The Week I Spent Alone and Naked in the Jungle

The sun fell like molten lead on Adriana's shoulders. She had been walking for three hours along that trail that looked short on the map and, in reality, never seemed to end. Her T-shirt clung to her back and the air was so thick it was hard to breathe. When the giant ferns parted and the water appeared, she dropped her backpack without thinking.

It was a small, round lagoon, ringed by moss-covered trunks. The water was so still it reflected the treetops like a green mirror. No one in sight. No human sound. Only the buzzing of insects and, far away, the cry of a monkey.

She unfastened her boots, took off her shorts, her T-shirt. She was left in her underwear and hesitated for a moment. Then she thought there was no one for miles and that putting her wet panties back on would be hell. She took them off. She left all her clothes piled beside her backpack, on a flat rock, and stepped into the water.

The first contact was electric. The cold climbed her calves, her thighs, her belly, until it clamped her cunt in a spasm. When she submerged completely, she let out a laugh that startled the birds. She swam to the center of the lagoon, let herself float on her back, and felt the sun pouring over her face and her breasts. Her nipples had hardened with the cold, two dark points aimed at the sky. This is what I came for, she thought. This exactly.

She lost track of time. When she finally swam back toward the bank, fingers wrinkled and lips a little blue, she looked at the rock and knew, before she could even reason it out, that something was wrong. The rock was empty. The clothes, the boots, the backpack, the phone, the money, the passport. Everything had disappeared.

She stayed crouched in the water, up to her neck, staring at the bank as if the rock would return her things if she watched it long enough. It didn't. The jungle kept breathing, indifferent.

—Hello? —she said softly. And then louder—: Hello! Is anyone there?

Only the echo. And, for a fraction of a second, a shadow moving among the trunks on the other side of the lagoon. A slender figure, dark hair, skin like wet earth. It vanished before she could focus properly.

—Wait! —she shouted.

She ran out of the water, her tits bouncing with the rhythm of her running and water streaming down the hair of her pussy, but there was nothing there anymore. No clear footprints, no sound of steps, no trace of discarded clothes. Only broken ferns in one direction and a new silence, different from the one before, a silence that watched her.

***

The sun started to go down faster than she had expected. The temperature plummeted with a speed she had never felt in the city. Adriana walked barefoot, trying to get back the way she had come, but the trail had split into three and none of them seemed right. Branches left fine scratches on her thighs. Her feet sank into warm mud.

Every sound was a scare. The crack of a branch, the distant shriek of a bird, the sudden flapping of something she never got to see. But along with fear, something else grew, a feeling she didn't know how to name. She was completely exposed and, even so, more alive than ever. Her skin answered every breeze. Every leaf brushing her side raised the hair on her arms, and every brush between her legs as she walked reminded her that she was naked, that anyone could see her, that they already had seen her. It was a brutal awareness of her own body.

When she could go no farther, she curled up at the foot of a huge tree, among roots that jutted out like ribs. She hugged her knees to her chest. She was hungry, thirsty, scared. And even so, in the dark, she began rubbing her arms to warm herself up. She went up over her shoulders, down over her collarbones, brushed her nipples without meaning to and then brushed them again, on purpose. She pinched them between thumb and forefinger, first one, then the other, tugging until they stood hard like little stones. A warm current ran down her belly and flowed straight into her cunt.

She hadn't decided to touch herself. Her body simply decided for her. Her hand slid down her abdomen, found the hair, found the wetness. It wasn't lagoon water. It was her, answering something she didn't fully understand. She slipped two fingers between the lips of her cunt and slowly parted them, feeling them slide in her own juice. She was soaked. Her clit throbbed swollen, protruding from its hood as if asking to be touched. She did it. She began rubbing it in slow circles, with the tip of her middle finger, while her other hand kept torturing a nipple.

