It wasn’t raining in Bogotá that evening. It seldom did. The interior capital stood high and dry at 8,500 feet on an intermontane plain of the Andes. So, despite the latitude, it always seemed to be springtime there. That was why it was the capital.
But despite the benign atmosphere, Captain Gringo smelled a rat as he strolled out of the railroad depot. The police check inside had been a lark and the people on the street outside seemed relaxed, considering. There were still fresh bullet pocks on the walls up and down the street and you could see where they’d thrown a barricade across the pavement near the corner. But the more obvious signs of a recent revolution had been cleaned up and nobody seemed excited about anything. So what in the hell was wrong? Why were the hairs on the back of his neck tingling?
Returning to the scene of one’s recent crimes against the state, while dumb, offered at least some advantages to a man on the dodge. Unlike most of the places he’d hit since jumping the Mexican border one jump ahead of the law, Bogotá was a place he knew his way around.
Captain Gringo hailed a horse drawn cab and ordered the driver to take him to the hotel he and Gaston had stayed in the last time they were here. He had no intention of staying there, of course. A man trying to throw folks off his tail makes certain basic moves.
Any police informer around the station would have heard his shouted destination as he climbed in the back of the cab. As the vehicle left the neighborhood of the depot, Captain Gringo watched to see if they were being followed.
He couldn’t spot any tail. So far, so good. It sure was beginning to look like nobody was expecting him in Bogotá.
“Bullshit,” he muttered darkly to himself as he lit a cigar with a frown. If they had Gaston locked up in the Presidio, they had to be expecting somebody to try and spring him. He and the little Frenchman were unfortunately well known in military mercenary circles and it wasn’t as if a tall blond Anglo was hard to describe or keep an eye out for in this neck of the woods. Gaston tended to blend in. Captain Gringo knew he didn’t.
The tall American studied the passing scenery, getting his bearings. It was early evening but, as always in the tropics, darkness fell fast with none of the gloaming afterglow he remembered from back home in the States. He took out a bill and placed it on the leather seat beside him. It was three times as much as the regular fare from the station to the hotel. He didn’t want the driver bitching loudly later.
Captain Gringo waited until they were passing through a tunnel of shade trees he’d noticed the last time he’d made this trip. Then he cupped the smoke in his palm to hide the glow, silently opened the side door, and slid out to land, running in a catlike crouch that carried him silently away from the rumbling cab as the driver drove on, oblivious to the sneaky change of destination. Captain Gringo flattened out against the shaded bole of a massive pepper tree and waited until the cab rattled on out of sight. Then he grinned and started walking with the cigar at a jaunty angle. There wasn’t another soul in sight. He was well clear of the depot and nowhere near the hotel where his face would be known. The driver would be puzzled, even annoyed, when he pulled up at the hotel entrance to find his passenger missing. But he wouldn’t search too hard once he found the money in the back. If he ever saw the son of a bitch again, Captain Gringo intended to ask for his change.
He came to a corner and headed down a side street. First he’d put more distance between himself and any attempted tail. Then he’d figure where the hell he was and what he intended to do about it.
He knew where the military presidio was. Before he figured out how he’d ever get Gaston out of there, he had to have a place to take him. So a base of operations was indicated. Captain Gringo came to another corner and turned it automatically. He was in a middle-class residential area that offered nothing but temporary cover. Like most Hispanic homes in this part of the world, the ones around him faced inward on their patio courts and offered little of interest to the narrow street. Captain Gringo walked casually, trying not to be any more interesting than the blank stucco walls and barred gates he passed. The neighborhood was dimly lit with an occasional streetlamp. When he saw a group of youths lounging under one, well down the way ahead, he turned another corner without having to think too hard about it. He passed one or two people in his travels and nodded politely. It was now too dark to see if they nodded back. Things were looking up. If he couldn’t see them any better than that, they couldn’t see him any better.
He was starting to feel safer now, but he knew he couldn’t just roam the streets all night. He had to find a safe hideout before it got late enough for folks to wonder about footsteps outside their private little worlds. He knew that like most Latin American cities, Bogotá was surrounded by shanty town favelas. The one to the north between the main drag and those mine installations he’d blown up the last time he’d been here were out. The young rebels he’d worked with had enough on their plate right now, just trying to stay alive. A big gringo with a price on his head would not only be less welcome than the plague, somebody in the gang might opt for the reward.
