Alone in the Forest at Night, with My Little Secret

It happened during our second-year field practicum, and I’m going to tell you all about it. We set out one Friday morning for a forest reserve in the mountains, a group of about forty students: the biology majors were thrilled with their notebooks and insect traps, while those of us in veterinary medicine—including me—were more resigned. It was mandatory, so there we were.

I’d dressed with more sense than most of the others. Beige cargo pants, a long-sleeved shirt, a multi-pocket vest, and mid-calf boots. In the side pocket at my thigh I carried the essentials: a lighter, a small flashlight, wet wipes, lip balm, and a few other things. Yes, I also had a spare sanitary pad. Not because I needed it—my period had ended a few days earlier—but because you never know.

As for body hair, I’ll admit that was a practical decision. My friend Lucía, who’d done fieldwork the year before, warned me that in the forest, every woman eventually ends up pissing among the bushes without the luxury of toilet paper or privacy. So I decided not to shave down there. It was more comfortable. Period.

The day was long but interesting. The biologists set up camera traps to record nocturnal wildlife, searched for fungi, and collected soil samples. We helped wherever we could and basically watched an ecosystem function when no one was disturbing it. Or almost no one.

At dusk we made camp beside the stream, and the other part of the practicum began: the unofficial part. The professors looked the other way as backpacks full of alcohol appeared. There was beer, cheap wine in cartons, and someone had brought a flask of something that burned too much to have a respectable name. I drank. More than I should have, but not an outrageous amount. Let’s say I was at that pleasant point where everything seems funny and your inhibitions loosen a little.

Around midnight I felt the pressure in my bladder. I got up, took the flashlight from my vest—although the nearly full moon made it hardly necessary—and walked toward the stream. It was the most logical place: far from camp, with enough vegetation for cover and the sound of the water to disguise any noise.

I went about a hundred yards away, found a large rock beside the stream, and squatted behind it. The relief was immediate and complete. Then I looked for the wipes in the side pocket. My fingers brushed against the lighter, the flashlight, the pad…and then touched something that wasn’t what I was looking for.

The vibrating lipstick.

I pulled it out and laughed to myself in the darkness. It was a small, discreet toy, perfectly disguised as a luxury lipstick. A friend had given it to me for my birthday, and I’d put it in that pocket a couple of weeks earlier while testing it, forgetting to return it to its usual place. The wipes, meanwhile, were probably at home, neatly arranged on my desk.

I remained crouched for a moment, looking at the object between my fingers. The moon traced a silver path across the water. Fireflies—an increasingly rare sight—blinked among the bushes. There was no one around. Only the sound of the stream and the wind in the pines.

Well.

I sat down on the rock. It was cold, but not unbearably so. I lowered my pants to my knees and settled myself. I turned the toy on with a gentle twist and felt the familiar vibration travel through my fingers.

I started over my blouse. My vest lay on the ground at my feet. I slowly ran the vibrator over my left breast and noticed that the fabric dulled the sensation too much. So I did the sensible thing: I unfastened my bra beneath my shirt and pulled it off without removing the shirt. A skill every woman masters without thinking. I left it on the rock beside me.

Now that was better. With only the thin fabric of my shirt between us, the vibration reached my nipple directly. The cold night had already made them taut, and contact with the toy made them even harder. I closed my eyes for a moment and let the sounds of the forest mingle with the sensation. I pinched my other nipple between two fingers, tugging it until the sharp pleasure drew a gasp from me. They were swollen, throbbing, so sensitive that every pass of the vibrator made me squeeze my thighs together.

I pulled my shirt up to my neck. The cold air struck my bare tits and raised gooseflesh all over my body. In the silver moonlight they looked pale, their nipples dark and hard as pebbles. I pressed the vibrator directly against one and let out a moan that I had to muffle against my elbow. I went from one breast to the other, pressing the toy against the tip until the sensation became almost painful, then lowering it in a straight line down my stomach so the tingling could spread.

I lowered my hand slowly.

I’d said I wasn’t going to shave, and I’d kept my word. The brush of hair against my own fingers felt novel, almost intimate, as though that small difference reminded me that I was outside the familiar world. I ran the vibrator along my inner thigh, letting the vibration approach without quite reaching its destination. I bit my lip. The alcohol made everything slower and more intense at the same time.

When I finally put it where I wanted it, I almost made a sound far too loud for the silence of the forest. I covered my mouth with my wrist. The vibrator buzzed softly against my clit, and I had to make a conscious effort not to tense my legs, to remain open and exposed to the cold mountain air. I was already soaked. I could feel my pussy opening on its own, my lips swelling and parting, the wetness running down the crack of my ass until it dripped onto the stone.

I slid two fingers of my other hand inside, slowly, just to check. They went in without resistance, all the way to the hilt, and came out dripping. I brought them to my mouth and sucked them, tasting myself. I was hot, so hot, hotter than I’d been in weeks. I lowered them again, and this time plunged them in hard, fucking myself to the rhythm of the vibrator on my clit, feeling the walls of my pussy contract as they searched for something bigger.

There was a strange, almost philosophical moment. I’m in a forest, in the middle of nowhere, masturbating beneath the full moon while my classmates sleep a hundred yards away. And that thought, instead of stopping everything, sped it up. I imagined one of them watching me from behind a tree. Seeing me spread my legs over the rock, drive my fingers into my pussy, hearing my moans escape. The idea made me clench my teeth and fuck myself faster.

