Here is anew story to get my mind away from all the current Sh*t going on
hopefully it will help others
Gringo Meets Huka Huka
The air hung thick with humid heat and anticipation as we stepped off the rickety wooden airstrip onto the packed earth runway. My girlfriend, Beatriz, adjusted the strap of her worn leather satchel, a wry grin playing on her lips beneath the vibrant green leaves woven into her fiery red hair. "Ready for this, Cara?" she asked, her Brazilian Portuguese rolling like honeyed stones down my throat.
“As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said, swallowing my apprehension. A trip with Beatriz rarely started at an airstrip that resembled something out of Apocalypse Now. But then again, she wasn’t typical. Gorgeous with curves and a smile that could launch ships, Beatriz had the heart of a warrior princess. She’d brought me to this remote Brazilian village in Kuikuro territory for one reason: the Yamurikuma Festival.
It wasn't just the annual spectacle that drew her in, though witnessing 1000 women taking on the roles and rituals of men for a whole week held its allure. No, it was the wrestling—the Huka Huka. Her eyes sparked with primal excitement whenever I brought it up—even more so than when we sparred in our tiny Brooklyn apartment or she demolished me on a Saturday morning at my favorite Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gym.
Word among anthropologists and those rare souls who’d braved the journey into this deep green heart was that Kuikuro women, disguised as warriors for Yamurikuma, weren't just good at Huka Huka; they were legendary. They wrestled with a ferocity that had even seasoned male competitors trembling in their sandals, limbs slick with clay oil and sweat intertwined in a blur of primal dance under the canopy of emerald leaves.
We trudged through a final gauntlet of dense jungle growth before emerging into a clearing bathed in dappled sunlight. It was a riot of color and sound—women draped in feathers and woven bark costumes chanting rhythmically, men drumming on intricately carved hollowed-out logs, and children chasing fat chickens with raucous laughter echoing through the emerald cathedral of trees.
A woman with charcoal smudges across her cheeks and braided black hair thick as rope approached us. Her grin was a flash of white between obsidian teeth, and her eyes, bright with curiosity behind a thicket of fringe, settled on Beatriz. She gestured towards a crude hut built from woven palm leaves and said something in a language that sounded like wind chimes striking against polished stones.
Beatriz’s smile broadened. “She wants to know if you wrestle, too,” she said in fluent Portuguese, taking my hand before the woman could press further with her questioning gaze. "Come on," she squeezed, pulling me towards the hut. “Let’s show them what a gringo can do.”
The hut was filled with the scent of woodsmoke and damp earth, mingling with the sharp tang of copal incense. Dim light filtered through gaps in the woven walls, and we were surrounded by women dressed as men, some in animal skins dyed ochre and crimson, others in elaborate feathered headdresses. Their faces were adorned with intricate black-and-white paint that resembled tribal tattoos.
Though dark and keen behind the painted lines, their eyes settled on me with a curious mixture of amusement and challenge that sent another wave of prickles up my spine. The woman who’d greeted us outside – her name was Awa, Beatriz told me in a hushed whisper as we navigated through the throng – clapped once sharply, twice, then gestured towards two mats woven from braided palm leaves laid out on the packed earth floor.
"She says it's good to see another warrior," Beatriz said, her voice echoing oddly in the dense stillness of the hut, "and she wants me to teach you some basics before the real matches start." She grinned, that mischievous glint back in her eyes. It wasn’t a grin directed at me – not entirely.
Beyond mere curiosity about my awkward presence in their midst, something was in the air, an undercurrent of competitive energy thrumming like a taut bowstring. I caught Awa’s gaze and saw it mirrored there, too: not just amusement but a subtle assessing gleam as though she were sizing me up for sacrifice at a particularly boisterous shrine.
Beatriz grabbed my arm and led me through the murmuring mass towards one of the mats. "Don't worry," she murmured, her hand warm against my bicep even beneath my sweat-dampened t-shirt, "they just want to see if you bleed easily."
"Great," I muttered, trying to summon a laugh that didn’t sound like a strangled lizard in my throat as the air thickened with the earthy smell of copal and sweat. This was already proving far more intimidating than grappling with hulking bikers at our local BJJ gym or even Beatriz on those rare mornings when she decided to treat me like a human punching bag instead of a lover who needed some extra tender loving care after her long shifts as a nurse.
