Night of the Jaguar (23 page)

“OH YEAH!
OH YEAH!
”

Each time he thrust in, she pushed back. Putting her hand on the headboard for leverage she slammed her ass back as hard as he slammed his hips forward. Ajax laid his hands on her ass and was moved by the contrast of his brown skin on her milky-white butt cheeks. Even they were freckled! A wicked feeling he'd never known before, or even imagined, made him raise a hand and smack her on the ass.

Only once.

But hard.

“Oh. My.
God!”

Suddenly Amelia flipped herself over; her nails dug into his arms as she pulled him on top of her.

“Give me your tongue and I'll suck it out of your head.”

Ajax complied. Amelia seemed to be trying to do just that. He slid an arm under each of her legs and set them over his shoulders. He pinched a nipple in each hand and slid into her again. Only halfway in and out again, like before. But when he reached ten he let her have it.

She let go his tongue. Her eyes rolled into her head. Ajax arched his back and lifted his head to the ceiling, to the sky, to the heavens.

“Ajax, yeah. Ajax, yeah. Ajax, yeah.”

Damn, this gringa was a talker. And damn how he liked it!

She grabbed the back of his neck and bent him down to her, the look on her face half pleading, half exalted.

“Make me come, Ajax. Come in me and make me come.”

“Yes,
amor
, I will, I am.”

“Look at me, Ajax. Look in my eyes.”

Ajax bent himself so their noses touched, almost eyeball to eyeball. Every time he slammed his cock into her he went deeper into her eyes. And she into his. A strangled cry gathered in her throat. She gritted her teeth, it seemed to him, in order to keep her eyes unblinkingly open. This was a new thrill. He'd never looked so directly, so openly into a lover's eyes. And he'd never heard tell of it either.

“You want me to fuck you in the eyes, too, gringa? Huh?”

“Yes! Come in my eyes, too!”

As if one detonator for twin grenades had been pushed, their orgasms exploded with such force Ajax was almost thrust out of her, but she pulled him back in, and they both finally had to shut their eyes and lock each other in an embrace, while their bodies were rocked, wracked, with spasms of such shuddering power Ajax felt as if huge ice sheets from some vast inner glacier were toppling into an emerald green sea sending tsunamis of pleasure rolling through his body, his eyes, his fingers, washing over Amelia and back over him again.

There followed a wonderful silence. Punctured only by small moans shaken from one, or the other, or both of them as delicious aftershocks dazed them.

“Oh, my good God. Ajax Montoya. Ajax Montoya. Ajax Montoya.”

“Amelia Peck. Amelia Peck. Amelia Peck.”

“That was fucking amazing.”

“And amazing fucking.”

She giggled in a way he'd not heard before. It made him open his eyes and look again into hers. She stared unblinkingly back. No fear, no discomfort, no postcoital shyness. He thought:
This gringa's got some sand.

“What was that? You were like halfway in and then mostly out and…”

“Yeah, till the count of ten and then…”

“Blast off!”

She bit his neck, not quite as hard as he'd smacked her ass, but close enough.

“That was a good trick.”

“Well, I been around you know.
Don Juan
was my nom de guerre.”

“I didn't read
that
in your file.”

Ajax saw a drop of sweat slip down her neck into that little hollow at the base of the throat. He licked the salty pool dry. Maybe it was hers, or his, or both of theirs. Then his head snapped up.

“My
file
?”

Amelia giggled again. “Uh oh. Spilling secrets like it was jism.”

Ajax made a face. “Ewww.”

“That was gross. Sorry.”

Ajax sat up, and even though he was concerned by her revelation he still had to admire her body, sweat-soaked and glowing in the single candle she'd lit.

“Really, Amelia. My file. You had a CIA briefing on me?”

Amelia sat up, too. Her back against the headboard, she bent her legs and laid a hand on each knee. Damn! Ajax marveled. He would've never guessed she would lack inhibition like this. Amelia Peck seemed completely comfortable in her skin. Her naked, flawless, delicious skin. He sat back on his haunches, and although he was concerned by her slip, he still could not keep his eyes from roving over her body and down her legs to her carroty sex.

