A Threesome in the Amazon
"Research Trip," a Dirty Martini story by Ariel Graham
Button my Button by Mick Payton (available at ObsessionArt.com)
"The problem with this place is, it needs more places to get a pedicure and a really good latte."
The problem, Cynthia thought sourly from her corner of the enormous research tent, was she could never tell when her boss was kidding and when she wasn't. Even when she was, there was an undercurrent of meaning it.
She kind of meant it, the way she ordered Cynthia around. Even if she was an assistant, Cynthia didn't think it would be so bad if people occasionally said "please" to her. Probably, she wouldn't become so drunk on power she'd refuse to do whatever she was asked.
Partly because she generally didn't mind. Partly because Jenice Bradshaw who, at 46, made Cyn's 23 look dumpy, really was her boss.
But largely because she was relying on Jenice Bradshaw and crew to get her home again.
Outside the tent, something screamed. Parrot or monkey this time? she wondered. They sounded startlingly the same and since neither shut up 24-7, no matter what people said about the eerie silence of the jungle at night, it didn't matter.
How did I get here again?
It was then that the answer walked into the tent. Brian Harker, all six-foot-something of him, now nicely suntanned and wearing only a pair of low slung jeans. Policy on the research trip was clear. Light-weight clothes, long-sleeved shirts, long pants and boots meant to discourage mosquitoes, sunburn, the less persistent local snakes, and possibly the unbridled lust of the indigenous people of Amazonas.
Brian Harker hadn't gotten the memo. Brian Harker wandered around the research tents in jeans and shorts and thought that shirts were for lesser men. Cynthia was all in favor of the one-man dress code.
She just wished it were for her benefit.
I came here because of him.
He came here because of her.
None of that, strictly speaking, was true.
"Cynthia," Jenice said. "I need the updated lists of planting and I need the new research on birds." She hadn't moved from the desk chair she'd cranked back, using her long legs to rest it against a wall, but everything about her had gone languid and steamy the minute Brian walked in.
They're on your laptop, Cyn wanted to say. We've got a network in place. Sending me with a flash drive to carry everything to that one printer does nothing but use paper –
– and get her out of the tent.
"Whatever," she muttered, but then, she'd get to talk to some of the biologists.
And this, she thought as she pushed out of the flap of the tent, was another reason she'd come to Amazonas.
Jungle or rain forest. She'd expected it to be predominantly green. But Amazonas offered ever color, from the shifting hues of green to the stark browns and blacks of clear cutting. Birds soared overhead, looking like spectacular gardens flying past, all bright reds and blues and greens and yellows. It was never quiet in the forest and when there wasn't the sound of howler monkeys and harpy eagles, there was the sound of chainsaws and the stench of burning as the Brazilians brought down their forests.
"Where are you off to, Cynful?"
David, with the wire glasses and the florid Hawaiian shirts and the endless grin. He carried around about 50 extra pounds, mostly in unbecoming places, and was unfailingly kind. She thought he'd joined the nonprofit planting effort to research the medicinal properties of the plants two twin blond boys brought back every night, laughing and making notes and talking in fast, undistinguishable Swedish. Others in their group had come to plant, or to study for graduate degrees. A journalist had attached himself and doubled as photographer.
And Cynthia came because Brian suggested she come. Brian worked for a landscape company. He'd landscaped the apartment complex where Cynthia lived with her sister and while Cynthia was unemployed, spending her days making the little downstairs cement patio bloom, Brian had stopped to talk every day about plants and landscaping and, eventually, about Amazonas, a chance to travel and identify plants and see an amazing place before it was gone. They were replanting in some areas, bringing the forest back.
She was intrigued. By Amazonas. And by Brian.
"Jenice is looking for updates on everything," she told David.
"Gotcha. I've got much of nothing, but then, she just got updates this morning from me." He leaned against a mangrove tree and grinned at her.
"So, what, you can't be brilliant on cue?" Cynthia asked.
"For you, I'd try. But alas, you only want it to stay the wicked witch's hand."
She stared at him, nonplused. "She's not that bad."
David grinned. "But if need be, I can make something up."
"No, thanks. I'll just tell her you're too busy to jump to her service." She grinned.
"Gods, no. She'll leave me here. Come to my rescue."
She grinned an evil grin.
"Have dinner with me tonight. Give me the chance to bribe you," he said.
