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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Wick

It really shouldn’t have been possible to stay inside her all night. That said, the damn hammock made any sort of sleep moving impossible. That, mixed with the fact that our bodies were absolutely dead tired, and, yeah, that’s how it worked out.

I’d woken up at the crunch of something in the canopy above us, already finding myself half-hard from the pleasant dreams I’d been having.

And the second I felt her warm, tight walls around me, I went from semi to fully hard in a single breath.

As much as my balls ached with need for release, and my whole body was tense and aching with the need to thrust, I forced myself to stay still and let her sleep.

Even before Vi’s head lifted—eyes wide, lips parted—her pussy tightened around my cock.

“Found the one perk to this uncomfortable damn hammock,” I said, rocking my hips into her.

Her breath caught and a low whimper escaped her.

That was all the encouragement I needed.

My hand sank into her ass, pulling her against me as I thrust forward, letting me thrust deeper.

Vi’s nails dug into my arm as we started to move together.

It wasn’t long before she shifted fully over me, taking over, the new position driving her to that edge faster than either of us were prepared for.

Her face pressed to my chest, muffling her cries as her pussy spasmed around my cock over and over.

Frustrated with the lack of movement, I yanked back the zipper of the netting. Anchoring Vi to my chest, I shifted to a seated position, legs hanging out of the hammock, Vi still on my lap.

She shifted back, lifting her arms up to let me remove her shirt, exposing her to me completely.

And, fuck, I’d never seen anything more beautiful than her right then. Her perfect body on full display, the Amazon a backdrop behind her.

My hands slid up her sides, cupping her breasts, loving the way her head fell back and a little mewling sound escaped her.

I teased her nipples as her hips did little rocking motions as the need grew within her once again.

It didn’t take long before she was desperate for movement.

My hands held her hips as she started to ride me.

The harder she rode me, the more the hammock swung, making her panic and freeze, causing the building orgasm to keep eluding her.

Hooking an arm around her, I pushed to my feet, turning, and dropping her onto her back in the hammock instead.

A gasp escaped her as I grabbed the sides of the hammock and used it and its momentum to slam her back onto my cock.

“Oh, my God,” she cried as I fucked her just like that. Hard and deep. Taking my time to take every fucking inch of her each time.

Her legs writhed, and her hands went to her own tits, working them for me as I drove her up, her pussy getting tighter and tighter until I could barely move inside her anymore.

Then, with a spasming that had my own release surging out of me, she came, her cries filling my ears.

It wasn’t until we both came down that we realized how much noise we’d been making, how we could have been giving ourselves away.

We broke apart in unison, both heading off into the bushes to clean up and get dressed.

By the time Violet made her way back, grumbling about how her bra was still damp and didn’t want to slide on, I had the hammock broken down and stashed away.

“We have some fruit left, but we should probably walk and eat. We have to find a water source today.”

Violet nodded, slipped her backpack on, then reached to tie her long hair up.

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” she said, shooting me a guilty little look.

I set a slower pace than I should have, mindful of how sore my body was, so I figured Violet—who had endured more the day before and who had to take two strides to every one of mine—was struggling even more.

We lucked upon another banana tree, loading our backpacks up with bright yellow and green fruit.

It was a relief to know we would stay fed. And that there was at least a little water content in fruit. But I was painfully mindful of how badly we needed to come across some water.

In my pack, I had two bag filters that worked by filling them and squeezing the water out into another receptacle. It was a bit of a process, but we could stock up using our empty water bottles so we could get from one water source to another.

One good thing about the Amazon was that we would never be too far from water. There were something like a thousand water sources throughout it. We just had to find one.

“I’m going to ask something I am probably better off not knowing.”

“Okay,” I said, glancing over at her.

“How long would it take to cross the whole rainforest?”

Yeah, that wasn’t going to be a morale-boosting answer. But I wasn’t going to lie to her either.

“From one side of the Amazon River to the other… over two years. Two years, four months, I think. Give or take, depending on speed.”

“So, keeping that in mind, should we be concerned that this is getting so much more dense all of a sudden?” she asked, gesturing around.

“No,” I assured her. “We are walking west. Ecuador is as west as you can get. We will get out eventually.”

So long as we didn’t get chased in the wrong direction again and need to course-correct, we would reach civilization eventually. We just had to stay the course.

“I think the river we… crossed,” I said, getting a wince from Violet, “was the Caquetá-Japurá, given how big it was and those cliffs.”