She thought of the shadow that had seen her naked in the water. She thought of a pair of dark, nameless eyes watching her from the undergrowth. She imagined those eyes looking at her now, crouched three meters away, seeing her open her legs against the roots of a tree, seeing her slide her fingers inside, seeing her moan softly in the dark. Instead of horror, she felt a rush of heat between her legs so strong she let out a gasp. She pushed two fingers inside and curled them, searching for the spot she knew worked for her. She pulled them out dripping, ran them over her clit, pushed them back in. In and out, in and out. Her hips moved on their own against her hand. With the thumb of her other hand she found her ass and pressed it, not going in, just keeping it there like a guard.

What came next was a dry spasm, brief, almost violent, that shook her legs and made her cunt clamp around her fingers in three, four, five contractions in a row. She came with her cheek pressed to the bark and a muffled groan in her throat, feeling the orgasm rise through her guts and escape through her mouth in the form of warm air. She stayed there panting against the tree with her fingers still inside, not wanting to take them out, feeling the last tremors of her cunt suck on her knuckles like a small, hungry mouth.

Afterward she stayed still for a long time, cheek against the wood, listening to the forest. For the first time since she had seen the empty rock, she wasn't afraid.

***

Dawn found her exhausted and intact. Her feet hurt, the scratches burned, her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth with thirst. But she got up. She kept walking. No longer like a lost tourist, but like something else, something she didn't yet know how to name.

Toward midday she heard the engine before she saw the road. A rusty, very old jeep was moving slowly along a dirt track. Adriana stepped out onto the track with her hands on her hips, not hiding anything. She had nothing to hide with, and by then she wasn't all that interested anyway. The driver braked hard. He was an older man, around sixty, with a weathered face and a dark straw hat.

—Good day —she said, with a voice firmer than she had expected.

The man took a while to answer. Then he cleared his throat and looked at a fixed point between her eyes, making an obvious effort not to let his gaze drop to her tits or her pubic hair.

—Do you need help?

—I need a ride. And, if possible, a blanket.

The man reached behind the seat and handed her a huge, faded flannel shirt that smelled of tobacco and many weeks' sweat. Adriana put it on. It reached halfway down her thighs. She climbed into the jeep.

—I'm Esteban —he said, after a good while.

—Adriana.

They didn't speak again the whole way. The vinyl seat burned on the naked skin of her thighs. Every bump made her bounce, and each jolt rubbed her naked cunt against the hot vinyl. Esteban stared at the track with exaggerated concentration, but she caught him twice glancing at the gap between the shirt buttons, where the top of one breast was visible. It didn't bother her. It even amused her a little. She had been someone else for less than a day and already felt comfortable.

***

The village was a dozen thatched-roof huts arranged around a hard-packed dirt square. Esteban stopped the jeep in front of the largest one. A woman came out to meet them. She had the calm face of someone who is frightened by almost nothing. She didn't ask Adriana anything. She offered her water, a raw cotton tunic, and a bowl of fish stew with cassava.

—You can stay as long as you need —said the woman, whose name was Beatriz—. Until you decide.

Adriana decided to stay that night. And then another. And then an entire week.

She learned how to draw water from the well, split firewood, separate fish from bones. She learned how to braid palm fibers into baskets that were later used to store cassava. The children followed her the first few days, laughing at the color of her hair, until they got bored. The older women watched her in silence and then, when they crossed paths on the trail, would rest a hand on her shoulder. The men didn't look at her directly, but she felt their glances all the same, like a heat that passed and went away.

At night she slept in a hammock inside a small hut Beatriz had given her. She listened to the jungle outside and remembered the tree and her own fingers in the dark. Some nights she touched herself again, slowly, this time without urgency, like someone sorting through a memory. She opened her legs in the hammock, with the tunic lifted up to her tits, and stroked her clit with two fingers until she came in silence, biting her lip, feeling the hammock sway on its own with the jolts of her hips.

***

On the seventh day, Esteban came into the hut with a strange smile.

—There's a harvest festival in the village upriver. Want to come?

Adriana went. Beatriz tied a yellow flower into her hair. The festival was an explosion of light: bonfires, drums made from hollow logs, a fermented corn drink served in gourd bowls that went down sweet and stayed burning in the stomach. She danced. She danced with a woman who taught her the steps, danced with two young brothers who took turns keeping the beat, danced alone in the center until the gourd bowl was empty for the third time and the night began to move.

And then she saw him.