Awa stood before us, arms crossed over her woven bark breastplate – a warrior princess without the feathered headdress of the others. Older than most women in the hut, her face was etched with wrinkles like riverbeds across the Amazon basin, but her sharp, intelligent eyes mirrored Beatriz’s. Her long black hair was woven with tiny white shells and knotted with a bone pendant shaped like a jaguar.
She crouched low on the mat, one arm hooked around her opposite ankle, moving in slow circles. Her bare feet whispered against the earth; the palm leaves creaking beneath her solid, sinewy frame—like an old baobab tree. This was a display of strength, fluidity, and controlled aggression, coiled like a jaguar ready to spring.
The other women watched silently, heads cocked, some chewing twigs like cattle grazing, their black eyes reflecting the flickering firelight from men huddled outside the clearing. They judged not just my physical skill but an ancient rhythm of power and balance—a dance passed down through generations of Kuikuro women who wrestled not for conquest but for something more profound.
Awa looked up, meeting my gaze with a stare that seemed to pierce through the flimsy facade of city-boy bravado I desperately clutched. "Show me your spirit, gringo," she rasped, her voice gravelly like stones grinding together in the riverbed. “Let your blood sing.”
My throat went bone dry. "Spirit?" I croaked, feeling a sheen of sweat break out across my brow despite the relative coolness of the shadowed hut. "Blood singing...?" The jungle heat pressed against the woven walls like a living thing, suffocating me with its thick green scent and humid weight. My carefully constructed facade of nonchalant tourists crumbled faster than cheap drywall under an avalanche.
Awa didn't wait for my feeble attempt at philosophical debate. She exploded from her crouch in a blur of muscle and bark armor, the woven breastplate clicking like brittle bone against bone as she moved. For a split second, I was bathed in the scent of copal and damp earth, intensified tenfold before she slammed into me – hard enough to knock my breath out with an echoing *thwock* that resonated through my chest cavity.
I went down hard on the packed earth floor, tasting dust and a faintly metallic tang like overripe mangoes left too long in the sun. My head swam with the sudden dizzying rush of it all - her surprising force, the guttural whoop that rose from somewhere deep inside Awa as she drove me back, the smell of sweat and woodsmoke clinging to my nostrils like a desperate plea for mercy.
"FIGHT!" Beatriz screamed from behind me, the sharp Portuguese cutting through the murmuring drone of the women gathered at the edge of the mat like a knife slicing through rawhide. The sound sent another jolt of adrenaline tearing through my system, electrifying every muscle screaming in protest against the sudden and brutal disorientation.
I scrambled back, scrabbling for purchase on the uneven ground, slick with sweat beneath Awa's relentless advance. My mind was trying to catch up with my flailing limbs – grappling in this chaotic dance wasn’t just about brute strength but angles, leverage, and momentum-shifting like the tides under a full moon. All the hours spent learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu back home suddenly felt as distant and useless as trying to navigate by sextant after being hurled through a wormhole into some pre-Columbian warp.
Awa didn't give me any room for strategy. She moved with a coiled panther’s fluidity, weaving around my clumsy attempts to block her advance. Each strike was delivered with the jarring snap of bone against bone – she used her forearm like an iron club in one swift motion, slamming it into my ribs, then came back again with a driving knee aimed squarely at my sternum that felt like being buffeted by a rogue wave. My breath exploded from me in a strangled gasp, and I went down again, sprawled on my back, tasting dirt and the coppery tang of something distinctly un-mango.
She was on top of me almost before I hit the ground, her knees pinning my arms against the mat in a vicelike grip that smelled faintly of woodsmoke and something wilder – game meat smoked over open fire, maybe, or perhaps just raw muscle memory honed from generations of wrestling for territory under the blazing sun.
Her cheek pressed down on mine, hot and slick with sweat. I could feel the coarse weave of her bark armor pressing into my skin like a woven net cast across my chest.
"You sing softly, gringo," she rasped in my ear, voice thick and low like grinding stone. Her breath hitched in a gust of warmth over my face - then she pressed down on my throat with a single hand that felt heavier than any man I'd ever grappled with. "Is this all your spirit?"
I clawed at her forearm, trying to pry away the pressure pinning me to the mat like an insect pinned beneath a collector’s glass – desperate for air, desperate for the space to think beyond the primal fear tightening its grip around my lungs.