I changed the angle. I placed the end of the vibrator at the entrance to my vagina, without penetrating deeply, just letting the vibration transfer inward. With my other hand I gripped my mound tightly, tugging lightly at the hair, a habit I’d developed on my own that always worked. The combination of that slight tension and the direct vibration was exactly what I needed.

But it wasn’t enough. I pushed the vibrator inside, sliding it all the way in, feeling the buzzing sink into my pussy and make everything tremble inside. I fucked myself with it, pulling it out and pushing it back in, listening to the wet sound it made every time it went deep. With the thumb of the same hand I squeezed my clit, while my other hand went back up to my tits to tug my nipples until my vision blurred.

I moaned. Quietly, but I moaned. The sound dissolved into the noise of the stream. A few stray words escaped me, things I would never say out loud: slut, that feels so good, more, fuck me harder, whispered against my own wrist. No one was going to hear me, and yet I felt embarrassed—and even hotter hearing myself say them.

I pulled the vibrator out and placed it back against my clit, pressing harder this time. My fingers stayed inside, curled as they searched for that rough spot on the front wall that made me lose my mind. When I found it, I began rubbing it in circles while the toy buzzed against my swollen hood. My legs trembled on their own, my heels dug into the moss, and the stone beneath my ass was hot and slippery with my own fluids.

I leaned back farther against the rock and let everything flow. The orgasm arrived in an orderly fashion, building in short waves until the last one was long and made me arch my back. I clenched my teeth to keep from screaming. I felt my pussy contract in spasms around my fingers, felt myself squirt over my hand and wrist, felt a lash of pleasure climb through my belly and pierce my nipples. My feet stayed planted on the ground, my boots damp with dew, and the vibrator kept buzzing against me until I moved it away because it became too much.

I stayed still for a few seconds, breathing. My thighs were still trembling. I ran my hand over the crack of my ass to clean myself a little and pulled it away soaked, threads of cum stretching between my fingers. I licked off what I could and rubbed the rest against the stone. The smell of sex had worked its way into my pubic hair, my fingers, all the skin of my stomach.

Then the cold arrived all at once. The kind of cold you don’t feel when you’re aroused, but that envelops you as soon as your body returns to its normal temperature. I stood up quickly, pulled my pants over my still-pulsing pussy, and felt around for my bra on the rock. I couldn’t find it. I searched again. Nothing.

I turned on the flashlight and searched the ground around me. Between the stones, the grass, the edge of the stream. The bra had vanished, or at least I, in that state, couldn’t locate it. It was far too cold to keep looking. I slipped the vibrator into my pocket, grabbed my vest, and hurried back to camp as fast as I could.

I got into my sleeping bag without fully undressing and took a while to warm up. When I finally did, I fell asleep instantly, my panties still sticky and the smell of pussy on my hands.

***

The next morning, voices woke me before my head was ready to receive them. I came out of the tent blinking, my hair tousled and my mouth dry, and saw almost the entire group gathered around one of the laptops the biologists had brought to review the footage from the camera traps.

—Finally! —someone said when they saw me—. We thought you were going to sleep until noon.

—What’s going on? —I asked, yawning.

—The night cameras caught something very interesting —someone else replied, with a smile I didn’t like at all.

I approached, still not understanding. And then I saw the screen.

It was me.

The image was black and white, with the grainy texture infrared photos have, but it was unmistakably me. Sitting on the rock beside the stream. My shirt pulled up to my neck, my tits bare, my nipples standing out white against the gray of my chest. My legs spread wide, my pants lowered to my boots, and one hand buried between my thighs, leaving no doubt what I was doing. In another, closer shot, my mouth was open in the middle of a moan, and the shine of the vibrator could be seen entering my pussy.

The silence that followed lasted approximately half a second.

—Nice toy, Dani —someone called from the back—. Where did you buy it? My girlfriend’s going to love it.

—And the way you put it in, Jesus —another added—. I thought you veterinary girls were shyer.

—That isn’t mine —I replied, convincing no one.

—Of course it isn’t —they said in unison, and the group burst out laughing.

Then someone waved something in the air. It was my bra.

—I found it beside the stones in the stream when I went to get water this morning —he said, with a huge grin—. Thirty-two, underwire. Very elegant for a field practicum, Daniela.

I felt my nipples, traitors once again, react to the morning cold through my shirt, poking against the fabric like two hard buttons everyone could see. I crossed my arms. It didn’t help much.

—Give it back to me right now —I managed to say with something resembling firmness.

What worried me most wasn’t the embarrassment of the moment. It was the image itself. How many copies were there already? Where was it going to end up? My degree, the professors, the department…my mind began constructing catastrophes at top speed.

As if he’d heard my thoughts, Professor Herrera appeared among the groups. He was in charge of the practicum, one of those teachers who look as though they’ve seen everything and are no longer surprised by anything.

—What’s all the commotion this early? Have you collected all the cameras yet? —he asked, looking at the laptop screen. He looked at it for a second. Then at me. Then back at the screen—. Daniela —he said at last, with a calm that intimidated me more than any shout—. I think we need to talk. Get changed and come to the cabin when you’re ready.

He left, carrying the laptop under his arm.

I changed in three minutes. I walked toward the cabin wondering exactly what kind of conversation awaited me.

What happened inside that cabin is another story.