matte black, the surface etched with a tiny engraving of a wasp.
He held it up to the window. Sunlight caught the liquid, shot it through with gold and blood-red. Ethan’s hands trembled, and he almost dropped it. He set it down on the desk, then circled it, touching it only with his eyes. He half-expected it to pulse, or emit a sound too low for human hearing. It just sat there, perfectly still.
His first thought was Mia.
He hated that. Hated the way her name leapt to the front of his mind, cutting the queue of every other fantasy he’d built up over the years. Mia Chen: next-door neighbor, AP-bred overachiever, swimmer, lifeguard, legend of the backyard in every season. He ed the first time he’d seen her, seven or eight years ago, when both families had moved into the development on the same week. She’d been so tiny then, all knees and elbows and bowl-cut hair, trailing her parents and three suitcases with military precision. The next time he really looked, she was sixteen, a creature rebuilt for speed, her face cool and remote in the way that made Ethan’s tongue tie itself in knots. He’d nursed the usual crush, got over it, then reinstalled it when he saw her out front jogging in sports bras and those tiny runner’s shorts. He’d talked to her exactly three times in his life: once when her dog got loose and Ethan corralled it with a slice of bologna, once at a neighborhood Halloween thing, and once last summer, when she’d come home from college for a month and caught him sneaking a cigarette on the back deck.
Now she was back for the summer, pre-med at State, and he saw her almost every day. Sometimes through the kitchen window as she helped her mother with groceries, sometimes in the garage with her father, sometimes—this was the most reliable, and the most dangerous—on the weekends, sunbathing in the backyard.
He didn’t it, even to himself, how often he rearranged his schedule so he’d be at home when Mia did her laps or spread her towel on the grass. He told himself he was just bored, or that he’d inherited some lizard-brain territoriality from his father. But the urge was there, and it grew stronger the longer he stared at the vial, the more he imagined what it might do.
He googled “pheromone overdose,” read forums for hours, even tried to find academic papers about limbic system manipulation. He learned that real human pheromones were, at best, a debated science, and at worst, a marketing scam. But this was different. He could feel it. Or maybe he just wanted to.
He waited two days before testing it. On Sunday morning, he watched from his window as Mia came out, her hair up in a high ponytail, carrying a red beach towel and a paperback. She always put it down near their shared fence due to the way the sun moved and the shade she could reach if she over heated.
She wore her bikini under a battered gray tank top, but once she hit the grass, she shrugged the top off with an easy, practiced gesture and let her body catch the sun. Ethan counted three deep breaths, then retreated from the window.
He peeled the seal off the vial with surgical care, then dabbed the barest drop onto his wrist. The scent was nothing—maybe a faint chemical bitterness, gone in seconds. He waited. No dizziness, no burning. Heartbeat steady, or at least as steady as his baseline allowed.
He tried again, this time two drops, and dabbed one finger under his jaw, the other on the inside of his elbow. The fluid vanished instantly, no residue, no stickiness. He felt ridiculous. But he left his room and went outside anyway, carrying a trash bag as his pretense.
The air was brutal and bright, the kind of Midwestern summer day that stripped the will to live out of lesser mortals. He could hear Mia’s music before he saw her, tinny through her earbuds, something wordless and full of static. She lay on her back, one knee bent, book face-down on her chest, eyes closed. Her chest rose and fell with a swimmer’s discipline—long, slow, measured draws. Ethan hesitated at the edge of his own driveway, then made a show of stretching, as if he, too, were an athlete in need of warm-up.
Mia didn’t move. He stared for a second, taking in the impossible smoothness of her legs, the tiny knots of muscle in her abdomen, the wet slick of her lower lip. He forced himself to turn away, to haul the trash to the curb, to occupy his hands with the dumbest, most domestic chores he could find. Every ten minutes he checked his phone, every five he found a new excuse to go back outside, each time pretending not to look at the yard next door.
He positioned himself at the very edge of his property, just inches from where the fence separated their yards. Once, he even licked his finger and held it up, testing which way the wind was carrying his scent toward her lounging form.
Nothing happened. Not at first.
It was in the late afternoon, when the sun was at its meanest. He was sitting in a lawn chair on his side of the fence to let give it the best chance of reaching her.
His own deodorant had long since given up, that he finally heard it—a weird, strangled noise, halfway between a cough and a moan.
He looked over the fence, casual as he could manage, and saw Mia sitting up on her towel, hugging her knees, her face nearly purple with exertion.
