The Inner Sanctuary

Peter Forrest stood at the window, watching the intensity of the ocean waves slapping against the rocks a few yards away. The trees spotting the landscape bent and buckled, but seemed to hold their own against the fierce wind, despite their thin trunks. He couldn’t quite imagine how, in the midst of this weather, they didn’t snap, nor did the ribety window of his cheap hotel come crashing in. The pane itself rattled, filling the tiny space with the sound of an uneven drumbeat. The locals he’d spoken to down in the village suggested these winds were commonplace, yet their unsturdy-seeing houses were still standing.

He sat on the edge of the bed in the wood-paneled room, the one working lightbulb providing little illumination in the night. The ringing phone cut in and out with the spotty reception, and he wasn’t sure if it would be answered anyway. Two years ago, if he’d envisioned himself on this trip, it would have been a defining moment of his career, not an act of desperation.

The ring stopped. A yawn preceded a voice. “Hello?”

“Hey Sarah,” he said. “It’s me.”

“I figured. It’s 3 in the morning here. Who else would be calling?”

Peter chuckled. “It’s night here. I’m heading for Isla Lejana in the morning and I’m sure I won’t have reliable service there. I just wanted to tell you I love you.”

She yawned again. “I love you too. Good luck with everything. You’re doing OK?”

“Yeah. You?”

She was quiet for a bit. “Have you asked your agent for another advance?”

He rubbed the bridge of his nose. He’d been pestering both his agent and his publisher about money for weeks, to no avail. “Yeah, I did.”

“The electric company called again yesterday. They said they can’t keep giving us extensions.”

“I know, baby, I know.”

“And Bobby’s medicine is going to go up in price if we can’t-“

“Yeah. I know.” He shouldn’t have called. He missed her voice, but he should have known she’d just badger him aboutt money, as if he wasn’t already aware how much was riding on this trip. As if he needed more stress.

“I’m sorry. I’m just nervous. I’ll be quiet. I miss you. But I have to get up for work in three hours.”

“OK. I’ll let you go. I love you. I’ll call you when I get back from the island.”

He lay on the creaky bed, feeling the bars through the thin mattress. He was perfectly accustomed to harsh conditions. His first book had been about isolated tribes in Papua New Guinea, and he’d slept on the ground and in rough conditions for weeks when doing his research. Swatted mosquitoes, eaten strange foods, left behind all the creativity comforts. The book had earned him the respect of his peers in the anthropological community. What it didn’t earn him was a living. The pressure on him to write things that were more popular, to appeal to a larger audience, had weighed on him since then. Constantly. For years. A crushing weight on his shoulders to abandon his academic integrity andappeal to an audience that didn’t understand anything about social science. He watched as his vitality, Carter Jameson, made the New York Times bestseller list with a book about the history of witchcraft, despite a complete lack of academic rigor in his research. Fucking Carter. The self-righteous prick.

He shot a quick text to the boat owner he’d hired to take him to the island, and the guide who would take him to the temple, just to confirm timing.

The blank screen of his tablet stared at him. He knew he had to type something in his blog, but based on what he’d already posted, he wasn’t sure what to add. He’d already given all the background: Isla Lejana was once home to an indigenous population that worshipped Vuhara, the goddess of pleasure and hedonism. He’d posted a picture of a status of the goddess. Carved in stone and only about a foot high, the icon was nonetheless exhaustively crafted to show the deity’s large breasts and buttocks, curvaceous hips, and sharply defined facial features. The Lejanians believed that a true supplicant who entered the hidden Inner Sanctuary of the Temple of Vuhara would have their greatest desires given to them. But when the Spanish conquered the island, they destroyed the temple. The island was now uninhabited, and many believed the Inner Sanctuary to be a myth that the Spanish had invented to justify their conquest and destruction of the native population. (The writings of Domingo de Silva, the conquistador who invaded the island, claimed that magic that could summon one’s innermost wants was clearly Satanic.) Peter, however, had spent the past years researching, and believed that not only was the Inner Sanctuary real, but that he knew how to access it.

And, well, while his interest had long been purely academic, it was also something he could sell. A society centered around pleasure, whose greatest value was enjoyment of life, and their deepest secrets, had popular appeal. He wished he could be a purescholar, but then, Bobby also had medicine to buy.

