“You need pants?” she asked, surprised. “Where no people live, you still need pants?”
Matthew laughed again. “Hey,” he said without thinking. “You’re the one who took my sweater.”
A breeze passed between them. He heard the thin fabric of his tent shudder in the wind. The woman’s hair reached towards him, and through the tendrils’ shadows, Matthew saw her mouth form a small smile. His heart began to beat faster.
“You want your sweater back?” the woman said, her head cocked but her smile now a smirk, as if she already knew the answer.
Matthew felt the familiar blood rush and the first stirrings of interest in his groin. “Yeah,” he said, and if the woman heard his voice crack in the middle of his sentence, she didn’t let on. Her amber eyes were alight with something that could have been mischief if that predatory smile didn’t promise she was going to destroy him. Slowly, she pulled her arms from the sweater, lifted it over her head, and let it fall to the ground. Matthew kept his eyes on her face, desperately aware of the growing strain in his pants. He felt, somehow, that if he didn’t look down at her naked body, everything would remain stable and he would retain control.
But the woman began trailing her hands down her chest, and he was helpless. He followed the path she made over her full breasts, up the slopes of twin peaked nipples, down the curved lines of her ribs to the flesh of her stomach, and still farther down to the thick, dark mass of pubic hair curling in between her legs. Matthew watched with his mouth half open as the woman let a finger burrow into the curls and press the hooded mound within. She closed her eyes and moaned.
“I love this body,” she hissed. Matthew’s cock strained so hard against the tent of his shorts, the zipper began rubbing his length. He balled his fists, trying to keep some semblance of control over his impulses. The woman opened her eyes. They glowed, and he couldn’t tell if it was the moonlight or the desire that made them appear yellow. She padded closer and closer to him, her breasts swinging gently. She came so close that her hardened brown nipples brushed his chest. She placed a hand over the swollen bulge of his crotch. He couldn’t help it: he bucked into her touch. The woman brought her lips to his neck and nipped his skin. She yanked the t-shirt, dank with sweat and dirt, from his torso. Then she turned around, grabbing his hands and placing them on her breasts, and began to rub her rump up and down against his crotch, as though moving through the first steps of an erotic dance. Matthew squeezed and thumbed her breasts and pressed into her.
“Bite me,” she moaned, her hips gyrating in sync with his thrusting. His cock felt hot and trapped inside his pants. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face as he obediently lowered his head to her neck and teethed on her brown skin. She smelled fresh and musky, like the drooping juniper trees of the Chisos. He nuzzled her behind her ear. The woman gasped. He watched her twist her arm to bring her hand behind her in the small amount of space left between them. She let her fingers drum against the fabric over his erection. Matthew suckled on her earlobe and pinched the sides of her breasts. They weighed well in his hands, as if they’d always meant to be placed in his palms. He tweaked her nipples. The woman arched her back, then bent over and buried her ass in his crotch and began thrusting backwards. Matthew gripped her fleshy hips and mimicked her movements, until they were slapping against each other in synchronized desperation. The woman pushed her hair behind her ears and turned to look back at him. She bared her teeth, and Matthew felt a glimmer of surprise that his cock jumped in response. She grabbed his finger and threaded it through her thick pubic hair to her wet, slick clit. He pressed and she groaned with need. Matthew began pumping his body against her rump harder and harder, his entrapped member throbbing with an almost painful arousal.
“Spill your seed,” she demanded, her voice husky and low. “Do it now.”
He swirled his finger against wet skin, then pressed down and held on. The woman bucked, reared her head back, and howled at the moon. The strange, wild howl sent him over the edge. Matthew shouted as he felt thick, white come coating the inside of his shorts and spurting onto his stomach. The orgasm racked his body. He shuddered, white stars filling his vision. Matthew laid his head down until his forehead rested on the ridges of the woman’s bare spine. Dimly, he realized they were both collapsing onto the hard, cold ground. He felt the woman curl into his body, threading her legs through his. Suddenly he felt something soft, like fur, covering his body. His eyelids were insistent on drooping closed.
“Wait,” Matthew whispered, trying to hold control of his consciousness but knowing it was a lost cause. He felt a warm breath on his ear, and a cold, wet, leathery sensation brush his earlobe.
“You’re mine,” he heard the woman murmur. “I’ll be back for you.”