She was sweating heavily, more than was strictly necessary, and her hair, even pulled back, looked wild and damp at the hairline.
He thought, for a flicker, that she was sick. He almost asked if she was okay. But then her eyes met his, and the look was not one of sickness, or of any pain he recognized.
It was hunger.
Ethan smiled, or tried to, but his own throat was dry as sand. He opened his mouth, closed it, then finally raised a hand in a silent wave. Mia didn’t wave back. She just stared, unblinking, and the color in her face bloomed even deeper.
He had the wild thought that she might leap the fence and tackle him, and for a second he almost wanted her to.
Instead, she stood, legs shaky, wrapped the towel around her waist, and went inside without another look.
He felt like the world’s biggest idiot. He went back inside, washed his wrists three times, even tried scrubbing under his jaw, as if that would undo whatever he’d just done.
The vial perched on his desk like a judge, condemning him even as it whispered of possibilities. The internet had failed him on the practical details—whether it lingered on skin or penetrated it, how much to use, how long it lasted. He was flying blind, armed only with that tiny glass weapon.
That night, he lay awake, replaying the moment over and over. The look in her eyes. The way her body had moved, tight and restless and raw. He wanted to believe it was his imagination. He wanted to believe nothing had changed.
But when he checked the vial again before bed, he was already planning his next test. This time, he’d be ready.
The next Saturday, Ethan woke before noon and ran his standard pre-operation checklist: teeth, deodorant, body spray, fresh graphic tee. He spent ten minutes calculating the optimal time for deployment. Not too early—she’d still be inside, helping with chores or prepping for whatever healthy lunch her mother made. Not too late, or the sun would turn his sweat into visible shame. He settled on 1:45, aligning his trajectory with what he’d logged as “Mia’s most likely sunbathing window.”
He applied the cologne with care, three measured dabs: wrists, under jaw, one just below his navel, hidden by elastic. The stuff spread invisibly, evaporating on , but left his skin warm in a way that felt faintly alive. He liked the sense of it more than the effect; liked the idea of something dangerous pulsing out from him in silent, radioactive waves.
Ethan grabbed a handful of basic yard tools and clomped outside, doing his best to look bored and put-upon. The fence dividing the two properties was just over five feet—high enough for privacy, but not so high you couldn’t have a conversation if you really tried. He pretended to rake leaves, then adjusted strategy to pruning the dead branches from his mom’s overgrown rosebush. He could hear the gentle, erratic slap of water as Mia rinsed herself in the outdoor shower by her garage.
The empty houses on both sides of the fence gave him a strange sense of freedom. No parents to question why he was suddenly interested in yard work, no one in her house to notice her reaction to whatever was about to happen.
He snuck a look as she emerged, towel around her shoulders. Her bikini today was a cherry-red, the bottoms cut scandalously high on the hip; her hair was a wet, black curtain down her back. She stood on one foot, balanced like a flamingo, and peeled the towel off in a single motion before spreading it on the lawn.
Ethan watched from his peripheral as she settled in, face-up, arms outstretched to maximize the sun. The urge to stare was almost overwhelming. He buried it in the physical act of clipping and bagging, pretending to be consumed by thorns and compost.
Ten minutes in, he heard her make a noise—something almost like a laugh, but sharper at the edges. He looked up.
Mia was twisting slightly on her towel, hands pressed flat to her abdomen, fingers splayed. Her legs flexed, then locked, then flexed again. At first Ethan thought she was simply adjusting, stretching after a long winter of academic desk work. But then she rolled onto her side, bent nearly double, and clutched her knees to her chest.
She was breathing hard. Her lips were parted in an unmistakably obscene way.
Ethan felt the cologne’s heat climb his throat. He was suddenly, excruciatingly hard, and forced himself to focus on the shears, counting each snip as if it were a chess move. He could feel her gaze burning a hole in his shoulder blade. When he finally turned, she was looking straight at him, not with anger or embarrassment but with a kind of raw, naked confusion.
She stood, wobbling slightly, and took two uncertain steps toward the fence.
“Hey,” she called. The word was thinner than he ed her voice being. “Do you have any… water, or something?”
Ethan blinked. “Uh, yeah. I can grab you a bottle?”
“That would be good,” she said. She clutched the towel to her chest now, but her hands shook.
He ducked inside, returned with a lukewarm bottle from the fridge. He half expected her to have vanished, to have composed herself and retreated. But she was there, arms braced on the top rail, chest heaving, sweat breaking along her collarbone.