Beatriz's voice sliced through the swirling chaos of muscle memory and primal urges in a high-pitched scream that ripped clean through the jungle symphony inside the hut – "Breathe! Use your legs!"
The words echoed, sharp as shards of obsidian, in the sudden silence of the women holding their breath beside me. Her image flickered above the pressed bark and mud floor: her face alight with a fierce joy, almost manic, yet focused beyond comprehension; not fear but pure adrenaline blazing through those dark eyes like jungle firelight catching on dry leaves.
For just a second, I saw her standing there, naked-breasted beneath a sky choked with a green canopy, spear poised between the black lines painted above her cheekbones—one of their warriors in this skin of flesh and muscle, not some city nurse who fought infections in sterile hallways after long shifts tending to sick men and women.
Maybe that was where my spirit had gotten lost, somewhere between concrete and cotton, between antibiotics and antiseptic.
I shifted, rolling my hip against her thigh as I dug my heels into the packed earth floor - drawing on something more profound than all the carefully learned rolls and takedowns she’d drilled me within their cramped apartment kitchen back home – and slammed up onto one elbow, pushing a hand free to shove at her chest.
It wasn’t enough to draw a ragged breath and grasp a fleeting sense of calm. For the first time since she had landed on me, I noticed a flicker of surprise in Awa’s dark eyes—an acknowledgment of my clumsy thrust against her weight. That tiny realization ignited a spark of hope, radiating outward through every fiber of my being.
The rhythm was changing now. This wasn’t some casual grappling match with a hot girlfriend who enjoyed tossing around anyone who dared call themselves a fighter before bed.
Beatriz shouted something in Portuguese, perhaps “Hold on!” or “Take her down!” It resonated like thunder through the leafy canopy, accompanied by a deep chanting from the hut, like cicadas after rain. This wasn’t about technique anymore; it was primal energy unleashed, a legacy of generations that had fought for territory in the jungle long before steel and steam altered the world.
It was about survival. It was about singing my blood out loud enough so that maybe, just maybe, this warrior princess wouldn't decide I wasn't worth the kill.
The air crackled. It wasn’t just the humid weight of the jungle pressing down, thick as damp moss clinging to broad leaves; it felt electric, charged with an unseen current humming between Awa and me like taut fibers spun from raw muscle memory and something far older, more profound than any human invention. Her sudden shift was brutal, visceral – not just a change in tactics but some primal unlocking within her.
The bark breastplate slipped from her torso as if in a ritual rather than necessity. She shed it like a snake shedding skin, revealing sun-tanned flesh the shade of polished mahogany, marked with deep lines like canyons in rock. Awa’s body, sculpted over bone and muscle, exuded raw power and an unsettling absence of restraint. She moved with the liquid ferocity of a jaguar, transforming grace into something sharp and predatory.
I scrambled back against the matted earth floor, struggling to breathe. The scent around her intensified; copal smoke mingled with a primal musk, something feral and fecund-like life breaking through damp soil. It was no longer just sweat—raw wildness, staining the earth like blood on freshly broken ground.
Her left hand shot out, fingers hooked around my wrist in a vise that pinched away all feeling from knuckle to elbow, and she twisted me sideways like some brittle branch caught in a storm’s current. My fist went swinging blindly upward – connected somewhere near her ribs in a dull *thump* that felt more like swatting at water than bone against sinew, but it was enough to break the relentless arc of her body as she came down again.
Instead of driving me into the packed earth with another punishing knee strike, Awa used that sudden shift I'd bought myself to roll under my flailing arm. We were suddenly locked in a tangle so tight that I could feel the rasp of her woven skirt against my chest – coarse grass fibers and something else smelling faintly of dried herbs mashed together like poultice - while the rest of the world seemed to tilt sideways, a hazy green blur through the fringe of woven palm leaves around the edges of the hut.
She smelled of sweat, earth, and a strange herbal scent, fresh as mountain air. I felt her hot breath against my neck—steady and rhythmic, unlike my own labored panting. Her skin was slick beneath the woven skirt like river mud smoothed by water. It wasn’t just sweat; it was oiled flesh, her muscles trembling as she pushed against me, trying to unbalance me for another takedown.
