The Standup Boys' New Hope

"You are certainly not native to the jungle," said the woman slowly, as she circled around behind Ruan. Her hand ran down his back but stopped short of fondling his butt. "I see hair that is trimmed. I see clothes that were once beautiful." Stopping in front of him, she aimed a hungry smile straight into his eyes. "And most importantly, I see a man who can follow orders. What is your name?"

"Ruan." His voice crackled nervously.

"Ruan, I accept you as my personal attendant." She looked past him, at the other Standup boys. Switching languages, she gave an order to Amuset.

Amuset lit up. "Governor Mananat says you are welcome." She bounced on her heels. "Come, follow me. You're to be put up in the cooking hut until we can get you married off."

"Only ten of us," said Naka, following her into the settlement. "That was the deal, wasn't it?"

"Ten, yes. But you're one of them. I don't care if you're a virgin or not. I want you."

At that, she indicated the doorway to an unassuming hut, and as Naka filed in with the other men, he felt a sharp sting on his butt. "Ah!" he blurted out. He turned just in time to see Amuset disappear from the doorway, a tellingly mischievous grin on her face.

"Look!" said Kervin, pulling a lump out from behind a stone. "Blankets! We can rest our heads!"

In short order, he had a blanket big enough to cover the whole floor rolled up into one long pillow and all fourteen men—now thirteen, with Ruan off in the governor's house—settled onto it.

"Hey, Naka," said Intriba, already halfway asleep. "I thought you said we'd be sleeping in beds by now."

"So I was a little off the mark," said Naka. "But I was right about one thing." He turned over and relaxed, feeling his muscles go limp for the last time that day. "We're done sleeping in dirt."

The next morning, Naka's first sensation was a vague awareness of something above him. His danger sense triggered, he flung up his arms, and his hands met resistance in the exact shape of the bridge of a person's nose.

Sitting up, he saw Amuset stagger back, holding a protective hand over her face.

"Oh..." Naka breathed out his fear. "Amuset? I'm sorry."

"It's alright," Amuset took her hand away, revealing an intact smile. "That's what I get for sneaking up on you." She giggled. "Fierce men, as promised."

"You're here to wake us up? Did we oversleep?"

"No, no, no..." Amuset crawled over Naka, seating herself astride his waist. "Naka, I choose you. To be my companion."

Naka shook his head to clear his thoughts. "We're choosing already? I wish I was more presentable..."

"It's okay! I talked to Governor Mananat, and she said I can have first pick of the men, and I choose you! I don't care how you look right now, I choose you! Do you accept?"

Naka blinked. "Accept? I have a choice?"

"Of course! You'll have to go with someone eventually, but I can only have you if you accept me." She leaned over him. "Do you?"

Belatedly, Naka thought to close his mouth. He tried to consider the offer, but all he could think of was those three magical words: 'Do you accept?' This place would not be just another Izaz; this woman had just afforded him a choice he would never have dared even to ask for.

When Naka had joined the Standup movement, he had thrown caution to the wind. Now he did it again. "Yes." he said. "You've been-"

That was as far as he got before Amuset seized him and kissed him. Hot, tense lips smothered his mouth, and her hands squeezed his chest with a force that almost pained her. She stood up, her left foot missing his groin by inches, and helped him to his feet, all with a wild grin on her face.

Finally, the last of Naka's drowsiness left him as he hustled after Amuset, out of his sandstone hut into another one lined with hammocks all down the walls. Sleeping women occupied most of them—human women, as Naka assured himself.

"We need to be quiet in here," said Amuset, not very quietly, as she tiptoed to the far wall of the hut and opened a sack, throwing aside tough-looking white clothes. "Here!" she said, pulling up a length of white cloth. She held it up stretched between her hands. "I have a boys' kilt. Here, put it on."

Naka looked around. It briefly occurred to him to wonder why she had a male kilt, then he considered the more pressing problem that he was in a roomful of women. He glanced around, satisfying himself that the others were asleep, and threw off his loose, dusty shirt and pushed down his fraying pants, nearly tearing them in half. He reached for his kilt.

Amuset yanked it away, holding it back out of his reach. "Say 'please,'" she smarmed.

"Amuset, be reasonable!" Naka colored as he covered his penis with his hands. "Please?"

She handed over the kilt, and he took barely longer than an eye-blink to snatch it and put it on.

"Now I'm taking you to the river," she said, pulling a creamy white brick out of the supply sack. "We're going to wash you up."

"With soap?" Naka considered how long it had been. "I'm in love."

A minute later, the two were out in the bushes. Amuset led Naka by her left hand, and in her right, she carried her spear with reassuring firmness. Despite the danger of monster girls, she paced herself slowly. Her eyes played over the leaves, the vines, the trees, the flowers and the sparse dots of sunlight as if all of it was new.

"What's the jungle like where you're from?" asked Naka.

Amuset laughed. "There is no jungle. There is only deshret. Sand and bare mountains, as far as the eye can see."

"That sounds like a desert."

"Desert? Is that the word for it in your language? I didn't think you had a word."

"And here I had always wondered what one looked like."

