The Badlands Brigade (A Captain Gringo Adventure Book 12) Read online

  Golondrina lowered one hand to run her fingers through her pubic hair as she pleaded, “Hurry, Querido. I am so hot for you I am in pain. Who cares about the things they told you over there at that silly old embassy?”

  “I do,” answered Captain Gringo, switching off the light and moving over to the window to open the blinds. Golondrina said, “Thank you, the light was in my eyes but I did not wish for to say anything. But what are you doing at that silly window. I am here, waiting for you to do it right this time!”

  There was nobody in sight on the dark street below. That didn’t mean much, of course. He moved back to the door and made sure of the lock as he told the girl, “I’m not sure what the hell the name of this game is. I don’t think anyone would go to all that trouble with commissions and so forth just to turn me into the cops, though, so what the hell.”

  He finished undressing and got in bed with Golondrina, who welcomed him with open arms and wide spread thighs. The swelling under her one eye had almost vanished by now and she was really a lovely little thing in the soft light from the street lamps outside. As he started making love to her, a blur of motion caught his eye and when he looked closer he saw that a mirror on the wall across the room was reflecting their combined images as he laid her. He had to laugh. A beam of light was catching his pale rump on the upstroke. Golondrina asked what was so funny, so he told her and she craned her neck to catch the view, too. She giggled and said, “Oh, we look like we are being terribly naughty.”

  “That’s the general idea. Isn’t it funny how something that feels so good can look so dumb?”

  “I do not think we look dumb, querido mio. I think we look most romantico.”

  He started moving faster as she emphasized her point with rhythmic contractions of her juicy little insides. Romantic was perhaps too strong a word for the picture they made in the mirror, but it sure looked hot and horny. Captain Gringo was well tanned from the tropic sun but in the soft illumination, the flesh of his bigger body contrasted strongly with the darkness of Golondrina’s petite form. In brighter light the little mestiza was a light shade of milk chocolate. Right now she looked dark as any African sandwiched between his paler flesh and the silvery sheen of the white linen sheet under her rollicking rump. She suddenly started breathing harder as she moaned, “Oh, stop looking at those other people and treat me right, Querido! I am almost there!”

  So he buckled down and pounded her to glory. She climaxed well before him and as he kept going she shivered through a secondary orgasm and gasped, “Stop for a moment, por favor! I am too excited! You are driving me mad with that monstrous love tool!”

  He stopped, leaving everything in place to let her breath return as he wondered why he was taking so long to come this time. Sure, he’d had her earlier and before that he’d almost sated himself in that treacherous bitch, Chirivita. But that had been hours ago and the sweet little thing in his arms was tight as well as enthusiastic. He wanted to let go in her again. But he felt distracted. Whoever was banging on the floor above them wasn’t helping a hell of a lot. As Golondrina sighed and said, “Oh, that was lovely, give it to me hard again,” somebody upstairs smashed something made of glass and the same woman screamed again. He couldn’t tell if she was in pain or just drunk or both. He wondered what she looked like. She sounded wild as hell.

  Golondrina moved her hips experimentally and asked, “Are you getting tired, querido?”

  He realized he wasn’t treating a lady right, so he rolled off and pulled her into a dog style position on her hands and knees as he stood with his bare feet on the rug. Golondrina didn’t resist his rearrangement of her anatomy but asked, “What are you doing? For why do you wish me in such a strange position?”

  Then she gasped, “Oh, Madre de Dios! Never mind!” as he entered her from the rear to deep-stroke her in a less tiring position. As she arched her spine to take it even deeper, Golondrina laughed and said, “I had heard of this position from some naughty girls I knew in my old village. I did not know it felt this good, but it makes me feel very wicked. Nobody but whores does it this way, no?”

  He cupped a palm over each of her tawny hips to pull her on and off like a sock as he answered, “No. Everybody does it like this from time to time.”

  “Es verdad? I thought respectable couples only made love face to face, in their nightgowns.”

  “That doesn’t sound respectable, Kitten. It sounds downright tedious.”

  She laughed again and looked back archly over her shoulder to see if she could see herself in the mirror. She could and it made her gasp and say, “Oh, Santa Maria, we look like animals mating!”

