The Lounge: King of Oregon Country

Holly Prinsen: Wild

POV: Holly Prinsen

It isn't technically cheating on your boyfriend if you're fucking a cannibal on a whole other continent. Right?

Doesn't matter. A Prinsen doesn't concern themselves with such things. My father certainly didn't when he first came to South America. A renowned and Oscar-winning documentary filmmaker, Jagger Prinsen spent months filming projects on the continent when I was seven. As the months went on, his phone calls became more scarce. At some point, my mother realized that Jagger had been smashing this Brazilian stud the entire time. Needless to say, their marriage ended there. But somehow, despite all that, they still managed to stay close friends. I don't understand it, but I don't need to. I'm grateful that my family is still a family, even if it includes some Brazilian slam piece.

"Delicious," Ikal growls, his fingers sinking deeper into the meat of my thighs as I wind my waist into him, sinking deeper into a pleasure pit of which there is no end. The wet forest soil is kind to my bare legs as I look down at Ikal, his thin body thrusting into me with increasing feverishness.

I remember the time we first met in the Amazon. It was several summers ago when I was just eleven. My father wanted badly to make a documentary about the Kali tribe. He wasn't the first person to try. The Kali are aggressive people who protect themselves from foreigners. Exocannibalism, the act of eating foreigners, is common among the tribe, as is the act of eating their deceased, a ritual their tribe has always practiced.

At the time, my father's camp was a few miles away from Kali territory. My mother protested me visiting him, as I had done every summer since we found out about his secret little boyfriend, but nothing can keep a girl away from her father. I was told to stay at the campsite with Carlos, my father's Brazilian boy toy, while my dad and his crew explored the forest, trying to catch any footage they could of the hostile tribe I took pleasure in escaping the watching eyes my father's lover to explore the forest on my own. I didn't do it out of spite. I liked Carlos, but I liked the wilderness much more.

It was during one of my solo adventures into the depths of the Amazon that I had a feeling I wasn't alone. Ikal was there, hunting for his tribe and watching me frolic through the deadliest forest on the face of the Earth. He had watched me before. He had watched me often, knowing of my presence long before I knew of his.

He tackled me and held a knife to my neck, mistaking me for easy prey. "Wandehah," he hissed at me. I came to learn the meaning of that word in time—foreigner. I kneed him in the stomach and threw him to the earth beside me. He may have been older but was very thin, as his people are. I mounted him and hissed "Wandehah" back at him, even though I had no clue at the time what it meant. He didn't try to fight me. If he wanted to kill me, he would have done it the first time he saw me. But he didn't. What he wanted from me was something else entirely.

I would see him every day after that. Three years my senior and an Amazon native, he had a wealth of knowledge to share about life in the forest. He taught me how to hunt but not how to fight. I knew how to do that already. After all, it saved my life the first day I discovered him.

Every summer after that, we would hunt together. I learned where to strike the wild hog to ensure it bled out before it could run away from me. I also learned to cut and pull the pig's skin from its meat. Skin isn't some coat we wear over our muscles, as most would think it is. It is nearly fused with our muscles; it is really stuck on there. You have to cut and pull hard and fast after you drain the blood of your quarry to separate it.

When I was thirteen, Ikal showed me the pleasures that a girl could feel from touching herself. He took my hand and guided my fingers to the soft space between my thighs. He showed me where to press, rub, and flick... I was fourteen when Ikal showed me what a boy can do to take a girl to the brink of Heaven. Every cell in my body felt like fire the first time he ravished me. I would spend the years after with my American boyfriend, trying to feel some semblance of what I felt with Ikal, only to be disappointed.