"N-no," she admitted, with a break in her voice. "I feel... whatever I feel... it is very different..."
Trying to suppress my own arousal, so I could speak as soberly as an examining tícitl, I asked, "But it feels good?"
She said softly, "Yes."
When I kissed her nipples, she whispered, "Yes."
As I kissed farther down the sleek-pelted, moon-glistening length of her body, she said almost inaudibly, "Yes."
I kissed to where my hand was, then moved my hand out of the way. She started and gasped, "No! You cannot... that is not how... oh, yes, it is! Yes, you can! And I... oh, I can!"
It took a while for Cricket to recover, and she breathed as if she had just come up from the sea depths when she said, "Uiikíiki! Never... when I myself... it has never been like that!"
"Let us make up for the long neglect," I suggested, and I did things that took her to those depths—or heights—twice again before I even let her know that I had a pole of flesh available when it should be wanted. And when it was, I was embraced and enfolded and engulfed by a creature as lithe and sinuous and pliant and nimble as any sea-cuguar cavorting in its own element.
Then it was that I discovered something absolutely novel about Ixínatsi—and I would have sworn that no woman could ever again surprise me in any way. It was not until we lay together that I discovered it, because her delightful difference from all other women resided in her most intimate parts. Manifestly, when the unborn Cricket was being fashioned by the gods, while she was still within her mother's womb, the kindly goddess of love and flowers and connubial happiness must have said:
"Let me endow this girl-child Ixínatsi with one small uniqueness in her female organs, so that when she grows to womanhood she can perform akuáreni with mortal men as joyously and voluptuously as I myself might do." It was indeed only a small alteration that the goddess effected in Cricket's body, but ayyo!—I can attest that it added an incredible piquancy and exuberance when she and I joined in the conjugal act.
The love goddess is called Xochiquétzal by us Aztéca, but is known as Petsíkuri by the Purémpecha, including these island women. Whatever her name, what she had done was this. She had set Cricket's tipíli opening just a little farther back between her thighs than is the case in ordinary women. Thus her tipíli's inner recess did not simply extend straight upward inside her body, but upward and forward. When she and I coupled face-to-face, and I slid my tepúli into her, it gently flexed to fit that curve. So, when it was fully sheathed inside her, my tepúli's crown was pointing back toward me, or, rather, toward the back of her belly's navel button.
In our Náhuatl language, a woman's body is often respectfully referred to as a xochitl, a "flower," and her navel as the yoloxóchitl, or "bud center" of that flower. When I was inside Ixínatsi, then, my tepúli literally became the "stalk" of that bud, that flower. Just to realize, in my mind, that she and I were so very intimately conjoined—not to mention the vivid sensations involved—heightened my ardor to a degree I could never have believed possible.
And, in her arranging of Ixínatsi's feminine parts, the goddess had provided, for both Cricket and myself, yet a further enhancement of the joy that comes in the act of love. The slightly rearward placement of her tipíli orifice meant that when my tepúli penetrated her to its hilt, my pubic bone was necessarily close and hard against her sensitive xacapíli pearl, much more tightly than it would be with an ordinary woman. So, as Ixínatsi and I clasped and rocked and writhed together, her little pink kinú accordingly got caressed, rubbed, kneaded—to excited erection, then to urgent throbbing, then to paroxysms of rapture. And Cricket's increasingly heated response naturally heated me as well, so that we were equally, gleefully, dizzily, almost swooningly exultant when together we came to climax.
When it was over, she of the prodigious lungs, of course, got her breath back before I did. While I still lay limp, Ixínatsi slipped into her den under the tree and emerged to press something into my hand. It glowed in the moonlight like a piece of the moon itself.
"A kinú means a loving heart," she said, and kissed me.
"This single pearl," I said weakly, "would buy you much. A proper house, for instance. A very good one."
"I would not know what to do with a house. I do know—now—how to enjoy akuáreni. The kinú is to thank you for showing me."
Before I could gather breath to speak again, she had bounded upright and called across the tree trunk, "Marúuani!" to the young woman who lived in the shelter on the other side. I thought Cricket was going to apologize for the doubtlessly unfamiliar noises we had been making. Instead she said urgently, "Come over here! I have discovered a thing most marvelous!"
Marúuani came around the root end of the tree, idly combing her long hair, pretending to be not at all curious, but her eyebrows went up when she saw us both unclothed. She said to Ixínatsi, but with her eyes on me, "It sounded—as if you were enjoying yourselves."
"Exactly that," Cricket said with relish. "Our... selves. Listen!" She moved close, to whisper to the other woman, who continued to regard me, her eyes widening more each moment. Lying there, being described and discussed, I felt rather like some hitherto unknown sea creature just washed ashore and causing a sensation. I heard Marúuani say, in a hushed voice, "He did?" and after some more whispering, "Would he?"
"Of course he will," said Ixínatsi. "Will you not, Tenamáxtli? Will you not do akuáreni with my friend Marúuani?"
I cleared my throat and said, "One thing you must realize about men, my dearest. It takes them at least a little resting—between times—for the pole to stiffen again."
"It does? Oh, what a pity. Marúuani is eager to learn."
I considered, then said, "Well, I have shown you some things, Cricket, that do not require my participation. While I regather my faculties, you could demonstrate the preliminaries to your friend."
"You are right," she said brightly. "After all, we will not always have men with poles at our bidding. Marúuani, take off your loincloth and lie down here."
Somewhat guardedly, Marúuani obeyed, and Ixínatsi stretched out beside her, both of them just a little way from me. Marúuani flinched and gave a small shriek at the first intimate touch.
"Be still," said Cricket, with the confidence of experience. "This is how it is done. In a moment you will know."
And it was not long before I was watching two supple, shining sea-cuguars doing the contortions of coupling—much as the real animals do it—except that these were much more graceful, since they had long, shapely arms and legs to intertwine. And the watching of it hastened my own availability, so I was ready for Marúuani when she was ready for me.
I repeat, I was in love with Ixínatsi even before we did the act of love. I had already, that very night, determined to take her and her little girl with me when I left the island. I would do it by persuasion, if possible. If not, I would—like a brute Yaki—abduct them by force. And now, having found out how uniquely and wonderfully Cricket was constructed for the act of love, I was more determined than before.
But I am human. And I am male. Therefore I am incurably, insatiably curious. I could not help wondering if all these island women possessed the same physical properties that Cricket did. Although the young woman Marúuani was comely and appealing, I had never felt any desire for her, certainly not what I had felt and still felt for Ixínatsi. However, after watching what had just occurred, and being aroused by it to an indiscriminate lustfulness, and with Ixínatsi unselfishly urging me on...