by Lou Cameron
Vera didn’t. She said, “Damn, I might have known Sarah would go into heat on me again. All right, you’ll just have to kip out here in the parlor. I’ll fetch you some blankets from the one bedroom left.”
He said, “No you won’t. That love seat can’t be five feet long and I’m well over six. A guy can’t run for his life worth a damn on cramped legs, Doll. So I’m taking the bedroom. You can sleep anywhere you want.”
He moved out to the hall before she could answer. He remembered the two bedroom doors from his earlier exploration. So he twisted the first knob he came to, opened the door, and said, “Oops. Sorry, Gaston,” and closed it quickly. But not before Vera, behind him, got a good look at what Gaston and her chum, Sarah, were doing without bothering to undress first. She blanched and said, “Oh, how disgusting!”
Captain Gringo didn’t answer. He opened the next door and stepped inside, unbuttoning his skeleton suit as he moved toward the big four-poster. He pulled the quilted comforter off the sheets and held it out to Vera, saying, “Here. I won’t need this with no cross ventilation on a tropic night.”
She took it but said, “You’re just awful. Haven’t you a shred of gallantry left?”
He said, “You were the one who said I was a nut for paying my bills. You’re probably right that there’s a little self-serving hypocrisy in the Robin Hood act. So, I’m trying to reform.”
She said, “You … bastard! That settee is hard and lumpy!”
“That’s why you wanted me to sleep on it? Look on the bright side, Vera. At least you’re shorter than me.”
He sat on the mattress of the four-poster, bounced, and said, “Yum yum yum. If that other bed’s softer it’s too soft for me. Like Goldilocks said, this is just right.”
He bent to pull off his mosquito boots. Then he peeled off the grotesque’ fiesta costume, wadded it up, and placed it on the bed table with the mask on top of it. As he stood in his shorts to unbuckle his money belt and gun rig, Vera stamped her foot and said, “Dammit, I want that bed!”
He shrugged and said, “I’ll let you use half. It’s big enough.”
She blushed and said, “Not bloody likely! I don’t want to be raped in my sleep!”
He frowned and said, “Don’t be so egotistical. Did I say I owed you any favors?”
Again she laughed despite herself and said, “Pooh, you’re not going to try to tell me you weren’t sleeping with that dumpy Spanish girl back at that posada!”
He shrugged, slid his money belt and gun rig between the headboard and the mattress, and slid himself between the sheets as he said, “I didn’t do anything to Lucita she didn’t want me to do. We were good friends.”
“I’ll bet. Did you ever enjoy her the way Gaston was just treating poor Sarah?”
“You’d better ask Sarah in the morning if she spent the night in agony. I don’t talk about what I may or may not have done to a lady who might have been a real pal.”
Vera sneered and said, “It’s small wonder you’re ashamed to go into detail about your sordid relationship with that fat peasant girl! How could a white man sink so low?”
“Old Lucita wasn’t so low, with a couple of pillows under her. She was white, sort of, and a lot nicer than you. Built better, too. So please shut the door as you leave. It’s been a long hard Day of the Dead and I gotta catch forty winks before I’ll feel alive again.”
She called him a bastard again and flounced out, slamming the door behind her. He chuckled, trimmed the bed lamp to a faint glow, just in case, and rolled over to catch some shut-eye.
He was asleep within minutes. He didn’t dream that night. So he had no idea how long he’d been asleep when he found himself sitting bolt upright in bed, training his .38 on the door.
He saw that it was Vera and lowered the muzzle with a puzzled frown. She gasped and said, “My God, you move fast! How did you do that?”
“Practice. What’s your problem?”
She said, “I couldn’t sleep,” as she stepped inside and closed the door after her. He could see by the dim light, now, that she was wrapped in the comforter. He couldn’t tell what, if anything, she wore under it. She asked, “Did you mean what you said about not raping me if I sort of took the other side?”
He laughed and said, “I don’t pay for it, either. You might say I’m a romantic fool. Get in or get out. I’m going back to sleep.”
He put his gun away and plumped up the pillows on his side as she moved around the foot of the bed, dropped the comforter to reveal the thin silk slip she wore, and gingerly raised the sheet on her side to slide into bed with him. Then she gasped and said, “Oh, you’re not wearing anything? Not even your shorts!”
