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Jane never had thoughts like this in England. She’s a good girl, aside from her entirely unwomanly liking for scientific books (and really what can you expect with that strange father of hers?). But this ape-man in nothing but a loincloth, this entirely uncivilized brute who has nonetheless treated her with astonishing gentleness and kindness…well. He is rather upsetting even to a well-bred Englishwoman like Jane.
There’s his eyes, for one thing. Big and green and clear, and he looks at her as if he’s never seen anything like her – which he hasn’t, has he? But what would it be like if he looked at her like that when she wasn’t…clothed?
And he so enjoyed exploring her hands and feet, as if he’d never felt human skin before (except his own), that it’s a little hard not to imagine him touching the rest of her with clever, callused hands and that intent look as though she’s a marvelous mystery to be unraveled.
And he is an ungodly handsome man.
So she does what she’s always done when something interests her: she draws. She draws him sitting and standing and sprawling on tree limbs, she draws him happy and worried and fascinated and laughing. And late at night, by the light of a single dim lantern, she draws him as she has never seen him: ecstatic and loving and sensual, mysterious and dangerous and downright sexual. She’s read things her father never knew she even thought of, and she draws them: draws Tarzan intertwined with her, so close there’s hardly a line between them. Draws him with his head back in pleasure. Draws herself beneath him, above him, beside him. Occasionally she has to refer to anatomy books, and blushes as she does so. But it’s not as though anyone else will ever see.
She hides her secret sketchbook as well as she can in such a small camp: under her bed, in her clothes chest, all the way at the bottom. It makes it hard to get to, but at least that means none of the men will find it.
Except that Tarzan (beautiful, frustrating man) hasn’t got a clue what ‘private’ or ‘personal’ mean. He’s just curious about everything, from the tents to the gramophone to the slide projector to the dishes to the clothes. And so it is that she comes back from sketching a small bird investigating the chemistry set to find him sitting among her petticoats and bustles, one of her hats askew on his head, looking with great interest through her secret sketchbook.
She goes bright red and tries to snatch it from his hands, but he’s quite a bit stronger than she is – all that swinging on vines and wrestling great apes – and hangs on tenaciously. He has it open to her favorite page, the one where he is crouched over her and looks like she’s the best dinner he’s ever seen and everything else he’s ever wanted all rolled into one, and she’s sprawled out in perfect surrender. And when she looks down, she notices his loincloth has a distinct tent in it.
And he looks up at her, really looks at her, with an expression so full of hunger it makes her shiver.
Like she’s the best dinner he’s ever seen.
Like she’s everything he ever wanted.
Like she is perfect just like this, frazzled and improperly dressed and unkempt, no artifice or primping needed, nothing needed at all but just her.
And he says, “Jane.”
She flings her caution to the wind and falls into his arms and kisses him.
It’s better than she dreamed, better than charcoal drawings on white pages. He kisses awkwardly at first, but he gets the hang of it quickly, and then he kisses like it’s the most fun he’s ever had. Which is rather a compliment, really.
And later she learns that when she is lying bare before him, he does indeed take great pleasure in looking at her all over with his big green eyes full of hunger and something more; that he does indeed enjoy running strong, gentle hands over every inch of her; that when he is crouching over her and looking at her with something that can only be love shining in his eyes, it is the best and easiest thing in the world to spread herself out and wait for him, to give herself utterly to this wonderful madness, because this? This cannot be learned out of a book, or sketched onto paper.
This is love, and lust, and joy, and she wraps her arms and legs around him and holds on and laughs and cries out and clings to him as she falls apart and falls together again, a jungle woman with her perfect jungle man. She will not need her sketchbook anymore.
(She keeps it anyway, out of sentiment. And also because it tends to give Tarzan wonderful ideas.)