The first thing Matthew noticed was the sun warming his bare skin. The second was that his neck ached. He opened his eyes. He was curled on the dirt outside his tent. The half-finished can of beans, now dry and crusty, rocked in the gentle morning breeze underneath a flat-armed cactus with bright pink flowers growing out of thick spikes. The Chisos Mountains glowed hot orange in the sunrise. A silver line that was the Rio Grande glinted and winked its way into a shadowed canyon. Desert birds chirped their songs, the high sounds echoing against the rocks. Matthew shook his head and studied the ground. There were no indentations, no footprints, no sign at all that anyone had slept with him last night. He reached behind him into his pack. There was the sweater the woman had worn, or so he’d thought. It was still rolled up tightly underneath his rain jacket. He frowned. Had the quick-witted, gorgeous woman from last night been just a dream? Had any of it been real? It had felt real. Matthew felt his stomach for any residue, some kind of proof, but he felt nothing. His stomach sank in disappointment. Just a dream, then. It was time to prepare for a new day. He reached into his pack again, pulling out a fresh t-shirt and a packet of instant oatmeal.
After breakfast, Matthew took down his tent, rolled up his sleeping bag and sleeping pad, and replaced his empty water jug with a full one from his backpack. Then he unfolded his map and consulted the line he’d drawn in pen through the wilderness to the Chisos. Today, he’d be hiking straight up the mountains on the path that ended at the South Rim, famous for its beautiful vistas and abundance of desert mule deer. He’d be able to camp on a cliff, drink whiskey from the flask he’d packed, and look out over Mexico that night. Matthew folded his map, slid it into the pocket of his cargo shorts, and set out on the trail.
It took him five miles of brisk walking to realize he hadn’t thought of Keller once that morning. His thoughts were consumed by the mysterious woman from his dream. Her rough laughter. Her sharp tongue. The way she demanded from him, claimed him almost; the birthmark that looked like a star fixed between her ample breasts; her howl when he’d made her come with his hands, and his own orgasm that had consumed his thoughts. Had he really made her up? Perhaps he had. The woman from his dream was certainly different from Keller. The polar opposite, in fact. Keller hated biting during sex. She said it was tacky. She wasn’t one to demand anything, or to make quick decisions; she’d liked to let him make the decision, and then passive aggressively critique him until he did what she wanted. Even their bodies were polar opposites. The woman’s body was voluptuous and she was unapologetic about it; he remembered the way she’d rubbed at herself and shook his head to discourage his cock from its growing interest. Keller, on the other hand, was rail thin, and yet she hated her body. She hated for him to look at her naked when they’d been going out so long.
Matthew reached the summit of a small hill and paused to look out onto sheer cliff faces and the turquoise band of the Rio Grande, the sun and the wind in his face. He rubbed his stubble. If the woman was a dream, he thought to himself, then she’d given him the best orgasm he’d ever had, dream or otherwise.
Matthew leaned against the rough, flaky bark of a drooping juniper tree and almost collapsed right then and there. All day he’d been hiking uphill, his pack
weighing heavy on his body. Steeper and steeper he’d climbed, along switchbacks, past desert rabbits scurrying through the scrub, over valleys and into the upper crests of the Chisos, his thighs straining to lift his own body plus 30 pounds of backpacking gear. The drooping juniper trees filled the air with their musk, and he took deep, racking breaths of it as he let his hands trail along the rock wall that rose beside the trail, filled with prehistoric seashells frozen into the lines of petrified sediment from when the mountains were underwater thousands of years ago. Finally he raised his sweating, panting head to find he was at the cliffs of the South Rim. Matthew wiggled out from underneath the shoulder straps and let his pack crash to the ground, too exhausted to set it down gently in the soft grasses that waved on the open shelf of land. He stumbled forward until he stood on the very edge of the cliff. Before him stretched the red-tipped ripples and dips of Mexican territory. A fine, soft, blue mist settled over the peaks. The sun was making its natural progression back down towards the horizon, and the sky was so alight with reds and pinks and oranges that it looked to Matthew like the whole heavens were on fire. It was beautiful. How small he felt, in the face of all this.
Eventually, Matthew stood up again and brushed off his pants. He needed to set up his tent and arrange his campsite before he lost daylight. He turned around to move towards his pack, then stopped short. Sitting in the tall, pale grass next to a juniper tree was a wolf. It was watching him.
