In this cave, guarded by the falls, I’ve finally found the privacy I need to be what I couldn’t be for Ario—sexual. After our first kiss, Marcos and I know what comes next and we know what to do. His hands swirl over my body—my back, my cheeks, my hips—with frantic greed; in seven months, he hasn’t touched another boy beyond a handshake. His lips engulf mine, feasting like a man gone psychotic from prolonged hunger. His bristly chin scrapes against mine, but I welcome it; the abrasions are divine. I can’t explain it—sex has always been simultaneously intoxicating and uncomfortable, but Marcos’s touch doesn’t burn me. The balance of my emotions is tipping so rapidly toward ecstasy that I wonder if this is sex at all. Maybe I’m just delirious from dehydration.

We may be inexperienced, unknowledgeable, and terrified of what doing this means…but AT LAST, none of that matters. The urgency is everything. I’m not embarrassed to be doing sex wrong with Marcos because Marcos is on my same playing field. Skill means nothing. Instinct is driving us.

Ario’s breath was light and minty, but Marcos tastes riper—richer—like bootstrap leather and charred meat. Ario never went anywhere without a spritz of cologne, but Marcos—to be blunt—smells nasty. I hadn’t noticed when we were farther apart, but pressed against me, Marcos stinks like he’s spent the day running around in 100-degree humidity. His sticky, pungent musk reminds me of rutting animals in captivity, which only swells me harder against his leg.

I’m a cliché, but I don’t care. I don’t care! I DON’T CARE!

Marcos is fully erect beneath his shorts, invitingly warm, even though I’m already dizzy from the heat. Without warning, he throws strong, paint-can-round arms under my knees and hoists me off my feet. My legs instinctively close around his back. Huffing, he walks me to the cave wall, pushes me against the rock, and resumes devouring my mouth. The maneuver isn’t graceful—Marcos grips me clumsily, kisses messily, and the rock jabbing into my back already hurts—but even as my thoughts spin further outside of my grasp, I refuse to do anything that might end this moment prematurely.

“You lifted me…like I was nothing,” I gasp.

“I saw it on TV,” he whispers, becoming the gentle, nervous preacher’s boy again. “Thought it would be fun to do.” Our eyes deadlock, and a thrilled laugh escapes me; my internal roller coaster, slowly climbing, takes its first plunge into pandemonium. Marcos grins sheepishly, but one blink later, the starved lion returns. “I’ve been dying to pick you up all day.”

“What else d’you want to do?”