“Goddamn, you are a beautiful sexy woman.”

“And you are a beautiful man.” She ran her fingertips over his shoulders and chest, lingering on an old pucker of skin. “Complete with a manly scar or two. And you make love like a lion, or whatever big cat is appropriate.”

“Jaguar.”

“Yeah, a jaguar.”

“Didn't say that in my file. Least I hope not.”

“Ajax, it's not a ‘file' as in a CIA file. They keep newspaper clippings and radio transcripts from all sorts of media. I was just curious.”

“About what?”

“
About what,
asks the guy who brought my carefully laid plans within an inch of carnage, gunfire, and death? About what?”

“Look, I didn't plan it to happen like that.”

Amelia rubbed her hand through his hair. “There was a lot of talk at the embassy about it being a provocation—your, you know, ‘show.' So I read up on El Gordo Sangroso. He was a serial killer. Preyed on
señoritas de la noche
.”

“Whores.”

Amelia gently took hold of Ajax's ears and turned him around until his back leaned against her boobs and belly. She wrapped her arms around him. “Such a hard man with your bad language.”

“Hard man?”

“It's a colloquialism for tough guy, such a tough guy with your bad language.” She ran her hands down to his sex. “And a hard man, too.”

“Well, give me a minute.”

She fondled his sagging dick and gently stretched it out. “There's always a pause between eruptions; this volcano's not spent yet.”

“You know, for all your prim and proper language, you're hardly the wilting lily.”

“And for all your cursing and rudeness, you're kind of shy, aren't you?”

“Me?”

“Yeah, talk all you want. But in all those newspaper articles about the murders there were no direct quotes, like you didn't talk to the press even though they were writing glowing articles, even
La Prensa
. And the photos of you, they either looked like stock ones from some other time, or there was just one where you looked like you were dashing from a car into a building, like you didn't care if your fifteen minutes had arrived. So, yeah. Maybe you're shy, but disguise it with foul language and rudeness. The whole tough guy thing.”

“A la gran puta, Jugo. You'd make a good detective.”

She nibbled his ear. “Or a spy?”

“Don't. You'll make the volcano go cold.”

“By nibbling?”

“By saying ‘spy.' Our nations are technically at war; more than technically. More like literally at war.”

“Okay, no jokes. Just nibbling. In your file there's a bio sheet. It said you grew up in Los Angeles. Hollywood. How American is that?”

“North Hollywood.”

“Is that close to Hollywood?”

“Not the way you mean.”

“And what way do I
mean
?”

“You mean Hollywood and movie stars. Swimming pools. That's Bel Air. I left Hollywood in '69 when it was skanky. Junkies, runaways, drifters, and hippies.”

“Were you a child of the sixties?”

“Jesus fucked a goat. No! ‘Child of the sixties'? You had to be white to be that. Or at least American.”

“What do you mean?”

“The hippies were white, the Black Power brothers black, the Chicano Movement Mexican. We Nicas just did our thing.”

“And what thing was that?”

Ajax smiled and shook his head at the memory. Or, rather, he shook the cobwebs off the memory. It seemed to him that Amelia sensed this and began kneading his scalp with fingers whose strength he'd already admired.

“My father liked to quote the favorite line of the Mexican guys he worked with:
En America trabajamos como negroes, a vivir como blancos
.”

“We work like blacks to live like whites?”

“That's good, gringa. But more like: We slave like blacks to live like whites.”

“What'd he do, your father?”

“He was a professor. Of history. At least down here he was. When he got to
El Norte
all he could get was gardening. Pool cleaning. Laborer at first. He ran the crews later. Didn't my
file
cover that?”

She stopped kneading and gave him a playful slap on the temple. “You think your embassy in Washington doesn't keep files?”

Ajax turned his head to look at her. “Do you know why there's never been a coup d'état in the United States?”

“Checks and balances. It keeps the branches of government from…”

“No, Jugo. It's a joke. Like a knock-knock joke.”