“Mano a mano now, gringo,” came Awa’s voice low in my ear, rough as dry leaves stirred by a sudden gust under the jungle canopy, and I knew with an unshakeable certainty that the game had shifted again. It wasn't just about survival anymore; this wasn’t some test of technique or endurance imposed from outside.
Her grip on the nape of my neck tightened like a vise, anchoring me in place to confront the primal truth ahead. Her other arm pulled mine free from her skirt’s tangled embrace, twisting my fingers down to meet hers with bone against bone. Her hand was no longer slick; it was hard and calloused, rough like river stones smoothed over time.
She gripped my hand tightly, her chin pressing against my collarbone, an unspoken truce before the battle. Beneath the copal smoke and earth, a feral yet feminine scent emerged from her wet, clingy skirt, like a jungle flower thriving in the shadow of death as Awa bore down on me like a storm.
And then she said something else - this time not in that guttural rasp I’d learned was somehow still her normal voice – but in what sounded like a choked, husky whisper against my skin. "You bleed for me" came out like a question rather than a statement. "So you are mine?"
It wasn't just the heat of their jungle pressing down on us; suddenly, I felt something hot bloom behind my eyes that had nothing to do with humidity - and everything to do with the impossible truth of being pinned beneath this woman in her wildness, smelling faintly of bloodroot and river mud.
Her hand tightened against mine, then relaxed just enough for me to catch a whiff – a breath-stealing scent that was both musky and sweet as jasmine after rain – before it locked again like some living steel trap on my wrist bone.
The women in the hut watched us through the smoke haze, eyes wide and dark and unblinking, with the silent intensity of jaguar cubs watching their mother stalk across sun-dappled leaves under a canopy so dense that even noon felt shadowed green.
It was more than just the wrestling match now; this was something older, more profound than any rules I’d learned in sweaty gyms back home - it was about territory claimed and offered between two living things breathing the same humid air with hearts thudding like jungle drums against bone. This wasn't about my survival anymore – at least not alone.
This was about whether she let me bleed out into this woman who smelled of everything green, fertile, and wild or if she decided I was worth keeping whole enough for something else entirely.
Her thigh slammed into my ribs, bone on bone, like a hammer blow against steel. This wasn’t some polite grappling match where you traded takedowns and feints for sport. It felt less like wrestling and more like being tossed about by a storm spirit in human skin – muscular limbs churning through the air with the same primal force that ripped at the thatched roof of their hut when downpours turned torrential.
Air hissed out of my lungs, a strangled gasp caught somewhere between pain and awe as Awa dragged me along the packed earth floor like some sodden leaf caught in a river’s undertow. My stomach lurched with the disorienting lurch, then slammed hard against something solid – probably another stack of woven mats piled up haphazardly in this hut that functioned more like a jungle clearing than any apartment I'd known back home.
She pinned me there before I could even get my bearings back – a sprawling mess of limbs tangled beneath her as she hunched over me with the weight and intensity of a panther settling on its prey. The musky, jasmine-tinged scent of her exploded in my nostrils; it was so strong, almost suffocating now, laced with that raw, metallic tang I recognized from spilled blood at butcher shops back home – this wasn’t just sweat anymore; it was some primal musk she wore as a second skin woven into the fabric of this goddamn place.
I tasted dirt and something else bitter-sweet, like crushed berries on my tongue. My hand shot up to find my cheek smeared with grime, sticky and slick. I knew without looking she'd come down hard enough to leave more than smears there – a good chance it was blood from somewhere above the brow line where bone had met too much sudden force against palm-sized stones dug into the floor by generations who’d wrestled for territory beneath this very canopy.
“Mano a mano, gringo,” she rasped again, voice close enough to vibrate my eardrums as a tom-tom beat in her chest – but something was different about it now, deeper and more guttural than even when she’d called me out for the match. It wasn’t just a challenge anymore; it was an invocation of some ancient contract sealed in blood and mud beneath this green ceiling pressed down on us like iron.
My eyes met hers – dark as polished obsidian flecked with gold, shimmering in the moonlight under the canopy. The whites were impossibly bright against her pupils, ringed blacker than any jungle cat I’d seen in a zoo. It was unsettling – she held them wide open like a ritualistic offering, sharp and bare as polished bone in the dimness that never quite touched daylight, even with the palm leaves above.
