Tarzan, The Man

Jane Porter—now Jane Greystoke—had had enough of Africa for the moment. Tarzan couldn’t blame her. As sturdy as she was, the loss of his cousin, once her fiancée, and the machinations of Nikolas Rokoff would surely tax the constitution of any woman. Though Tarzan knew her spirit would recover, he thought it best to prescribe the same curative he had taken for his heartbreak a year earlier. Distance and time, until all reminders of the scouring events had lost their power over her.

To that end, Tarzan’s good friend Paul D’Arnot had volunteered them a cabin in the French countryside, rustic and remote, to the point that he felt near guilt that his obligations as naval officer left this family inheritance barren so much of the time. He was insistent that the Greystokes put it to good use and give purpose to what was in danger of becoming a foppish bauble.

Jane was amused by the idea—an American woman and a British lord, late of Africa, taking up residence in the hills of France—and though she was up to meeting the social obligations of her sex, she far preferred to have her new husband to herself after their year apart.

As well, their marriage had as yet gone unconsummated. They had been married as quickly as possible, almost recklessly soon, with Jane scarcely recovered from the shipwreck and stranding that had so circuitously brought her back to Tarzan. She had recuperated a great deal on the voyage back to Europe, but the cramped quarters of the ship, with the hustle and bustle of sailors and other passengers about, had done nothing to induce her to passion, much less the surrender of her virginity.

Her new husband was almost inducement enough by himself—his strength, his chivalry, his care for her, and the godlike attributes of his physique which were obvious most clearly through the borrowed clothing that could not help but strain to cover chest, biceps, and thighs. But he had not pressed the matter, except for the temptation his kisses presented, as they laid together at night. Jane’s illness limped along, almost a gift, as otherwise she didn’t think she’d be able to get to sleep with the touch and feel of her husband looming so large in her mind.

Upon their arrival in France, Tarzan bought them a roadster with the gold that now swelled his family fortune. A new wardrobe more dutifully sheathed his body, though Jane missed how his old clothes sometimes teared trying to hold in his thews. By the end of the journey, he had been wearing simple sailor’s clothes, tough enough to take the hard work of shipboard duty, and thus strong enough to be worthy of the King of the Apes.

Yet, though they were far more modest than the loincloth Jane was so used to seeing him in, the plain, rough garments were so unsuited to his lordly manner that they seemed far less becoming. It was a testament, Jane thought, to how oddly the mind could color and shade what it sees. It seemed only natural to her that he should wear only animal hide, despite being noble in both blood and sentiment, yet though the sailor’s clothing was less ill-suited to civilized man, it nevertheless seemed unequal to his grandeur.

Jane could not see how that could be—that a lack of clothing be more genteel than that of a peasant—yet nonetheless, her eyes said it so. Perhaps it was to pacify her that Tarzan consented to be properly tailored while Jane bought herself new clothes in the boutiques of Paris. Jane could perceive the irony of a naturist and his new bride acquiring an expensive wardrobe before setting out to start a family, but Tarzan proved the native gentleman in his soul by indulging her womanly foibles.

Finally, they came to the cabin. It was as lovely as D’Arnot had promised, the lieutenant having been guilt-ridden enough to work to maintain its upkeep over the years, though he could only enjoy the luxurious loneliness of this oasis for but a few days at a time. Far away in Paris, the dutiful D’Arnot was enjoying the knowledge that his friends were putting this family holding to good use far more than he ever had himself, as the call of duty invariably appealed to him louder than the hillside cabin’s manifest comforts.

With speed and ease, Tarzan bore their luggage from the trunk of their stately SCAP Type A to inside the cabin, emerging again shortly after Jane closed the trunk. She had regained her old vitality in fullness, but she still lagged behind Tarzan’s skill and athleticism. As well, he did not wear a corset.

“Shall I carry you over the threshold?” Tarzan asked.

“I believe you’re growing entirely too comfortable with lugging me around,” Jane retorted teasingly.

Tarzan seized her up, with Jane’s stunned cry of impropriety being swallowed up by the rolling hills that surrounded them in verdant green, their own cabin the only break in nature’s majesty. “I believe the American expression is ‘one more for the road’?”

As though she were weightless, Tarzan carried her inside, a wayward kick shutting the door behind him. And inside the well-furnished cabin—opulent in the simplicity and elegance of its trappings—Tarzan paused for a moment to kiss her, before keeping her in his arms as he made for the bedroom…

“Oh no!” Jane cried laughingly, beating at his invincible chest with her fists until he put her down. “At least let us unpack our bags before you turn me into a wanton.”