"Someday, I might just show you." They came upon a stream, and Amuset ran her hands up Naka's sides, her fingers tracing the ridges of his muscles, tickling his ribs. "But first, I want to show you something else."

Standing apart from him, Amuset took gentle hold of the folds of her top and slid them up. Naka watched raptly as the cloth came free, revealing modest mounds on her chest. She paused for a moment, letting him see her bareness for the first time, then began to undo her skirt, untying it and sliding it slowly down her waist, arching her back and moving by finger-widths as the cloth hem passed her womanhood. She grinned, then laughed, clearly delighting in the attention, before getting the kilt around one foot and flicking it away.

"Now you know what I look like," said Amuset proudly. "It's your turn. ¬I caught a glimpse before. Now I want the whole thing."

Taking a cue from Amuset's performance, Naka put up one foot on a tall rock, nearly exposing his cock, and started to roll up his kilt, showing a little more of his legs with each pull. Finally, his cock showed, from the hardening tip up his length to the base between his strong thighs. He paused there, letting Amuset see everything, then put his legs together and threw the kilt down. "This is what you've picked." said Naka. "Do you like what you see?"

"I do. But I didn't pick you for your flat stomach, Naka. I picked you because you're brazen. I love brazen men."

Naka's heart fluttered.

"And I love clean men too." She slapped his butt, making him squeal behind pursed lips. "Now get in that water so I can soap you down."

Naka put one foot in the stream, feeling the icy grip of the water crawl up his leg. Without hesitation, he jumped in, feeling the shock of cold all over his body. At the same time, his skin still burned where Amuset had spanked him. "Do you have to keep doing that?" he asked her, rubbing the burn.

"With a cute butt like yours?" she stepped in after him. "Get used to it."

Any frustration Naka felt was swept away when Amuset laid her hands on him. Slathered in soap, her palms massaged his back while her fingers splayed, stroking his shoulders pleasantly. She moved onto his sides, washing his armpits first, then taking special care over his ribs, her hands wrapping around to his stomach. Warmed by her hands, the soap foam made a comforting layer on his skin. Still standing behind him, pressing her hips up against his rear, Amuset brought her hands up, her slippery fingers pinching his nipples until they went hard. Then she went down.

Naka stiffened, ready for Amuset to attack his cock, only be surprised when her hands crawled past it, rubbing all around his upper thighs, then his knees, then down his calves. Her left hand came away, and Naka was prepared when her finger rubbed against the underside of his length.

"Ooh," Amuset whispered into his ear. "Nice and hard. Keep it that way." Releasing him, she walked around in front of him and handed over the soap. When he took it, she raised her arms, joining her hands above her head. "Now it's my turn. Make me feel like a queen."

Naka had never thought he would be so happy to see a naked woman leer at him. Soaping up his hands, he started on her ribcage, rolling his palms in circles from her back to her sides. Then to his disconcert, her hands clamped over his, pressing them onto her hips. For one moment, he thought he had erred, then Amuset let out a shuddering moan. "Yes," she whispered.

As soon as her hands came away, Naka kept going, caressing her stomach in a circular pattern, passing his hands closer and closer to her sex. Then to tease her, he stopped just above her button to soap up his hands again.

That was all the time she gave her. With sudden, animal energy, she hefted him by the shoulders and dragged him to the grassy riverside, seating him in the grass. "I can't stand it," she huffed. "I want it. I'm going to do it to you."

As she straddled him, grabbing him by the ears, he felt the briefest moment of panic as he imagined himself back in the monster girl's cave, but this woman was no monster. Carefully, she teased his penis, then guided it into her.

This time, there was no pain and no fear. All he could feel was delicious intensity as her tight sex crushed him. She squealed into his face, opening her mouth so wide that he worried she might swallow him whole. Fiercely, she bucked on him, her arms hooking under his and holding him tight as her rhythm became faster, her movements smaller and her breathing more intense. Her head leaned in until they touched, and she closed her eyes tightly.

To Naka's relief, she came first, her cry of pleasure fading into tense, silent breath as she erupted.

It was a relief because Naka burst moments later, losing all of his tension at once. He felt little jolts of pain up his shaft. "Stop!" he gasped. "Stop, stop!"

Amuset stopped, horrified.

"My penis..." He pulled out of her. "It can't do any more. Not after the monster girls wrung me dry."

She looked at his reddened, flaccid shaft. "You poor thing..."

"Do you want another?"

"Not if it hurts you."

He leaned in close. "I don't need my penis to please you."

She giggled.

"Let me show you."

She leaned back, and Naka suddenly reeled at what he had committed himself to. He had been immodest; a friend had explained how to finger a woman, but this would be his first time.

He started close to her clitoris, rubbing in and out, as slowly as he could manage, and in response, Amuset made the least dignified face Naka had ever seen. Emboldened, he added his other hand, playing with her flaps, then brushing in deeper and deeper into her slit, until the tip of his left index finger found her button.

She almost came on the spot. Her hands closed on his shoulders again. "Right there!" she sputtered. "Yes, right there!"