“Oh. Sorry. Go ahead.”

“Do you know why there's never been a coup d'état in the United States?”

“Who's there?”

“Cabrona!”

“Okay. Why has there never been a coup d'état in the United States?”

“Because there's no American embassy in Washington.”

“I don't get it.”

“You would if you were Nicaraguense.”

“Oh, here it comes. We're the big bad wolf. Blame everything under the sun on
los Estados Unidos
.”

“And here you come with all that ‘land of the free, home of the brave' crap.”

“It's not crap, if by crap you mean untrue.”

“By crap I mean bullshit, which it is unless you live
inside
the United States.”

“Which is why so many come to our shores, to be free.”

“You think the Statue of Liberty lights the way for the huddled masses.…”

“Yearning to be free, that's right!”

Ajax turned his face from her, looked up at the ceiling and recited: “Lady Liberty lights the way to conquest.”

“What?”

“Rubén Darío. Everything we're going to argue about he put into a poem to Teddy Roosevelt. ‘You think the future is wherever your bullet strikes … while Lady Liberty, lighting the path of easy conquest, raises her torch in New York.'” He rubbed his hand along her thigh, perhaps in farewell, but he really hoped not. “No matter what you Americans see when you look in the mirror, Jugo, the rest of the world does not see that.”

“The emperor has no clothes?”

He patted her naked leg. “You have no clothes. You are a gorgeously naked gringa. I'm talking about perspective. You gringos stand behind the Statue of Liberty and see the ships coming into the dock full of huddled, yearning masses. Latin America stands in front of the statue and all we see are the huddled masses of Marines leaving the dock for our shores.”

“Now I'm a gringa again. Is the moment lost?”

“Magma cooling rapidly.”

She rolled Ajax onto his back, pinioned his arms, straddled him, and settled her orange-maned pussy right on his belly button.

“Didn't you say you left the states in '69?”

“I did.”

“That's my favorite number.”

Her green eyes lit with a feline hunger. Ajax rocked his hips side to side until he felt his belly button grow moist from her. “Magma warming quickly.”

The soft knock at the door put an end to it all. Ajax laid his hand over her mouth, then took it away and nodded for her to answer.

“Quién es?”

“Señorita Peck? Llamada
.”

She looked back at Ajax. He mouthed,
phone call
.

“Quién me llama?”

“Dice es ‘Tony.'”

“Tony! Oh my God.” She leapt out of bed and covered her breasts and sex with her hands. “What time is it?” She shouted through the door, “Qué hora es?”

“Casi media noche.”

“Midnight! That figures. Okay señor, thank you! Ya vengo!”

Ajax laughed. “Not ‘
vengo,' ‘voy.'”

“What?”

“In Spanish
ya vengo
means
I'm coming,
but as in the kind of coming we both already did.
Ya voy
means literally
I go,
but as in
I'll be right there
. So while you did already come, you are now just going because you'll be right there.”

Amelia dropped her hands, cocked her hips. “Strangely, I understand that.”

“Amelia.” Ajax kissed her palm. “Your jefe calls you in the middle of the night. Why are you here? Really.”

She pulled on a T-shirt, sat on the edge of the bed, took a deep breath and held it a moment. When she exhaled she seemed to expel her doubts.

“It's all on the up-and-up, but very quiet. Tony has a deal with the foreign minister to take three people with him, when we leave, to reunite with their family in Ohio. A ‘humanitarian gesture.' They live in Father Jerome's parish. I'm here to pick them up.”

“That's why you're traveling without an escort.”

“Yes.”

She stood up and Ajax watched her do a little circle dance, sliding on the jeans he had so enjoyed sliding off.

“You'll wait for me?”

“No way. Truce is over.” He smiled as he said it, but it was true. “I don't need to warn you, if anyone finds out you're sleeping with the enemy your job is gone, right? Fucking Republicans got no sense of romance.”

“No worries there. No one knows I'm here but Tony. The name is Amelia D. Peck, and the D is for Discretion. And you could probably be shot. Freaking Communists got no sense of romance.”