He grimaced and said, “Sleeping in your underwear is a disgusting habit. But you’ve still got yours on, so cross your legs, say your prayers, and for Chrissake let’s get some sleep!”
He rolled onto his left side with his bare back facing her and snuggled his head down into the pillows as he shut his eyes. He was just dozing off again when she murmured, “Are you asleep, Dick?”
He groaned and said, “Not now. What do you want, a glass of wawa?”
“It was mean of you to say that other girl had a nicer figure than me. She was short and dumpy, dammit!”
“Okay, you’re built like a brick shithouse. Shut up and go to sleep.”
“I can’t. I’ve been turning and twisting for hours on that damned lumpy settee and now I seem to be too overtired to fall asleep.”
“Speak for yourself, girl. I could sleep like a log right now, if only you’d let me!”
Actually, he was getting an erection, for some dumb reason. But he wasn’t in the mood to play games. So he shut his eyes and willed himself into the arms of Morpheus. But now Morpheus was acting like a bitch, too, and it was sort of tough to fall asleep with a throbbing dong and strange stuff just a few teasing inches away from it.
He started counting sheep. But they had hard-ons too, dammit. He tried counting backward from a hundred. Vera was wearing some kind of musky perfume and couldn’t seem to settle down. He tried to ignore the way she was rubbing her body around on the mattress next to him. So she gave in first and said, pouting, “I may be a little flat-chested, but at least I’m not fat.”
He sighed, rolled over, and took her in his arms. She gasped and said, “Oh, you promised you wouldn’t get fresh!”
He said, “I’m not getting fresh. I’m just trying to see if you’re right. Lessee, you are a little flatter topside, but not enough to qualify as flat-chested. I’d call you sort of willowy. Belly’s okay and, yeah, I really like them hips.”
“Dick, that’s enough! Stop right there!” she began. But when he kissed her, and she kissed back, she couldn’t say more as he ran his free hand down to cup her silk-sheathed mons in his palm. She moaned and threw her arms around him as he proceeded to rub her silk-filled valley of delight with two fingers. But as they came up for air she protested, “You’re going to stain my slip if you don’t stop that, you horrid thing.”
So he said, “No problem. Let’s just slide that slip off so we can do it right.”
She said, “Oh, no, I never go to bed naked, even by myself. They say it’s wicked. Girls who sleep naked might wind up playing with themselves!”
“Don’t worry. They don’t know what’s going on, and if I catch you jerking off I’ll make you stop.”
She giggled like a little kid being tickled as he got the slip up at least around her waist and rolled in place between her naked thighs. But even as she spread them and thrust her pelvis up in welcome the dumb dame had to say, “Please be gentle, dear. I’ve never done this sort of thing before.”
Her passion-lubricated love maw made a liar out of her as she slid its lips up to swallow him alive. But he was too polite to accuse a lady of insulting his intelligence. Some dames thought they had to talk like that, and her middle-class English accent gave her away as a girl who’d probably been reared by a strict and doubtless frustrated nanny who�
�d been paid to scare the shit out of her about sex. But obviously old Vera had learned the facts of life from someone who’d broken her in pretty good, God bless him, or, more likely, them.
As he laid her he kept working the silk slip higher until her naked nipples rubbed against his chest as she kissed him passionately. Vera suddenly grabbed the crumpled silk and pulled it all the way off over her head, sobbing as she said, “Oh, it does feel better with no clothes on, after all. But how shall I ever be able to face you again, after we’ve been so vile?”
He said, “Let’s not worry about it now. I’m fixing to come!”
“Does that mean you’re about to have an orgasm, dear?”
“Something like that. How about you?”
“Oh, women don’t have orgasms. We just have to let you brutes have your way with us until you’ve satisfied your lusts and … could you move a little faster, dear?”
He did, and said, growling, “This must be really killing you, right?” as she moved her slim hips skillfully and replied, “Oh, I don’t really mind, now that I’m getting used to it. Do you enjoy my body as much as you did that awful Costa Rican girl’s?”