He handed her the bottle. Their fingers touched. It was nothing, except for the fact that it made Ethan feel like he’d been tazed. She opened it and downed half the contents in one go, the muscles in her neck working like ropes.
Mia didn’t say thank you. She just stood there, breathing.
Ethan felt the moment stretch, dangerous and elastic.
“Are you, uh—” He trailed off, suddenly mortified.
Mia cut him off: “Do you smell anything weird out here?”
He went cold, then hot. “Like what?”
“I dunno. It’s—” She sniffed the air. “It’s nothing. I just… sorry. I think I’m getting a heatstroke or something.”
She smiled, but the gesture looked as if she were being forced to reenact a smile from memory.
“Maybe you should come inside for a minute,” Ethan said. He tried to sound casual, but it came out as a suggestion, almost a command. “It’s pretty brutal out here.”
Mia nodded, but her eyes had the dazed, glassy focus of someone being drawn down a riptide. “Yeah. Maybe.”
She gathered her towel, draped it over her shoulders, and walked along the fence to the gate separating the two yards. The latch caught on her first try, and she stepped into Ethan’s yard barefoot, without hesitation, without the usual awkward pause of neighbor etiquette.
Ethan felt his heart thudding behind his ribs as she crossed the lawn, a strip of bare, vivid green between them. She was so close now he could see the beads of sweat tracking along the notch of her sternum, the salt already drying at the edges. He tried not to stare, but she didn’t notice—she was busy pinching the skin on her forearm, as if checking to see if she was awake.
He opened the sliding glass door, gestured her inside. The cool air hit them both like a slap. Mia inhaled deeply, and for a second, it looked like she might cry.
Ethan shut the door, set the water bottle on the counter. He tried to speak, but words fell away. His own body felt wrung out, electric.
Mia turned, and suddenly she was right in front of him. “Do you… have any… like, sugar or something?” Her voice was a whisper, hoarse. “I feel… weird.”
He nodded, shuffling to the pantry. “Yeah. We’ve got Gatorade? Or Coke?”
“Either,” she said, closing her eyes.
He poured her a glass of Gatorade, hands trembling. She took it, gulped it so fast it ran down her chin and onto her chest, staining the edge of her bikini top. She didn’t wipe it away. Instead, she just let it drip.
She opened her eyes, and for a moment, all the confusion and panic had been replaced by something else—something animal. She looked him up and down in a way that made his skin prickle, his blood surge.
She laughed, the sound breathy and tight. “This is going to sound totally insane,” she said, “but I feel like… I want to…” She didn’t finish the sentence.
Ethan did not move. He couldn’t have, if he’d tried.
Mia stepped forward, so close now he could count the tiny freckles on her nose. “I’m sorry,” she said, and kissed him.
It was not a gentle, neighborly kiss. Her lips parted, tongue demanding. She tasted like Gatorade, chlorine, and something new. Her hand found the back of his neck, pulling him down. She was a full head shorter, but she made up for it with force, with urgency.
Ethan kissed back, letting her lead, letting the moment override every rational thought he’d ever had. His hands found her waist, the bone and muscle beneath the skin shockingly taut, a tension waiting for release.
Mia pulled away, but kept her hands on him. “What’s happening to me?” she whispered.
He wanted to say “I don’t know,” but the words stuck. He wanted to say “You’re not alone,” but that was not true. Instead, he just kissed her again.
They made it to the couch without speaking. Mia straddled him, towel flung aside, hair dripping onto his face. She ground against him with a need that was almost painful, her hips moving in tight, frantic circles. Every time she inhaled, her body shook.
He unhooked her bikini top without asking, and she let it fall. Her nipples were so hard they looked like they hurt. She pressed his face between her breasts, and he nipped gently at the skin, leaving pink, elliptical marks.
She grabbed his hand and pushed it inside the waistband of her bikini bottoms. Ethan’s fingers found her slick, her body already soaked. She moaned—louder than was necessary, than was safe.
He froze for a moment, waiting for her to change her mind, to snap out of it. But she didn’t. She just writhed, desperate, grinding harder against his palm.
Ethan felt something like guilt try to surface. He pushed it down, hard. Instead, he pulled her closer, his other hand tangling in her hair. Her scent was everywhere—chlorine, sweat, that strange, sweet musk from the vial.
Mia moved his hand lower, inside her, then gripped his wrist as if daring him to stop. Her thighs were steel cables around him.
She came so violently she nearly bit his ear. Her body convulsed, hands clawing at his back, legs locking and unlocking. She cried out, the noise strangled and wild, then collapsed on his chest, shaking.
