Lost in the Green Grass

by Henry Sands

  Jack suggested linking back up with her friends and going on somewhere in town, but at that point, Makenna moved her resting hand from Jack’s knee, up his inner thigh and onto his now increasingly hard cock.

  ‘Why don’t we head back to your fancy yurt you keep telling me about?’ Makenna asked softly.

  Jack ordered the bill, after which they made their way back to the beach. Although it was night, the brightness of the stars above and the illuminated plankton glowing along the breaking shoreline ahead of them provided the perfect balance of light; enough to be able to see where they were going, but not too much to stand out visibly to any other late-night walkers.

  Jack found himself wondering what state he had left his yurt in that afternoon before heading out, desperately hoping it wasn’t such a disgrace as to put off Makenna on arrival. He had learnt that there was nothing women find less appealing than having sex with someone they’ve just met amongst a seabed of empty beer cans, dirty clothes and an overflowing bin with last night’s supper still festering at the bottom of it.

  In the end, he needn’t have worried about what he may or may not have left out, as well before they reached the yurt, Makenna stopped and began stripping off her clothes. First, her little t-shirt and bikini top came straight over her head and dropped to the floor, revealing what Jack felt were frankly gargantuan breasts, given the petiteness of the rest of her body.

  Her little denim shorts followed, revealing just the tight green thong-like bikini bottoms she had been wearing. They were held up by a bow on each side with a drawstring. Makenna pulled the drawstring and the bikini bottoms came apart in two pieces and fell to the ground. For a split second she stood there, and Jack was mesmerised. She was the most perfect physical specimen he had ever set his eyes on. And she was here, standing naked in front of him.

  The moment of silence was swiftly broken as Makenna turned towards the sea and said, ‘C’mon, Jack, race me in,’ and with that she turned and ran towards the breaking waves in front of them.

  Jack, still not quite believing his luck, removed his clothes as quickly as he was able to, while getting one foot caught up in his shorts, nearly causing him to fall over. Finally, he was clear and running towards the sea to catch up with Makenna, who was already through the first break of waves.

  As the Caribbean Sea remained shallow for further than Jack expected, by the time he reached Makenna, he could still keep his feet firmly on the sandy seabed beneath him. This was fortuitous because no sooner had he reached her than she jumped towards him, wrapping her arms around him and kissed him again, this time even more energetically than before. Using the sandbank beneath her, she kicked herself off the ground and straddled her legs around Jack’s waist. With her left hand, she reached down and firmly clasped Jack’s now heavily swollen cock.

  Her hand worked its way up and down Jack’s shaft a couple of times, before she manoeuvred all of him inside her. Throwing her head back to look at the stars, Jack pulled her hips down, thrusting his cock as deep into her as he could go.

  Her weightlessness in the water enabled Jack to control the movement of her body in a way he knew he would never have been strong enough to do onshore, and he intended to make the most of it.

  In the distance, they could just hear the faint sounds of a jungle music beat starting over the sound of the waves around them. As Jack felt himself getting closer to climaxing, Makenna threw her head forward again and whispered into his ear, ‘Come with me.’ A few moments later, they let go of their tangled embrace and fell backwards into the warm water.

  They swam back towards the beach and gathered up their clothes. Jack handed his shirt for Makenna to use as a towel, before drying himself off with it. Once both were dressed, they lay down on the dunes behind them in silence, Jack with his arm around her, and looked up to watch the stars.

  Jack closed his eyes, with Makenna’s head resting on his chest. He soon drifted off to sleep.

  *

  When Jack was woken a few hours later by the rising sun, Makenna had gone. In his pocket he saw a folded receipt, on the back of which was written, That was a wonderful evening. M x

  At first, Jack was taken aback by her sudden departure, before he smiled. What a cool girl, he thought to himself. These American girls knew how to enjoy themselves.

  Inside his jeans pocket was his phone, which had eight new WhatsApp messages from the group chat, Tainted-in-Tulum, which he shared with Leonardo, Diego and a few other friends working there.

  The messages were mostly updating each other with the various goings-on in town, along with a selection of photos from amusing scenarios of holidaymakers they had come across. These were normally of individuals in compromising situations, including one of a couple seen the night before riding their rented cruiser bicycles completely naked down the main strip of the town.

  Jack laughed and made his way back to his yurt. He knew they had new arrivals coming that day that needed welcoming.

  - Chapter Three -

  Norfolk, England

  Diana McAlpine’s shooting weekend two weeks before Christmas had been in Lucinda’s calendar since late June. While many of Lucinda’s friends had stopped asking them to social events, Diana’s invitations inevitably, and loyally, continued to arrive.

  Since Diana’s husband, Charlie, had died three years ago unexpectedly from a heart attack, aged sixty-four, Lucinda had grown close to Diana, and the two women tried to meet for coffee mornings at a boutique hotel in nearby Swaffham every other week.