“Jesus, these wolves are friendly,” Matthew said to himself.
The wolf perked its ears, and then he understood. It was the same wolf as the day before. Something about the piercing eyes, and the patience the animal exuded. The haughty way she lifted her chin. Matthew tried not to think about why his breath had caught in his throat, or why the wolf’s eyes made a spark of electricity run up and down his spine.
“Well hello again,” he called to her. “You found me.”
The wolf inclined her head, as if confirming his statement.
“Come here,” he said casually. “I won’t hurt you.” He held out his hand, not expecting anything, but to his surprise, the wolf stood up and trotted towards him. Matthew felt his heart pick up speed. He kept his hand in front of him, resisting the urge to pull it away and run back into the woods. The wolf came up to his hand. She sniffed it, and then dragged her rough tongue against his palm. Matthew swallowed hard. He could feel her soft breath misting on the rough pads of his fingers. She nuzzled his fingers, and he allowed them to tentatively pet the fur on her cheek. Matthew was just a real estate photographer, but he felt fairly certain that no other scientist had ever been allowed to pet a wild wolf’s face before.
A sudden breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees behind them. The wolf’s ears twitched. She looked towards the woods. Then she gave him a long, sharp look and leapt away through the field, disappearing into the gathering darkness.
Matthew stared after her. He stayed that way for a long time, until the sun was gone and the perfume of the juniper trees wound through the dark blue air.
“Boy. Wake up, boy.”
Something tickled Matthew’s neck. He swatted at it without opening his eyes and heard a soft giggle. Suddenly a mouth was up against his ear, breath even and measured. Fingers danced up and down the inside of his thigh.
“Boy,” the mouth whispered in a sing-song voice. “Bo-oy.”
Matthew opened his eyes. The first thing he thought, straightening his legs and sitting up, was that he’d fallen asleep outside his tent again. The grasses, shining bone white under the light of the nearly full moon, shivered in a wind that swirled in eddies across the top of the cliffs of the Chisos. Matthew’s flask of whiskey lay on its side near his hand, the cap open. He’d drunk the whole stash of alcohol in one sitting. Perfect. Then Matthew remembered the voice. He looked around wildly. There. The curvature of her body mirrored the slopes and lines of the dark land beyond the edge of the cliff. Her hair flapped back and forth in the wind. Foggy with whiskey and the thick perfume of the drooping juniper trees, Matthew staggered to his feet and walked across the meadow to where she stood, on the precipice. The closer he came, the clearer it became that the woman was wearing nothing. Matthew felt his face burn and solemnly swore to keep his eyes on her face. The two of them stood side-by-side at the edge of the land and stared into the valleys below.
“I’m dreaming,” said Matthew, unsure if he was asking or telling. He snuck a sideways glance at the woman. She smiled, not unkindly.
“It’s possible,” she replied. The moon emerged from behind a film of clouds and gleamed down onto the beautiful rise of her collarbone. Matthew swallowed the disappointment rising like bile in his throat. He was not going to be surprised that women didn’t just wander around naked trying to have sex with men in the desert all the time. He was not, goddammit.
The woman looked at him with disdain, her gold eyes flashing. “No, women don’t wander around naked in the desert waiting for men,” she said, her lips curling.
Matthew sputtered. “How did you know…”
But the woman rolled her eyes and crossed her arms across her chest. “This always happens,” she said softly, to herself.
Matthew raised his eyebrows in shock. “It does?” he said. “But this is the first time I’ve ever dreamed of you.”
The woman waved her hand through the air, as if to say, “You men. You always want perfection. You’re idiots.” She sank to the ground and pulled her knees to her chest. “This is why I don’t come back to the same man twice,” she continued. She batted at the rising tendrils of her hair, billowing in the wind, and looked out over the wilderness. All of a sudden, an immense sadness came over her face. Matthew gazed at her, riddled with guilt as he let her words settle in his mind. She was right; he did expect perfection. From Keller, his perfect, blonde, leggy, cheerleading ex-girlfriend, and now from this woman in his dreams, who he’d imagined as wandering the canyons and mountains without clothes, waiting for the sun to go down so he could have sex with her. He wasn’t an idiot; he was an asshole. Matthew sat down in the grass beside her. Their toes danced above oblivion.