"I have dinner with you every night," Cynthia said. It wasn't like there were many choices.
"Ahh. I love this place. I can get dates here."
So did Brian. With Jenice.
Am I stalking him?
But he'd asked her to come.
"Hello?" He leaned down to grin at her.
"Yes. OK. Dinner. I won't rat you out. She just wanted to send me away, anyway." She waved and went on to gather numbers on plants and birds and trees replanted and birds revisited and, Am I stalking him? she wondered.
But he'd said, "You should come."
He'd gotten her the info on the nonprofit project. She'd applied, and gotten in.
And it wasn't all bad, even though the instant the trip had gotten underway, Jenice Bradshaw had all but branded Brian Harker.
Because Cyn had learned something about herself.
She liked to watch.
First time had been a mistake. Jenice had been doing yoga, just tight blue shorts and an exercise bra and her heavy fall of auburn hair swept up in a ponytail. She gleamed with sweat as she moved with a heavy, languid grace from pose to pose, down dog and up cat and child's pose and everything that morning had seemed shockingly erotic.
Jenice had looked up and seen Cyn there and told her to go and fetch a specific report and Cynthia, new to the project, had gone, confused, and encountered opposition from the biologists she encountered who mistook the information she wanted. She'd ended up heading back to the tent long before she would have if she'd located and loaded and printed what she wanted on the world's last remaining dot-matrix horror of a printer.
She'd heard them right before she entered the tent, and stopped short. Jenice sounded as bossy as ever, but there was something different to the bossiness. Cyn stopped, confused, then moved quietly to the back of the tent where she remembered seeing movement through a gap when she was inside and birds flew past in the canopy.
There were gaps, and through them she saw Jenice, still glistening from her morning yoga in the steamy Amazonas climate, and with her, Brian.
Brian was definitely not paying attention to the dress code. He'd stripped out of the cutoffs he'd worn that morning and stood naked, except for his boots, his body gleaming as Jenice's body did.
Cynthia drew in her breath and went still. When neither reacted, she moved closer to the tent and peered through the cracks.
Her point of view was almost perfect, as if the whole thing had been planned. From where she stood, she could see exactly how toned and beautiful Jenice's body was, with sleek hips and large, firm breasts, and everything about her lean and taut and beautifully tanned a honey-shade. She stood close to Brian and said something that made him duck his head, as if shy, and then, louder, "I wasn't making idle conversation, Mr. Harker."
Brian, Cynthia noticed now, almost as an afterthought, had a beautiful cock, very long and thick and it stood straight out just now, bobbing and waiting and Jenice was having none of it. She turned and moved back to a space between her desk and her desk chair and gracefully lifted one leg onto the seat of the chair.
Cynthia suddenly couldn't breathe. Behind her, several monkeys exploded into furious assault – of themselves or each other or, simply, the silence. Cyn cringed, and waited for Jenice and Brian to turn and see her there, but the two were otherwise engaged.
Brian knelt between Jenice's legs and reached up with both hands, placing his hands on Jenice's hips as if steadying himself before he leaned in and began to lick her shaved pussy.
Cynthia's hands wanted to find their way into her clothes. Inside the tent, morning shadows and sun streaked the figures and Jenice let her head fall back, her mouth open and her hips thrust in toward Brian.
Brian knelt in a stray beam of sunlight, licking, thrusting his head forward while Jenice dug fingers into his hair and purred and made demands – faster, slower, oh, you can get it in there deeper than that, and Cynthia's neck flushed hot, heat gathered between her breasts, and between her legs she grew wet, slick, hot, and wanting.
Inside the tent, Jenice rode Brian's face, pumped her hips and growled when he slid two longer fingers into her cunt. She came, pressing herself against him, bucking and panting. She came down slowly and Cynthia, watching, pressed closer to the tent. A hot pulse beat between her legs, mocking her heartbeat. The seam in her jeans rubbed her clit, tempting. She held her breath.
In the sunlight, Jenice stood and stretched like a cat, leaned down to where Brian still knelt, a little off balance apparently, and bit his neck. She said something to him then, something demanding and sharp, and turned her back on him arching forward so her hands and feet made contact with the floor as she dropped into down dog.
Cynthia heard her clearly that time: "Fuck me."
