Jungle Fever

by Celeste Anwar

  They´d protected her too often for her to not think kindly of them. But now, she truly believed that they weren´t the animals and freaks of nature she´d considered them earlier. She was relieved that he had stopped. She was too tired for more sex, but she couldn´t deny that she´d aroused herself by touching and blowing him.

  Yvonne was a little disappointed, truth be told, she´d wanted to feel him explode in her mouth. A small piece of her had wanted him to lose control too much.

  Five minutes later, he returned back to the cave. He didn´t look at her, but he put the boar on the fire to cook. He´d sliced it somehow into thin strips that would cook quickly. As it cooked, she felt both disgust and hunger.

  “You didn’t find any fruit out there?”

  Rafael looked at her apologetically. “No. I would have gotten some for you if I had. I’m aware of your aversion to meat.”

  The smell of cooking flesh made her stomach rumble, and that made her feel disgust at herself. What kind of Vegan was she? She´d turned Vegan at David and Moira´s farm, when they´d sent some pigs to slaughter. She´d helped care for the animals, and it had really upset her to see them sent off to the slaughterhouse. She hadn´t eaten another piece of meat since, but now, when she was so hungry and tired, she couldn´t help but think about eating a strip of the boar.

  She wasn’t sure she could keep going without having something to eat. She’d torn muscle tissue and needed to repair her body. Protein was something she needed to survive, and she doubted she’ d have access to beans and rice any time soon.

  She watched Rafael turn it over silently, then a few minutes later, he held his hand out with a piece of the meat in it. She shook her head at him, watched him frown, but he turned away and called for Remy and Armando.

  The men walked in, and she couldn´t help but flush at their nakedness. They´d spent the majority of the time spent together in their birthday suits, but to see them move around comfortably and without any awkwardness, made her uncomfortable and awkward!

  She’d never thought of herself as a prude, and she shouldn’t feel that way since she’d been sexual with all three of them. Still….

  They all reached for some meat, some of it was very rare. She looked away and grimaced slightly as Armando picked up one of those pieces and started to eat it. She saw him glare at her, almost daring her to say something, but she held her tongue. She settled her head on her knees and clasped her hands around her calves.

  “Chérie, shouldn´t you eat something?” Remy asked her quietly. She shook her head.

  “If she wants to starve herself, Remy, then let her!” Armando muttered gruffly.

  Rafael reached over, grabbed one of the strips then handed it to her. “Eat it, Yvonne, you need the nourishment. You need meat.”

  She shook her head. “I don´t want any!”

  “Tough, eat some!”

  She glared at him, but her stomach rumbled in rebellion. Finally, she took a piece and placed a small morsel between her teeth. She bit into it but the feel of it in her mouth made her feel sick. She tried to spit it out, felt herself start to slip, but swallowed when Rafael shouted at her, “Eat it, Yvonne!”

  She shook her head and handed the meat back to him. Holding the back of her hand to her mouth she tried not to be sick. After a couple of minutes, her stomach settled but it had been a near thing! At least, she didn´t feel hungry anymore. How people could eat meat was beyond her.

  “Do you feel okay?” Rafael asked, then at her nod, he continued, “I´m sorry I made you eat it, but you do have to eat something, and there isn´t exactly a grocery store anywhere nearby,” he paused again, watching her. “Yvonne, I told Armando and Remy about what you said earlier, we all agreed that we should tell you our story as a thank you for your honesty.”

  “I´m sure you´ve noticed the scars on my body,” Armando told her gruffly, “well I got them when I was ten. I lived in Colombia with my parents, until one day the local cartel came around and killed my mother and father. The cartel had visited our village before, and whenever they came around, my mother told me to hide from them in case they visited our house. I was hiding in the usual spot in our house, when they practically demolished it with machine guns, I was lucky I wasn´t shot. When they stopped firing, I tried to get out but couldn´t, so I had to crawl through the debris, a lot of which was glass. Hence the scars.