  Lucinda noticed that some women retreat into themselves when they lose their husbands, choosing to save the memories they had rather than seeking new ones, but Diana was the opposite. Her husband had been a larger-than-life character who was always the last to leave any party. Being the centre of attention that he so often was meant Diana had rather taken a back seat. Since his untimely death, she had thrown herself into social life more than anyone else Lucinda knew. But in one of the few moments Diana had let her guard down, she confessed to Lucinda that the main reason she kept herself so busy was actually because it distracted her from thinking too much about Charlie, who she missed desperately.

  His premature death meant that not only had Diana lost her husband of thirty-two years, but also brought about the end of her time living at Bickham Hall, a fine Jacobean house surrounded by rolling parkland and a 3,000-acre farm that her husband had inherited soon after they married.

  Her eldest son, Hugo, had packed in his job in the city and moved his young family up from the house they had only recently moved to in West London to take over the Hall and farm.

  A separate farmhouse on the estate had been converted for Diana which, while perfectly comfortable and tucked away in one of Norfolk’s few small valleys, was quite a transition from running the large household she had become used to.

  Hugo had made many changes to the running of the farm since he had taken over. Aside from the shoot, of course, which was already one of the finest partridge shoots in the county and had clearly been a primary area of focus for Charlie and his trusty gamekeeper, Tommy. This was at the expense of what he deemed to be overly extravagant modern-day expenditure, such as heating the house outside of arctic conditions or replacing the temperamental Aga, despite Diana’s protestations at never having managed to have served the Christmas turkey before 9pm.

  In order to ensure that his mother still felt involved in the house, on moving in, Hugo encouraged her to co-host a shooting weekend with him each year, to which she invited most of his late father’s best friends.

  The reality was that these weekends were as much to keep his mother busy as to have an opportunity to see his father’s old friends, who never declined an invitation to spend a day in the company of the next generation of “scoundrels”.

  Lucinda admired Diana and loved her generous and lively weekends, but as much as she was looking forward to this year’s event,
there was a part of her that now dreaded the prospect of dragging Anthony along in tow, given the circumstances. Not exactly the consummate sportsman, Lucinda could happily laugh off his rather imprecise shooting, but she hadn’t got used to his complete lack of ability or appetite to socialise normally with the other husbands. This was half the reason she didn’t mind that their invitations had dried up, but she was damn well going to grin and bear any embarrassment that might arise on Diana’s weekend, which was always jolly, and an admirable example of making the most out of whatever life threw at you.

  *

  After lunch, the women decided to leave the men to their own devices for the final drive and walk back along the River Stiffkey towards Diana’s house.

  The sun was out, and the reflection of the hedgerows glistened in the water. Norfolk looked beautiful in the soft light, with endless skies above them that reminded her of the Kenyan plains. Diana dropped back slightly from the others to remove a stone from her boot, and Lucinda took the opportunity to wait with her.

  ‘Is everything okay, Lucinda? I mean, really okay?’ Diana asked, sensing Lucinda wanted to get something off her chest.

  Lucinda just smiled at Diana, before saying, ‘Do you know what, I think so. I’ve got a plan.’

  ‘That sounds dangerous,’ Diana replied with a wry smile, before continuing, ‘but be careful what you wish for. Things aren’t perfect with Anthony, I know, but the grass isn’t always greener on the other side. And sometimes you only really appreciate how good something is once it’s gone.’ Lucinda understood clearly the point she was making but also knew that her words weren’t going to be enough to talk her out of it.

  With that, Lucinda and Diana caught up with the rest of the group and continued on their way back to the house, ostensibly to prepare the tea. By the time the men had returned to the house, the women were finishing off their second bottle of Champagne as they shared stories by the fire in the sitting room.

  A couple of the husbands came in and ran their cold, wet hands up the backs of their wives, leading to pleads of mercy from the women concerned and an eruption of laughter from the others. Needless to say, Anthony was not one of these men but instead watched on from the doorway with a forced smile, before announcing to himself only that he was going to skip tea and head up for a bath, if no one minded. Lucinda quietly slipped away from the group shortly afterwards and followed Anthony to their room, by which point he was already in the bath humming away as he always did.

  Lucinda rested her head against the bathroom door and listened for a few moments. Perhaps now was the time to speak to him, rather than waiting until after Christmas. The weight she felt building up on her shoulders was becoming unbearable, and she wanted to get her announcement off her chest. She took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door.

  ‘Hello, darling; I didn’t hear you there at all,’ Anthony said, sitting up in the bath. Lucinda looked on at him, with a growing sense of pity.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Anthony asked.

  ‘Oh. Um, yes. Yes, all absolutely fine. I just wanted to check you had had a good day. That’s all.’

  ‘Very good, actually. Thanks, darling. Really enjoyed myself.’

  ‘Great. Well, see you downstairs shortly.’

  Lucinda closed the door and wondered to herself what she was thinking. Of course, now was not the right time to speak to him. No, she would stick to the original plan and wait until after Christmas. If that meant she had to carry the burden until then, then fine.

  - Chapter Four -

  Tulum, Mexico

  The Christmas season in Tulum was the town’s busiest period of the year, mostly for a mix of wealthy East Coast Americans and Europeans escaping away for some winter sun.