He sped up, making her moan in time with him, then slowed, pushing a little more aggressively each time. Spontaneously, she forced her mouth onto his, kissing him with force he was in no way prepared for, and he twitched, sending her over the edge. She let out a muted screech, her arms and legs trembling on him, then fell forward, pinning him to the ground. For a minute, she straddled him on hands and knees, panting, then she rolled over and lay next to him. Together, they caught their breath as they gazed up through a gap in the jungle canopy at the morning sky. A few stars still defiantly shone against the rising sunshine.

"I wish we could stay here longer," said Amuset, eventually. "But if we wait, monster girls are going to smell us."

Naka did not need to be told twice. "We'll do this back in the settlement."

He stood, planning to help her to her feet, only to find that she was already up. Squatting in the grass, she picked out the two pieces of her outfit and neatly slid them on, watching with amusement as Naka struggled to knot the belt-string of his new kilt. When he finished, she took his hand and took up her spear, and they began the hike back to the settlement.

The others were up and about. Two women measured the ground with contraptions of string and water bowls that Naka had never seen before, and in between them, Intriba and a few strong-looking women sank shovels into the ground, fighting with roots and tree stumps. Behind them, the scraping and sifting of hard work drifted out from the doors of huts Naka had never been in, while men stood lazily around the entrance to the kitchen hut, two of them assisting a woman in preparing breakfast.

Governor Mananat stepped up to the approaching couple, and Naka prepared to explain himself, then the governor accosted them in her own language. Amuset responded in kind, and Naka sheepishly remembered that he was no longer in Standup; he no longer had to speak for himself.

"She says I'm to help them build the lookout tower," Amuset explained to Naka. "Come with me, and I'll show you something."

At the place where Intriba and the others cleared the mud, Amuset knelt by a brick mold, took a stick and drew glyphs in the soft earth behind her. "I want you to learn how to read, so you can read things to me while I'm working." She pointed at the first symbol. "This one says 'ah,' as in 'Amuset.' And this next one makes the 't' sound." She drew another glyph. "And this one says 'mm' if it's at the start of the word, or just 'n' if it isn't. So how do you spell Governor Mananat's name?"

Getting the idea, Naka knelt in the mud, took the stick and inexpertly traced the glyphs.

"That's it," said Amuset, turning to her work. "Now memorize that."

Naka applied himself, writing out the glyphs in any combination he could think of and then mouthing them. After a while, Amuset would pause her work and impart a few more glyphs on him, or take the opportunity to spank him and fondle him without warning. Every time, he failed to restrain his indignance.

As Naka learned, Intriba's work brought him closer, until the big man nudged Naka. "Hey," he said quietly. "What'd she do to you?"

"She's teaching me her alphabet," replied Naka. "She wants-"

"Not that, you idiot! I saw her drag you off. Did you let her ride you?"

Naka smiled. "That and so much more. I'm her chosen now. I'll serve her as long as..." he trailed off. "I guess for as long as we live. And listen to this: she had to ask my permission first. In this culture, a woman can't marry you unless you say so."

"Bullshit. Ruan didn't have a choice."

"That was part of a deal. Now that he's held up his end of the bargain, we can turn down anyone, just as long as we marry someone."

"Huh."

"Aren't you excited?"

"Doesn't change a thing for me. They like hard workers, but they hate ugly men. I'm just a pair of arms here." He plunged his shovel angrily into the soil, splashing some mud onto Naka. "You'll be whoring for that spear-woman for the rest of your life? Well good for you. I get to do this."

"That's not true! Some woman will want you."

Intriba huffed. "Even worse."

With a sigh, Naka went back to his letters.

A long time later, someone gave a call in the women's language, and Amuset and all the other women perked up suddenly. Naka followed suit when Amuset explained that breakfast was served.

Seated in pits they had dug into the earth, Naka heartily ate rice and yam, delighting in his first taste of sourdough bread. When he finally restrained his hunger enough to eat slowly, he eased himself up next to Ruan, who dined without his mistress. "Ruan," he said, "how is it going with the governor?"

"Not bad," said Ruan distantly. "It's happened. I'm not a virgin anymore."

Naka patted his shoulder, wanting to apologize but knowing Ruan would insist it was not his fault.

"You know, before I joined the Standup movement, I would have loved a wife like her. She's patient with me and she doesn't roughhouse me, and all she seems to want me to do in return is put in effort." He sipped a spoonful of soup. "I'm going to miss this place when it's time to run away."

"What?" Naka looked around, terrified that a woman had heard them. None had. "How can you do that after all that we've gained here?"

Ruan looked down. "I wish I could be like you. You can get on your knees and move earth for any woman as long as she throws you a bone. But we Standup boys—we real Standup boys—we just can't live like that. We have to be our own men. It's in our natures."

Naka wanted to argue, but knew it was no use.

"Whatever we do," Ruan added, "we'll leave you out of it. Keep your hands clean and all that."

"I would appreciate that."

The rest of the meal passed in silence as Naka reflected on how lucky he was. When he felt a hand on his shoulder, he jumped, but it was only Amuset.

"Naka?" she said.

Naka looked into her caring eyes and delighted in saying, "Yes, my wife?"

"Let's get back to work."