Chapter Sixteen
Sixteen
Lulu pressed back.
His tongue, so salty-sweet, so human, so animal, mingled with hers. Her entire being wanted to melt into him. Her entire being except for one spot.
Her body wriggled to relieve the pressure, but it was no use.
Pushed flat against the tree with the harness strapped against her belly, there was no getting around the fact that she really had to pee.
But the other sensations flooding her—no, Lulu, shouldn’t think about the word flooding with a full bladder—rather, exploding her system—probably also a poor choice so near a volcano—the other sensations overwhelming her system.
Tyler’s fingers laced through one of her hands and pressed it over her head while their mouths tangled and their fingers groped at the frickin’ harness buckles, which had to have been designed by the Alcatraz Straitjacket Company and were not yielding to either of their wills, no matter how desperately they yanked at the snug straps.
Gasping, they pulled apart. And both began a full-fledged assault on the other’s offending buckles.
But then. World, you’ve got to be fucking kidding.
Because more desperately than perhaps ever in her entire life, she needed to pee.
And this, none of this, not the warnings in her head, nor the persistent resistance of the harness buckles, not even the talented tongue of Tyler Demming, was anything compared to the undeniable entreaties of her bladder.
Disentangling her attentions from his harness buckles, she pressed her palm to his chest and pushed him back.
“Is this okay?” he asked, breathless. “Do you want me to stop?”
“God, no,” she panted. “But, yes. Just. Pause!” She held up a finger to indicate that the interruption was a temporary thing. “I need to…” Lulu stopped herself. There was no need to say the word pee out loud. “I’ll be right back.”
Tyler’s expression plummeted. “Where are you going?”
“Give me a sec.” Turning toward the thick of the jungle, she began to hobble off.
Behind her, she could hear the pursuit of his footsteps. She swiveled on him. All right. Fine. She would say it. “I have to pee!”
“Oh!”
Lulu skittered away, tugging at the damn buckles of the harness. Why, why, she asked the sky, did the clasps have to be so snugly secured? Well. The answer was obvious really, because, well, falling. But at that moment, theoretical reasoning did little to soothe her.
Spotting a thicket of low bushes, she stumbled to a spot out of Tyler’s eyeshot. Maybe she could wiggle the harness down, she thought, as she wriggled and yanked on the stubborn material, but her broad hips blocked any chance for successful removal.
Maybe, she thought, before puzzling through the logistics, she could pull her pants and underwear down without removing the harness and then tug the contraption out of the way.
No. That was a dumb idea, in addition to being illogical.
Lulu undid the top button of her pants, hoping that some other solution might appear by way of a urinary fairy godmother, and as she did so, miracle of miracles, one of the harness buckles snapped off.
It was then that she realized the buckle on the other side of the harness was actually buckled into the material of her pants.
Ugh! Shit. Shit. Shit. The pants! She wanted to cry, but she was afraid that any leakage from her eyes would trigger the same reaction below. The pants, with the harness still attached, would have to come off. But…argh! Hiking boots! The damn boots. The boots were in the way.
Fuckity-fuck-fuck, she needed to pee so bad.
She tried to get her brain to stop thinking about peeing for long enough to address the issue at hand. Removing her boots would be time-consuming, not to mention leave her feet unprotected on the buggy jungle floor. Think, Lulu.
Aha! These were zip-ankle pants.
In a flash, Lulu tugged up the zipper and began to yank one pant leg over her ginormous hiking boot.
The heel caught the material, and Lulu congratulated herself as she hopped on the other leg and regained her balance…
until gravity claimed its victory and Lulu tumbled sideways.
The bush softened her fall, and while she was down there, she decided that standing up and pants removal were not destined to share the stage.
After a pants-wrestling match—which Lulu won, but just barely—she tossed the shirt-pants-harness bundle on the ground and at long last, clad in only her boots, bra, and panties, she lowered her panties and squatted down to pee.
If lengthy urination were an Olympic sport, Lulu would be a shoo-in for the gold medal, or at minimum, a silver.
Peeing was an agonizing pleasure, a gift of physiology that Lulu might never before have appreciated as dearly as she did right at that moment.
It was a pee of grand proportions, a magnum opus of urination, a masterwork.
A urinary track record. And dare she say it?
Perhaps her best pee ever.
She peed and peed and peed for at least one hundred and one seconds. And just as the well ran dry, Lulu froze.