He felt his groin tingle wistfully as he wrote off the rebels he knew in town. That one muchacha had served him a sweet enchilada indeed, and a couple of the other girls in the gang had looked interesting, too. But it was dumb enough to be back in town this soon. He couldn’t risk looking up a single soul he knew here!
He swung a corner and found himself on a slightly wider street with some lights ahead down the block. As he passed a girl lounging in a doorway she murmured, “A ’onde va, querido?” in a lackluster voice. So he knew he was drifting back to the action part of town.
That was okay. He’d be less likely to attract attention in the parts of Bogotá a single man was expected to be interested in. Pulling his hat brim down a bit to shade his features, Captain Gringo strolled on, ignoring the casually lewd suggestions from some of the doorways he passed. He knew where he was now. He knew the street ahead. He’d passed through it more than once during his last adventures here.
More important, he hadn’t made any friends or enemies within blocks.
He drifted to a closed shop on the corner and pretended to look at the shoes in the window as he got his bearings. There was a neighborhood cantina across the way. That was to be avoided. Strangers stood out in any local joint and the police in every city expected knock-around guys to show up in places like that.
There was an open farmacia a couple of doors past the cantina. Nobody cared who ducked into a drugstore early in the evening. So he headed that way. The druggist inside was waiting on a woman in a straw hat and shawl. Captain Gringo noticed the politely startled glance of the druggist but ignored it and waited politely until the woman had paid for her purchase and left. Captain Gringo went to the counter and bought a big bottle of quinine. He didn’t need any quinine, but it was reasonably expensive. The druggist got even friendlier when he asked for some Havana Perfectos. As the druggist rang up the sale and made change, he asked, “El Señor is new in this barrio, no?”
Captain Gringo had been hoping for something like that. He smiled pleasantly and said, “Yes, I’m with the German legation, as you may have guessed.”
“Ah? El Señor speaks Spanish very well for a German. Although, now that you mention it, I place the accent. Your consulate is that big pink building over on the avenue, no?”
Captain Gringo wondered what else was new, but he nodded and said, “Yes, I came over this way tonight to talk to some people I know about renting a furnished room. I understand there are a few around here, but the fellow I was supposed to meet wasn’t in the cantina just now. I sure hope I didn’t get the address wrong.”
The druggist brightened and asked, “Ah, you are searching for a room?”
“Yes, I’ve been staying at a hotel near the depot since I was posted here, but it’s costing me the earth, and I’m afraid it’s not a very nice hotel. This Colombian fellow who works with me at the German consulate says he has an aunt around here who lets out rooms, but, like I said, he hasn’t shown up yet. I guess I’ll just have to hang around and hope he does.”
You could see the little wheels spin around in the neighborhood druggist’s eyes as he tried not to look at the expensive purchases on the counter between them. He said, “Well, far be it from me to interfere, señor. But if your friend can’t find you a place for to stay, I have a regular customer who owns a small hotel just down the street. She is a most respected widow who keeps her rooms most clean. I can vouch for the fact she uses a formidable amount of soap. As to her rates, I cannot say. But I do not think her rooms are very expensive.”
Captain Gringo resisted the impulse to nod. He frowned dubiously and said, “Well, I’m certainly tired of waiting around for that other guy, but …” and then all he had to do was relax and let himself be sold. It took the druggist less than fifteen minutes to close shop and almost drag him down the street to the hotel a relative had to be running.
Somebody had once told Captain Gringo that a true bargain was a transaction in which each party thought that he or she was getting the best deal. So the grim little hotel, run by a grim little woman in rusty black, was a better bargain than he’d hoped for. The landlady and the neighborhood wise guy who’d steered him to her doubtless thought he was a live one. He pretended he didn’t know that he was being charged twice as much as the small furnished suite of rooms was worth. On the other hand, the place was reasonably clean and, more important, private. He paid a month in advance for the rooms tucked into a corner on the street side. The widow’s doorway opened on the vestibule downstairs, but a guy could come and go by the stairway unobserved, when her door wasn’t open. He could keep an eye on the street out front from between the slats of the jalousied shutters. There seemed to be a way out the back, too. He’d explore the upstairs hallways later.