Then Beatriz shrieked something from somewhere behind her crouched form - I couldn’t quite pick out the Portuguese words through the haze of smoke and exertion pressing down on my chest, but there was no mistaking the way she yelled, "Tetas!" – “The tits!” as if it were some holy mantra uttered just before a sacrifice to appease some unseen jungle spirit.
Beatriz always had this knack for knowing exactly what I needed to hear at any given moment – even when that moment involved a woman who smelled like copal and river mud pinning me hard enough to make my ribs sing a symphony of cracking bone against slick bark armor.
Except it wasn't the sheer audacity of her shout – or even the way Awa paused mid-grimace, nostrils flaring like some jungle flower testing the breeze for pollen – that jolted something loose inside me—the sudden clarity of what those words meant in this place, under these conditions.
It wasn’t just a crude command to grapple lower on the body; it was an acknowledgment of some primal truth woven into the fabric of their world even thicker than the humidity pressing down on us all. Here, with the air thick as jungle moss and sweat slicked onto palms like river mud clinging to exposed roots, my hand instinctively reaching out for something besides bare skin wasn't so much a vulgar instinct; it was almost an echo of those primal rites Beatriz had described in her breathless, earnest way back when we’d first met.
For Awa, the game had gone beyond mere sport or dominance. She didn't just want to test my endurance and skill against hers – she wanted something else entirely, something more deeply embedded in this place than any gym rulebook or prizefighter’s pride could ever hold.
And if I was going to survive this mano-a-mano match, it wasn't enough anymore to stay conscious beneath the weight of her limbs;
I needed to figure out what game she was playing and how you played with your bare chest exposed like an offering under a green sky where even noon felt like twilight.
The jungle pressed down on us both – this green, humid world that breathed in its rhythm alongside the rasping pant of her lungs and the frantic hammering of my own heart against my ribs beneath one hand still clamped on hers, the other somehow clawing at the woven skirt between us before it could become an issue of needing to choose: was it better to be strangled by bark fibers or drowned in a tide of mud-slicked muscle?
The air hung thick with something more than sweat and smoke - there was a feral scent she wore like armor that wasn't just animal musk, but some promise coiled tight beneath its heat – the same way copal smoke promised both purification and sacrifice at once. I knew I’d be lucky to walk out of this ordeal smelling only of earth, blood, and river mud.
As Awa shifted, a deep tremor rippled through her flesh, the jungle air thickening with anticipation. The silence from the women behind us was hushed, as if the whole hut collectively held its breath, aware that whatever came next could leave me bleeding on these tightly woven mats.
It felt less like there was still time left in some measured round and more like I’d fallen into the center of a hummingbird’s heart beating against a ribcage choked with green leaves - all frantic vibration and imminent eruption in the space between those jungle-dark eyes and whatever she was going to do next.
She pressed her hand hard on my chest again, knuckles white where they sank into the curve just beneath my ribs – then started speaking something low in that same guttural rasp of hers that had come with the sudden shift from playful combatant to some fierce embodiment of this place’s tangled undergrowth and bone-deep rain.
It was something about “blood” and “rain,” and a word I didn't recognize but caught its edge sharp as flint: *“Kuarup.”*
I wanted to ask, "What in the blue hell does that mean?" – but it came out choked between two breaths, trying to claw their way past her weight, pinning me down with an air of some ancient right. It wasn't just a body-crushing mine; it was the world settling around us like moss after a downpour.
The women watching through the smoke haze shifted in unison, bodies murmuring and swaying as if they were being played upon by some unseen drumbeat deep inside this green cathedral of woven palm leaves and fever-bright blooms tucked into the jungle canopy.
"Kuarup," Awa breathed again – her voice like something catching on a dry leaf rasping across bone – "Blood rain, gringo. You bleed for me?"
And then I knew it wasn't just about my endurance anymore – or even about any goddamn rulebook I’d brought with me from the outside world.
It was about what that blood meant here in this place, pressed down by that green canopy and the weight of generations who wrestled for territory beneath its shade – a place where rain tasted like copper pennies and a woman’s touch could be both baptism and a drowning you prayed wouldn't have a way to come back from.
It was about whether I understood enough about Kuarup’s meaning in this jungle cathedral of woven palm leaves and fever-bright blooms tucked into the canopy even to begin to bleed right.