  For Jack, however, his three-month stay in the beach town was approaching its end. Leonardo had already lined up another young traveller to take over Jack’s position when he left. He was a 21-year-old man called Gabriel who lived an hour north of Los Angeles and had got in touch over Facebook six weeks ago. Leonardo had asked Gabriel to arrive a few days before Jack left so they could do a proper handover of responsibilities.

  The downside of this was that Jack’s already small yurt now had to accommodate two people, but the plus side was that he was now largely free to fully enjoy what remained of his time in Tulum without having to worry about the camp.

  A week of partying culminated in Jack’s final night at the Papaya Playa beach club, where they were hosting their legendary Christmas party, this year with Diego DJing.

  Leonardo had already scheduled a “meditative healing group” on the beach at sunset, after which he and Jack planned to step it up a gear or three and head on to the party together.

  To be truthful, Jack was yet to buy into the hype of beachside meditative healing in the way that so many other young people in Tulum did, but he didn’t mind joining in occasionally.

  Even though Leonardo swore by the homeopathic power of the “massage”, Jack rather suspected it was, at least in part, the power of the unsuspecting female holiday-makers that led to his self-appointment as the local spiritual guru.

  Jack had vaguely agreed to join Leonardo in this evening’s session, and as he arrived at the scene, he immediately cursed himself for not having followed his own newly learnt but invaluable rule of extracting a specific job description out of his hippy friend. Leonardo had “forgotten” to mention the exact nature of today’s class, which became clear to Jack only on reading the scrawled writing on the amateurish chalkboard outside the tent: Tantric Meditative Healing. Suffice to say, it didn’t look like a normal yoga class.

  Leonardo had only recently declared himself to be a tantric yoga instructor, having spent a weekend away with a supposedly qualified trainer he had met in a bar at the far end of the beach. She had taken him to a jungle retreat, two hours south of Tulum, where she had promised to train him up. What “training” actually took place during this time remained highly suspect, given the stories that Leonardo occasionally recounted.

  Tonight’s class was all about focussing upon the spiritual yoni massage – yoni being the Sanskrit name for a vagina – and it was a genre of class that Jack had thus far managed to avoid. At these evenings, often unlikely couples would sit facing each other, while Leonardo would demonstrate with his own partner, who was invariably the hottest attendee of the evening, how to release female sexual repression by opening up the energy channels inside her.

  Increasingly, though, Leonardo had noticed that fewer couples were coming to the class and instead he had found a front row of single women, who were disconcertingly eager to offer their services for the demonstration, and partner with himself. That certainly changed the dynamic of the class, though on reflection he thought to himself that there could certainly be worse jobs.

  On this particular evening, there were three different couples in the class, each looking around slightly awkwardly as they always did at the start.

  To help them feel more at ease, Leonardo had set up a series of candles in glass lanterns in a circle, while a small Bose speaker played the requisite chanting music. Tonight was Buddha Bar Chill, Leonardo’s go-to soundtrack.

  Jack’s job was to check off the names of the pre-booked list of guests who had paid $50 each for the hour’s session.

  Once Jack was happy that the whole class was present and correct, he nodded to Leonardo, who kicked off proceedings: ‘Everyone, relax, and take long, deep breaths. Listen to the sound of the ocean and feel the energy of the earth beneath us. Move closer to your partner and feel the rhythm of your breathing together.’

  Jack had just perched himself against a nearby sand dune, where he planned to contemplate the next chapter of his life until the class was over.

  He had just started rolling himself a cigarette, when he spotted a couple of late arrivals: two middle-aged women, giggling nervously to each other. Jack jumped up to greet t
hem.

  The first woman seemed to be the instigator of their attendance. With thick, curly dark hair that fell just above her shoulders, she had a muscular physique and a large tattoo of a dragon down her right thigh.

  The second woman was smaller, with mousey hair cut into a short bob, a nose piercing, and was wearing a green vest that hung loosely off her, exposing much of her chest as she leant forward. Both women were attractive in their own way, but years of sun and hard living were starting to creep into their faces. If he had to guess, Jack would say they were both about sixty but maintained figures that disguised their age.

  ‘Can I help you ladies?’

  ‘Yes, hi’ said the first woman. ‘I’m Chrissie and this is Noelle. We’re here for the yoga class. We tried to book through our hotel, but they said it was too late and we were better off just turning up now to see if there’s space.’

  ‘Well, the class has literally just started, but I think it should be fine to join. Why don’t you get started, and we can sort out the details later. If you’d both like to sit down opposite each other next to that couple in the corner, we can get started.’ Jack pointed to a space, just at the back of the circle where the couples were now deep into the initial meditation stage.

  The women paused and looked at each other before Chrissie blushed. ‘Oh, thanks. But we’re not here to massage each other! Not exactly lesbians.’ She winked at her friend. ‘We heard maybe there was an option to join the instructors?’

  ‘Oh right. Um, okay. Hold on one sec; let me just check with Leonardo. He’s the instructor.’ Jack walked quietly to the front of the circle and whispered to his friend that he had two women who wanted to work with him as the instructor’s demonstrator. Leonardo responded that he could only take one, and if they both wanted to join the class, Jack would have to partner with one of the women himself.