Moon Fever
Page 28
Antonio walked her to the hut she had first inhabited so many months earlier. He must have sensed her disquiet. “You are sorry he is not here?”
She wasn’t sure sorry was the word. “Worried. He is well, isn’t he? Recovered from the fight with Armando?”
Antonio nodded and shot her a glance from the corner of his eye. “He is physically well.”
Carefully chosen words intended to deliver a carefully chosen message, she realized. As she stepped into the hut and tossed her bag onto the bed, Antonio came to stand beside her. He clasped his hands before him and asked, “Why have you returned, Jessica?”
“I feel the animal inside me. It’s unhappy,” she admitted.
“You speak of it as if it wasn’t a part of you, but it is,” he said, and motioned for her to sit.
She took a spot next to her bag and, with a shrug, said, “Will I ever feel that way?”
“That is up to you to decide. You can battle the spirit Javier gifted you with—”
“Some gift,” she mumbled under her breath, but Antonio plowed forward, undissuaded.
“Or you can ask it to accept you.”
Accept me? Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around? she thought.
After her hesitation, he asked, “Do you wish to do the ritual?”
She searched his peaceful face. It was the face of a man clearly in tune with himself and all around him. She wondered if Javier had found peace with her gone.
Antonio must have sensed her question, since he said, “He has been at war with himself since you left.”
At war with himself?
Maybe in the same way she had been tearing herself apart as she struggled to discover what she wanted. What would end the restlessness of her soul?
“Will the ritual bring peace?”
A glimmer of a smile crept into his features. “It will bring enlightenment. It is up to you to decide what to do with that knowledge.”
Epilogue
J essica stood naked before the bonfire, arms outstretched as Antonio anointed her body with the ointment made from a native tree frog. Antonio had warned her that the frog’s excretions would bring pain and certainly fever but that it was necessary for her to experience pain as she surrendered herself to the jungle and the spirits within its embrace.
Javier’s words came back to her.
The fever burns away our fears and opens our senses to the jungle spirits.
After Antonio finished the anointing, he grabbed a bowl with the red achiote and painted her body with that dye, creating a pattern of rosettes like those she had seen on Javier the night of the feast. Like the dark rosettes on his golden jaguar skin. The gentle touch of the brush on her skin awakened the animal essence within her.
In soft tones, Antonio began chanting a prayer, and the group joined in unison, the cadence of their voices soft and lulling her to a peaceful state as her body began to tingle and then burn in those spots where Antonio had dabbed the ointment and the achiote.
As she met his gaze, he nodded and said, “Go now into the jungle. Meet your spirit, and allow it within you.”
She looked around the group, and their faces blurred in her vision, but not so much that she couldn’t realize that Javier was still not there.
Pain came in the center of her chest, but she tamped it down and turned, racing into the underbrush. She was determined to face the demand of the animal within and put her world to right.
She dashed past the huts and into the underbrush, which lashed at her body as she streaked by, deeper and deeper into the rain forest. The evening air was damp but welcome against the growing heat of her skin. A chill sweat joined the moistness of the night as she raced onward, until her breath rasped in her lungs and her legs collapsed beneath her.
She lay on the jungle floor, the ferns and plants lush on the skin of her back. The light of the moon burned her sensitized eyes. Everything around her seemed brighter and more vibrant. Her head spun as her senses drank in the musky aroma of another animal nearby.
Her head flopped to one side, and she glimpsed the distinctive markings of a jaguar then, gold and brown against the lush green leaves of the underbrush, until the animal slipped closer.
Javier, she somehow knew. Javier. His name raced in her brain and heart, but she remained immobile on the jungle floor, her body refusing to cooperate. Her skin burned with fever from the frog’s poison painted on her body by the shaman.
Her scent had been carried to him on the night breeze as the jaguar loped through the rain forest.
Jessica.
How many months had he prowled the jungle, trying to outrun what he had done? Trying to forget her so that he might find peace?
Now she was here, he realized, and he followed her scent into a moonlit clearing.
She was sprawled on the ground, the pale skin of her naked body bathed in moonlight.
He approached slowly. Muscles loose and head down, to dispel any fear she might have, but he sensed that fear was not what she was feeling.