The word "Kuarup" hung between us, thick as the jungle humidity clinging to every exposed inch of skin. It wasn't just a name – a pressure point pressed against my chest so hard that even breathing felt like trying to inflate lungs filled with damp leaves. Her hand on mine hadn’t loosened its grip at all; she shifted her weight, rolling onto something other than bone and muscle above me as I struggled to inhale past the crushing pressure of those thighs pinning me.
My ribs protested again – a symphony of groans from compressed cartilage against slick bark armor - but beneath that, the primal knowledge Beatriz had so casually offered about these women in their wildness echoed in my ears like some half-forgotten mantra: *“Their legs are meant to crush.”*
Not just for sport – not like those leg locks I’d grown used to back home where a girl might get her ankle twisted, but something closer to how a jaguar cinched in on prey.
So, while my lungs clawed for air and every muscle screamed in protest at being pressed into an unnatural origami figure beneath that living wall of sinew and muscle – I had to find another angle. I needed to shift this whole equation from "trying to stay alive" to some semblance of strategy before I became a mud-slicked tapestry woven with Awa's blood and the sweat from those goddamn thighs squeezing every inch of air out of me.
Beatriz’s face loomed above me, her eyes wide and translucent like a bright insect under glass. She smiled wildly, her canines peeking over her lower lip as if ready to gnaw through the leather. When our eyes met, she exclaimed in Portuguese about Awa’s “power” being “not just legs” before sharply declaring, *“Tetas!”* It felt like a command, striking me like a bird’s beak against my collarbone.
It was like she'd laid bare some ancient truth about this place, as unavoidable and tangled as those vines choking on that roof overhead.
So I did what any man half-dead under a mountain of Brazilian muscle would do when told the way to fight back was to go straight for the source of that power - I scrambled with one hand clawing free from her grip like some desperate spider trying to escape a lizard's tongue. Then I went straight for the only thing left exposed enough in this whole goddamn jungle cathedral to grab hold of: Awa’s breasts.
The moment my fingers sank into the slick sweat beneath her shirt, heat radiated from contact, like touching the heart of a hidden ember. Her body felt warm and resilient, moving with a rhythm like giant jungle flowers, soft as waterlogged moss yet carrying a tension that blurred the line between muscle and something more challenging beneath.
The air seemed to crackle with something hot and shocked all at once - not just from the unexpectedness of my move after all that grueling pinning but from Awa's sudden gasp. It wasn’t a sound of pain exactly – though there was pain in that rasping inhale as she lurched up like some river monster surfacing with an almost comical amount of surprise.
Her weight shifted enough to give me just enough purchase on the mats beneath my back to twist my body free from her thighs' viselike grip - but it wasn’t a full release, not by any means. They still pressed against me like living walls I'd managed to wedge myself into some narrow crevice between.
My hand was still anchored at Awa's breastbone, though – and that contact seemed to do something weird and sudden in her. The muscles around my fingers knotted with surprising density as she caught her breath, then strained hard against the pressure of my palm like someone trying to hold onto a piece of driftwood caught in a river’s current when they were fighting for their grip on the shore.
This wasn't just about pain or even surprise anymore – it was something more profound, wilder than that, and I couldn't shake the feeling she was somehow transmitting the rhythm of this jungle through the goddamn bridge my hand had become across those smooth, firm globes beneath her damp cotton shirt.
The air crackled again with it - a sound like static in some old radio set picking up more than just stations at the edge of its dial; there was something alive and electric under that green canopy overhead, caught somewhere between Awa’s breath coming out as ragged gasps against my fingers, and the low rumble of those women watching us both – not applauding, exactly – but more like some tide pooling in their chests and rising with a rhythm I felt myself catching up to.
"Mano a mano," she rasped again – voice different now, rougher somehow, strained around that sudden intake of breath as if the word itself was something heavy and urgent needing to be forced through a tangle of leaves clogging her throat before it could make it out. It wasn't just about the match anymore - not when I’d gone for something so primal beneath that sweat-slicked cotton, but I hadn’t even managed to get my other hand free yet, and she was still breathing like some jungle cat who’d been woken up in its den by a trespasser.
I could feel it before the words came: what *that* hand would mean for her next move.
