Cornelia Quick

This is an experiment in serializing a short novel ahead of a new project that will start up in October. I’m going to publish a chapter a day of “Ohio Johnson and the Fountain of Youth,” a little adventure tale I started years ago with my husband and which I polished up (ever so slightly) and published early this year as my first foray into writing erotica more seriously. It has languished, unread and unsold, with the original pen name “Laz Larue” largely abandoned. You can read more about how this story came to be in the Eroticist’s Notebook.

My October project will start publishing on the first of the month, and I’m planning to release the first 11 chapters every other day, and then a chapter a day the week before Halloween for a total of 17. It will be made available on the e-book retail sites in time for All Hallow’s Eve for those who prefer to read through all at once. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy this fun little story — I don’t think it’s all bad, and I’ve got a plan for a sequel that is going to a ton of fun.

Ohio Johnson had been hacking his way through underbrush, vines snaring his ankles and branches scratching his face, for hours, when he suddenly stepped into a sunny clearing carpeted with low flowering plants, open to a blue and cloudless sky he hadn’t seen since first stepping into the dense Amazon rainforest six days earlier. He stumbled forward, almost losing his balance on the open ground. Without the rustle and crack of the undergrowth he had been struggling through, the clearing was eerily quiet, and without the jungle’s dense shadows it was almost dazzlingly bright. He shielded his eyes with the brim of his hat, lowered his heavy pack to the ground, and sat with a grunt.

In retrospect, he realized he should have spent the money on a guide. He was freelancing for Glexco Pharma, though, and had no guarantee that the cash they had fronted him when he left for Brazil would ever be followed by more. His pay and expenses would have to come out of the same pot, and it had been easy back in Manaus to choose to trim expenses. Now, a week into the bush and hopelessly lost, he realized that it would be hard to spend the savings as a corpse quickly decomposing into fertilizer for the elusive plants he had come to find.

Not that Glexco had fronted him very much. The Rainforest Beauty cosmetics line for which the fabled donzela luxuriosa plant would provide a minor ingredient was a sideline the company had acquired some years ago with more lucrative properties; it was marginally profitable, but hardly worth investing in a serious expedition. A cut-rate ethnobotanist with no track record and a silly moniker was about the level of expense that seemed right; and Ohio knew he was in it as much for the adventure as the profit. At least that was how he felt before he became hopelessly lost.

With a clear patch of sky visible, though, he stood a chance of at least orienting himself and pointing in the right direction, either back to the river or through to one of the logging roads that crisscrossed the forest’s borders. He decided he would make camp here, at least for a night, and resume his trek once he had his bearings.

The clearing appeared to be roughly circular, almost an acre across, with a still, clear pool near its center. It must be spring-fed, he thought, as he didn’t see any streams leading to the clearing, and since the ground felt firm and not at all boggy he imagined it must be set on an unusually rocky subterranean outcrop. While the clearing itself was covered in some plant that resembled purple and white clover, he saw a rich array of fruit trees in clusters around its edge. In a moment of panic he worried that he had stumbled into a native village’s orchard, and that they may not take kindly to an intruder; but he saw no sign of human feet across the ground; if it was cultivated, it hadn’t been visited for a long time.

Ohio decided to pitch his tent near the pool, and to take a sample of the water. He had been drinking river and stream water so blasted with chemical purifiers since entering the jungle that the thought of clean spring water was as welcome as an aged Scotch would be back home. As he pulled up an eye dropper of the pool’s water to put into his test kit, he noticed that there was a faint scent of licorice about the pool – not unpleasant, certainly, but distinct.

He made a pillow of his backpack and rested while the testing kit did its business. So far the trip, while certainly offering plenty of adventure, was a bust as far as its intended purpose, and he wasn’t sure how to turn it around.

“The donzela luxuriosa plant,” Julia Turner, Glexco’s vice president of field procurement, had said in their one brief meeting back in Chicago. She held out a page torn from an old field guide with a blurry picture of a reddish-green plant with three pointed leaflets and what may have been fine hairs, or may have been a lack of camera focus coupled with cheap printing, on its spindly stems. “We need a steady supply, an industrial supply, and we need it now.”

Ohio took the picture, folded it into a square, and tucked it in his shirt pocket. He had never heard of the donzela luxuriosa plant, but he would be the first to admit (to himself, though not to an employer) that there were a lot of things he’d never heard of.

“You can count on me,” said Ohio, flashing what he thought was surely a winning smile.