Meanwhile, he’d established, should anybody ask, that the corner suite was occupied by a nice boy from the German legation, consulate, or something. They hadn’t asked him what he did for Der Kaiser, once he’d shown them the color of his money they hadn’t appeared to care. He of course had no intention of staying a month, or even a week, if he could help it. But by paying well in advance he’d hopefully lulled her interest in him for a while. Anxious landladies ask questions. Contented ones didn’t, as a rule.
The druggist left discreetly as the black-clad widow puttered about a bit to make sure he was going to stay. He made a point of saying he’d have his luggage delivered in the morning. What would it cost to buy a couple of cheap suitcases?
So, having taken his money and given him his key, she left him to his own devices, too. He grimaced as he shut the door after her and snuffed the candle. He wondered if she’d pay off the druggist in cash or something more personal. He’d noticed the little druggist ogling her in the cracked mirror across the room. Some guys were like that. The poor old broad had a reasonable figure under that rusty black poplin, but the severe bunned-up hair had been streaked with gray and the lips had been as kissable as a steel trap.
Captain Gringo moved to the window in the darkness. As he’d expected, he had a clear view of the street below through the slats. He could see the sign of the farmacia but not as far as the cantina. Nobody down there seemed to be interested in the front entrance of the hotel. Except for an obvious whore in a doorway down the block, nobody was lounging around looking like they weren’t interested, either.
Captain Gringo struck a match and relit the candlestick. Then he sat on the bed and took out his .38 to check it as he pondered his next move. It was early and he was edgy as hell, but his best move right now would be no move at all.
He’d let them get used to the idea that a “German” was staying in the neighborhood. He’d picked that nationality because he knew few Latins could tell a German from an English accent in Spanish and because the story fit. He’d remembered there was a German legation nearby and, of course, everyone knew Germans were big and blond. Later, when people asked the locals about him, they’d be assured he was “neighborhood.” Meanwhile, he knew he’d never be able to approach the presidio where Gaston was being held this late at night without attracting attention, no matter who they thought he might be. He’d case that part out by daylight, when the streets were crowded and he had this “address” for any nosy cop.
He tossed his hat on a chair, put the gun in a fold of the mattress near the headboard, and started to undress. He didn’t want to go to bed. It was early, he wasn’t the least bit tired. He was edgy as hell, as a matter of fact. He’d eaten aboard the train, but he was starting to get hungry again and he was dying for a drink.
But that was tough shit. All too many guys on the dodge had been taken, just as they thought they were safe, by dropping their guard as soon as the pressure seemed to be off them for the night. Billy the Kid had bought the farm about this same time at night when he’d left a safe hideout for a bedtime snack. Captain Gringo remembered that lawman he’d met during his hitch in Apache country. Mean-looking gent named Pat Something. He’d said he’d have never gunned the Kid if it hadn’t been for the Kid’s uncontrollable appetite, and that some owl-hoots just never learn. The Kid had been caught once already, when he’d succumbed to the smell of frying bacon and eggs. The night he’d died at the Maxwell spread he’d been after a steak. Captain Gringo decided it wouldn’t kill him to sleep on a growling gut.
He finished stripping and turned down the counterpane on the bed. The sheets were cool and scented with lavender. It seemed almost obscene as well as wasteful to slide a solo unwashed body between them. But he did. For some reason it gave him a hard-on.
That was another appetite he hadn’t been able to satisfy lately. It had been a three-day journey from the coast, changing trains a lot and mule packing over some of the rough stretches.
He hadn’t looked for any action, coming up from the lowlands. He’d seen some nice-looking stuff in the last few days. A guy could hardly go anywhere without seeing somebody worth laying, but he hadn’t really considered anything along those lines until just now when, for the first time in days, he found himself alone in bed with nobody likely to point a gun at him in the next few minutes.
He willed himself to forget it. He hadn’t come all this way to find a woman. He was risking his ass to save Gaston, and that was going to be a real problem. Bogotá was full of broads. There was one holding up a wall with her for-sale spine just across the goddamn street! It was time he got down to some serious planning about that goddamn military presidio on the far side of town.
But he’d been thinking about that for days. He hadn’t come up with a sensible plan either. But, as a natural survivor and professional man of action, he’d learned to move on the guns and play it by ear until fate, or a mistake by the other side, offered an opening.