“Is that a… good thing? Is it at the edge of the rainforest?”

“Not exactly,” I admitted. That particular river went from the edge of the rainforest to pretty deep inside, where it met the Amazon River. “But it tells us where we are. Roundabout.”

“I guess any insight is better than nothing. And we—“

“Sh,” I said, holding up a hand. “Hear that?”

“The men?” she whispered, turning in a circle.

“Water,” I said, the relief palpable. “Over that way.”

We’d both clearly been suffering in silence with our dehydration. Because as soon as we heard water, we both fucking ran.

“Don’t drink it,” I warned when we came up to a white-water river, the current creating racket that drowned out the usual animal sounds all around.

“I can just rinse, right?” she asked, leaning down at the water’s edge.

“Yeah, of course. Just try not to get it in your mouth.”

I set my pack down, digging around until I found the bag with the filter, thankful I’d decided to fully pack the bag, even though I’d only planned on a short trip. With a guide.

I filled the bag as Violet scrubbed fresh water up her arms, over her chest, around the back of her neck.

“What the hell are you doing?” I asked as she moved flat on her back to hang her head over the water.

“Listen, your hair is short; you don’t get it.”

Then she dipped her hair back into the current and reached up to scrub at her scalp. “Honestly, better than any shower head I’ve ever come across,” she said as she sat back up after squeezing out her hair. “I feel almost human again. Though it would be nice to get in the water.”

“That water would rip you away in a heartbeat,” I warned her as I handed her an empty water bottle so I could squeeze filtered water into it.

It was a slow process to fill the bottles, only to have us both guzzle down two each before starting the process over again, so we were stocked up.

“Isn’t that going to be heavy?” Violet asked as I filled up the filter bag again, then worked on fitting it into my pack.

“Yeah, but it will be worth it if we don’t have to try to seek out another water source if we run through the bottles.”

With that, we started walking again, this time with a little more speed—bodies hydrated, stomachs somewhat full of fruit.

It was impossible to tell how much ground we covered, and this part of the forest was thick as hell, making progress likely a little slower, despite the quicker pace.

We’d even lucked into another small rain shower that kept the sweating at bay as we went.

My rough estimate was it was close to dusk when we stopped near a banana plant.

“Oh, wow, those are far up there, huh?”

“Yeah, this is a really mature one.” I’d lucked out that the other few I’d come across were on the shorter side with some low-lying bananas that were reachable with just a few jumps.

If we wanted some of the ripe bananas on this plant, I was going to need to climb.

We were low on food. And I hadn’t come across more guava or anything else on our walk.

If we wanted to keep morale up, we needed more food.

“Alright. I am going to see if I can find some rocks to stand on.”

“Rocks?” Violet asked, brows pinched.

“Seems like we’re in an area of old lava flow. I’ve seen more rocks around. If I can get one under the tree, that might give me a couple of feet, so I only have to climb maybe five or so feet.”

“Shouldn’t I come with you?”

“I’d rather you stay here, so we don’t lose the tree. You can whistle me back.”

“I can’t whistle.”

“You can’t whistle? Really?”

“I know. Believe me, I’ve tried. But I can Marco Polo you back.”

“That’ll work. I won’t go far. If I can’t find a good rock, I’ll circle back and just use the climbing strap I have.”

I was only opting to find a rock or two out of sheer laziness. I was uncharacteristically worn out and didn’t want to tax my upper body as much as my lower body felt.

But I would do what I needed to do to keep us fed, one way or another.

“Okay. But if some giant beetle attacks me while you’re gone, I’ll never forgive you.”

My smile was immediate as I closed the space between us grabbing Vi by the back of her neck and hauling her against me as my lips claimed hers.

It was supposed to be a quick kiss, but it wasn’t long before we were getting a little carried away.

It was the hoot of a monkey somewhere overhead that had us breaking apart.

“Go get your rock. Then we get our food. And get into the hammock together.”

I was looking forward to it.

Both of us on our sides, her facing away from me, my hand between her thighs for a while before I was sliding into her from behind…

“I won’t be long. Keep an ear out for me.”

As it would turn out, she wouldn’t have to listen hard.

Because as I knelt down on the ground beside a particularly large rock, trying to roll it, something crawled up my leg.

Before I could even see what it was, the bite started.

The debilitating, indescribable pain told me what it was.

A bullet ant.

Fuck.