Tarzan obediently picked up the bags instead, muttering with dark joviality. “I suppose outside the jungle, an ape must do as his mate says.”

“Very often.”

Jane went to the fireplace, a massive stone hearth with a bearskin rug before it. She slid off her slippers and padded upon the fur with her bare toes, relishing how her tiny feet sunk into the luxurious hair. It was near dark, the bestial sounds of night-nature growing out of the rustle of grass and the whispers of the wind, and D’Arnot had even been so conscientious as to leave firewood in the rack. She threw a few logs upon the andirons.

“The more you insist on carting me about, the more I’ll have to demonstrate my self-sufficiency,” Jane said, taking a box of matches from the mantel and striking one. It immediately pooped out and Tarzan let out a snicker of laughter Jane found unbecoming, especially directed at her. Fortunately for their fledgling relationship, the next match caught and she was able to properly light a fire.

“And the more independent you are, the more I must love you.”

Jane smiled to herself. Coming from anyone else, that’d strike her as flattery, but Tarzan would never lower himself to anything less than the truth. He was far from guileless and not quite innocent, but he favored honesty as a leopard would its spots. All the sophistries of the modern world couldn’t wash away the patina of Eden he’d retained from noble birth and mother’s love, untouched by fallen Man.

“I must ask you for a favor,” Tarzan continued.

Jane blushed at her own heated thoughts, and bit back a flirtatious retort. Although Tarzan was not above lasciviousness of a sort, he was too high-minded for the smutty or the cheap. Even in the jungle, those pleasures were bold and voluptuous and living, the relations of one mate to another, not a tawdry affair of desperation or depravity. “Anything.”

“The locket. May I have it back?”

Jane’s hand went to her breast, where she still wore the locket Tarzan had given her, a diamond and gold beauty that had once belonged to his mother, the Lady Alice. Jane had clung to it dearly ever since he had given it to her, the only remnant and reminder of him she’d had for far too long, but now she willingly fished it from between her breasts and held it out to him. She would no more deny it to him than she would deny him anything else. Yet, her fidelity was not without doubt.

“Why would you ask to have this restored to you?” Jane questioned, trying not to sound hurt.

“To replace it,” Tarzan replied, and took from his pocket another locket, a twin to the one she had been wearing. “The gold is from Opar, freshly forged. New. Like us.”

Jane took the locket from him and it indeed felt fresh to the touch, shorn of the years and meaning invested in the old, virgin as her. She opened it and saw, not pictures of the past Lord and Lady Greystoke, but of them.

“When did you photograph me?” Jane asked, her bewilderment of that small detail speaking for her when the rest of her was struck dumb.

“A young man in Paris did it. He was showing off with what I believed to be called a Brownie while you were engaged with a flower girl. Wanting to know his intentions with this device and my bride, I confronted him…”

“Oh, Tarzan, you didn’t…”

Tarzan only smiled at her halfhearted admonishment. “I was the soul of gentility. As much as I appreciate the directness of nature, one of the benefits of society is having many roads to travel before arriving at force. He informed me as to the workings of the camera and I fairly marveled at the invention; you shouldn’t be shocked if I purchase my own in due course. Like him, I was struck by your beauty in that unselfconscious moment, and I arranged a handsome sum for him to have the picture delivered to me when it was developed. Naturally, I thought it unfair that I should have a reminder of your visage in that glorious moment while you should forget mine, so I endeavored to memorialize my own appearance. And when I thought of how these pictures should be held…”

Tarzan put on the locket containing the pictures of his own family—hers now too, Jane realized, but given how much closeness Tarzan had been denied with them, Jane couldn’t denigrate the note of lineage he received having it held to his breast.

“I’m not a man born to words. And a small sum of money, translated into workmanship and precious mineral, still seems a poor showing for what’s in my heart. I can only hope that when I express myself in the ways of a man with a woman, that you finally know the depths of my fervor for you.”

“Oh, Tarzan…” Closing the locket, Jane slipped it around her own delicate neck, where it felt even more the token of affection than had the old one. She swooned to see its brethren on Tarzan’s own mighty chest. “That alone is worth more than a thousand other men and a thousand words from each of them. Oh! Tell me you mean it!”

He took her in his arms, holding her with a certainty that could only come with the doubtless knowledge of how she was his. How he yearned to be hers. “With all my heart. Every beat of it is a bell tolling for you. Every drop of blood it pumps yearns to be shed for your sake.”

