Chapter 18
Moira
I wash my hands in
the bathroom sink and look up in the mirror at my reflection. Serious
eyes bore back at me, contemplating what happened last night between
Zach and me in the shower. It was beautiful… terrifying…
liberating.
It changed me.
I’ve never had
another man touch me the way he did, yet I trusted him fully for some
reason. This wild man who never had to care for a woman’s
feelings or body before. It was absolutely exquisite, and I felt
something change between the two of us when he pulled out of me.
Zach had gently
pulled me under the water spray and rinsed the remaining lather from
my body. He then massaged shampoo into my hair, followed by
conditioner… running his fingers for the longest time through
the silky, wet locks.
So gentle with me.
Helping me from the shower, wrapping a towel around my shoulders but
careful not to rub it across my sensitive back. He had me get my
aloe, then he laid me across the bed on my stomach and tenderly
rubbed the lotion onto my back. I sighed with a mixture of relief
from the cooling essence and sexual longing for the way his fingers
played across my skin.
While he handled me
with the utmost delicateness over my burned back, his fingers were a
bit rougher over my ass as he massaged me. I squirmed, silently
pleading with him to touch me intimately, and he obliged. He used his
fingers between my legs to get me slick with hunger, then he merely
pushed my legs apart and sank into me from behind while I lay
stretched out flat on the bed.
Zach fucked me
slowly, bracing his weight above me with this hands dug into the
mattress. I wanted to feel his entire body against me, but I know he
was being sensitive to my sunburn. Although he went so very slow, he
was anything but quiet. As promised, he held nothing back from me.
Every time he
plunged into my body, he would groan with abandon, completely giving
himself over to the ecstasy of the moment. I came with a quiet force
and he followed me over the edge, leaning down to place a whisper of
a kiss between my shoulder blades.
After he pulled out
of me, I wondered if he would leave and go back to his own room. He
had slept with me the previous night, but I wasn’t sure if that
was from pure exhaustion or because he wanted to. I didn’t ask
because I was afraid of the answer.
Instead, he rolled
to the side and collapsed on his back, commanding me, “Come
here.”
I turned, scooting
over to his side, and he gingerly wrapped his arm around my back,
which felt so much better after the aloe treatment he’d given
me. We lay quiet for a while, but then I broke the silence.
“Where did you
get these scars from?” I asked as I trailed my hand down his
stomach, past his right hipbone, and down to the top of his thigh,
where I fluttered over four lines of small, circular scars, each line
about five inches long. I had noticed them that first night I saw him
in Caraica, and while Zach had other interesting, slash-like scars
over various parts of his body, these interested me the most.
Zach lifted his head
up from the pillow slightly, to see where my fingers rested. “Oh,
those. From a green anaconda that tried to make a meal of me.”
My head rose up so I
could look at his face, thinking he was joking with me. “You’re
kidding me?”
He looked back at me
with utter seriousness. “I’m not.”
“Holy shit.
What happened?”
Zach chuckled as he
let his head rest back on the pillow. “I was twelve, I think,
and out on a hunt with some of the other boys in the tribe around my
age. We weren’t very good… mostly we were able to bag
some monkeys if we all shot enough arrows at one. We stumbled upon an
anaconda on the bank of the Itui River. She was all curled up in a
spiral, her head tucked down so we couldn’t see it.”
“Her? How do
you know it was a girl snake? Did you lift her skirt up?” I
asked with a snort.
“No, smart
ass. The females are larger, and this snake was massive…
probably twenty feet long judging by its coils. Anyway, they normally
stay in the water to hunt, and they are super fast. But this one was
looking lazy, and maybe she was old… who knows, but all I know
is that we thought she’d make a fine meal for the tribe if we
could kill it.”
I shuddered at the
thought. Not only for the danger Zach faced at such a tender age, but
also at the enormous responsibility he had already taken upon his
shoulders. It was important to him at the age of twelve to help feed
his people.
“We all had
our bows and arrows, but we knew that wouldn’t work. We’d
have to cut the head off, but the problem was we couldn’t see
it. We plotted for a while, sitting about twenty feet from the snake,
when finally Kaurlo came up with the brilliant idea to bait it by
throwing rocks.”
“So you threw
rocks at a huge snake to get it to show its head. Are you nuts?”
Zach snickered. “I
think probably just stupid. But it worked. It took several throws,
and the rocks all bounced off harmlessly, but finally she lifted that
massive head up and looked at us. But she didn’t looked pissed…
just sleepy. She uncoiled and started to slither toward the water.”