So far this trip, Lady Luck seemed amazingly benign, considering how the old bitch had been treating him since the day he found himself facing a U.S. Army court-martial on a bum rap. He was almost certain nobody had trailed him to this lair, and the neighborhood offered a better base of operations than most. It was too transient for a stranger to draw all the gossip, and too quiet to draw the undivided interest of the law. In the morning, along with some cardboard luggage, he’d pick up a change of clothing. It was cool enough at this altitude to get away with a dark suit and felt hat.
Just in case some rat in Buenaventura had described him to the new government, a gringo was a gringo and they’d be looking for a big guy in a Panama suit.
“Then what?” the small voice asked from somewhere in the worried shadows of his mind. Captain Gringo told it to go to sleep. He knew the dangers as well as the discomforts of planning the unplannable alone in bed with a weary brain and a hard-on. A guy could squirrel-cage all night and never come up with an idea that made much sense in the cold reason of broad daylight. He’d done all he could for now. The rest depended on the measures the enemy had taken. He couldn’t see them from here. Hell, he wasn’t even sure who the enemy was.
The last time he and Gaston had passed through these parts they’d been fighting the government in power for people paying to see it overthrown. Then General Reyes had popped out of the woodwork and started mopping up both loyalists and rebels to “restore order.” To give the devil his due, things seemed orderly as hell right now. Captain Gringo knew many of the erstwhile loyalists and rebels would have made peace with the new junta and, if useful to Reyes, were probably working for him. That was a good reason to avoid seeking help from his old rebel comrades here in Bogotá. If they had not yet changed sides, they were losers having enough trouble just trying to stay alive. The apparently loose security he’d noticed so far hinted that the Reyes government felt pretty smug in their new rug. So, okay; if they were running things so relaxed, why had they picked Gaston up? Like everyone else who’d fought the old government, Gaston had only asked for out!
Gaston and Captain Gringo had split up when the revolution went sour, not to oppose General Reyes but to get the hell out of his way. Gaston had led a party of innocent refugees out to the north while Captain Gringo had finished their contract by blowing up a few loose ends and escaping via another route. If the fucking government now running things had just left them the hell alone they’d have met by now in Buenaventura and been out of the country. They said Reyes was smart. So what was this bullshit about arresting guys who’d never done all that much to him?
The reward? That sounded stupid-greedy. The little Frenchman wasn’t worth that much to the Legion he’d deserted years ago. The two of them together were worth a sum a private citizen might find tempting. But for God’s sake, General Reyes had a whole fucking country to loot at his pleasure if he needed cigarette money. They must have known Gaston had friends. They must have known that grabbing him would be asking for other soldiers of fortune too ... That was it.
Gaston was bait. They were holding him to lure a rescue try and … then what? They hadn’t even questioned him at the depot. The handful of military police had waved everyone through with a casual glance at their papers. He probably could have gotten through with a laundry list. They certainly had most definitely not trailed him from the depot and ...
Captain Gringo slid out from between the now-warm sheets and over to the window. It was getting really cool now, and the effects on his hard-on were the same as a cold shower while he stood, covered with gooseflesh, peeking out through the slats of his shuttered window.
The whore who’d been standing in that doorway was gone. The street out front was deserted for the moment but somewhere in the night a piano tinkled a lively tune. It was funny what night and a little distance did to the sound of music. He knew that up close, in the smoke-filled cantina, the rinky-tink piano sounded cheerful and rowdy. From here in the lonely darkness it sounded wistful and homesick.
Captain Gringo spotted a moving light in a window across the way and watched with interest as he softly sang along with the distant piano. A woman in a short white shift was moving toward the window carrying a candle. It was too far to make out her looks, but he could see her legs from mid-thigh down and they looked yummy as hell in the soft candle glow. She put the candle down near the open window and started to pull the drapes of a four-poster bed open. She had her nicely shaped derrière to him as she bent to smooth the sheets and fluff the pillows. Captain Gringo grinned and sang, “Up in a balloon, dear. Up in a balloon. Up among the little stars, beside the silvery moon...”
The girl, woman, whatever, stood up, satisfied, with her back to him. She seemed to be talking to someone in a corner he couldn’t see in to. It had to be a guy. He wondered if she was that puta he’d seen in the doorway before. She started to pull the shift off over her head and as the hemline rose, he found himself singing, “Oh, there’s something very daring, going up in my balloon.”