  “So what? Why should animals have all the fun?”

  “Oh, querido, you are a terrible man and I am so happy to be your adelita. I do not mind being wicked with you. I think I wish for you to do every wicked thing to me I have ever heard of. Will you teach me to be absolutely vile with you?”

  That sounded reasonable to Captain Gringo and he was almost there. He withdrew, pulled her to her feet, and braced her against the bed post to re-enter her face to face and standing, like they’d done it in the alley, only this time with both of them naked, and he’d been right. It sure was a lot nicer out of his damned clothes. Golondrina clung to him, watching the mirror over his shoulder as he got both her legs up over his elbows while he gripped the bed post to thrust until he was ready, and then let go inside her as they slid down the post like a pair of sex-mad firemen to wind up on the rug with him on top, still coming in her as she moaned in extravagant ecstasy. As they lay in a heap on the floor, throbbing their way back to earth, Golondrina sighed and murmured, “Oh, that was so very beautiful, querido. But could we not get back in bed, por favor? Forgive me, I am your love slave, but my tail bone is most uncomfortable on this itchy carpeting.”

  He rose with her in his arms as he said, “I’m sorry. Got a little carried away. Did I hurt you?”

  “No, I loved it. But in God’s truth, you are muy toro for one woman to handle. Could we not sleep a little bit before we do it again?”

  He lowered her gently to the bed and kissed her, relieved in his own mind as well as body, for when a man had to resort to acrobatics to get over the hump with anything as pretty as Golondrina, common sense said it was time to quit, for God’s sake. They stretched out together on the cool sheets and she cuddled against him with a contented sigh as he lit a smoke. He knew the smartest move right now would be for him to try and catch some sleep, too. He’d had one hellishly active night, even for him, and Golondrina wouldn’t call him a sissy if he packed it in. But, damn it, he just wasn’t sleepy, just tired. He felt as if he’d just run a couple of miles and split a cord of wood: exhausted but still very wide awake.

  Somebody upstairs dragged what sounded like chains across the floor and he asked Golondrina if the noise of the party was keeping her awake, too. She answered, sleepily, that she was fine and he could tell she was about to drop off. He said, “Listen, querida, I’m going out for a little while, okay?”

  “You wish for to leave me?” she answered in a hurt little voice.

  He patted her reassuringly and said, “Not a chance. I just want to check on Gaston and I may pick up a magazine and some smokes in the lobby. I’ll lock the door after me and hang onto the key.”

  She answered, “If you wish to, my toro. I do not know why I should feel so sleepy now, but I do. I think it’s because at last I have escaped those terrible people and have someone to protect and cherish me.”

  His cigar suddenly tasted lousy. He gently moved his arm out from under her tousled black hair and sat up to dress, feeling like the shit of the universe. Golondrina was already sleeping, like the half-child he knew she was no matter how old she might be. The poor ignorant little thing was so damn trusting as well as willing. How the hell was he to get rid of her, once the time came, without hurting her?

  It was a good question and Captain Gringo had no answers by the time he’d put on his clothes and a .38 rig. Golondrina
was the kind of woman every man dreamed of meeting until he met one. She’d given herself willingly and made no real demands on him. She hadn’t questioned his perfect right to kill other men and screw other women. She wasn’t holding out for a rose-covered cottage. She didn’t want anything except to be his adelita and, like other adelitas he’d met, he knew she’d be willing to walk behind his horse carrying the spare ammo and bedroll until and wherever her soldado directed her to set up camp, cook his meals, wash his socks and, if he asked her, suck his cock. What the hell she and other adelitas expected to gain from such an arrangement eluded him and probably a lot. of their sisters. But some girls were just made to be used and abused by men. The only trouble was, he didn’t enjoy abusing women. Captain Gringo liked women. Not simply as bed partners, but as human beings. It made it rough on everyone when he came time to move on. But a soldier of fortune with a price on his head did a lot of moving on.

  He let himself out and locked the door after him. He’d fibbed to the sweet little primitive inside about going out for some smokes or a magazine. He had a shirt pocket full of Havana claros and he didn’t want to read. He wanted to find out what the fuck the limeys upstairs were up to.