There, staring her straight in the eye, was a peccary.
Lulu’s breath caught. The wild pig tipped its head to the side, studying the odd, pale-skinned creature who squatted in the woods marking her territory.
A porcupine-like spray of bristly hackles rose on the piggy’s back and Lulu panicked.
Would she be attacked? Bitten? Trampled to death?
The latter was unlikely, being that the pig was the size of a large racoon, and a good, swift kick might save her in a pinch.
But then there was the problem that she was squatting, pantsless, and peeing.
Well. She was no longer peeing at that second, so her brain may have exaggerated that final point.
Nevertheless, when the peccary bared her teeth, Lulu braced with fear.
Just then, suddenly aware of the altered landscape, Lulu saw the sharp shift in the pig’s attention as it spotted her clothes crumpled on the ground.
The peccary dropped its attack stance. With the slow, casual stride of a pig who does not give a single fuck about Lulu Gardner, it waltzed to her cotton tank top, sniffed with derision, and moved on to Lulu’s Gortex travel pants, which, Lulu noted with grave trepidation, she had purchased after trying on eight pairs in a variety of sizes and colors at the REI flagship store in Seattle.
The peccary glanced over its shoulder, reveling in its plan for vindication. Taking a territorial squat, the pig wrinkled its hairy snout and peed right on the crotch of Lulu’s pants. As it released its load, it gave Lulu a long, satisfied smirk.
Lulu’s lips unlocked. “Hey!” she shouted, and receiving no reaction from the pig, she yelled again. “Hey!”
The peccary offered Lulu a series of clicking sounds, which Lulu believed meant, “Fuck you, urinating lady, and the zip line you rode in on,” then it kicked some dirt over her pants and scuttled off into the jungle at top speed.
“Lu!” The sound of Tyler crashing through the trees shocked her out of her squatting stupor, and she raced to yank up her panties and present herself with a modicum of decency. “Lu! Are you okay—?” His words dropped off the second he caught sight of her. “Whoa. Hello!”
His eyes traveled up past the boots, along her toned legs, past the panties and the lovely bump of birthed-a-baby paunch, to her breasts rounding out her bra. His expression passed from confused to hopeful. “Is this an invitation?”
“What?”
“Are we…tapping paddles?” he asked.
She squinted at him. “What?! No!”
“Oh.” His expression fell. “There’s something in your—” he gestured to her hair. Reaching up, she touched her curls. Somehow, in the shrubbery kerfuffle, her hair had become encrusted with leaves and twigs. She tugged out a small stick.
“What happened?” he asked.
She shook her head and parted her lips but stopped. Maybe keep the full story to herself.
Tyler’s nose wrinkled and he sniffed at the air. His lips turned down in disgust. “Do you smell that? What’s that smell?”
Lulu took a whiff. “Ugh. That’s pee!” At his surprised look, she added, “Not mine. One of your stupid pigs…” she said, not masking the accusation in her voice, “urinated all over my pants.”
“My pigs?”
“You know. A peccary!”
With cartoonlike effect, Tyler’s eyes rounded, his mouth opened, and hands flew out to his sides like his body was on guard. “There was a peccary?! Here?”
Then realizing the inappropriate lack of sympathy for Lulu’s situation, he added, “I mean, I’m sure we can wash out your pants.
In the stream. Not we, necessarily. Of course I can help if you want.
Or you can do it by yourself if you’re more comfortable.
Because. Your comfort. That’s what’s important. ”
Resigned, Lulu rolled her eyes toward the brush to her left. “It went that way.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said, and he took off into the tangle of vegetation.
Breathing through her mouth, Lulu picked up the jumble of clothes.
The tank top tore at the hem when she disentangled it, but at least the pig’s spray had missed it, and she slipped it back over her head.
The pants/harness situation would be trickier.
She trotted to the stream and dunked the offending portion of her pants in the running water, swishing and wringing until the scent had sufficiently dissipated.
At last, she squeezed the pants dryish and looked around for Tyler. Men, she had found, were good for wringing out wet things; they must have gotten those strong grips and muscled fingers from all the lonely nights.
Tyler returned just in time, a look of utter dejection across his features. “No luck?” Lulu asked.
“No.” He took the pants Lulu handed him and squeezed out another bucket’s worth of water. “But,” he said, his tone as flat as Kansas, “I think I saw a jaguar.”
“A jaguar!” Lulu exclaimed, alarmed.