Brian moved up behind her and grabbed her legs and slid smoothly inside. Cynthia's vantage point wasn't as good but she didn't move, just watched as Brian's buttocks flexed, tensed and released as he drove into Jenice over and over, making her moan.
She'd stumbled out from behind the tent before Jenice had finished coming that time, and ran directly into the Swedish twins who indicated her flushed face and made random, worried, not-quite-English sounds at her. Eventually, they found her a bottle of water and led her to a cool spot beside a tributary where Cynthia replayed what she had seen in her mind until finally her hands did slip between her thighs, one thumb rubbing the seam of her jeans, one wrist grinding hard against her clit.
Cynthia surfaced form her thoughts.
If I am stalking him, at least I'm harmless.
A box of seedlings at her feet withered gently in the wet heat. The sky overhead was nothing but green canopy.
#
The boy, Jenice thought, was even stupider than the girl. From where she sat outside the main research tent, watching biologists and horticulturists moving about the camp, she could see the girl watching Brian, oblivious to the plants she was supposed to be caring for.
Almost as oblivious as the boy was to the girl. The girl had clearly come for him. She might watch the colorful flocks of birds moving overhead and she might really have a deep love for the plants she moved through even if she was a beginner, but it was Brian she'd come for.
You're not wrong about him, Jenice thought. The boy – if he'd even reached 25 yet, she'd eat her – well, OK, she'd eat him – would eventually get his shit together and go somewhere. He'd own a nursery, or his own landscaping service. He might import plants or go back to school and get a complicated degree in horticulture or business. He'd be happy with someone like Cynthia.
He just had to notice her.
Jenice would suggest it. Eventually.
#
In the evenings, the air cooled and took on a blue tinge. Everything in the canopy began a nightly ritual of rustling that went from the first hint of twilight until true dark. David said every animal was just making sure it had something to eat and wouldn't be eaten itself before night settled in.
Cynthia grinned distractedly at the thought and rinsed the last of her planting tools, gathered the sketch book she was recording notes and drawings in, and turned to head up to the tent she shared with the journalist.
Instead, she ran directly into Brian.
#
"I've been looking for you," Jenice heard Brian say. She sat across the clearing from the boy and the girl, and she could imagine the girl's heart rate kicking higher, the little catch of breath as she saw him there.
And then whatever he said to her, something about plants or the trip or – something, anyway, about what they were doing there.
Not about what they should be doing there, in such an outlandishly beautiful and exotic setting.
He needed to catch a clue. Whatever else he was, Brian Harker wasn't a keeper. Not for Jenice. When they got back to the states she had enough friends with privileges and lovers and boyfriends to keep her occupied. Brian Harker needed to look to the next conquest.
"Or maybe I do," Jenice said aloud.
"Do what?" asked one of the biologists, a fat boy in a Hawaiian shirt, who had snuck up on her.
"Need to make some changes, that's all," she said, and her brain ticked over into the trip itself, planting and replanting and cataloging along the Amazon, and she went back to her specialty as a scientist, someone who watched and therefore changed, rather than someone who just liked to watch.
Make some changes.
Take matters into my own hands.
Observation changes things.
The girl – Cynthia? – was cute, all blond and puppy-like and probably Harker's age.
So why not? What good was it being in charge if she didn't give commands? She was their boss. Brian Harker took orders well – very well – and the girl? She wouldn't argue for long, Jenice suspected. She'd known about the girl even before the day she'd pressed herself against the tent and watched.
Jenice rose and went inside her tent. Rummaging through her knapsack, she found a variety of pens and legal pads.
A good scientist takes field notes.
And likes to watch.
#
"Command performance," Brian said, appearing from nowhere directly into her path.
Cyn made an idiotic sound of alarm and braked, dropping the wet armload of lilies. "How do you do that? Just appear out of nowhere? I always run into you!"
"I'm stalking you," he said, with that devastating white-blond grin.
"No," she said, because the grin didn't cut it this time. She'd decided this morning to go home, and had spent the rest of the day so far trying to come up with a decent excuse, nothing so dire the nonprofit would raise heaven and earth to get her back, and nothing so casual it sounded like what it was – she was tired of watching and she wanted to go home. "I'm stalking you."
"That so?" Brian said. "Came all this way to Amazonas just for me?"
Behind him the sky beyond the canopy lit purple and silver with an approaching late afternoon thunderstorm.
