SAMPLE THE STORY BY READING CHAPTER ONE

I had never bought a woman before. 

I was going to buy one now, here in Tijuana in a back street bistro, where anything went. All around me there were men drooling at their jaws and maybe elsewhere, for all I knew, at sight of the black velvet stage drop and the faint blue light that spotlighted it, with a girl standing there stark naked, waiting to be bought by some niggle nut staring at her. 

Beside me in the darkened room, I heard David Anderjanian sigh. He is my case officer for L.U.S.T.—the League of Undercover Spies and Terrorists in whose service I draw a damn good salary. He was posing as my husband here in Mexico, and since we were both working on this assignment together, he was in on the girl slave action. 

My name is Eve Drum. The boys at L.U.S.T. head quarters call me Double Oh Sex, maybe with some justification. I am considered an expert on the subject, as well as being a damn good secret service operative. 

We were in Mexico to smash a ring of terrorists. 

Yeah, just the two of us. 

Right now David was interested in smashing something more than a terrorist crowd. His eyes were bulging along with his manhood as he feasted them on the naked female framed in the blue spot. She was pretty, with a fleshy body, and she was giggling nervously as the auctioneer posed her for the enjoyment of the crowd of onlookers. Her pubic patch was a blob of darkness between her meaty thighs; she made no move to cover it, nor the heavy young breasts that wobbled lazily to her every motion. 

"Too bad, David," I breathed.

"Huh? What?”

"That she isn't the one we're here to buy."

"Yeah. Sure." 

The girl we had been sent to purchase was a woman agent for the Mexican police. She was supposed to know about the terrorists, enough to clue us in on their location and mode of operation. The terrorists had their own spies around and about as well, because the girl was too frightened to meet us normally; we had to do it this way to protect her. 

"Do a little dance," the auctioneer coaxed. 

The girl giggled more shrilly, held her arms out from her sides, and did a shimmy that sent her breasts bouncing to the cardinal points of the compass. Those swinging love jugs drove David forward to the edge of his chair. They even sent a scopolagniacal stab of excitement throughout my own libido. 

I put my hand on the hard thigh beside my soft one. David rested his hand on my garter-clasp and began checking the area around it with his fingertips. I could see a number of other American tourists—real married folks or only make-believe, like us, I never did find out-feeling the goodies and wondering what it would be like to buy themselves a girl to fool around with in their hotel room. 

This sort of thing goes on south of the border, but in a very hush-hush way, so nobody should get scandalized and complain too much and too loudly to the authorities. It is a great source of income to the poor Mexican peasants and Indians who bring their prettiest daughters to the vice vultures who run the slave market. I have been told the parents get about two-thirds the purchase price, the rest goes to the auctioneer. You can guess what the girl gets. 

This slave sell-quarters is located some distance off Revolution Avenue in Tijuana. It is known to the initiates: to the rich young bachelors of wealthy Mexican families, to the agents for bordellos from here to there, to American touristas, and to the young men in shirtsleeves and tight chinos who have saved up such monies as they can lay their hands on, to indulge themselves in a dreams-come true situation with a woman they can do damn well what they want. 

"Very occasionally there is a bout of spirited bidding between a well-heeled bachelor and a pair of rich American tourists for the ownerships of a particularly pretty puta. The young man becomes angry, he shouts and swears in Spanish at the man and wife who yell back at him in Americanese. It is great entertainment. 

The auctioneer is no fool. He often offers the girl to some teenage toreador who cannot afford a girl any other way, so that the boy and the girl will put on a show for the onlookers. Naturally, the auctioneer is no altruist, he knows the value of a sexhibition at a time like this; it makes the bachelor and the wealthy American touristas bid away over their heads to come at such a bit of belly plaster, themselves. 

My female intuition was telling me we were going to get such a show, right now. The auctioneer was grinning, looking around at the intent faces on which were mirrored all the fleshly lusts mankind has ever known. To my left, 

an older man and a woman I am sure was his wife, were whispering excitedly to one another, they were getting ready to bid the sky for the naked girl. In front of me, a well-dressed young Mexican was stirring restlessly. Mutual opponents for the upcoming sexual sweepstakes, I felt positive. 

"Como? Eh? How about it, folks?” the auctioneer was saying. 

"Si! Si! Yes! Yes!" the initiates howled back. 

The man on the stage made a pretense of staring at a number of young men standing against the wall. Actually, I am certain he had his boy all picked out, long before hand. He would take no chances on servicing his girl slave with a diseased male. His business would blow up under him, if that happened—fun and games is something a government official may wink an eye at—a case of clap is something else again. 