The scent of river mud and copal smoke filled the hut, the air pressing down on us like a heavy palm leaf hat. The humidity clung to our skin, transforming into clammy heat; the jungle outside felt less like a backdrop and more like lung-breathing dampness with green leaves and rich earth.
I managed to scramble back onto my elbows – still wedging myself sideways between those thighs. Still, at least now, it wasn't as much like being pinned under two giant pythons who'd mistaken me for a particularly plump termite mound. With the left hand that was still anchored on Awa's chest, I clawed at the space behind her and somehow managed to get my right fist free – the back of it stinging with something more than just muscle fatigue as I found purchase on one of those woven mats piled up against the wall for padding.
For a moment, I thought the purchase would help me stand again, but then her muscles tightened around my hand like a vice. It wasn’t painful; it felt like she had transformed from a river monster into polished jade, with live wires humming beneath her smooth skin. It was about more than strength; that coiled tension in her torso made even my fingers against her taut breasts feel like tracing the veins of a wing ready to take flight.
“Mano a mano,” she rasped again, and goddamn if it didn't sound more like a guttural warning than a challenge. This wasn’t just some display of strength anymore; whatever had woken up under that thatched roof alongside us when my hand met hers at her breastbone was somehow seeping into the whole atmosphere – even those women watching were hushed, bodies swaying against each other in some rhythm I was only starting to grasp.
Then she moved again. Not a shift or lurch like before - more like a sudden narrowing, a folding inwards. The thighs that had been pinning me sideways compressed around me so suddenly and sharply it felt like being squeezed into a hollowed-out log someone decided to use for a cradle – all the space in that little pocket of green leaf-scented air was eaten up by how tight her legs became, how close their heat pressed against mine.
Surprisingly, her hand shot to my face quickly, more like a strike on a snare drum than a grab. Fingers tangled in my damp hair at the nape of my neck felt dipped in embers, radiating heat. She pulled me against her strong thigh, our foreheads pressed so tightly that my teeth ached.
Then came the smell – something sharp and metallic underneath that cloying humid sweetness, and I realized that even with that hand still anchored on her chest, this wasn’t just about strength anymore; it was about angles and pressure points she was suddenly forcing me onto.
Nothing was delicate about how she leaned into that scent of river mud and copal smoke. There wasn't a single muscle in that whole goddamn figure not engaged as she slid forward from hip to shoulder, dragging me with her until my legs were cradled against those thighs like I’d been stuffed back into some primal cradle where the rocking was all about shifting tectonic plates.
That same hand anchoring on her chest snaked around and under something pressing hard against my hips - still pinned between the two sides of her, but now it wasn't just heat radiating off those thighs anymore, there was this pulsation to them – slow and deep like some drumbeat only I could hear as it vibrated up through whatever was wedged tight between my legs.
A sudden jerk upward from her hips preceded the rest of the motion, more a quick pull than anything brutal. The hand against her chest squeezed tightly, making her breasts bunch beneath my fingers. Then I felt it—not through touch, but as deep pressure as if the entire jungle cathedral was exhaling upon me like a green-leafed leviathan.
It wasn't pain, but fullness bloomed hot and sudden between my legs, amplified by the tightening squeeze of her thighs as if trying to force something through the damp cotton and slick skin. Then came her hand on me. It wasn't just holding tight – it was flexing and pulling, a rhythm that matched the drumbeat pulsing up from those thighs, resonating deep inside me until I was vibrating with its alien echo.
Nothing was left to say – not even “Mano a mano.” This wasn't wrestling anymore; this was a primal thing where words didn’t matter, only how fast you could give yourself over to something more significant than the space your bones were trying to claim.
And with that pulsing pressure and the heat radiating from her hand against my tight muscles – I went limp as a plucked string against those living walls of muscle around me, just waiting for whatever rhythm they had decided on for this particular kind of surrender.
The rest was lost somewhere in between jungle-scented humidity clinging to every inch of exposed skin, the rough rasp of her breathing that sounded like a tiger letting out air after a kill, and whatever kind of primal drumbeat was resonating from somewhere deep inside those thighs until I couldn't tell if it came from my blood or hers.
This wasn't just winning; this felt closer to being swallowed whole by something wilder than the green cathedral outside – but then, in a place where wrestling matches were rituals, and women wore their power like bark armor, maybe that was always what “mano a mano” meant: letting whatever held you be the one who decided when you finally ran out of the fight.
