Chapter 15
Torches of resinous wood lit up the village clearing against the darkness of night and gave off a perfumed fragrance. Birds called through the trees as if questioning the interruption of their sleep. The sumptuous feasting and drinking of the celebration was over. The jokes had been told, the trinkets traded, and the dances of erotic openness had been danced.
Martha now lay in the center of the clearing, her wrists and ankles loosely tied to stakes in the ground. Her head was light from some kind of drink, and she could look around the circle of faces and laugh without embarrassment.
They were happy faces, faces with love in them. It didn't seem to matter to her any more that she was nude. Her breasts hummed with a buzzing tingle. Her thighs yearned to enfold Ken between them. She saw him sitting in the circle with the others, his body broad-shouldered and lean, his cock spearing from his lap from the affection being given it by the lovely girl beside him. She could see him playing with her tits and making her laugh.
She looked down the length of her body and saw the scarlet petals of the flowers covering her cunt. Its stem was up inside her, slowly leaking a kind of sap that made her tissues tremble with need. It was the ornamental flower the women wore for ceremonies, and its power made her writhe with impatience and longing to be fucked.
There was nothing holding her back this time. She had no fears. All inhibitions had been cleared from her mind by the gentle jungle drugs and the erotic sights about her. She could feel her vaginal walls contracting tightly about the flower's stem as if she were too impatient to wait. She closed her eyes and moaned with sizzling passion, waiting for Umpati to make an appearance. If he was as beautiful as Yambiki, she knew she would devour him with her ready cunt.
Yambiki had shown his prowess as chief, working Clara up to an incredible pitch before sliding his cock into her auburn-matted cunt and making her cry out with joy again and again. Winston had watched and fucked his nubile girl with astonishing virility, matching Clara's orgasms with his own in a kind of parallel contest to see which of them could outlast the other. At the last, they had held hands and smiled into each other's eyes and come one more time under the expert sensuality of their partners.
The villagers had fondled each other and not bothered to go into privacy but, rather, fucked where they sat, where they lay, where they stood. Sex was not a mystery to them, not a thing to hide or be ashamed of. Martha saw that their enjoyment of one another's bodies did not imply a lasting commitment, the way her mother had taught her. Envy, as well as desire, swelled inside her and made her pussy run. Once, she had tried to finger herself off in desperation, but one of the women stopped her with a smile, pointing to her golden pussy and saying, "Umpati, Umpati;" in indication that her passion was to be expended on the witch.
Martha heard a small commotion and knew that her time had finally come. She writhed against her bonds with impatience, straining to get a glimpse of the powerful medicine man.
Umpati leaped into the clear space with a roar. He held his legs braced apart in a crouch and hissed harshly. Martha stared at the image before her and nearly passed out with terror. Her mouth worked, but she couldn't utter a sound.
Umpati was covered with the green-brown hide of a cayman. His head showed from the depths of the gaping, jagged-toothed jaws. His arms and legs were inside the scaly skin, and the claws on the ends gleamed in the night. He switched his hips and made the heavy, plated tail thrash back and forth with deadly realism. He hissed again and dropped to all fours and approached Martha with the unforgettable crocodilian waddle.
She wanted to scream. She wanted to break loose and flee into the night and let the jungle swallow her up. But her bonds were tight, and all she could do was writhe before Umpati's advance as if she were in the height of passion.
She tried to make her mind go black so that she wouldn't have to suffer the reptilian fate coming toward her, but it wouldn't obey her will. Whatever they had given her to drink only heightened the realism of the moment and made her acutely aware of it all.
Umpati circled her body, hissing and grunting, digging the cayman claws into the ground, swishing the heavy tail. Someone had thrown something into the fire, and the air was suddenly filled with musk. She lay there petrified with an astonishing mixture of fear and desire and watched Umpati draw closer. The scales on his back shone. The rows of three-inch teeth gleamed. If she had closed her eyes, his sounds would have convinced her that a live alligator was only inches from her body.
She felt the leathery snout caress her side, and her throat choked with a silent scream. She saw the head inside clearly for the first time and was stunned by the beauty of the old man's face inside the hideous jaws.
It was all plainly before her now. The answers were there, ruptured up into her consciousness as they had been stamped there as a girl, no longer hiding in the dark depths of her memory.
Everything came back to Martha as if it were all happening again at this moment, only now there was a difference. Now she knew the truth. She realized now that her father had not left but that he'd been accused by her and had fled from her mother's rage.
It was the cry she had forgotten-the one uttered by her good, kind father when he'd been hit on the head by the other man, the one unseen, who plagued her dreams.