In one sense, at least, these girls were clean. "Tu me vas, Manuel! You'll do." 

His pointing finger stabbed through the blue light at a somewhat older youth, who may have been in his early twenties. He wore black sideburns with his curly black head of hair, he affected black chinos with golden slashings down the seams and a light blue sports shirt 

The youth straightened with a little smile, he dropped his cigarette and ground out the butt on the hard dirt floor. His fingers began unfastening his shirt buttons as he sauntered forward toward the stage. 

Bare to his middle, revealing a muscular chest, he was pushing his pants down and off his hips as he came into the blue spotlight. Since his fingers had hold of his boxer shorts as well, he came into view full-armed, like Priapus in a garden, as the blue spotlight enfolded his nakedness. 

"Ooooh," breathed the woman to my left. 

There was no attempt at anything but instant sex. The young man put up his hands and caught the breasts hanging there before him. He shook them a little and used them to draw the girl toward him for a kiss. His hands left her white melons, slid down her bare, curving sides to the quivering buttocks. His fingers sank deep. 

The girl moaned, shivering. When the male drew back, revealing how aroused he had become, there was a gasp from the older woman beside me. 

"How much for him?" she cried. 

The youth turned his handsome face toward the audience that sat in near darkness, smiling, showing even white teeth. "Mas tarde, querida—after I finish with this one." 

There was laughter around the little hall in which the woman herself joined. It was breathless laughter as if the audience had no time for mirth; each man and woman was too engrossed with the way in which the young man was lifting the naked girl and settling her down upon his member, her heavy thighs rippling loosely until she closed them around his hips. 

She began to bounce up and down. The young man walked her a few feet to a bare wooden table and let her buttocks sink down upon its surface. Then he caught her legs and raised them, hammering away all the time. He had good staying powers, that youth, he was a regular bull. I found myself with a dry mouth and thumping heart, watching; the woman who had offered to buy him was moaning deep in her throat. 

The girl slave wailed, clutching the young man with arms and thighs as she shuddered out her bliss. She clung like a leech, kissing his broad hairy chest while he stood patiently and let her orgasmic trembling die down. He was experienced, that one. 

The woman to my left shouted, "A thousand pesos for the boy." 

Eight pesos are roughly equivalent to a United States dollar. The old girl was offering about hundred and twenty bucks for the youth. I saw the boy look at the auctioneer, who nodded heavily and moved forward, his moon-face wrapped in a big smile. 

"Senor Manuel is not for sale, madam but in the interests of good neighbor policy he is willing to sell himself to you for a day and a night at the thousand pesos you have so kindly offered." 

The woman gave a whoop. Onstage, the young man was disengaging himself from the attentions of the naked girl, who obviously wanted more of what he had to give. He pushed her away kindly, as some of the onlookers chuckled. Then he reached for his clothes while the auctioneer went on with his spiel 

"This young woman—you have seen for yourselves how she loves tumbling—is for sale. He is a perita en dulce, she will turn your bed into a jungle hothouse. Ay di mi! Study her! She is wriggling like a worm on a hook, demanding satisfaction. Who will give it to her? And for how much?” 

The bachelor shouted, "A thousand pesos!" The man and wife called, "Two thousand!” 

The bidding went on. When the price got to be ten thousand pesos, the young bachelor scowled at the Americanos and shrugged his shoulders philosophically. There would be more women put up for sale, and no woman was worth that much money, in his eyes. 

The woman on the stage got back into her thin dress and came down the aisle while the husband was counting out the ten thousand pesos. Then the man and woman took her between them and walked out of the building. 

David sighed. “I wonder how much we're going to be nicked?” 

"It's L.U.S.T. money, David,” I consoled him. We had to wait while the auctioneer sold a pretty Indian girl, a somewhat plainer peasant woman, and a peppery girl with mixed antecedents, before we saw our female secret agent. She was young, very pretty, with long black hair falling down her smooth bare shoulders. She wore a tattered dress so sun-faded it was next to colorless. Some body had ripped it so it hung on the very rims of her upper arms. 

Her black eyes defied the world as the auctioneer gestured at her. She was proud of her slimly curved body, of the firm hips pressing their rondures into the worn cloth that hid her nakedness, of the full breasts stabbing stiff nipples into the bodice. 

The rich bachelor in front of me breathed, “Ahhh!" David sat up straighter. Bachelor boy yelled, "Five thousand pesos!" 