Julia Turner didn’t smile back. From what he’d heard, she seldom did, and that was just one of the reasons so many people at Glexco called her the “ice queen.” With her porcelain skin, cold blue eyes, and regal carriage, she certainly looked the part; her high collars, tailored jackets, and straight skirts also gave her an air of aloof and untouchable power. With a humorless stare and brusque demeanor, Julia Turner had certainly earned her sobriquet in that meeting.

“I do not count on you at all, Mr. Johnson,” she said. “I have absolutely no reason to expect you to deliver, but there’s a slim chance that you will and the pittance we’re paying is a reasonable gamble. There are other, more reliable but more costly, ways to meet our requirements.”

Ohio still had that field guide page, in a plastic map carrier in his pack, and he pulled it out now to look at it again, as he had a hundred times before. So far this plant had been elusive, though he was in a region where it was said to be plentiful. The closest he had seen, in general color and texture, was a plant that was plentiful along the banks of the tributaries and streams he had been crossing, but that plant had four leaflets, not three. He had even asked a local guide in Manaus about the plant, but when he waved his arm at the plentiful four-leafleted plants in a nearby ditch Ohio had rolled his eyes and decided to plunge deeper into the bush. Perhaps the encroachments of civilization had pushed the donzela luxuriosa deeper into the jungle since that clearly outdated field guide had been published.

The plant was surely still out there, and Ohio was certain that he could find it and prove his worth to the “ice queen.” It might even melt her a little bit, he mused; she couldn’t be ice all the way down. For one thing, she was a redhead, though she kept her hair pulled into a tight bun at the back of her head. Ohio had a girlfriend in college with hair the same shade, both above and below, and she had been anything but icy; indeed, it was her fiery and unquenchable heat that had ended their relationship when he walked in on her spread-eagled under a thrusting football star with the head cheerleader squatting on her face. Surely Julia Turner had a similar passion burning in her nether regions. Maybe when he returned triumphant with an infinite supply of her damned plant, the “ice queen” would celebrate by pulling a train in a corporate board room orgy. Ohio would be quite happy to ride her around the conference table while she begged for sweet, hot release.

Ohio shook his head and grinned. Where did that fountain of raunch come from? Hardly a dirty thought had found space in his head for days of bushwhacking, and now he was composing a pornographic movie starring a Glexco Pharma VP. The heat and exhaustion must be getting to him.

He rolled over and checked the water test. It showed the pool to be surprisingly clean, and he recalled it was cool as well when he took the sample. A quick, cold dip, then, was just the thing to clear his head.

Ohio stripped out of his mud-caked, sweat-soaked clothes, and piled them near his tent. He was somewhat bemused to find his cock was half-hard from his brief “ice queen” fantasy, and gave it a quick stroke. Might as well enjoy all the thrills of being alone and naked in the wilderness. Then he stepped to the edge of the pool and jumped in.

It was cool, and deep, and refreshing. He swam a few strokes out from the edge and dived under, surprised at how clear the water was. The spring must be very deep, with almost no runoff from the streams and tributaries around the clearing. He wished for a moment that he had studied geology rather than anthropology and botany – this was surely a career-making discovery.

Ohio paddled to the middle of the pool and turned to float on his back; for such clear water, it was surprisingly buoyant. The sky was still blue and bright – probably not much past noon – and only a few wispy clouds floated by. He noticed that his cock was still hard, resting now against his belly, and his balls tingled when the water rippled against them. He gave it another tentative stroke, and felt it engorge and stiffen with unusual strength.

What the “ice queen” needed, he thought, was a float in a pool like this, in a pristine jungle setting with someone – himself, for instance – to cater to her needs. Particularly if those needs were centered on what he imagined to be a fiery red bush with a hard, thick clit just begging to be licked. Ohio was sure he could meet exactly that sort of need, floating on his belly while she floated on her back, his face between her thighs and his tongue busily lapping at her lips and clit while she moaned and ran her fingers through his hair. He would guide her to the edge of the pool then, brace his feet on some rocky prominence, and then guide his raging cock between the lips of her wet, pliant cunt. He imagined his cock sliding in and out of her tight sheath, his fingers teasing her clit, her face contorted in pleasure …

Ohio snapped to his senses when he felt his cock shuddering against his belly, on the verge of exploding without even a touch. He paddled back to the shore and pulled himself out, his cock standing straight up.

“The jungle must be getting to me,” he thought, smiling, as he lay down on the clearing’s soft lawn and took his cock in hand. After only a few quick strokes, and some very vivid images of Julia Turner’s willing, wet cunt, Ohio’s cock erupted with a geyser of cum that splattered across his belly and as high as his chin. Panting and exhausted, he pulled the last of the cum from his balls and drifted into a deep, dreamless sleep.