Hello, readers! he typed, feigning excitement. His life’s work might be coming to a head, and he had to pretend he was excited. I’m heading out tomorrow morning to Isla Lejana! I’ll be sure to record some videos, but I won’t be able to livestream without any internet. I’ll give you updates as soon as I can!

Then, he opened his private browser.

Stress about money had slithered its way into virtually every aspect of his life, and his sex life with Sarah was no exception. Once, their love-making had been password and ferocious, driven by an insatiable need for each other’s bodies. Hands, mouths, rolling wild in bed, on the couch, in every room of the house. No longer. They hadn’t completely stopped having sex, but it had become plain, robotic, and predictable. He always initiated, and she showed little interest when he would simply mount her and cum. She seemed equally bored by it, but took little initiative to change it. And so, he had fallen down the porn rabbit hole later in life than most men. In the past year, he had gone from videos of men and women, women and women, all sorts of groups, deep into the rabbit videos. He understands the cycle of addition, how the addict always becomes numb and needs bigger and bigger bumps to get less and less of an effect. Even though he knew he was being like an addict, he didn’t care enough to stop.

He looked through the words in his search history on his favorite site. Femdom. Chastity. Cuckold. Forced bi. Ass-eating slaves. Chastity sub getting pegged. Cuck forced to suck. If nothing else, he knew what he liked. He found, in his recommended videos, one title, He makes her cum while locked. Simple enough. The thumbnail depicted a petite blonde in a corset, holding a flogger, standing over a naked man, in a chatity cage, tied to a bed. He clicked.

The lights opened on a dim hotel room and the man strained against his binds for a moment. He was fit, if a bit skinny, and his mouth was filled with a ball gag. The sound of heels on the floor interrupted his grunts. The blonde girl stepped in and stood over him, her eyes cold, as her hand drifted down his chest to his cage. “Do you want me to take this off?” she said. He nodded and whimpered. “Poor boy. It’s been so long since you emptied these balls, hasn’t it? They must hurt so much.”

Why Peter was turned on by this, he didn’t know. What was arousing about meaningness? About a woman making him suffering? Maybe it was just depression manifesting as an urge to feel something. Either way, the idea of ​​being in that man’s place had him hard already.

“Well, too bad. These are my balls, and if I want them full, they stay full. Isn’t that right?” The man nodded. “Good boy.” She pulled the gag from his mouth, and gracefully, she extended her slender leg over his head, facing towards his feet, to mount his face. “If you’re really good, maybe I’ll unlock you today.”

Peter knew she wouldn’t. That was how these videos went. The point was the cruelty. The teasing and denial. Give the boy hope that his weeks of frustration (yes, he knew this actor probably had the cage put on him minutes before the shoot) might be released, make him believe it, and then take it from him. He dreamed of a woman who would do that to him. He wanted to ache. Feel that constant arousal. Be at someone’s sexual mercy. Feel objectively and used.

The woman began to moan. Her ass Shook in the sub’s face, completely cutting off his air for a moment. Peter wanted a woman’s ass in his face right now, to draw him away from this empty, unfeeling moment. To drift away into a breathless paradise of pleasure. To just not have to breathe the fucking air right now. She brought her flogger down repeatedly on his abs. Peter came close to the edge, but didn’t want to finish quite yet. Under the Related Videos tab, he lickedon one showing a woman with a strapon and a muscle man spitroasting a naked boy in a chatity cage.

He skipped straight to the middle of the video. The woman had mouse features but still a commanding presence, and she held her sub’s leash as the boy struggled with the large dick in front of him. She slapped his ass as her strapon pushed in and out. “Deeper, bitch!” she said with an amused smile on her face. When he tried and failed to oblige, she grabbed his hair and forced him down further. Peter was close.

He fast forwarded to a moment when the other man was gone. Just the chaste sub and his owner. She sat on a chair, him on his knees, his head between her legs, while her heels rested on his shoulders. His tongue was doing its work. Her moans got quicker. Peter approached the edge. He wanted to cum as badly as he wanted someone to tell him not to, but he waited on her. Her back arched. She gasped. Her moans exploded, and so did he, all over the scratchy towel his hotelhad provided.