"I did, actually," she said, and ran a dirt-grubby hand over her sweat-slicked forehead. Blond hair stuck to her face and she clawed at it.
Brian had gone still. "You did?" He had an odd look on his face she didn't want to try and identify, in case it was disgust or alarm.
"I'm an unemployed college graduate and an amateur gardener," she said, staring at him framed against the jewel colors of the forest. "I came because you suggested it and you were always nice and I was hopeful. But then you found Jenice and I'm sick of waiting and hoping and so I'm going home. I don't think I've been much help here anyway." She looked down at the armload of wet, lost lily pads.
"Well, that's seriously fucked up," Brian said, and it sounded so much like he meant it was her fault she looked up at him and said, "What?"
Harker stared. "Are you an idiot? Jenice is fantastic. She's amazing. You've got to admit she's beautiful and – "
"I get it," she said, and heard the anger in her own voice. "She's everything and I'm an idiot. Point taken. Thanks." She started to bend for the lilies, gave up on them and spun away from him.
Brian caught her easily. His mouth on hers was hot and salty and the muscles in his back flexed under her hands when she stopped flailing and held on.
When he let go of her, she staggered and gaped at him.
"As I was saying, Jenice is amazing. But she's only into me because I'm here. And I'm only hooked up with her because, well, fuck, she'd gorgeous and you weren't exactly beating down my door or responding to signals – "
"Those would be the signals of you fucking Jenice?" She crossed her arms and glared at him.
He went blank for an instant and then stared back at her and laughed. "I told her someone was watching. Look, she's beautiful. You're beautiful. She doesn't want a long-term relationship or a long-term anything with me and I couldn't take someone so – "
"Old?" she interrupted. Meow, she thought. But still.
Brian quirked an eyebrow. "Bossy. She orchestrates everything."
"So I've observed."
Under his tan, he blushed. "Anyway, Bossy is why I was looking for you. She wants to see us both." He turned, heading in the direction of Jenice's tent, sure she'd follow, and Cyn felt the flickering of something she couldn't quite identify. Maybe it was the vestiges of power.
"Brian?"
He stopped and turned and looked back at her.
"Did you want me to come knocking at your door?"
He grinned.
#
"It's come to my attention," Jenice said when the two finally, and belatedly, made it to her office tent, "that you two aren't paying attention." She waited while they exchanged a confused glance and looked back at her. When she had them focused on her again, she said, "I thought I'd take this opportunity to remedy that."
"What do you mean, ma – Jenice?" Cyn asked. Jenice gritted her teeth and imagined what she might have done if Cynthia had called her "ma'am."
"I mean…" she said, and stood. She crossed to where the two stood in front of her director’s camp chair as if they were star-crossed lovers in a fairytale waiting for their fate to be revealed by a witch queen. She trailed her fingers along the back of Brian's neck, and then the back of Cyn's, as she trailed behind the two. "I mean that the world of nonprofit funding is small and it would be a shame if there wasn't quite enough funding and I had to make decisions on who to take home. And who to leave behind."
"Uh, Jenice, I don't think that's legal," Brian said and Jenice laughed.
"Legal, no Unfortunate, yes. An oversight, of course, because we didn't mean to leave anyone behind. We didn't mean to run out of funds. In fact," she said, and looked away from the clueless hunk and over at the girl who looked frankly suspicious, "it would be a shame if that – had to happen."
Cynthia cleared her throat. "So what do you suppose might stop that from happening. Ma'am."
Oh, feisty little thing.
"Well, the best employees, of course, are going to find the least problem with getting back to the states. And really, what makes a good employee?" She didn't wait for either to answer. "Doing what you're told."
Brian didn't look like he was any closer to a clue. Cynthia had started to frown and looked downright suspicious.
"Brian, you have some very nice talents," Jenice said, and before he could say anything, she continued. "I'd like you to show them to Cynthia. Not show, actually, because she's already seen them. I want you to use them on her. You see," she turned to Cyn, whose eyebrows had skyrocketed, "You both are missing something that seems so obvious to me I decided to help you out. So, Brian, take Cynthia's shirt off and show her what you can do with that tongue of yours."
She stood, feeling the heat pulsing between her own legs, the heat radiating off her crossed arms.
"You can't just treat her like – " Harker had flushed, angry and protective.
"I can," she said. "And I – "
"Brian." Cynthia put a hand on his arm. "You don't want to get stuck here, do you?"