He was standing at the edge of the circle of light, leaning against a post, watching her. A boy her age or perhaps a little younger, slender, with black hair to his shoulders and a red feather tied with thread. He wore a cloth wrapped around his waist and nothing else. He had the same dark eyes she had imagined so many nights against the bark of the tree.

She knew it before she could reason it out. It was him.

Her body reacted before her mind: heat in her neck, the sudden pressure in her chest, a sweet weakness in her knees, and immediate dampness between her thighs that soaked the underwear Beatriz had lent her. But she didn't look away. She walked toward him, slowly, crossing the circle of dancing people, feeling the long skirt brush her thighs with every step.

When she reached him, she stopped. He didn't move.

—You robbed me —she said quietly.

He looked at her lips for a moment, then her eyes. He didn't speak right away. When he did, it was in slow, chewed-up Spanish.

—I wanted to see you up close.

—And now what do you see?

He lifted a hand and brushed a damp lock from her temple. His fingers were rough and warm.

—I see a woman who's no longer afraid of the jungle.

Adriana closed her eyes for a second. In a week, she had forgotten what it was like to be nervous. She remembered it again.

—What's your name?

—Yari.

***

He took her out of the festival without anyone seeming to notice. He led her along a trail she hadn't seen, to a small clearing ringed by very tall trees. The moon was almost full and fell cleanly over the moss. There were no insects, no sounds, only a charged silence, thick, expectant.

Yari took off the cloth from his waist. He let it fall to the ground with a gesture that was neither shy nor obscene. Underneath he was naked, with his cock already half hard between his legs, thick and brown, hanging heavy against his thighs. Adriana pulled her tunic off over her head. The two of them stood there, looking at each other, not touching yet. She had been naked for an entire week before him. This time was different. This time she had decided.

He came closer, put one hand on her waist and the other on the back of her neck, and kissed her. It wasn't a violent kiss. It was a slow kiss, with the whole night ahead of it. They slid their tongues into each other's mouths, slowly, tasting one another. Adriana ran her hands down his back, felt the lean muscles, the old scars from some jungle work, the pulse in his neck under her fingers. She lowered one hand over his flat belly and closed it around his cock. It was hot, fully hard now, with soft skin over tense flesh. Yari let out a low grunt when she started moving her hand up and down, measuring him, squeezing the head with her thumb and feeling the tip grow wet.

—You're well endowed —she murmured against his mouth.

He answered by squeezing one breast with his free hand, pinching her nipple between two knuckles and twisting it with a softness that was almost cruelty. Adriana moaned and pressed herself against him, feeling the hard cock drive into her belly.

She dropped to her knees without being asked. She looked at his cock up close, gleaming under the moon, with a thick vein running along the underside, and took it into her mouth without preamble. She swallowed half of it at the first try, closed her lips around it, and began to suck it hungrily. Her tongue circled the head, her hands gripped the base and stroked the tight balls pressed against his body. Yari put both hands on her neck and began moving her head to his rhythm, pushing his cock deeper each time, until Adriana felt it hit the back of her throat and her eyes began to water. She didn't pull back. She let him fuck her mouth there, kneeling on the moss, saliva running down her chin to drip onto her tits.

—You're going to make me come if you keep doing that —he panted in his slow Spanish.

Adriana pulled his cock out of her mouth with a wet sound, ran it over her lips like lipstick, and smiled.

—Not yet.

She lay back on the moss and spread her legs. Yari knelt between them and looked at her for a moment. Adriana's cunt shone under the moon, swollen, soaked, the lips already parted. He bent down and ran his tongue from below up to her clit in one long lick. Adriana arched her back and grabbed his hair with both hands.

—Again —she asked.

He did it again. And again. He started eating her cunt with a calm that drove her crazy. His tongue went in and out, sucked each lip one by one, rose to circle her clit and came back down to slide inside her. He slid two fingers in while still sucking her clit, curling them upward, searching for the spot. He found it. Adriana started moaning without holding back, her hips moving on their own against his face, her heels digging into his back.