He caught his breath as the pretty woman in the video pulled her sub’s head from between her legs and told him he’d be staying locked. Peter laughed at the absurdity of it. It seemed so ridiculous now that he’d released all that tension. How weird his mind was. But he had little energy to think of it now. He placed the tablet back in his bag and was soon sleep.

–

The six-hour trip to Isla Lejana seemed treacherous as Peter and the ship captured braved the brutal winds of the ocean in what seemed like little more than a simple fishing boat. The owner, a chubby, mustachioed man in what seemed like his late 50s, steered calmly, as if he’d been through a thousand storms in his tiny vessel, while Peter feared for his life at every swell and surge. It would, of course, be worth it if he could sell a book about this. There was always the possibility that he was wrong. That the Inner Sanctuary was, in fact, a myth. And that all this was pointless. He couldn’t think like that.

Eventually, though, the island came into view. It wasn’t large, but mountainous enough that it could be spotted appearing over the horizon from a distance, looming and assertive. It felt alive, like it was standing above the wild ocean, unmoving against the churning sea. Dominating Peter’s vision, he noticed the vastness of the ocean. Nobody, nothing, for hundreds of miles, except for this little spot of deep, luscious green, stringing out against the rising sun. He had to squint against the glare as the boat, rocking back and forth, slowly made its way towards the rocks on the shore.

Against the deep greens and browns of the uninhabited landscape, Peter could pick out a single figure, standing tall on a boulder at the shore. She wore a deep wine-red garment, and as they approached, he could tell that it seemed like little more than a robe, cinched at the waist by a tied belt of some loose, silky material. The wind whipped around this woman and the waves blasted in front of her. The garment blew wildly, yet still framed her perfectly, and her hair, too, was wild in the wind, and strands flew in her eyes and between her lips.

It wasn’t until they nearly reached the shore that Peter could process how firmly she stood against the wind. The trees, the grass, the water, all seemed cowed by the power of it, and yet, the woman in the red robe balanced cleanly on a stone, making no effort to adjust her clothes or brush her hair from her face. Standing unwavering like the mountain in the background behind her, even her deep brown eyes gave no indication of interest when he stepped onto the land. Her gaze was cold and commanding. She watched as he handed the boat owner a handful of bills. Then he turned to her.

“Hi!” he said, battleling the sounds of the wind. “You must be M’shali.”

“I am.” Standing as she was, she turned only her head to look at him. Her skin was a deep tan, her hair dark and wavy, and though her robe hung loose onHer body, Peter could tell that she was curvaceous underneath it. He had pictured someone more lithe, given that they’d be going up step hills together, but he’d taken care to choose an experienced guide and trusted that she knew what she was doing. “And you must be Dr. Peter Forrest.” She spoke with an accent that hinted at Spanish but was more of something else, that Peter couldn’t place.

“That’s me.” He extended a hand. She descended from her rock, gracefully, to shake it.

“Welcome to Hamotagwa,” she said, using the indigenous name of the island.

Peter climbed over the boulders to get to the beach beyond it. It was hardly a spot you’d lay and read a page-turner in the summer sun, but at least he could gain his footing safely. The sand was full of shells and rocks, and his hiking boots sank slightly in it. Here he was. Isla Lejana. His dream. He looked upward. Carved into the rock face up high, near the top of a small mountain, overlooking the massive ocean in allIts power, he could spot the white, rocky ruins of the Temple of Vuhara. Columns sat on their sides from where the Spanish had shattered them, but the artifice still stood, strong as ever, large against the blue sky, like it had just been carved, with the image of the goddess of pleasure presiding over the entire landscape. He had seen it in photographs and in drone footage, but never had he stood under it like this. It was real, through his own eyes. And all he could think about was money.

Taking some time to take in the wonder of it, he came out of his reverie state eventually, feeling the wind and salty air whipping over his skin, and pointed towards the trees beyond the beach. “Should we…?”

Wordlessly, M’shali walked towards the forest, barely bothering to look back at Peter as he walked behind her. In a matter of paces, They’d transitioned from rough sand to lush, untouched grass, where a backpack of supplies lay waiting for them. The trees rippled in the harsh weatherr, but at least provided protection from the feel and the sound of it. Peter closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He’d made it. Alive. There was still more to go, but at least a leg of his journey had been accomplished.

“You have come a long way,” M’shali said.