It didn’t matter what her face looked like. That hourglass of naked female flesh was giving him another hard-on. The customer, lover, whatever, came into view now. He was a heavyset guy in black pants and a white shirt. As Captain Gringo watched, he moved over to put his arms around the naked woman. The tall nude American wondered how much further they’d go with the candle lit. They were too deep in the room to be seen from the street level below, but they had to know that window faced others across the way. If she was a whore and he was the local Romeo, maybe they liked to show off?
Captain Gringo grimaced, feeling a little sheepish about his peeping tommery. He knew it was really stupid to torture himself like this and, what the hell, he wasn’t even close enough for a good peep show. But he went on watching, even as the rest of us would have.
The guy over there tried to move the woman on to the mattress. But she suddenly pulled coyly away and turned from him, facing the window stark and spectacular for a moment as the candlelight illuminated her heroic breasts from below. And then the dirty teasing bitch leaned forward and snuffed out the light.
“You did that on purpose,” Captain Gringo muttered with a wry grin. He knew the joke was on him and anyone else peeking out of other windows, and what the hell, it sure paid to advertise.
He was about to move back from the window when he heard heel clicks from below. He craned for a better view of the street. It was the whore he’d seen before. She was walking back to the doorway he’d last spotted her in. As she lit a cigarette and lounged against the jamb, he glanced over at the now-dark window across the way and thought, “No, nobody is that fast.” So the woman across the way was somebody else. He felt a wry satisfaction in having his worldly judgment confirmed. He’d thought the one across the way moved pretty slow for a streetwalker.
He tried to judge the time the one down there in the doorway had been gone. He gave it up as a pointless exercise. At the most optimistic, it had been maybe ten minutes from the moment some poor hard-up bastard had spoken to her in the doorway until she was fully dressed and back there waiting for the next. It didn’t matter what she looked like. A gal in that much of a hurry wasn’t selling mock romance. She was asking guys to pay for downright hostility!
A couple of guys walked down the street going the other way. The whore called out to them softly, and they didn’t glance her way. Captain Gringo noticed they didn’t glance toward the hotel entrance either. He decided to write them off as a couple of guys heading for the cantina.
He was about to go back to the bed and warm his chilled hide when he heard the soft snick of a key turning ever so gently in a lock. His lock!
He moved quietly on the balls of his bare feet, heart pounding as he cursed himself for leaving the gun under the mattress a million miles away on the far side of the door. He knew the door hinges were on his side. He flattened against the wall just as the door began to open, slowly and ever so quietly. The party on the other side wasn’t packing a light. So they were both playing kitty cat and Captain Gringo had at least the advantage of eyes accustomed to the dark and a knowledge of the layout. He knew where he was. The other probably thought he was in the bed. From there on, things went rapidly downhill. The other probably had the only gun in the game.
Captain Gringo tensed to spring as the mysterious intruder moved into the room. He could see only that it was somebody a lot shorter than himself, and probably alone. To make sure of this, he let the intruder clear the door, then slammed it shut as he dove forward. He crashed into the dark figure and his momentum carried them both over to and across the empty bed, with Captain Gringo on top and groping for wrists and/or weapons as they crashed down together. The whoever gasped in surprise and fear as he got the right wrist and twisted it up into the small of his victim’s back, using his superior weight to pin whomsoever down. He got his other hand against the nape of a neck and shoved his victim’s face into the mattress as, at the same time, he became aware that it seemed to be wearing a skirt and that his nude pelvis had the other’s hips pinned against the edge of the bed with its knees on the rug and one round hemisphere of buttock on either side of his semi-erection.
He growled, “¿Quien es?” as the obviously female derrière gripped his growing interest between cloth-covered trembling fanny muscles. She answered, face buried in the mattress, “Have you gone mad, señor? It is I, Vanessa.”
He had no idea who on earth Vanessa might be, but he allowed her to raise her head from the mattress enough to breathe freely and speak more clearly. So naturally she said something dumb like, “Let me go. You are hurting me.”
The hard-on between her cheeks didn’t seem to bother her all that much, so he stayed put but eased off the pressure on her elbow as he said, “I’m pleased to meet you, Vanessa. But I don’t remember ringing for room service.”
“I was afraid you might be cold, señor. I only came for to see if I could make you more comfortable.”
“With a passkey, in your bare feet? How come you didn’t knock?”
“Please get off me, señor. I did not wish for to disturb other guests and, well, people say wicked things about a woman who knocks on a man’s door late at night. I thought, if you were already asleep, I would simply put the extra covers I brought over you and tiptoe away without disturbing you.”