They stayed like that, panting, for several minutes. Ethan listened to her heartbeat, fast and irregular.
After a while, she spoke, her voice muffled by his shirt. “Don’t tell anyone about this.”
He almost laughed. “Who would I tell?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she disentangled herself, put the towel back around her shoulders, and walked to the door. She didn’t look at him.
Ethan watched her go, the heavy, salt-slicked air of the living room slowly returning to normal.
He looked down at his hands, stained faintly pink from her sunburn and his own nervous sweat. He felt spent, hollow, but also—he couldn’t deny it—more alive than he’d ever been.
He glanced at the clock. It was only 3:00.
He wondered what would happen if he wore double the dose.
He wondered, most of all, if she would come back.
The first thing Mia noticed when she came back to herself was the taste of orange Gatorade coating her teeth. She stared at the glass in her hand, half-empty, and tried to how she’d gotten from the backyard to the living room. Time didn’t work right; her brain lagged several seconds behind her body. Her limbs felt numb, as if she’d been asleep for hours and woken to find herself in someone else’s skin.
Ethan’s presence was a silent, gravitational force at the edge of her vision. He stood by the kitchen counter, pretending to scroll through his phone, but his eyes kept darting up—every five seconds, like clockwork, like he couldn’t help himself.
She looked down at her chest and realized she’d never put her bikini top back on. The towel was gone, too. She clutched the Gatorade glass to her sternum, tried to cover herself, but her hands would not stop trembling. She knew she should stand, should run, but all she could do was huddle into the couch and will herself to disappear.
Ethan set his phone down and walked toward her. There was something different about him now: a posture, an intent. He wasn’t slouching, wasn’t mumbling. He moved like he had already won.
“You okay?” he asked, voice low and even. Not concerned—assessing.
Mia wanted to say no. She wanted to scream at him, or at herself, or at the world for short-circuiting her body. But the words jammed in her throat.
Instead, she nodded. “Yeah. Just… dizzy.”
He took the glass from her, set it on the table. He sat next to her on the couch, close enough that she could feel the heat radiate off him. There was a smell, too—not cologne, not deodorant, but something sharper, almost spicy. She tried to focus on it, to analyze it the way she did in bio lab, but the effort made her eyelids flutter.
Ethan put a hand on her knee.
She meant to flinch away. Her leg twitched, but not in the right direction. She sat perfectly still as his hand slid up her thigh, fingers pressing into the sensitive skin above the knee. Her entire body locked down, muscles tensed as if awaiting a car crash. The terror was there—she could feel it, a spike of electric cold in her chest—but it was instantly overlaid by something else, something that made her thighs go molten and her lungs seize.
He squeezed, gently, almost mockingly.
Her breath came in a ragged little gasp.
She wanted to slap his hand away. She wanted to scream. Instead, her back arched into the pressure, hips lifting off the couch in a slow, traitorous shudder. Ethan’s other hand found her waist, sliding up her stomach to cup her breast. His thumb traced circles around the areola, and the was so sharp, so overwhelming, it was like being zapped by a live wire.
Her nipples were already hard, too sensitive to touch, but he pinched them anyway, rolling them between his fingers. She bit down on her own lip to keep from making a sound. She could feel herself—her body, her betrayer—flood with wet heat, her clit throbbing so hard she thought she might out.
Ethan leaned in. “You want this, don’t you?”
She wanted to scream “NO!” but her head jerked in a nod, once, hard enough to make her teeth clack together.
His hand slipped inside the band of her bikini bottoms. Two fingers slid along her slit, finding her already soaked, already quivering. He groaned, low and animal, and pushed a finger inside her.
She heard herself moan. It was a stranger’s voice, desperate and loud.
He pumped his finger in and out, slow at first, then faster, thumb circling her clit. The pleasure was monstrous, tidal, something she couldn’t suppress even by clenching every muscle in her body. It built so fast she almost missed it; one second she was hyperventilating, the next she was coming, hard, legs clamped tight around his hand, sobbing into his shoulder.
He held her through the aftershocks, then pulled his hand away, sucked her wetness from his fingers with a look of exaggerated delight. She would have been revolted if her body would let her.
He got to his knees in front of her and tugged her bikini bottoms down to her ankles, peeling them away with slow, calculated care. Her legs followed his touch, feet lifting automatically to let him take them off.
He spread her thighs and just stared for a moment, eyes wide and unblinking. His hands found her hips, gripping so hard she could feel the imprints of his fingers even after he let go.