Her hips rose upward again and again, deriving pleasure from the pain of Umpati's prick, as if it were a stick he was wielding to castigate her with for all the years of being wrong.
"Daddy!" she cried. "I'm sorry, Daddy! I'm sorry!"
The bonds at her wrists worked loose, and she threw her arms around the plated back and hugged the cayman to her with delirious joy. She rocked upward and exploded in a violent burst of emotion, propelling herself from the depths of her remorse and guilt toward the sun, reaching for its beauty like a flowering vine, twisting through the jungle of her dark fears and barriers to tower above them.
She felt Umpati's seed burst into her womb to implant the freedom of his spirit there, and she came again. He lay on her a moment while the onlookers were silent, then slowly withdrew. He stood in the light with his cock spearing from the belly of the hide. The thin pinkness of her purity was plainly on it. He raised his claw-tipped arms and hissed and roared. He danced around in a circle and then toppled over. He thrashed on his belly and then rolled over onto his side with a dying growl. The onlookers cheered and began a wild spree of carnal delight. Ken rushed up to Martha and knelt over her.
"Honey-oh, God, Martha, are you all right? Darling-oh, I'm so sorry for you!"
"Ken," she cried. "Ken, I love you! It all came back to me, darling, all of it! Oh, Goddon't leave me! Don't let me leave you ever again! I'm well-I'm cured! For God's sake, Ken, fuck me!"
She pulled hard at him, astounded by the strength her passion had given her. She spread her thighs wide and cupped his loins. She guided his cock into her cunt and moaned with unabashed bliss. Ken hesitated, not understanding quite what had happened, then didn't care. He was in her at last. She was giving herself to him at last-with love.
They shuddered together in one dizzying burst of love after another. She pumped up and down under him and drew his source of life deeply into her vibrant cunt. She felt his seed pour into her, and she tipped back to drink it up, sobbing with happiness for the first time in too many wasted years of confusion.
"Oh you sweet angel, Martha," Clara said softly. She knelt beside her and rocked her back and forth. , "Oh, I thought he was killing you, the way you screamed."
"Clara-Clara, he gave me life! Now I can be a woman!"
"I'm happy for you, darling-so happy."
Martha looked into Winston's happy face and watched him gently hug Clara. "You stole the show, honey," Winston said. "The old man fell down and thrashed around better than he ever had before, showing everybody how strong your good spirit was. It knocked the old cayman devil for a loop, and they're still going crazy."
Martha lifted her head and looked around. The villagers were still fucking everywhere. "Where are the others?" she asked.
"Wendy's over in Yambiki's hut. She's proved herself quite a fucker. I don't know-I think she's trying to make a play for the chief. She-likes that rock around his neck, you know. He seems to like her plump body and blonde hair for a change. She might not be going with us in the morning. I heard her and Bob talking over some of their problems. He's finished with her. Giving Alva pure hell, too."
"He's what?" Martha laughed.
Sharp scratched his head and winked at Ken. "I don't know-something's gotten into him. It's as if he became a man or something. He's bossing Alva around, shoving her down, spanking her-she seems to like it."
"She would," Martha said, thinking back to a night that seemed long ago.
Ken touched her arm. "Honey, tell me something. What Alva was saying on the plane-did you and she...do anything together?"
Martha couldn't help but glance at Clara. The blue eyes twinkled with merriment, and her smile was warm.
"Yes," Martha admitted. "Does that bother you now?"
"Of course not," Clara burst in. "Ken's a big boy and he understands, don't you, Ken?"
Ken looked blank for a moment under her gaze, then broke into a slow, happy smile. "Sure," he said, keeping his eyes on Clara. "Of course I understand. You had to find yourself. Is that right, Clara?"
She laughed warmly. "Martha, you'd better marry this big kid or I'll do it myself."
"Hey, what about me?" Sharp said.
"You can marry Martha. In fact, I think we ought to see how that might work out while the night's still young." She moved smoothly over to Ken and took his youthful prick in her hand, looking warmly into his eyes. "Oh, aren't I just terrible, Martha? I told you they'd better watch out for us."
Martha cupped Winston's hard-soft face in her hand. "Clara, you're like a twenty-year-old nympho again," she said. She lay back, pulling him with her. She smiled at Ken and watched his prick slide smoothly into Clara's body. "Well, come on, Skipper. Aren't you going to fuck the bride? It's an old jungle custom I've just discovered."
Winston smiled and covered her. She closed her eyes and felt him fill her body. She reached out and clutched Ken's hand tightly, gripping it as she soared with him into a new world of life.