  He didn’t mean the wild party, although it sounded wild enough for any number to play and it shouldn’t be hard for any English speaking person to crash a brawl taking up a whole hotel floor. He didn’t care what they were celebrating, either. He wanted to find somebody who could tell him if Great Britain knew it was at war with Honduras.

  He found a stairwell and climbed to the floor above. He saw his suspicions about bowling had been correct when a fat idiot wearing a paper hat and not a stitch of anything else rolled a wooden croquet ball past him down the hall runner. It was a little small for a bowling ball, and the pins improvised from wine bottles down at the far end were fragile, so it evened out. He knew now what the breaking glass noises had been all about. But the ball that zipped by his shins bounced off a wall and went into an open doorway beyond as the naked man in the paper hat said, “I say, you made me miss, you sod!”

  “Sorry. Would you rather have a fist fight?”

  “Not terribly. Conway, here. Are you from the consulate?”

  “Yeah. Where’s the main brawl?”

  “Down that way, if you’re talking about the bar. The women are sort of spread out about the premises, but you may find one unoccupied if you try hard enough. Dammed if I recall where I left that Negress I was with a bit earlier. Why don’t you just get a drink and join me for a game of bowls?”

  Captain Gringo said he’d think about it and moved toward the barroom. Finding it was no problem and he supposed the Negro nearby was supposed to be tending the portable bar set up in the corner of the crowded room, but at the moment the barkeep was humping a rather horsey looking and middle-aged white woman on the floor. They both had half their clothes on and he was glad. He didn’t care what the young Negro looked like when he wasn’t wearing that white jacket, but the old broad was pretty awful. Her long skirt was of course up around her waist and the scrawny legs she’d locked around her partner’s bouncing rump alarmingly had varicose veins.

  Captain Gringo moved to the bar and proceeded to build himself a tall gin and tonic as he sized up the rest of the crowd for somebody who looked sober enough to talk to.

  There didn’t seem to be anybody. Two other couples were rutting across the room but most of them were just sitting around in various stages of drunken disrepair. He sniffed the Halloween punk odor of cannabis and knew they hadn’t all gotten that way on booze alone. As he left to explore further, drink in hand, a woman wearing a tightly laced corset, one stocking, and a wild mop of dishwater blond hair met him in the hall doorway and asked, blearily, “Have I fucked you, yet?”

  He said, “Not hardly,” and she said, “We’d best get on with it, then. I told my husband I meant to fuck every chap at the party and I’m a woman of my word.”

  “You’ll probably be a legend in your own time, too.” He laughed, adding, “I’ll take a rain check, thanks. Got to find the girl I came with.”

  “Good lord, what a dreadfully pedestrian idea, or do you mean you came already in somebody you met at the party?”

  He said, “Both,” and gently forced his way past her. She made a feeble grab at his pants but missed, too drunk to really know what she was doing and too ugly to consider under any condition. What the hell was going on here? He knew, the straight-laced manners the British upper classes imposed on their social inferiors tended to be less rigid among peers, but this was a pretty wild and wooly orgy even for the diplomatic corps.

  As he passed a doorway he heard whimpering sobs and paused to peek in. Another naked fat man was enjoying anal sex as he presented his upthrust rump to his partner on the sofa they shared. The partner was a younger man wearing nothing but a bow tie for some reason. As he spotted Captain Gringo in the doorway he smiled politely and said, “Faversham, here. Passport division. Chap I’m screwing is Johnston, from Military Intelligence.”

  Captain Gringo nodded and said, “I’m Walker, American Embassy. You guys might be just the ones I’m looking for.”

  The fat man taking the woman’s part groaned and said, “Pleased to meet you. Not so deep, dash it all!” and Faversham said, “You know you love it deep, you queen. What can we do for you, Walker? Do you like to take it or give it?”

  “Oh, I wouldn’t want to spoil your fun. They sent me over to find out if any of you chaps know about the war you’re having with Honduras.”