He moved a naked foot over toward the door and, sure enough, his toes felt the blankets on the rug where she’d dropped them. The new angle to his hips felt interesting as hell, too. She had a really nice little rump and his raging erection was lined up just right, if it hadn’t been for all those clothes she had on. He could feel she had no pantaloons on.
He moved his free hand down to hoist her smooth taffeta skirting as he smiled and said, “Well, as long as you came to comfort me, I wouldn’t want to send you away frustrated.”
As he felt the bareness of her thighs with his own naked legs she gasped and protested, “Oh, señor, I only came for to lay a blanket over you. What kind of a woman do you think I am?”
He replied, “That’s what I’m trying to find out. So far, I like what I feel.”
She struggled, not really too hard, as he got the skirting out from between them, and his turgid member popped into the moistness between her smooth, trembling thighs. He shoved the cloth above her waistline and caressed her firm but feminine rump as he moved his hand down to guide it to glory. She said, “This is most rude of you, señor. I never came here for to be raped.”
He laughed and said, “You don’t have to be so formal, Vanessa. You can call me Ricardo. We both know you’re not being raped.”
Then he had it in position, and as he thrust home with a sigh of pleasure she gasped and bleated, “Oh, Madre de Dios! What are you doing to me if that is not rape?”
“Let’s call it common courtesy, querida. I can see you needed some comforting, too. Your little box is hot and hungry. How long has it been since you’ve had some of this, muchachita?”
She sobbed, face down against the mattress, and thrust her tail bone up to grind it into his belly hairs as she moaned, “Oh, far too long, you lovely brute! Don’t tease me with your questions. Fuck me hard and deep!”
That seemed the most reasonable suggestion he’d heard all evening, so he did his best to oblige. He was already hot as a pistol, so he tried to hold back a bit, not wanting to leave her up in the air by coming too quickly. But apparently that was impossible. Vanessa chewed a mouthful of linen as she hissed like a mountain lion in heat and contracted on his questing shaft with repeated orgasms until, in less than three minutes, he exploded inside her with a pyrotechnic climax of his own.
She said, “Oh, I felt that. Is it all over so soon, alas?”
He said, “Querida, we are just getting started. I haven’t had anything this nice for a month of Sundays and if you weren’t ready to meet your maker you never should have started this.”
She giggled girlishly as he rolled off, turned her on her back, and undressed her, kissing her naked flesh as he exposed it to the cool night air. As his own had been, up to a minute ago, Vanessa’s slightly moist skin was covered with goosebumps to be soothed with warm lips. He nibbled a turgid nipple as he slid the last of her clothing out of the way and cupped her warm mons in his palm. She spread her thighs and crooned, “Oh, stop teasing and do it again, my great German bull.”
He mounted her and started to enjoy a nice old-fashioned rutting before that sank in. Vanessa, whoever the hell she was, made love like a sex-starved mink and kissed like the intake of a blast furnace. He’d told the dried-up old landlady he was a German, now that he thought about it. So Vanessa had to be her chambermaid, maybe her daughter, and just what in the hell had he started? If the old bat who owned the place found out how he’d responded to extra blankets she might act sort of frantic. A guy down here had to remember that Hispanics took a pretty narrow view on country matters. There were only supposed to be two kinds of Latin girls. Whores and madonnas. A lot of chambermaids put out, but only on the very sneaky Q.T.
He started to ask her if anyone downstairs knew she was up here with him, but Vanessa wrapped her legs around him and sobbed, “Don’t talk. Screw me. I go crazy so nice when you pound me hard!”
He was feeling crazy so nice, himself, so what the hell. The fat was in the fire and he’d worry about the landlady later. Vanessa’s firm breasts were moist and slippery now, as she slithered them back and forth against his heaving chest and, below the waist, she was moving up to meet him like a Arabian belly dancer in love. Her kissing was more French. She was great at that, too. As he felt her already tight vaginal muscles contracting in another orgasm she managed to somehow get her tongue almost deep enough to make him gag. He sucked it perversely as he shot as deep as he could get inside her. He collapsed atop her, trying for a well-earned rest, but she kept moving, pulsating with insatiable orgasmic desire, and even with no effort on his part, it felt like he was pounding her hot and heavy, so what the hell, in a little while he was.
The next time he came, he gasped, “Hey, time out for a smoke at least.”