“I sure have.” He looked around. The forest wasn’t density, but it was still all he could see. At least right now. “I’m hoping it pans out. I worry that my colleagues were right to call this trip a waste. They think the Inner Sanctuary is a myth.”

M’shali’s lips seemed to twist into something looking like frustration, but her face was still mostly stone. “The Inner Sanctuary is no myth, Dr. Peter Forrest.” She lifted the bag and began walking deeper into the woods, further from the raging and loud water.

“That’s reassuring that you believe that,” he said loudly, still battleing the sound. “You can call me Peter, by the way.”

“As you like, Peter. I would not give you a name other than the one you choose for yourself, in the way Europeans renamed the sacred homeland of my ancestors.”

A tinge of guilty rang in Peter. Of course, it would be a matter of respect to the people of this island who were wiped out by the conquistadors to at least call it by its indigenous name. But then, that wouldn’t be as marketable.

M’shali began to walk forward, climbing over a large root, moving smoothly and daintily, despite the unevenness of the ground. Peter lumbered over the same root behind her, watching her large backside underneath the bag she carried, with a machete and canteen dangling off of it. Soon, the wind was at least quiet enough to record.

“Hey, hold on a second,” he said. She stopped. From his pocket, he pulled his phone, noting that he did, in fact, have one bar of service. Potentially useful. What angle was he going to film from? They were near the foot of the step slope which they’d be ascending, and the temple ruins balanced precariously above them. They looked as though they might tumble down at any moment, crushing the forest below. The temple had, of course, stood for a thousand years, even against the violence of invaders. He stood and pointed his phone at the sea first.

“Well, here we are. We’ve made it to Isla Lejana! Look at how you can’t see anything beyond the horizon here. It took six whole hours to get here, so there’s absolutely nobody around but me and my guide. It’s quite the sensing.” He knew he was being overdramatic intentionally, but still, the sense that him and M’shali were essentially alone on this little speck of land on the ocean was outstanding. He inhaled loudly. “And hey, take a look!” The camera pointed upward. He had to adjust the angle to reduce the flare of the sun enough that the temple was visible. Looking upward, from this angle, it seemed even more domineering than before. It took Peter a moment to start speaking once that realization hit. “Check it out. The Temple of Vuhara. What’s left of it, anyway. It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” The white stone glimmered in the light. “As my followers know, the natives believed that those who entered the Inner Sanctuary would look into the Fire of Vuhara and have their deepest desires granted by the pleasure goddess herself. But its existence has been a question for centuries. Come along with me and let’s see if we can find it.”

He turned the phone off, popped it back into his pocket, and exhausted all that fake excitement. “All right. We’re good to go.”

Without a look back, M’shali continued walking. “That is not fully accurate.”

“What?”

“What you said. It is not fully accurate. Vuhara is not a deity. She is the embodied spirit of the island. The people of Hamotagwa were enemies. They believed that nature was imbued with a spirit, just as the flesh, and the pleasures of the flesh heightened one’s connection to the land. The Inner Sanctuary was where Vuhara appeared and one could commune with her in pleasure.”

“Oh,” Peter said as a branch slapped him in the face. The forest was getting thicker, though M’shali, with her thick body, was still moving through it nimbly, avoiding every branch and rock as if she knew exactly where to expect it in advance. She must have walked this trail hundreds of times.

“It was the Christians, with their inability to conceive of non-theistic religions, that called Vuhara a goddess. And who Imposed their belief that self-denial is a virtue upon the people. They did not agree. They viewed engaging in pleasure as a sacred experience. I hope the book you write will respect our heritage, and not the mischaracterizations of our conquerors.”

Peter slipped and told. “Yeah, me too.” Years ago, he would have protected M’shali for more information, fascinated by his own misunderstanding about this Extinct culture. Today, he only considered what would sell.

She stopped and looked over her shoulder at him. There was a furrow in her browser, something of a mix between anger and confusion. He knew she had every right to respond that way to him, but there was more to it than that. In the split second that she paused, her eyes moved swiftly but smoothly from his forehead to his feet, as if taking him in. Her eyes pierced him in a way he couldn’t quite make sense of. He had been looked at quizzically before, but there wasn’t a question in her eyes so much as an answer. And then, she looked forward again, and it was gone.