He leaned down and licked her, slow and deep. She bucked against his mouth, every nerve ending screaming for more. She came again, this time with no warning at all, a detonation that ripped a wail from her throat.
She thought she might suffocate on the feeling, but it didn’t stop—Ethan ate her like he was starving, his tongue flicking and stabbing, his fingers digging into her thighs to keep her from escaping. Every time she tried to close her legs, he pried them apart, holding her wide open and helpless.
When she finally stopped convulsing, he looked up at her, face wet with her slick, and smiled like he’d just solved the world’s hardest math problem.
He stood up and unzipped his cargo shorts, pushing them down with his boxers. His cock was already out, flushed dark, pre-come glistening at the tip.
She didn’t want this. She didn’t want this.
But her body bent forward, mouth open, begging.
He guided her head with both hands, holding her gently but firmly. He pressed the tip of his cock against her lips. She parted them, let him in, the taste bitter and so real it made her vision spark. He pushed deeper, controlling the depth, fucking her mouth with steady, relentless rhythm. She gagged once, twice, but each time he let her up for air before resuming.
He pulled out, not letting her recover, and pushed her back onto the couch. He lined himself up and drove inside her in one quick, brutal thrust. The sensation was so overwhelming she screamed, but then the pain melted into white-hot pleasure, another orgasm building before the first one finished fading.
He fucked her hard, holding her ankles over his shoulders, pushing so deep she thought he might split her in half. She heard herself begging him not to stop, voice choked and breathless.
He came inside her, spurting so much she felt it flood out around his cock and onto the cushion below. He held her there, impaled, while he emptied himself, then pulled out with a slow, deliberate motion that made her shudder.
He wiped himself with her towel, tossed it aside, then zipped up and looked at her with a satisfaction so total it made her want to die.
Mia lay on the couch, legs splayed, body slick with sweat and come. She could not move. She could not think. Her entire being was reduced to nerve endings and echoes.
Ethan crouched down beside her and brushed a lock of hair from her face. “You were amazing,” he said, almost tender. “I’ve never seen anyone come like that before.”
She wanted to say something, anything, but all that came out was a broken little laugh.
He stood, stretched, and left her there, alone.
She stared at the ceiling, feeling the weight of his absence as a physical thing. Her body hummed with afterglow, but her mind was a blank, silent void. She waited for the horror to return, but it stayed away, hovering at the edge of her consciousness.
She thought, dimly, that this couldn’t be the end. That he would come back.
And then she realized that when he did, she would let him.
Mia stumbled into the bathroom, not bothering to lock the door. She flicked the shower dial to scalding and stepped in before the water had even warmed, letting the shock of cold hammer into her muscles. Her hands moved with automatic violence—soap, scrub, loofah, repeat. She didn’t wash, she scoured, dragging the netted plastic over her breasts, between her legs, around her throat. Anywhere he’d touched, she hit twice, three times, until her skin shone red and pocked.
The steam built fast, filling the cramped room with haze. It was a relief: the world was easier to take when nothing stayed in focus. She closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the tile, letting the burn of the water numb everything it could reach.
Bits and pieces returned, each more impossible than the last. The couch. His fingers in her hair, in her mouth, inside her. The bitter taste on her tongue, the way her body moved without permission. The ache between her legs.
She pressed the loofah harder, ground it into her chest until her nipples stung. She thought the pain might help—might restart her brain, give her back control. Instead, it did the opposite: her body quivered, legs wobbling, heat flooding her in pulses.
“No,” she hissed, slamming her fist against the tile. “No, no, no.”
But her hips kept moving, grinding against the nothing, desperate for friction. Her hand drifted between her thighs, and even though she tried to resist, her fingers found her clit and she bucked against her own palm. It was even worse this time—her skin so raw, every nerve ending alive and screaming. She hated herself for it, but her body did not care.
She came fast, body convulsing so hard her knees gave out. She slumped to the floor of the tub, water hammering her back and hair, the loofah falling from her hand. She curled into a ball and pressed her face to her knees.
She wanted to vomit. She wanted to peel her skin off and start over. She wanted to kill Ethan, or kiss him, or both.
She sobbed, the noise lost in the roar of the water. The heat blurred her vision and made her lightheaded. She knew she should get out—should do something, anything, other than sit here in the fallout—but she couldn’t move.
Eventually, she reached up and turned off the tap. The silence was deafening.
She stayed there, curled and shivering, until her skin cooled and the pain dulled.
She knew she would not tell anyone.
She knew she would see him again.
And that next time, it would be even worse.