“You are not pleased with my body anymore?”
“Your body is just great. My body is about to melt into the mattress. Just give me a chance to get my second wind, querida. You don’t have to leave right away, do you?”
“No, I can stay the night if you wish for it, my Ricardo.”
“I wish for it. You won’t get in trouble downstairs?”
“No. I will tell you a secret now. Nobody else knows I am here. I confess I am a wicked girl. I was hoping you would, ah, trifle with me.”
“Confession is good for the soul and I’m going to trifle you dog style in a minute. But let’s share a smoke, first. You do smoke, don’t you?”
She laughed archly and said, “You smoke what you like and I will smoke what I like.”
He didn’t get it until he stretched an arm out to fumble a cigar and a light from his shirt draped over a nearby chair. That was when he felt her long hair dragging across his overheated belly and as he lit up, back braced against a pillow, Vanessa took his limp shaft between her moist lips and began to “smoke” it.
He lit his Havana Perfecto and took a luxurious drag as he held the match for a moment, gazing fondly down at the woman crouched broadside to him on her knees as she bobbed her head over his supine lap. The little flickering flame was kind to the ivory perfection of her firm nude body. He still had only a hazy idea what she might look like, after exploring her so thoroughly by feel in the dark. So he stared with interest at the profile of the face he’d been kissing hell out of under the cloak of night. Vanessa was Frenching him with enthusiasm and hence didn’t glance his way as he studied her by match light. So, mercifully, she never caught the look of utter dismay in his eyes as he recognized her.
Vanessa wasn’t a young chambermaid working for the old bat who ran the place. Vanessa was the old bat who ran the place!
The match burned his fingers and he shook it out, but not before he’d seen the gray streaks in her hair and the little lines that time’s cruel shark had bitten into her once pretty little face. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry as he lay there, being sucked off by a woman old enough to be his mother. But he knew he didn’t want her to stop, so what the hell.
He lay in the dark, breathing funny as he smoked his cigar and she smoked him. The sudden surprise had cooled him off a bit and, of course, he’d been partly satisfied to begin with. So it took her longer than usual to erect his monument to Venus to its usual heroic height.
It felt sort of weird as he lolled there like a jaded pasha, enjoying the contrasting pleasures of tobacco and oral sex.
Once the light was out, Vanessa reverted to the harem cutie he’d been playing with in his imagination. Sort of. On the other hand, knowing now that she was an older, albeit salty widow added something to the spice of carefree sex.
In the darkness, Vanessa was saying, “Oh, I have it nice and hard now. But my little pussy is so jealous. She is feeling most left out.”
He reached out to snuff the cigar in an end table ashtray before he groped for her derriere in the darkness and soothed, “We wouldn’t want anyone to feel left out.”
Vanessa gasped in startled pleasure as she realized what the position he was moving them into might mean. She kissed the head of what she held in her hand and purred, “Oh, I was willing to get on top, but if you are really that considerate ...” and then she almost shouted, “Oh, Jesus, Maria y Jose!” as he got two fingers in her and began to tongue her clit. She responded in kind by inhaling him to the root as they went sixty-nine, and he could tell she wanted to finish that way this time, so he decided he might as well. It was no more revolting to kiss a friendly twat than those pursed steel-trap lips he remembered shuddering at the first time he’d seen them!
After they’d enjoyed one another that way, and tried it dog style as a change of pace, they naturally wound up old-fashioned in each other’s arms and it only seemed polite to kiss the old bat while she was sobbing about coming some more. It was funny, but with the lights out, her lips did feel as soft and passionate as many a younger girl’s, and it did feel as if she was pretty when they lay quietly together in the lovely afterglow. It was no wonder the poor old bat went around looking so grim. The still healthy woman was starved for sex ... or maybe more.
The next time he suggested a smoke she lay quietly with her head on his shoulder and one thigh across his, toying with the hair on his chest with her free hand. As he lit the cigar she ducked her head, kissing his collarbone, and said, “I wish you would tell me when you are going to strike a match. I am ashamed for you to see me like this.”
He ran his own free hand over her soft, smooth skin and soothed, “There’s nothing I could see in the light that I don’t like pretty well in the dark, Vanessa.”
She sighed and said, “You are just being gallant. I know what I look like today. Would you believe me if I told you I was once considered a beautiful woman, Ricardo?”
