jeans folded on the bank. Water beads glistened on her thighs, in her black pubic brush. She shrugged off the blouse, held it crumpled in front of her, then tossed it next to the jeans. For a moment her body seemed inset into the greenery, a keyhole opening onto a tawny desert place.
His senses ran out of him, coiling around her. She was a little thick-waisted, her breasts so small in contrast to the fullness of her hips that they looked immature, and this gave her a sexy childlike allure. She kneeled facing him, her expression tentative, a dozen expressions trying to be one, and he thought he must look much the same, because now he was insecure, afraid of making mistakes with her.
‘I couldn’t…’ she said. ‘I had to.’
He wasn’t sure what specific uncertainty she was trying to put behind her, but to smooth over her confusion he kissed her, met her tongue, and slid a hand along her inner thigh. She eased into the touch, and his finger slipped between her legs, found her open; she shifted forward, letting his finger penetrate, and he understood that she didn’t want to wait, she wanted to rush past the beginning, to know everything. He lifted her astraddle him, and her head resting on his shoulder, her hair striping his vision, she guided him into place, worked herself down until he was all the way inside. To be held that way, her warmth enclosing him, gripping him, it was, Jesus! so good, so good, he was melting in her, dissolving in that perfect fit. He could feel a clean untroubled face breaking through his old mask of war and anger, the shards falling away into the flood of the sun, the daze of bright water. Everything was melting, the jungle and the river running together, slick with heat and brilliance, greens and blues washing into a unity of light that penetrated his eyelids. She began to tremble, her nails pricking his back, and just the trembling nearly brought him off.
He needed to move but they were angled wrong. Supporting her with one hand, he tipped her backward until her hair fanned across the water; he planted his free arm on the bottom to bear their weight. Her legs locked around his waist, inching him deeper, and he came, all the bad days, the longing, loosed in a heart-stopping pour that left him wobbly and gulping for breath. But he stayed hard, wanting her again. Sweat trickled down his back like molten cracks spreading; salt drops stung his eyes. His planted arm began to ache with the awkwardness of the position, but then as if it had connected with limestone muscles, the ache subsided. She worked her hips, grinding, pushing, building her moment. It was quick for her, too. Her belly tensed, she gave a sharp cry and clawed at his shoulders. Then she relaxed, mouth going slack, eyes closed against the glare. He pulled out, eased back in. So good, that silky muscle. Good like Jesus, like everything calm and sweet at once. A single word began sounding over and over in his head,
They lay on their sides in the warm flow of the springs, and looking at the far bank, at the diminutive crowns of the trees, Mingolla felt they had grown enormous, that they were two exhausted giants newly surfaced from a deep. Debora threw back her head, and at that precise instant something silver streaked across the top of the sky; a worry line creased her brow. He pulled her to him, but she drew back and said, ‘No… the tent. Let’s go in the tent.’ And coming to her feet with a splash, she outran him to the bank.
With the flap closed, sealing them into a confine of half-dark and air as still as a held breath, he felt more alone with her, strangely more alive. Her body was aglow with dampness, her eyes were gleams. He kneeled between her legs, bent lower and tasted her. Tasted her, exploring the folds of her cunt, lapping at her, imagining honey smearing his mouth. She hardly moved for a minute or so, but he could tell how she’d wanted this, how known and gloried in it made her feel. Her hips bucked, her legs clamped his head. Breath was knocked out of her in hoarse gasps. The muscles of her stomach bunched, and she wrapped her hands in his hair, holding him immobile, as if were he to take his mouth away or do anything more, she would break into pieces. Afterward he lay beside her, kissed her, and she said, ‘I can taste myself… I thought it’d be horrible to taste myself.’
‘And it’s not?’
‘No, because I can taste you, too.’
The demureness in her voice aroused him, and he entered her again. And this time, obeying an impulse, he pushed into her mind as well, reestablishing that blazing mental circuit they’d experienced with Amalia. His body was galvanized, his movements seemed to be conforming to the twists and turns of the electric knot they were weaving inside each other’s heads, and from that point on he was aware of what was happening only during lapses in the connection. He would find himself battering at her, pinning her wrists above her head, or that she had mounted him and was raking his chest with her nails. Hours of this, on and on into the night. Brutal, sweaty, animal sex. He knew he should be worn out, but every renewal of the mental contact restored him, kindled in him a sensation of thrilling strength and vitality.
Toward dawn, with gray light hanging in the folds of the tent flap, Debora went outside, returning a few minutes later, her body damp from the river, carrying a cloth and a full canteen. She sponged off his chest, his groin, and then, setting the canteen aside, she took him in her mouth. She was a shadow bending to him, the act veiled by the fall of her hair, and because she had caught him by surprise, he was at first less aware of his responses than of hers. Fingers digging into his thigh, the pressure of her mouth. She was sweetly inexpert, too gentle with him, learning as she went, but his thoughts went with her hesitant movements, and it was fine, lovely, the concerned delicacy of those thoughts, the fleeting memories of other more expert women, the messages he tried to send, urging to do it this way, oh yeah, Jesus, that’s it, and worries that she wouldn’t like it when he came, he wanted her to like it, and then his regard of her was subsumed into dominance and need, the need to flood her, fill her, purient images of her lips, his cock going in, hollowing her cheeks, mixed in with the sensation of her tongue curling around him, and he saw flashes in the dark air, and he followed them with his eyes, with the thrusting of his hips, with all his wish, all his muscled intent, his hips bridging to meet her mouth, and said, ‘Debora, Christ!’ and laid his hand on the back of her head, guiding her the last bit, going blank and rigid into light, into a nervy flare of pleasure that was a greater fulfillment than all the previous violent ones. She nestled close, smiling a bright prideful smile, and kissed him, bringing his own salt taste to his mouth. She whispered something.
‘I didn’t hear,’ he said.
‘Nothing.’
He was certain she had whispered, ‘I love you,’ and was happy that words were becoming accessible to them, that trust was building; but at the same time he was put off by the claim implicit in the words, frightened by their power, and he began once more to wonder who she was, this stranger whom love made seem so familiar, and why they were here and what they were going to do.
The most intriguing thing about their lovemaking was not the intensity of their mental contact—Mingolla realized that he’d been expecting something of the sort—but was its aftermath, the sense of strength and vitality it brought to them. He recalled what Izaguirre had said about a mutuality of focus between two psychics acting to increase their powers, and to test the truth of this, he went with Debora to visit Amalia again. They each awakened her with only the slightest of efforts, and when she attacked Mingolla, he repelled her without difficulty. Amalia did not take defeat well. She peered fearfully at them over the edge of the hammock, the pink splotches on her face glowing like radium in the gloom of the hut, and wept. Debora tried to comfort her, but Mingolla’s interest was more clinical, and he worked to shore up the less dominant patterns of her mind, fueling them with his strength, curious as to what she might be able to tell them about her past.
‘I don’t remember,’ she said defiantly when he asked about her therapy. But he could tell she was lying and urged her to comply.
‘There were lots of us,’ she said. ‘In a big house.’
‘Boys and girls like you?’ Debora asked.
‘No one’s like me,’ said Amalia.
‘I mean were they… sick?’
‘Broken,’ she said, and the word seemed to resonate beyond the walls of the hut, as if every broken thing