“I think I may faint,” Jane gasped.

Tarzan would hear none of it; he trusted her love for him to make her womanly frailty strong. “The way you look, the sound of your words—how could you not be mine, when everything about you was made to drive me to possess you?”

Jane gasped again. She felt dizzy from the force of the feelings he inspired in her, all thundering through her young body together. And yet, oddly, she felt scandalized to have him courting her so openly, though that was his right as her husband—far beyond his right, some would say his duty.

Like the sharp claws of the numa, Tarzan’s fingers ripped into Jane’s dress. He wouldn’t be denied the sight of her any longer. He tore away the fabric, showering the floor with the buttons that had failed to hold her dress together, leaving Jane in her corseted slip. It could not help but be entrancing on her, the filmy white fabric showing the grace of her figure as her dress could only hint at. Tarzan’s eyes barely alighted on her svelte body before his appetite was whetted.

“My dress!” Jane keened, not so much a whine as a paroxysm of excitement.

“I’ll buy you a new one,” Tarzan said, tearing his own clothes from the well-hewn physique that Jane’s eyes could not help but delight in. “I’ll buy you a thousand new ones.”

Jane’s natural inclination to taunt unexpectedly took precedent. “That hardly seems to align with your current interests…” Her eyes inevitably darted downwards as Tarzan ripped his trousers from his legs. They shot back up when he was revealed, and Jane actually turned around, so thoroughly did she wish… or not wish, but have to… avert her eyes.

It was so… extensive.

She knew it would be sizable. It only made sense, or at least was fitting, that Tarzan’s prodigious physical development would continue onto that last frontier. And she knew about the birds and the bees, the bulls and the sows, that the tomcat had a member in proportion to himself and his female conquests. But in being as overdeveloped, as all-surpassing in manhood as he was in all other facets, Jane found her husband intimidating. She knew all his muscle would never hurt her, but this was a new side of his towering size and she was as unused to it as seeing Tarzan in his sailor’s clothing. And so the paradox of Tarzan—his threat and her safety with him—confounded Jane once more.

Tarzan came up behind her, resting his hands lightly on her arms, not to hold her but to warn her of his nearness before he pressed himself against her back and her full, round ass. Jane moaned aloud, feeling the swell of his masculinity upon her once-untouched buttocks, and nearly swooned when he kissed the side of her face.

She was almost breathless when she turned around, lips parted, breath baying with heat, and returned his closeness, pressing herself against him. Her breasts, bold as they were with her youth in full bloom, flattened against his firm chest. The swell she felt before now alighted where she was wholly maiden—she could feel a throbbing in it that told her it was as feverishly alive as she felt, her body rushing as Tarzan’s was, like they’d joined the same heightened wavelength in preparation for their union.

“Oh, Tarzan!” Jane cried. “I’ve never felt such terror—such ecstatic terror—it is like unto the uncanny!”

Tarzan’s fine brow furrowed, his lustful features now gaining an aspect of sympathy in his concern for her. “Is it I that frightens you so?”

“No, never… it’s myself… what I may feel… what I want to feel… oh, I’m such a silly girl! Hold me, my darling! Hold me tight!”

He did as she bade, sensing that while Jane would never prevaricate with him, there was a deceit in her expression of fright that was not there in her encouragement. His hands moved all over her supple back, finding that the perfection of her lovely face and the creamy skin he had spied in back of her neck continued all over her milky white body.

His touch slid down to her hips, where the curves of her flowering womanhood broke out from the slenderness of girlish youth, as though entirely to give his bold hands something to grip in the high, firm cheeks of her bottom. Tarzan pulled his mate to him, Jane cooing to feel her quivering womanhood press tightly to his loins.

They swayed together, gasping and clinging to each other as if to endure together the intensity of the kisses which Tarzan favored Jane with… bomb blast after bomb blast. Her body felt numb—she was only cognizant of the tickle of the bearskin rug under her bare feet—then, though she knew not how it happened, Jane felt herself down upon the thick carpet, still in Tarzan’s blessed embrace.

Tarzan lifted her face from where it was buried in his shoulder and looked into her radiant eyes. “I love you, Jane,” he whispered.

“I… I love you too, Tarzan. And I need you… merciful Creator, how I need you!”

She came against Tarzan with a sudden burst of emotion, as though wracked with sobs, though of transcendent emotion rather than overwhelming grief. She pressed her breasts full to his chest again, lifting her mouth to his, and trying to match the desire he’d shown her before with her own passionate kiss.