“You’re still beautiful,” he lied, and for some reason that made the poor old broad start to cry. He didn’t comment as he felt a tear run off her cheek onto his chest. She got a few more out of her system before she said, “Thank you, my caballero. I wanted you so badly. I knew the moment I saw you that you were the kind of lover I need. But I was so afraid you would just be another big naughty boy. I feel so abased when a man I seduce has less tact than you about my, well, age. I wish there was a word less ugly than age. But there is nothing else wrong with me.”
He caressed her and said, “Hell, there’s nothing at all wrong with you. We all have to get older, sooner or later. I think you worry too much about it, Vanessa. What the hell, you can’t be much older than maybe thirty-nine or forty, right?”
“Oh, my God, you’re such a gallant liar, and I needed that. If you must know, I am nearly sixty.”
“I didn’t have to know, and I don’t believe you,” he fibbed kindly. Then he kissed the part in her hair to add, “Let’s forget about birthdays. I have no complaints to register about tonight. I needed you a lot more than you needed me, kitten.”
She giggled, and said, “I know. I felt so awkward, coming in, not knowing how I was going to approach you. And then you leaped on me like a beast and tore my clothes off. It was too good to be true.”
He chuckled back at her and held her closer as he took a drag of smoke. She began to walk her fingers shyly down his belly as she said, “Downstairs, when we were talking about your room earlier, I could see you were a most lusty man. I was happily married for many years to a lusty man. So I can tell when a man needs it. I was so foolish when I flustered around up here before. I wanted so for you to take me in your arms, but of course I knew you thought I was just a silly old woman.”
He said, “As a matter of fact, I noticed what a nice shape you had and I was feeling pretty silly, too. It was all I could do not to make a pass at you the moment I found myself alone with you.”
“Oh, Ricardo, is that the truth?”
It wasn’t, but he figured he owed it to her. He said, “Yes, if you hadn’t made a play for me, I’d have made one for you. But let’s not worry about it. Now that we’ve gotten past the awkward stages, we can just enjoy each other.”
“Oh, I am so happy, Ricardo. Are you really going to stay here with me?”
“I paid a month in advance, didn’t I?”
“Yes. But now I will have to give you back your money. It would not be right if I kept it. Only wicked women take money from the man they are sleeping with and—”
“Hey, back up,” he cut in. “I’m not paying you for your body, doll. I only rented the room! I could see right away you were a woman to be respected.”
That made her cry some more. Then she said, “The angels must have sent you to me, Ricardo. Would you believe I have not had any sex for over a year?”
“That sounds reasonable. Uh, how long have you been a widow?”
“Oh, my poor husband died many years ago. But, as you may have guessed, I am a woman of strong passions. I am afraid this has made me act the fool on more than one occasion. You see, I know I should look for a man closer to my own age, but …”
He grimaced and cut in with, “I understand.” She didn’t have to explain why she liked younger studs. Not many teenagers could keep up with old Vanessa as a steady bed-mate. He liked his women hot and horny, but it was probably just as well he wasn’t really intending to stay any back-breaking full month!
She said, “The last time I made a fool of myself like this I swore it would never happen again. I knew what you’d be like in bed the moment I saw you, but you younger men can be so cruel.”
“Anyone who was ever cruel to you was too stupid for you to worry your pretty little head about, querida.”
“Oh, my God, if only I could believe your beautiful lies. But others have used and abused me, Ricardo. If you could know the way it stabs a woman to the heart to be jeered at in the cold light of dawn.”
He got rid of the second smoke and soothed, “Nobody’s going to abuse you, querida, but, speaking of using, that’s not a milk churn you’ve started playing with down there.”
She laughed in girlish delight as he rolled aboard her again and as he settled into the saddle she coyly mocked, “Haven’t you had enough of this old worn-out shoe?”
He thrust into her and as she bit down hard with her love-slicked flesh he growled, “It’ll be worn out by the time I get through with it!”
But this time they made love like friends instead of acrobats and now that he’d gotten used to the idea, he was starting to like old Vanessa. He couldn’t think of any improvements he wanted to make that counted in the dark, and this solved another problem. His hideout was not only a safe one. It offered all the comforts of home! He didn’t even have to ask, when, after they’d finished another round, Vanessa suggested a midnight snack.
He had no idea, as they finally dropped off to sleep in each other’s sated arms, that he’d never got to spend another night with her.