  “My uncle, Rafe´s father, came for me from the US when the neighbor that took me in and hid me from the cartel, contacted him. We were both lucky to get out alive without the cartel finding out. I went to live with Rafe, we both joined the marines together and got out at the same time. I´d always known that when my service was complete, I would return to Columbia to kill the bastards that murdered my family. I went back to my village, Rafe came with me, and we discovered that they´d moved territory, they´d gone south to Chile.

  “They´d relocated to one of the islands on the south-western coast. It didn´t take us long to find them--we managed to kill the men, it was a bit of a bloodbath. There were a lot of them, and we were injured, not grievously, but an injury is an injury.” Armando stopped his story for a moment, running a hand through his hair.

  “We had almost reached our base camp, when a couple of black panthers ran out and attacked us--they must have smelled the blood. We managed to fight them off, but we´d both been bitten a few times. We didn´t think anything of it until a couple of weeks later when we returned back to the US. On the first full moon of our return, we shifted, there are no words to describe how fucking scared we were, but there was nothing we could do, nowhere we could go, and no one we could turn to for help.”

  Yvonne touched his arm in a comforting gesture, feeling the horror they both must have felt. “I can’t imagine going through something like what you both went through. First with your parents and then…. How is it no one found out about y’all?”

  Armando sighed. “We nearly got caught a couple times, especially that first time, we were totally out of it, hadn´t a handle on the cats yet. But after a while we were safe. We lived in Florida, so whenever we needed to run we drove out to the Everglades, and ran there. Rafael met a woman, he fucked her, and they got pretty close. One day we both went to the Everglades to run together, we transformed, and the woman he´d been fucking was there. There was a group of men with her, normally we would have run from them, but now we know about the pheromone, we realize that she used that to ensnare us. They captured us, and we were brought here to this island. We learned at the facility that a couple of the men had escaped--they´d obviously managed to run away to one of the nearby islands, and they´d infected us with the virus when they´d bitten us. We also learned, that the woman, Katherine Adams, had been sent to Florida by the Project on the trail of a couple of big cats they´d seen in the Everglades. Minus a lot of shit, that´s the story for Rafael and me.”

  Yvonne shook her head, dumbfounded and astonished. She didn’t know what to say, but she felt great empathy for what they both had been through. She understood now why Armando was so distrustful and cold. It all made sense, given what had happened to his family and then him and Rafe. She’d never condoned vengeance, but it seemed the cartel was deserving of justice of some sort. In the same situation, had she had a family, she might have done the same.

  Remy continued after Armando had finished talking. “I was a Seal, a lieutenant. I was told by my CO, that my country needed me to be a better fighter, so I was sent here. They infected me with the virus within a couple of days. I was apparently chosen, because I´d reached lieutenant at a relatively young age, they imagined me heading this superhuman troop of soldiers. Like I said, I was infected with the virus, and I handled it pretty well, apparently that made me an even more desirable candidate for the position of leader of the pack. A lot of the other candidates couldn´t handle the first shift, a few freaked out, cracked up and went crazy. Others handled it better, but they were never normal again, these men, though, were perfect for the Project. The soldiers were to b
e malleable, easily brainwashed into mindless warfare. They´ve not worked out how to do that crap, but they´re working towards it, and this fucking pheromone takes them one step nearer. When the virus takes hold, it makes you really violent, your body feels like it´s going to implode, you start reacting to all kinds of shit, things that would never normally piss you off are like a trigger and you shoot off. It´s uncontrollable. As soon as you make your first shift, the cats that respond well, go AWOL, it´s the first sign that they´ve reacted positively to the virus. The supposed ´internal saboteurs´ line that they fed you is bullshit. The cats run off, but the majority of the ones that escaped the facility, are smart and don´t go back, they also can´t get off the island. So they´re stuck here in this fucking place, eking out their lives. Apparently the Project leaders have grown tired of waiting for their pussies to run back home, and they´ve not only hired you, but created this pheromone to lure them back to the facility. The weaker cats won´t be able to help themselves, they´ll go back and the mad professors will continue fucking with them. They´re probably going to ´exterminate´ me, if they get me back to the facility,” he ended calmly.