  Faversham closed his eyes to hump his partner harder as he shook his head and said, “’fraid I can’t help, unless you want to be next in Bertie, here. Didn’t know we were having a war with anyone on this side of the pond. Oh, I say, I seem to be coming.”

  Captain Gringo laughed and moved on, washing the taste of the scene from his mouth with a swig of gin. A feminine voice at his elbow said, “Rather beastly in there, what? I imagine Public School accounts for our anal fixation. Never fancied it up the arse, myself. Do you?”

  He turned to see a fully dressed and quite pretty woman of about thirty. She had peaches and cream skin and ash blond hair, with every hair in place. He smiled and said, “You don’t seem to be getting into the spirit of things, here, Miss, ah...?”

  “Faversham, Cynthia Faversham. That’s my husband in there. The one doing it. Not the one taking it. You have all your clothes on, too, I see. Are you bashful or did you just arrive?”

  “Both. They sent me over from the American Embassy to find out what’s going on.”

  Cynthia sniffed and said, “You can see perfectly well what’s going on. Fortunately, we only have these office parties every few months or so. I wonder how Lady Pruett is going to explain that bit about the black boy she dragged from behind the bar, come the cold gray dawn. I can see why she seems a bit desperate. That was her husband in there with my husband. But one certainly should draw the line at servants of any description, don’t you agree?”

  “I’ve never made love to a male bartender. Is there someplace we can sit down and chat, Cynthia?”

  “I don’t know. Shall we look? I’d better warn you though that I don’t want to fuck.”

  He said he wasn’t in the mood, either, without going into the reasons why. Captain Gringo noticed a door standing ajar and opened it. The disheveled, fully dressed woman sitting alone on a couch inside screamed at the top of her lungs. It was the same scream he’d been hearing since arriving at the hotel. He shut the door on her and asked the other Englishwoman, “Why does she do that?”

  Cynthia shrugged and said, “I’ve no idea, but she always does. She may be mad. I know she takes opium. Her husband is a degenerate, too. A thing like that does tend to annoy a woman.”

  The next hotel room was empty, save for a four poster like the one he had downstairs and one chair. They went inside and he closed the latch behind them. He noticed she took a seat on the chair. That was jake with him. He sat on the bed and took out a cigar with an i
nquiring glance. Cynthia nodded, so he lit up before he asked her, casually, “Does it upset you to be married to a … man like Faversham?”

  She shrugged and replied, “It used to. I was a virgin at the time and he had this rather annoying inability to stay out of people’s arses. As I said, it’s not my cup of tea, so now we each go our own way in such matters.”

  “You mean you cheat on him?”

  She met his eyes coolly as she sniffed and said, “Cheating is not the way I’d put it. Since my husband prefers sodomy and I only enjoy normal sex I simply fuck anyone I feel like. Suffice to say that’s not to be taken as an invitation. I don’t know whether I want to fuck you or not. By the way, I seem to have missed your name.”

  “Oh, sorry, I’m Dick Walker As I said, I came over to find out what was going on.”

  “What’s going on is Her Majesty’s birthday party, although I doubt they’ll be celebrating it quite the same way at Buckingham Palace unless what they said about Her Majesty screwing her butler John Brown to an early grave should be true after all. I remember meeting John Brown when I was a girl at court. Rather jumped up gillie in kilts as I recall. None of us could see what Her Majesty saw in old John. But then, none of us got to look under his kilts, either. The office parties are usually held here rather than the embassy to save wear and tear on Crown Property. And then, of course, there are always a few newcomers from Blighty one really should get to know before one invites them to a drunken orgy.”

  Captain Gringo shook his head and said, “There’s nothing in the Monroe Doctrine forbidding a little friendly screwing. But word’s gotten around that you Brits are getting pushy with your borders again.”

  “Oh? As you Yanks treated Mexico so considerately back in ’48?”

  “Touché. But Grover Cleveland’s still going to be mad as hell if you guys start a war on his side of the Atlantic.”

  Cynthia looked genuinely puzzled as she asked, “War? What perishing war are we talking about? I thought we’d settled that sticky business about Venezuela and I must say your U.S. Marines were quite rude about it, too.”