“I would have
let her go,” I said with another slight shudder.
“That was our
dinner. No way were we letting it get away. We all ran after her,
machetes drawn. I was the fastest and reached her first. Just before
she hit the water’s edge, I lifted up my weapon to strike at
her and she spun on me so fast, I didn’t have time to react.
She just struck out at me and grabbed me by the thigh. I went
crashing to the ground, and my machete flew out of my hand.”
“Good God.
What did you do?”
“I fucking
screamed my head off. Anaconda’s have two rows of teeth on each
side of their mouth, and the teeth curve backward so once they sink
into you, there’s almost no way to get them out. They’re
not venomous, but they don’t need to be. They just need to hold
tight until they can get their coils around you to suffocate you.”
“Did one of
the other boys save you?”
Zach gave a low
laugh of amusement. “No. They all went screaming into the
jungle, calling for help. Luckily, Paraila was nearby and came
running. When he saw me on the ground with that damned snake latched
on, he started cursing me in Portuguese, ‘Stupid boy, stupid
boy’. By the time he reached me, she had already started to
coil around my stomach, and he had a hard time finding a place to cut
through her with his machete without cutting me too.”
“Oh my, God.
But clearly, he managed it.”
“Clearly. That
snake was pissed, because Paraila basically had to saw through her
while she was fighting to strangle me. He finally killed it, but it
took them forever to get the jaws unhinged off me. Several of the
teeth broke off and had to be pulled out individually.”
“Geez…
you could have died.”
“I nearly did…
twice. That snake almost killed me, but then the wounds got infected
and I got really sick. But I pulled through.”
Sadness welled up
inside of me for the violent life this man has lived. He wasn’t
meant for that. Not the sweet boy from Georgia who didn’t want
to go to the Amazon in the first place.
“You’ve
had such a rough life,” I said softly.
“Not really,”
he said as he shrugged his shoulders. “I managed.”
“You
survived.”
“Flourished
some would even say,” he added on.
Yes… Zach
did flourish, I think to myself as I look in the bathroom mirror
as I replay that conversation over in my head.
After his story, we
were quiet, and I eventually fell asleep in his arms. I was awoken
this morning from a sound sleep not twenty minutes ago with Zach’s
hand between my legs, working me to an awakening orgasm. He is
absolutely insatiable, but I’m not complaining.
By the time my
spasms started to quiet, his cock was lodged deep within me, and he
was pounding away to a blistering orgasm of his own. Just as he came,
he pressed his face in the pillow beside my head and cried out my
name, but it was thankfully muffled by the softness of the goose
down.
I then made my way
on shaky legs to the bathroom, where I peed, and now I stand looking
at myself in the mirror.
Zach is such an
enigma. He was born a sweet innocent, yet transformed into a man of
lethal danger and steely reserve. Raw edges, scarred flesh, and a
rapacious appetite for life. He took the hand he was dealt and yes,
he flourished.
Yet, here he is now,
and the only affinity he seems to hold for this new world lies within
my body. I’m absolutely positive that had we not developed the
relationship that now exists between us, Zach would have returned to
Caraica already. I say that with no amount of ego and, in fact, it
sort of saddens me to think it’s probably just some
phenomenally good sex keeping him here. But really… how long
can that last?
My eyes stare back
at me with no answers, so I dry my hands and creep back into the
bedroom. Zach watches me from the bed, his hands tucked behind his
head and his beautiful, naked body sprawled along the mattress.
I hesitate because
I’m not sure if I should crawl back in bed with him…
which would be my preference, yet the intimacy of sex seems to have
dissipated, and I’m feeling oddly vulnerable right now.
“Get back in
bed,” Zach says softly. “We have no plans today, and I
have more dirty things I want to do to you.”
My pulse hammers and
my eyes flick to his penis, which has softened but is still
impressive as it lays between his legs. When I look back at his face,
I find him smirking at me. “I need just a few more minutes, but
come up here and lie beside me.”
I don’t need
to be asked twice, and I scramble back up on the bed. Rather than
lying beside him, I decide for a bit of a bolder move, and I climb
right on top of his body, straddling his pelvis.
Zach’s
eyebrows raise and his hands come up to rest on my thighs. “What
are you doing?”
I shrug my shoulders
because, honestly… I have no clue what I’m doing. So I