The heat of her anger and lust touched him from even a few feet away. He dropped to the ground until his belly rubbed against the soft ferns of the jungle floor.
Tentatively, he shuffled forward on his paws, as afraid of driving her away as he was at seeing her, at having her near again.
A surge of heat swept through Jessica, coalescing in her center as Javier’s jaguar form finally reached her side. With a loud snuffle, he nuzzled her cheek with a low, repentant growl.
The ball of heat exploded in her, and the animal erupted from within, her body straining and groaning with the change. A howl erupted from her, and suddenly she was on him, her claws lashing out at the jaguar, who embraced her within his paws and rolled with her.
The snarls and moans of their semibattle filled the night, as they thrashed together along the jungle floor until another change came upon them, and little by little their animal spirits receded, leaving their human forms behind.
Their bodies lay plastered against each other in the thick underbrush of the jungle.
Jessica looked up at him. At the face she both hated and needed. “I wasn’t sure I could come back here.”
“And now?” he asked, the tones of his voice low and with an animal rumble that created a sympathetic pull between her legs.
“I’m not sure I can leave again without…”
“Without what?
“Without you,” she said. A part of her had seemed empty without him, without the forces of the jungle that had summoned her that night.
“And I’m not sure I can stay here without you. I’ve missed you more than I can say,” he admitted.
She reached up and cupped his cheek. “I’ve missed you as well.”
A tight smile came to his lips. “I’m sorry about doubting your intent when you first came here, and I’m sorry that I bit you, only…” He wound his hand through her hair and cradled the back of her head closer, as if afraid she would run from him again. “I’d bite you again if it meant saving your life. Even knowing you’d hate me afterward.”
She rested her forehead against his. “I don’t hate you, Javier, but I was confused. I still am confused.”
“We will find a way, Jessica. We will build a life together somehow. Share time in each other’s world.” He cupped her cheek and ran his thumb across the skin there.
“You’d go to Jersey with me?” she asked with surprise.
“If I have to,” he replied, but a teasing lilt filled his tone.
“I want to share my life with you. Explore what it is that I am now,” she whispered.
He bent his head and nuzzled his nose against hers. “I will help you with that, meu amor.”
She reached up, covered his hand with hers, and urged it downward to cover her breast. “Then love me, Javier.”
A shudder worked through his body, touching her heart. His body, so big and strong, was moved by her words. By her plea, which she repeated again, more urgently. “Amame, Javier.”
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He kissed her, his mouth moving against hers urgently, his tongue slipping in to taste her mouth as he parted her legs and eased inside. The width and length of him filled her completely, and he rested within her, content just to linger for a moment.
She brought her legs up and cradled his thighs, shifting her hips and increasing his penetration. He groaned, the sound loud and vibrating against her lips as he continued to kiss her.
Shifting her face, she dropped a kiss against his cheek and urged his head down to her breast, where his rough tongue circled the tip and made her body tremble.
When he sucked the tip into his mouth, she held his head to her and arched her back, the pleasure growing intensely.
She reached down and cupped his balls, exerted gentle pressure, and he groaned once again.
“This is crazy, isn’t it?” she asked, not that an answer was necessary, as his body jumped against her and he swelled inside her.
He reciprocated by trailing his hand down her body to where their bodies joined. As he shifted, drawing in and out of her, he parted the curls at the juncture of her legs and found the swollen nub. He applied gentle pressure, rotating his thumb against her clitoris, slick and wet from the caress of his body.
She came, her cry sharp in the night, followed by his harsh shout and the explosion of his body in hers.
They settled back onto the jungle floor, the ferns and underbrush alive against their still-joined bodies. They caressed each other, allowed passion to rise over and over again through the course of the night, until the first fingers of dawn crept into the night sky.
Javier moved from her then but maintained a firm grasp on her waist with one big hand. “Come with me.”
Something in his touch communicated his intent. She called to her spirit to join him, and she released her hold on the animal within. She quickly morphed into a jaguar alongside Javier as he underwent his own transformation.
With one huge leap, he bounded into the jungle in the direction of the village, and she followed.
Together they would find a way. She would continue her quest to honor the promise she had made to her sister. Only now she would no longer be alone.
She was crazy for the cat and wouldn’t deny it a second longer.