He said, “There’s no comparison.” Which was the simple truth. For no two women were the same in bed, bless their sweet hides. She took his assurance at face value and began to move faster, as if to settle the contest in her favor once and for all. So he came in her, hard, and she gasped and said, “Oh, that was mean! I was hoping you’d last longer. Just to be a good sport, of course. It’s rather flattering to feel a man wants you, even though … Dick, aren’t you going to stop now?”
“Do you really want me to?”
“Not if it amuses you. I said I was a good sport, and, well, I know I shouldn’t say it, but it does feel rather nice and … oh, dear, what are you doing to me, dear?”
That was a pretty dumb question, even coming from a Victorian English dame. So he didn’t answer. He just raised his weight on locked elbows to look down between them as he pounded her to glory. The view inspired him to pound her even harder. For, in truth, Vera was a redhead all over. She moaned. “Wait, take it easy, it’s starting to hurt, or at least it’s starting to do something odd, and if you don’t at least slow down I’m going to have to go to the loo or, oh, oh, Jeeeeeeeeezusssss!’’
He kept on throwing the blocks to her as she moaned and groaned and rolled her red head back and forth across the pillow, eyes closed and mouth wide open in a silent scream. And then he ejaculated in her still-climaxing vagina and fell limply down against her willowy torso to catch his breath as Vera wrapped her long slender legs around his waist and kept moving and milking until her internal contractions slowly subsided. As he kissed her throat she murmured in a scared little-girl voice, “So that’s what they meant! My God, I think I just lost my flaming virginity!”
He said, “Come on, Doll Box. You’re among friends now.”
She laughed sheepishly and said, “I didn’t say I’d never screwed before. I just meant I’d never seen what all the fuss was about, up until now.”
He knew he was in for the story of her life now, whether he wanted to hear it or not. So he dismounted, got out the matches and a claro, and snuggled her against him as he smoked and she talked.
It was funny. Though every dame was different, making love, so many of them told the same old stories. Vera’s, in a nutshell, was the one about the girl living in genteel poverty who’d been seduced in her teens by an older friend of the family, found out it didn’t hurt, and drifted into hooking as an easy source of income next to working as a lady’s maid or shop girl. Hakim’s people had found her working Waterloo Bridge in London and recruited her to work for them as an undercover agent who could pass, as need be, for anything from a well-bred Englishwoman to a slut. She confided that she hadn’t enjoyed seducing people for Sir Basil much, up until now.
He blew a thoughtful smoke ring up at the bed canopy and asked, “Why did he order you to seduce me, Vera? I wasn’t about to take off in that silly skeleton suit, you know.”
She giggled, snuggled closer, and confided, “Sir Basil said Sarah and I should do anything to keep you happy until he could have you smuggled out of San José. I didn’t know whether I wanted to seduce you or not. You had me confused. I don’t know why you made me so uncomfortable before you made me come. Most men are putty in my hands and I can take them or leave them. You seem to feel the same way about most women, and it bothered me. I suppose I was a little jealous, too. That Costa Rican girl was awfully pretty, even if she was sort of plump.”
He didn’t answer. So she said, “Well?”
“Well what?”
“Am I better in bed than she was?”
He laughed and patted her bare shoulder as he said, “Can’t say, yet. We haven’t tried all the positions yet.”
“My God, aren’t you satisfied yet?”
“Hell, no, are you?”
“No. Would you think I was awful if I suggested trying what Gaston and Sarah were up to, or down to, when we caught them at it?”
*
It wasn’t easy, but Captain Gringo managed to get at least a little sleep that night, and the night passed all too swiftly, according to Vera. In the morning she served him breakfast as well as more of herself in bed. Then some spoilsport sons of bitches came knocking on the front door with railroad tickets and the sort of chino work clothes engineers and construction workers wore in the tropics if they weren’t natives. Gaston could pass for a native or anything else. But Captain Gringo tended to agree that a tall blond guy with Anglo-Saxon features looked a little dumb in a charro outfit and big sombrero. The nondescript sneaks who delivered the tickets and disguises gave the two soldiers of fortune instructions to head for Limón on their own, where they’d be contacted by others with further instructions. Then they lit out, warning Captain Gringo and Gaston not to head for the railroad station until just before the eastbound train was ready to leave.