The first orgasm hit her like that, slowly at first and then like an avalanche, a wave that left her vibrating from the soles of her feet to the nape of her neck. She felt her cunt clamp in spasms around Yari's fingers, felt him keep sucking her clit even as she came, stretching the pleasure until she had to push him away by the forehead because she couldn't take any more.

He rose again and looked at her. His mouth and chin were shining with her. Adriana nodded before he even had to ask. Yari grabbed his cock with one hand, ran it over the lips of her cunt to wet it, rubbed it against her swollen clit and then began to push it in, slowly, centimeter by centimeter. When it went all the way in, she felt a deep heat, a fit. It wasn't a blow. It was an easing into place. They stayed still for a moment, looking at each other, him buried to the balls inside her.

Then he started moving. Slowly, measuring each thrust, coming almost all the way out and then sliding back in fully. Adriana wrapped her legs around his waist and dug her heels into his lower back so he wouldn't go anywhere. He didn't. He fucked her with an animal patience, changing rhythm every few thrusts, pausing inside to circle his hips, crushing her clit with the bone of his pubis on every drive.

—Harder —she begged in his ear.

He obeyed. He grabbed both her wrists and held them above her head against the moss, and started pounding into her with intent, making her tits bounce with every thrust. Adriana heard the wet sound of her cunt sucking his cock, the dull slap of his balls against her ass, her own ragged breathing. The moon came into her open eyes.

—Turn over —he told her.

He pulled out, flipped her, and put her on all fours. Adriana lowered her shoulders to the moss and lifted her ass, and Yari rammed into her from behind in one firm stroke that tore a cry from her. There she felt him even deeper, touching new places. He grabbed her by the hips and started fucking her hard, pulling her back with each thrust. He ran a wet thumb along the line of her ass and pressed it to her asshole, not going in, just pressing. Adriana trembled all over. She pushed her ass back for him to shove in. He did. He slid his thumb in up to the knuckle while still driving his cock into her cunt, and Adriana felt both holes filling at once.

—I'm going to come —she panted. —I'm going to come, don't stop.

Yari didn't stop. He sped up. He drove his cock to the hilt, over and over, with his thumb deep in her ass, until the second orgasm split her in half. It rose from behind her knees, ran up her whole spine, and came out in a long cry she didn't bother to hold back. Her cunt clenched in waves around Yari's cock, squeezing it, sucking it inward, and he held on for two, three more thrusts before groaning something in a language she didn't understand and coming inside her. Adriana felt the hot spurts filling her, one, two, three, and the cock kept throbbing long after it had emptied.

Yari collapsed on top of her, trembling, his chest against her back and his face buried in the nape of her neck. They stayed like that, locked together, breathing hard, until he slowly slipped out and she felt the semen run down her thigh to the moss.

***

They stayed for a long time without speaking, tangled in the moss, watching the tall leaves move against the sky. Adriana touched the red feather with one finger. With the other hand she felt her cunt, still swollen, still wet with him inside, and brought her fingers to her mouth to taste both of them.

—Why only the clothes? You could have waited.

Yari smiled, slowly.

—I wasn't going to touch you unless you decided it yourself.

It took Adriana a while to understand the answer. And then she realized that he, without knowing it, had put into words what had been circling in her head all week. The clothes had been a loan, not a theft. They had taken away the things that propped her up as a tourist, as a visitor, as someone passing through. And she, alone, had held herself up without them. The rest, what happened that night, was what came after.

***

In the morning, Yari walked her along the trail to the edge of Esteban and Beatriz's village. He didn't give her back her clothes, because she didn't need them anymore. He left in her hand a small knife with a leather-wrapped handle and a smile that promised nothing and promised everything.

—Will you come back? —she asked.

—The jungle is small.

Adriana watched him go into the trees until the green swallowed him. She stood there for a moment with the tunic slung over her shoulder and the knife in her palm, feeling the morning air on her face and the semen still slowly slipping down the inside of her thigh. She remembered the girl who two weeks earlier had gotten off the bus with a backpack on her shoulder and a badly folded map in her pocket. That girl no longer existed. In her place was another, barefoot, with a borrowed shirt and a leather-handled knife, and a story she would not be telling anyone for a long time.