#
When a scientist observes, what is observed, because of the act of observing, changes.
How they would have come together the first time none of them would ever know. Perhaps Cynthia would have been shy, or Brian would have been. They might have moved slower or stopped before finishing. Most likely, it would not have happened in the research tent where anyone on the expedition could come in at any time, though no one did.
But, observed, they changed. Brian's initial resistance met Cyn's calm acceptance and reason and something melted, and something else ignited.
She liked being watched as much as watching.
He pulled her tank top over her head. Cynthia first reached to cover herself, but then reached for him.
The afternoon thunderstorm broke, and the tent filled with the sound of the deluge and the shadows of light and dark. Reality seemed to flicker around her, as if she'd swallowed some of the psychotropics the Swedish boys reported finding.
Sometimes Jenice directed them aloud.
Sometimes they followed directions in their minds, moving to directions she hadn't given, but might have.
He bent his head and lapped at her upturned, fat, pink nipples. His caramel hands, streaked with something mossy, something from the forest, cupped her breasts as he moved his head between them, sucking, gentle at first, then hard, harder, until he used his teeth, nipping, stretching them out, rolling the nipple on the breast he wasn't biting and Cyn with her head flung back kept hold of him.
He worked his way down to her waistband with his mouth before Jenice rearranged them, sent Cynthia clawing at his back and then buttocks as he wriggled his way free of his shorts, that thick long hard cock beaded with moisture. She knelt before she was ordered to and ran her tongue from base to tip, enough to make Harker go weak in the knees before she cupped his balls and sucked him into her mouth.
He tasted like Amazonas, like the dry dirt around the edges of the forest and the warm loam of the forest itself. He tasted like the salt from the air and like a hot male and a little like come.
Cyn rolled her tongue around him, took him deep into her throat, and she felt the instant he stopped worrying that someone could walk into the tent and just let her blow him.
He came unexpectedly, shooting down her throat, and Cynthia felt an instant's regret before she heard Jenice say, from somewhere very nearby, "He recovers quickly. In the meantime, what can you do with this?"
She turned, expecting anything at all, and found Jenice sitting, sprawled naked on the desk, her heels on the edge of the desk and her legs spread wide. Cynthia grinned, wiped her mouth, gave Brian's chest a quick kiss and bent from the waist, leaning down into the shaven cunt she'd watched before. Behind her, Brian sucked in a breath and she felt him move up behind her, close, felt his hands on her ass, her hips, felt him reach around to unfasten her jeans, and pull them off of her.
She ran her tongue down the center of Jenice and drove it deep inside at the same time Brian sank his cock into her cunt. Cyn made a sound and shoved herself back against him, grinding, trying to remember to touch and lick Jenice at the same time. Her mouth didn't want to close, though, and she kept licking her own lips in pleasure. Finally, she sank three fingers inside Jenice and rubbed her clit furiously with her thumb. Brian fucked her harder with a definite lack of finesse and definite enthusiasm. His balls slapped at her and his hands moved back and forth, sometimes holding her, sometimes rubbing her clit hard.
Abruptly, Jenice said, "This isn't. Just. About. Ahh, god you're good. Mouth. Mouth again. Just about. Me. You get – that?" and her head dropped back again.
Cyn wasn't certain Jenice was listening anymore but she responded anyway. "Not. Just about. You. But really." She glanced back over her shoulder at Brian. His attention was focused on her, not on fucking some fantasy. Not watching Jenice. "We wanted to make certain. We both. Get home." She licked, kissed, bit, stroked. Every word. And meant them.
"Good employees," Brian muttered, and fucked her harder.
"Good employees always try to improve their performance," Jenice said breathlessly, and then, "Oh, fuck."
Cynthia felt Jenice spasm under her mouth, and grinned and licked and lost track of what she was doing as Brian sped up, slamming into her, filling her, and starting to pulse, and then he was coming, hot and filling her and Cyn felt herself coming too.
For an instant, as she started to come, Cyn felt a brief panic.
What am I doing here? she thought, as outside the tent the Amazon rain forest filled with thunder and the screaming of what sounded like all the monkeys in the forest.
And then the answer to the question slid his arms around her from behind and said, "Come to the Amazon with me. It'll be a whole new world. I promise."
And she had the answer to her question.
Originally published March 2010