That left them time to say adios to the girls right. So everyone went back to bed. Captain Gringo was mildly surprised when he found himself in bed with Sarah, of all people. But as the little blonde stripped off her robe it didn’t upset him. It just confused him. He asked, “Who’s idea was this, Sarah?” and the little blonde giggled and said, “Vera’s in command. We discussed it while you and dear Gaston were chatting with those other men. She was too shy to tell you herself. She’s ever so prim, our Vera. But as we’re never likely to see you lads again, and there’s so little time, we agreed there was no sense mucking about with long-winded explanations.”
He finished undressing, and as he hauled the smaller, softer Sarah in for a get-acquainted feel, chuckled fondly and said, “I heard you tell her it was true what they said about Frenchmen. I guess I must have disappointed her in that department.”
Sarah coyly reached down between them to take his shaft in her smaller, stranger hand, and giggled as she said, “Variety is the spice of life for us, too, you know. But, coo, she might have warned me about this!”
She was just being polite, he knew, for he’d seen Gaston with his pants off. So he really didn’t see what all the fuss was about when he rolled Sarah on her back and entered her. But she seemed to think he expected her to gasp and groan, “Oh, not so deep until a girl gets used to it!”
Then she wrapped her soft arms and stocky legs around him to screw like a little blond mink.
He found her smaller, more well-padded body a welcome change, too, and aside from that, a worry off his mind. The taller, slimmer redhead had said some dumb things during the night, while carried away by passion, and-it was good to know the girls weren’t going to be pining away for either of them, after all. He wondered why that sort of pissed him off. Sarah was a great little lay, but even as he laid her, the idea of Vera offering her red-thatched snatch to old Gaston right next door made him feel a little used and abused, for some reason. The idea that the tight blond snatch he was in at the moment had been inspired to sex madness by Gaston’s skil
led tongue just made the whole thing seem sort of dirty, the way a guy liked it, when ships were passing in the dark or, in this case, lamplight.
There was no window in the room. So he made a mental note to keep track of the time as he got to know his new bedroom associate better. Sarah knew they didn’t have all day, either. So he’d no sooner come in her old-fashioned than she insisted on getting on top.
He didn’t argue. By now he’d have been completely spent, had it not been for the new inspiration of strange stuff. The strange shaft in her inspired Sarah, too. She braced the bare soles of her tiny feet flat against the sheets on either side of his hips and played stoop tag on his love stalk as her big soft breasts bobbed alarmingly in time with her movements. He grinned up at her. She grinned back, dirty, and asked, “Do I screw as good as Vera?”
He said, “I don’t know why all you dames want to know that much about each other. I don’t want to be compared to old Gaston.”
She giggled and said, “You’re prettier and nicer, this way. But would you tickle my clit, please? For some reason it feels so sensitized this morning.”
He reached down to strum her old banjo, politely, but in truth it was getting to be just showing off, or, worse yet, work. There was a fine thin line between a good sport and a slut, and old Sarah didn’t have much couth.
He knew he’d never come this way now. So he suggested dog style, and Sarah would have done it in a pig sty, with a pig, he was sure. So they wound up with him standing by the bed behind her where he didn’t have to look into her amoral and not too bright eyes as he humped her very pretty rump. He managed to climax that way, at last, after Sarah had come thrice dog style and swore undying love and devotion. He decided to quit while he was ahead. He knew he’d never forgive himself if he’d gotten into anything that nice without coming at least once. But enough was enough.
As the chubby blonde lay face down across the sheets, purring, Captain Gringo sat on the edge of the bed and fumbled for both his pocket watch and a smoke from among the jumble on the bed table. He forgot the smoke as he saw how late it was getting; He patted Sarah’s bare behind and said, “I’ll see you around the campus, Doll. Gotta grab a whore bath and get dressed.” Sarah answered with a soft snore. He chuckled wryly and headed for the crapper. That was the trouble with the bitch goddess, Sex. When she offered a quickie, or, worse yet, nothing but your fist, Sex filled your head with endless possibilities. But let a poor guy or gal get a shot at all their fantasies come true and their poor bodies gave out long before they could take Sex up on her offer in full.