The crimson sunlight streaked through the slats of the wooden blind, staining the dar,k stuffy room in tiger stripes of gold and red, and setting the ever-present dust motes in the air alight with the twinkle of fiery embers. The slow, soft clanking of the ceiling fan as it laboriously rotated was the only sound to disturb the silence. It might have been serene, were it not so warm. The air was stifling, beads of sweat rolled down her skin, tickling at her in an irritating trickle as they traversed her bare flesh. The sheet, damp from her touch, clung to her limbs. Her arms were bound above her head as she lay helpless, sweating in the murky room, the thick leather bands encircling her wrists, coarse and heavy. Her lips were dry and parched and she yearned for the soft kiss of a mountain breeze to break the relentless torture of the heat.
He sat, comfortably beside her waist, as she fidgeted; his legs crossed, the streaming banners of sunlight across his bare chest, landing him in an almost feral, savage cast. In his lap lay her salvation, a bucket of fresh ice, large cubes, two inches across, glistening in the dim light, their surfaces blushed with meltwater, so cold so inviting. Her body cried out for the relief of their touch, for the salvation of their moisture on her lips, but he denied her. He kept the bucket tilted so her yearning need could see the release—see it, but not possess it, and he tormented her with the proximity whilst she was helpless to bridge the gap.
There was only one way to get what she needed, he knew it, and she knew it. At this point, she would willingly concede, but he wanted her to say the words. His fingers, chilled from holding the bucket, brushed her brow, a fleeting and all too transient hint of what was to come. Finally, he lifted one block from the bucket, holding it between thumb and forefinger above her chest, right in her line of sight. Her eyes traced a water droplet as it slowly, agonisingly trickled along the edge to hang tantalisingly from a corner. She groaned, gradually growing in size, as he held it there, but with a frustratingly tenacious grip on the block. She willed it to fall, focused every shred of thought she had left on it as if by sheer, stubborn will she could compel it to surrender to gravity.
At last, its weight too swollen to resist any further, it tumbled, passing through a shaft of the rose gold sunlight and sparkling like a crystal of pure diamond. Time moved at a crawl as it fell. Mountains rose from the oceans only to be worn away by eons of weathering and crumble back into the waves. Still, it fell. Stars were born, bursting into brilliance, flaring for millennia, then slowly growing cold and shrinking away to nothingness. Still, it fell.
After eternity had scoured her senses with its relentless delay, the droplet finally crashed into her broiled flesh, erupting like a minuscule wave to then cascade back down in an impact crater many times its own size. The touch of the frigid droplet hit her like a lightning bolt, the sudden juxtaposition of bitter cold against her burning flesh was like an explosion of sensation. It was agony; it was ecstasy, sweet relief, and cruellest torture. Transient, yet somehow eternal. She yearned for more, felt the heat even more keenly for the too-brief heartbeat of relief. She needed it, craved it, and was utterly lost to it. Her groan rippled from her throat, from her very soul, without ever gracing her mind with conscious choice. The ecstasy of the too-brief relief coupled with the rushing return of heat's agony tore it from her control.