  “What?” she shrieked. “My god, will they do anything? Why doesn’t someone stop them?”

  “They’re sanctioned by the government. Biological warfare is cheaper than technological. Everyone knows that. So no, there’s no one that can stop them. Not even us. They’re very good at hiding their tracks, and who are we to say what’s happened to us? Society would brand us monsters, to powerful and wild to be unleashed upon civilization. They’d want to put us down and get rid of the problem,” Remy said, ending on a long sigh. Armando and Rafael nodded, knowing the truth of his words.

  “They´ll kill me if they find me. Let´s just say that I didn´t respond well to their attempts at brainwashing, especially when they stopped me from going AWOL. They put me in a fucking cage and did some weird shit, but it didn´t work.” Remy shrugged. “I escaped with Armando and Rafael and killed two of the guards and mauled one of the scientists... boo fucking hoo.” He smirked nastily. “Do you know what really sucks, chérie? It´s irreversible, there´s no cure.”

  Yvonne was still seated on the floor, with her chin resting on her knees. At his words though, she hid her face against them. The hell they´d all gone through, it didn´t bear thinking about. The only way she could help them though, was to aid them in their escape. “I came in by ship, if we can take control of it, then we can all go back to our lives.”

  All three of them stared at her oddly. Armando asked her suspiciously, “Whereabouts was the ship docked?”

  “At the south of the island. If we work together, I´m sure we can get you all off here. I don’t want to be here anymore than you do. I’m an idiot for taking this job in the first place. I should have known it was too good to be true. ”

  “Why do you want to help us now? You´ve been trying to run away from us all evening!”

  She sighed. “No one deserves the crap you´ve been through, if I can help you at all,” she shrugged, “then I will.”

  “How can we trust you?” Armando asked her coldly.

  “I´ve no reason to ´betray´ you, even if I had managed to run away from you, I wouldn´t have told them anything about you, or led them to you. I swear. I do have principles you know, those bastards are fucking with nature, how could I not be against them? Anyone with a conscience wouldn’t stand for this. I’m not a monster like they are!” she said vehemently.

  “What about the 300k debt to the IRS?” Rafa asked.

  She shrugged nonchalantly. “I´ll just have to go to jail or find some other way to pay it off, won´t I?” She smiled weakly at them.

  “Why would you choose to help us when it would mean you´d could end up in prison or dead if they find out?”

  “I-I like you, I don´t want to hurt you or for you to be hurt by them. I am compassionate, you know, I can help my fellow man!”

  “I thought we were monsters!” Armando sneered.

  “Oh for fuck´s sake, Armando, leave her alone. She wants to help, so fucking let her. We might be able to get of this fucking island. We haven´t done that great on our own! Maybe we need some insider information,” Remy defended her.

  “What harm can it do to trust her, Armando?” Rafael asked. “She didn´t fucking knock you unconscious!”

  “No, but that was before she knew the score,” Remy told him.

  Armando shrugged and warned, “If she fucks us over, then it´s your fault!”

  “Come on, we need to get some rest. We´ll have to work out a plan to get off this fucking place,” Rafael told them all.

  “The pheromones are still strong enough to possibly attract some of the weaker cats during the night. If two of us sleep with her and the third stands guard then there should be no problem. We’ll take turns keeping watch. Tomorrow, we´ll have to figure out how to either get rid of the scent completely, or how to use it to our advantage,” Remy said. “They´ll be on the lookout for Yvonne as well, so we´ll have to watch out for them fuckers. Bastards.”

  “I´ll take first watch,” Rafe volunteered, he was obviously still uncomfortable around her. “You´re sure you don´t want any more of the meat, Yvonne?” he asked her worriedly, “You need to eat, muñeca.”

  He sighed as she shook her head and headed out of the cave.

  “What happened between you and Rafe? He´s acting like a mother hen. I´ve never seen him so maternal!” Remy joked.