“I’m sorry,” he said in the dark void. “I’m sorry I’m like that. I’m working on it.” He felt her cover his hand with hers.
“I’m glad,” she said gently.
“What do you mean, you don’t you come back to the same man twice?” Matthew asked, looking at her with a furrowed brow. Even if she was a dream, this woman was full of surprises.
But the woman just tilted her face and looked up at the moon. “It doesn’t matter. The moon will be full tomorrow night, and after that I’ll be back to normal again,” she said absentmindedly. Then she shivered. The woman turned to him, her eyes blazing, sadness still raw on her face. Matthew lifted his hand and brushed the side of her soft, silky knee. He didn’t know why – he barely knew her, and she was quite possibly not even a real person; just a figment of his imagination – but Matthew didn’t want to think about that right now. Even if he didn’t understand what the problem was, when he looked at this woman, he felt something happen in his chest. An aching. A need to please her. To do anything to wipe the despair from her beautiful, glowing eyes.
“Is there anything I can do to help?” he asked quietly.
The woman’s eyes flickered. Slowly she took his hand and unfolded her legs, shifting to face him so that he could see the entirety of her brown, voluptuous body. Matthew gulped, feeling his cock growing hard almost instantly. She placed his palm on the swell of her breast. He cupped her and, as if in slow motion, bent his head to her chest. Matthew let his tongue skim in circles around her areolas, swirling along the head of her nipple, and smiled as he felt it harden in his mouth. The woman gasped. Carefully, he nipped the skin, bringing his other hand up to her other breast and beginning to massage her. The woman arched her back, pressing herself into his lips. She made a sound in the back of her throat, keening and needy, as he closed his lips around her and began to suck. He felt a hand bury in hi
s hair and pull him to her other breast. He sucked and flicked and licked the length of her, his erection growing harder and harder inside his pants. The woman gasped. He felt her fingers scrambling to undo the fly of his jeans and push them past his ankles, then a yank of his hair as she brought his head up to meet her gaze. Her lips were wet and shining, and a flush spread across her cheeks. Matthew couldn’t help himself. He brought their lips together in a kiss.
The woman froze. Suddenly Matthew realized they hadn’t kissed last night, not at any point, not even as he’d had his hand between her legs and she’d begged him to bite her. He pulled away. “You don’t like that, do you?” he said curiously. She was constantly surprising him.
She closed her eyes briefly, and she when she opened them, he could see the answer, jumping in the golden depths: she was afraid.
“I won’t do it again,” he offered. The woman placed her warm hand on the back of his neck and brought his face close to hers, until they were mere inches apart.
“I want you to fuck me,” she said, and even though she whispered it, he could hear her perfectly over the roar of the wind. His cock, free of constraints, jumped against the warm skin on her inner thigh. Carefully the woman leaned in and bit his lower lip, dragging her teeth down. “And I don’t want you to do it like I’m perfect,” she continued, her nails skimming the ridges of his back and making him arch like a cat. “I want you,” she said, her fingers dancing now down over his hipbones to the skin beneath his thick, quivering shaft.
Matthew needed no more encouragement. In one smooth motion, he gripped her legs and pushed them up to her ears. She let her head fall back, sighing with pleasure. The dark curls between her legs parted to reveal pink folds and a white wetness that shone like nectar in the light of the moon. Matthew bent his head, burying his nose against her clit, and slyly he let his tongue lap at the juices offered there. The woman moaned. He let his tongue slide up and down the lateral lips, inhaling deeply and smelling that juniper musk she somehow seemed to carry between her legs. He pushed long, flat strokes up and down. The woman gripped the hair behind his ears, keening sharply through clenched teeth. Matthew moistened his thumb and began pressing slowly on her clit as he lowered his tongue, letting it dance around her opening. The woman squirmed beneath his head, her navel catching shadows from the moon, and Matthew almost let himself be mesmerized by the beautiful, wrecked image of her, but then the woman groaned in frustration. He bent his head obediently and began to suck the juices out from inside of her. His tongue flickered in and out of her wet, wet entrance. The woman gasped, and he took it as his cue to begin thrusting it in and out more confidently, his mouth filled with the sweet and salty taste of her. The woman was helpless: she bucked and wiggled desperately.
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