A discovery

The delicate hand strokes down her side, barely touching... then again, more persistent, and lingering under her breast. Jade draws in a deep, slow breath, and arches her back slightly to show that the touch is welcome and wanted, that she wants to feel more.

A warm softness embraces her nipple, a gentle and wet suction, and Jade puts her arms around her lover, stroking the long, wavy hair...

Long hair...

Suddenly Jade is wide awake. She looks down and sees the other woman sucking at her nipples. "What the fuck??" she chokes, and scrambles to pull away.

Tiffany seems to bolt awake herself, and lets Jade go immediately, backing away to the opposite corner of the bed. "I didn't - I'm sorry, I just..."

"Seriously, what the actual fuck?" Jade says again, more quietly but just as insistent. "It's not enough that I have fifty men chasing me down, now I have to fend off you too?"

"I don't know what came over me!" Tiffany says, clearly agitated but also trying to stay quiet. "I woke up, and you were lying there, kind of moaning in your sleep, and for some reason... I don't know, it just got to me. It felt like I didn't even know what I was doing, I just had to touch you for some reason." She clenches her fingers in her own hair, as if trying to shake her brain into working. "There's something wrong with me, I know it. I fell asleep and started having these wild erotic dreams, they kept waking me up, and I couldn't get the images out of my head. I'm just feeling so... horny."

"You said you were getting married to a guy," Jade points out. "What are you, a closet lesbian?"

"No! I'm not even bisexual. I mean, I've done stuff with girls before, but never seriously, just to get extra tips. I'm, um, an exotic dancer."

She's got the body for it, Jade thinks, looking over Tiffany's figure. I wish I had her tits, that's for sure. Maybe she'd let me touch them, to make up for her touching mine -

Jade shook her head. Where had THAT come from?

"It's crazy," Tiffany mumbled, more to herself it seemed. "Eight hours a day, I'm surrounded by sexy girls being seductive and horny guys who want to fuck. I've always kept it under control. I've never been seriously tempted to hook up with a customer, or tempted at ALL to get together with one of the girls. Then you come along, and for some reason I can't keep my hands off you."

"I know what you mean," Jade says quietly.

"Huh?"

"I'm feeling it too," she says. "It started a few hours after the games kicked off. I've been thinking about the men who are after us... thinking about what will happen if they catch me. And some part of me is actually hoping they will. I figured it was the heat, messing with my head, but I'm not actually that hot."

"Don't sell yourself short."

Jade looks up, surprised.

"Sorry, it's a habit from work. The guys like a little innuendo, you know."

"You said that these feelings started coming over you after I came in here," Jade says.

"Yeah. Maybe you've just got great pheromones."

"I started feeling it right before I found the water. Right after I ate some of the rations they gave us. Did you eat anything?"

"If you think they put something in the food, I'd say not. When I dropped my flask, I dropped my rations too. I haven't had anything except some wild strawberries I found."

"But it didn't start for you then, it started after I came in here. After you drank the water."

Tiffany looks up at Jade, understanding coming to her. "And I drank a lot of it, on an empty stomach. So if there was something in there, it would affect me hard, and fast."

"That's what I'm thinking."

Tiffany sits back against the wall. "If this is actually true, it would explain something. Did you ever actually watch this show before you came on it?"

"Just the last season. That was all I could lay my hands on."

"Didn't it strike you as weird that the women all started off the games running for their lives, but toward the end, they were humping guys left and right and loving it?"

Jade considers. "I guess I just figured that they all decided it was better to give the guys what they wanted in exchange for help. I decided from moment one that I wasn't going to do that!"

"Right, but it doesn't seem like such a bad idea now, does it?" Tiffany asks pointedly.

Jade thinks about it, and flushes red. "You're right," she whispers. "My God, they're giving us aphrodisiacs."

"And probably something that lowers inhibition in general," Tiffany says. "Makes for more interesting TV."

"Well, we can avoid the food," Jade says, "but in this heat, we can't go two more days without water. We have to drink it, we don't have any choice... and there's probably no drinkable water on this island except what they provide."

"So we know they're dosing us, but we can't stop it," Tiffany says. "What do you think we should do about it, then?"