  “Anyone with eyes can see what happened, Remy! Have you lost your sight?” Armando inquired politely.

  Remy shook his head in amusement, so Armando continued, “Well, then, leave it alone. We best get some sleep. Yvonne, you´ll have to sleep between Remy and me, you´ll freeze all night otherwise. We have a higher body temperature than you, so you won´t be cold.”

  Armando rolled his eyes as Remy waggled his eyebrows, and told him, “Stop pissing about.”

  “Forgive me, my lord! But, anyway, who died and made you leader? I´ll have you know that the finest forces in the US chose me to be the ultimate super soldier! Here you see Action Man in the flesh! You should bow down and tug your forelock in gratitude that I´m even willing to associate with you!” Remy finished with a chuckle.

  Armando shook his head in exasperation and said caustically, “Let´s get some sleep. Come over here Yvonne, it´s too late for rape.”

  Remy snorted in amusement as Yvonne ducked her head in embarrassment.

  “I didn´t know women could still get embarrassed!” Remy picked her up from the floor and moved her to the opposite side of the fire. “If you sleep here, there won´t be a draft,” he told her, then lay down beside her so that his body was flush against hers.

  Yvonne could soon feel her own body start to overheat with his proximity. She tried to control her breathing, but knew that he´d already heard her panting breaths. He didn´t say anything, for which she was extremely grateful, just pulled her closer to him so that her head was pressed into his throat. She almost shivered at his delicious smell.

  It was concentrated in the nook beneath his Adam´s apple. The scent seemed to permeate the air until she was just breathing in pure Remy. Her nipples started to pucker, and she longed to touch him, but managed somehow to keep her hands to herself. She started to relax, but then felt his cock prod her belly. She didn´t react to it, or say anything, but it was there. She had to fight the urge to hook her leg over his and press her pussy against his dick.

  She almost jumped when she realized that Armando had settled in behind her, equally as close and flush to her body as Remy. He spooned her from the back, his arm came over to rest against her stomach. She could feel his cock nestle itself in her butt. She should have felt uncomfortable and under threat, but she didn´t. She relished in being sandwiched between them.

  Their heat seemed to scald her. They were warmer than any fire she´d ever lit.

  She could feel her skin flush just from the contact with their bodies. She tried not t
o think about how much better it would be if she were naked too. She told herself to relax and calm down, eventually she slept, but it was a long time after the two men had settled down and fallen asleep.

  Chapter Seven

  Hours later that night, a cry from the jungle woke her up.

  Her body responded immediately to the position she was in, Armando had settled even closer to her in the night. There was not an inch of space between them. His hand had moved up to cup her breast, and his head had settled above hers. His arm rested behind their heads, and they both used it as a pillow from the hard floor--not that it was much softer!

  Remy had hooked his leg over both hers and Armando. They were wrapped up in each other´s arms tighter than a package. She tried not to focus on how good and right it felt. She also tried not to think about how perfect it would be if Rafael was with them too.

  She drifted back into sleep.

  She awoke with a moan, feeling herself being touched.

  Armando had his hand under her T-shirt and was cupping her breast, teasing the nipple between his thumb and forefinger. His other hand was between her legs, rubbing her pussy through the crotch of her trousers. That combined with the hardness of his cock against her butt, made her groan again in pleasure.

  Apparently, he’d forgiven her for the wound she’d inflicted. Sometimes an apology went a long way in creating good will. It’d been hard to admit she was wrong, she knew she had been and seeing him hurt had made her want to assuage her guilt with him.

  His head was beside hers still, but his mouth nuzzled her neck, licking at the sensitive skin behind her ear, nipping and pulling the taut flesh, making her shiver in excitement.

  Her dazed mind wasn´t working one hundred percent, it was just concentrating on the pleasure he was giving her. He ignited a fire in her belly that warmed her from deep within. She felt...loved, surrounded by their warmth, protected and coddled, cosseted from the outside world and the dangers that lay ahead.