Chapter 1
It was going to be quite a night. I could tell by the bright-eyed way the little doll kept smiling at me and licking her sensual lips. We were sitting together in a back booth in the Club Papagayo. I was drinking rum and she was drinking tequila, and we had already made arrangements to spend the night in my room, which was upstairs above the Papagayo.
She was Latin all the way down to her little toes. Well, maybe she was half Indio, but that just made the mixture more explosive. Her name was Conchita. I had met her an hour ago just after she had stepped off the bus.
She was a young little thing from the country who had just come into bloom. In Central America, when the family hut gets too crowded, papa sends one of the girls out into the world to seek her fortune.
Conchita had just arrived in Puerto Reyes, and she had no place to stay. That is, she hadn't until I'd offered to put her up for a few days, until she could get on her feet.
After a week in the big city she would have learned her way around, and a lot of the newness would have worn off for me. I like soft little kittens who purr when you stroke them, and I don't like a lot of cheap paint and perfume.
Give her a week in Puerto Reyes and she'd be so painted up her own mother wouldn't know her. That's how it went with all the young girls who came to the wicked city to seek their fortunes.
It was a thing you learned to live with. I made it a habit to check over just about every bus that came to town. I'd picked up lots of sweet young things that way. A couple of them had even stayed with me for a couple of months before they moved on.
It was something to do in Puerto Reyes, where there wasn't a hell of a lot to do besides guzzle rum and fight the flies.
Puerto Reyes is the biggest west coast settlement in one of those Central American countries where everyone either has a racket or starves to death. Since I'd landed here a year ago, jumping ship off a Panamanian freighter when the food became unbearable, I'd had my own racket.
I had started out small, but a guy with brains could do real well in the black market. Being a seaport, Puerto Reyes was kind of the center of the black market for the whole country. My two partners and I had really worked our operation into a gold mine. I had over ten thousand dollars, American, in the money belt I wore under my shirt.
Maybe Chris and Duke didn't have so much ready cash, but they'd spent heavier than I did. I wanted to get back to the states one of these days with enough cash to set me up for life.
There was only one fly in the ointment.
When you've got a gold mine, there's always someone looking for a way to take it away from you. They had everything on their side, and we had only the protection that money can buy. We'd bought plenty of it. But the men who ran the town weren't satisfied with just the mordida. They were playing a cat and mouse game, waiting until they decided we were ripe for the picking.
And we had to try to outguess them by enough time to make a clean getaway.
We had a couple of things going for us. We had all our worldly goods in negotiable form, so we could pack up and leave on a moment's notice. And we also had a man listening for us in the policia.
His name was Pancho. He sat at the big desk in front and swatted flies, but he had big ears, and he knew everything that was going on. Pancho had a standing offer from us ten thousand pesos if he tipped us off before the raid.
Like I said. It's a poor country, and everybody has a racket. Except the few honest people, and they're all starving.
There was one more ace we had up our sleeves. We had a couple of boats tied up in the harbor. We had figured long ago that was the best way to leave if things suddenly got hot for us. If the big cruiser couldn't outrun the local navy, then we had a runabout that could.
But right then I didn't want to think about the possibility of getting chased out of town. I liked the place. It had begun to grow on me. Mainly because there were so many spicy little senoritas like the one sitting beside me.
She must have been thinking about physical things, because her hand kept squeezing my leg. "You ready to go to the room, Rosita?" I asked. "Conchita "
"That's right. The last name was Rosita. You look enough like her to be her sister."
"I have a sister named Rosita," she murmured. "But she's only ten years old. She has not left home yet"
"You want to go to the room?"
Conchita picked up the empty tequila glass and licked it out with her tongue, the way a cat goes after the last drop of milk. Then she grinned and fluttered her eyes.
"Can I have more tequila?" she asked. "It makes my belly hot. And I want to be burning up for you, honey."
"Have all you want."
I made a sign to the waiter, who was asleep, leaning against a big stone pillar. He didn't see me wave, but the bartender did. He fixed up another set of drinks and put them on e tray. Then he bounced a lump of ice off the waiter's head.
It took a while, but we got the drinks.
She tossed hers off without a blink. Then she shoved the quarter-sliced lemon between her lips I felt her belly through the thin cloth of her cotton dress. It was hot all right.
She liked my hand there, and made a sound of disappointment when I took it away. She caught my wrist and put the hand back. Then she made me work the fingers against the softness of her lower belly.
A growl of pleasure came from deep inside her.
