A clear night at the Nereid Resort

At night, the beach was a dazzling spread of starlit sands and shimmering waters. Though the beach was far from empty, those who had stuck around well past midnight were focused on their own devices. Scattered couples sat staring up at the stars, making out, or savoring each other’s bodies beneath the open sky and save for the soft sound of moaning and whispered conversations carried on the wind, the only noise all across the beachfront was the sound of waves lapping at the shore.

It looked empty and peaceful--and that should have been no surprise. The few guards that did patrol the sands were there for exactly that reason--to enforce the image of an idyllic paradise and uphold the power of Narissa’s accumulated fortune.

Some of the Bravos had made it to their beds, while others found they would be spending the night in the most unexpected of places. Some wouldn’t be getting any sleep at all, as they found themselves preoccupied from sundown to sunrise.

Of all of our lovely heroines, though, none were aware of everything going on on the beach front around them.

Somewhere nearby, hidden from view and lost from mind, a great rhythm pulsed like a heartbeat. The faint warmth of a red light bled across the walls of a seaside cavern, protected from wandering eyes and in it’s thrumming glow the swaying shadows of crimson tendrils danced along the rough stone around them.

Here the crash of the tide met with the overpowering thumping pulse in syncopated percussion. The beats wove together like the rush of a tribal chant, rhythm without tone, noise so deep and heavy that it seemed to pulse through the rock itself. They were joined by sporadic groans, lustful whines, and the ****, pitiful shrieks of dozens of trapped women, slowly losing their minds amidst the onslaught of lust.

Nearby, a pair of tanned feet stepped from the sand and onto an onyx outcropping of untamed rock. Even here, at the very edge of the sea, the rough edges of this brutal piece of jutting stone stuck out like so many daggers. Even with countless days of the waves pounding at its surface, this outcropping of midnight stone held fast.

Koa, enforcer to Lady Nerissa, paced across its surface. The slender, polished metal of her club was held in her hands and she grimaced as she approached the cave.

Sometimes you drew the short straw. And sometimes, with this kind of job, you were the one who noticed something strange, so it became your job to investigate.

Her grip tightened on the handle of her club as she crept closer and closer to the cave, that rhythmic thumping growing louder and louder in her mind as a heat built between her core and a desire between her legs to accompany it. By the time she stepped through the seaside entrance, her legs were carrying her on their own.

The tanned, muscular enforcer’s mind screamed in panic as she came face to face with the source of the noise, and all at once she became completely aware of just how thoroughly her body had betrayed her. Koa fell to her knees, club clattering uselessly against the stone, eyes open wide in stupefied, helpless shock while lust surged inside her, turning a passing ache into a drowning torrent of need.

Helpless tears forming in the corners of her eyes, Koa crawled forward into the red, pulsing abyss of the cave before her. She would not return.