She reached down and began to do things with her hand, and all at once I was on fire.
"Let's go," I said. "If you want more tequila, I'll bring along a bottle."
"I don't need tequila now, honey," she whimpered. "I need a man like you big and strong. Oh, so nice and big. This is going to be fun."
I grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the booth. On the way out I made a sign to the bartender to put the drinks on my cuenta. I didn't want to stop and take the time to pay.
We went out the door and up the side stairs that led to the little open patio where there were a lot of tropical plants in round wooden tubs. My room was one of eight that faced on the patio. I unlocked the door.
Conchita ran in ahead of me and started pulling her dress over her head. She was giggling and gasping and watching me undress with hungry eyes.
The eyes of a pagan little beast in heat.
In less than a minute we were both naked, except that for some reason she was holding her dress in front of her. I grabbed the dress from her hand and tossed it at a chair. It missed the chair and landed in a heap on the floor, but by then neither of us gave a damn.
I caught her in a bear hug, pulling her compact little body against me. She was hot all over, like she was burning up with a fever.
I clasped her quivering buttocks while her mouth clung to mine. In the country she had learned to kiss just like they do it everywhere else. Yet she put even more hunger into it, more squirm and wiggle.
She began massaging my naked body with her taut little thighs, slapping me with her belly.
I reached from behind, way down between her legs and clamped my fingers. Her response was purely animal. She gave a little whimper of delight and clawed her nails into my back. And she shoved her tongue deeper into my mouth.
We stood there beside the bed, both of us shivering with excitement. Then I laid her down upon the mattress and leaned above her.
She was gasping, lifting up her shoulders, holding out her quivering young breasts, silently pleading with me to kiss them. And that's just what I did. I opened my lips around one of the firm little globes and drew it inward. It was solid and fleshy, yet it quivered like jelly.
I stabbed the nipple with my tongue.
It swelled up into a hard little core surrounded by all that fragrant softness.
I clung to the nipple, biting it gently, chewing with the edge of my teeth, rolling it around with the point of my tongue. Conchita groaned. She tightened her arms around my neck and began directing my head.
My face was buried in soft, female flesh.
And she was leaping beneath me, whining and tossing her hips. Her fingers tore at my hair.
"Oh, honeeeee " she sobbed. "Oh, bay-beeee. I'm burning up for you. I told you tequila would make me hot. Oh, honey, you've got to put out the fire."
I caught hold of both breasts and mashed them together until the two nipples were very close together. Then I kissed them both, running my tongue down into the little valley of flesh between the twin, quivering peaks.
Conchita began to roll her head on the mattress, tossing her long dark hair. There was a choking sob in her throat, a gasping for breath.
Then she uttered a long, drawn-out wail. It was like the cry of a jungle cat.
I raised my head and stared for a moment at the breath-taking sight of her restless, thrashing body. Her skin was as smooth as satin, and it glistened with sweat, the same shiny texture as polished bronze.
Her eyes stared at me, wide and demented. Her soft mouth was slack with the violence of her craving.
"Do it honey " she begged.
She parted her legs and raised her arms to me, whimpering with expectation. As I moved into position, she arched her body, seeking me hungrily.
The instant I fell upon her, she let out a wild cry of pure delight. Her whole body became alive at once, squirming erotically, clinging to me with desperation.
Looping her legs around me, she crawled higher and higher. I felt her ankles lock, and she held onto me with a vice-like grip, all the time tossing at me with her feverish thighs. She raked my back raw with her sharp nails.
Her hips swayed beneath me, her belly quivered.
I watched her face while she grew dizzy with rapture. She made strange sounds in her throat, her voice rising to a higher pitch, until she was screaming her pleasure.
Then I felt the first tremor jolt through her, a violent quaking deep within her body.
I cupped her soft little bottom and lifted her up from the bed, then slammed her down with a pile driving lunge. She turned into a little wildcat. She set her claws in my shoulders and shoved back at me, shrieking now, arching her body, tossing her hips, clamping with her thighs.
All at once I reached the limit of my endurance. And still she lashed at me, driving me over the edge. Spasms shot through me, like bolts of lightning tearing my guts apart. I held on for all I was worth and rode through the storm. We erupted together with volcanic force, thrashing at each other furiously, gasping our pleasure.
At last I was spent, so weak I could not hold myself up. I rolled over and lay on my back, while she clung to me, her body still squirming restlessly, her wet mouth open on my neck, biting hungrily.
That's how it was when I dropped off to sleep....