We were going to have trouble with this one. He was an beaver eager for a bit of blanket ruffling. He flashed a grin around the room after his three-word speech–I guess he imagined the rest of us would faint—and nodded his head as if satisfied with his particular slice of the world. 

I just had to deflate him. I yelled, "Ten thousand!" Hell! It was L.U.S.T. money. In other words, it comes from the American taxpayer, and it was being used to keep America safe, so I had no qualms about using all I needed. 

The bachelor turned his head and gave me a malignant stare. Oddly enough, I felt a kind of shock run down my spine and into my toes. This was not the irritated glance of a rival for an auction item. It was malevolent, filled with hate. It was the kind of look Ho Chi Minh might give to Lyndon Johnson. 

Maybe it was my female intuition kicking up her heels. I filed that look away as Communist, not so pure and not so simple. I told my memory cells to put that brown face and side-burned curly brown hair away in my subconscious. His lips were over full, but they could tighten to thin lines when he was angry, like now, and across his thick bull neck-visible above the sports shirt he was wearing was a hairline scar, slowly turning a raging red. 

He turned away and shouted, "Twenty thousand!” 

Now David looked at him. Twenty thousand pesos twenty-five hundred American dollars!—was altogether too damn much to pay for any woman, here in Tijuana. It told David and me that we were suspect in some quarters of not really being a tourist husband and wife. Possibly the terrorist gang we'd been sent south of the border to contact and destroy was on to us. I glanced at David, he nodded at me. 

The pretty girl onstage was looking worried. The plan was for us to buy her, not for somebody else to horn in. I knew how she must be feeling; I have been sold as a slave myself, on one of my adventures. It is no fun, wondering if things are going bay-wire and you'll wind up with the wrong master. 

I yelled, "Fifty thousand!” 

The girl in the tattered dress almost smiled as the worry emptied itself from her brilliant black eyes. She glanced at the bachelor who was cursing softly under his breath. Five thousand U.S.A. dollars is a fortune, three miles south of San Diego, Even for a rich Mexican bachelor. 

"A hundred thousand pesos," he screamed. 

This was my cue. "Mister auctioneer," I called. “I believe only cash is acceptable to you. I have here," and I rummaged in my handbag, "fifty thousand pesos, in good, spendable cash. I ask to see the hundred thousand pesos our rival is supposed to be able to produce!" 

I damn well doubted that he had that kind of moola on his person. I was right. His neck got red under its brown skin and he quivered as if I'd insulted him. Suddenly he whirled and reached for me with his hands. 

David was a little faster. His huge fingers caught the bachelor and whirled him sideways away from me. David Anderjanian is six feet four inches tall, he weighs in the vicinity of two hundred and thirty pounds. He has played professional football, and he was a heavyweight boxing champion during his college days. There is no fat on him, just bone and muscle. 

His fist is like a rock, doubled up. It was doubled up as he hit the Mexican alongside his face. The bachelor went backward, arms flailing in the air in a kind of reflex, be cause he was out on his feet. He landed five feet away, sprawled across a bench, and just lay there. 

"My bid still goes," I called. "Fifty thousand pesos for the girl.” 

The auctioneer was standing there with his mouth wide open, looking down at the unconscious man. When I repeated my bid, he lifted his eyes to stare blankly at me. 

Then he recovered his mental balance. 

"Si, senora! Fifty thousand pesos.” He looked around the room that was so ominously quiet. “I have a bid of fifty thousand pesos. Do I hear anyone say any more? Then for fifty thousand pesos—going, going, gone." 

The girl on the stage was all smiles. She hopped down off the little dais and advanced toward me as David moved forward to pay the auctioneer with the money I pushed into his hand. I turned when the girl came up to me, caught her elbow and guided her along beside me. Here and there, from the dark faces of the Mexican youths lining the wall, we caught sullen glances. 

In a moment we were out in the hot Mex sunshine, on the little street off Revolution Avenue. The street was almost empty at this siesta hour, only a peddler with his wares in baskets slung all over his body could be seen at the far end of the road. I took the girl by the hand and led her toward the parked Mustang in which David and I had driven into Tijuana. 

“Don't say a word," I cautioned in a low voice. 

She nodded, her ripe red mouth a little open as she breathed in the sultry air. As well as I, she knew there was something wrong about the situation. She did not know how the terroristas had stumbled onto our little plan, but she was happy that things were working out so perfectly. 

Or were they? 

As we turned into the parking lot, we saw half a dozen young men in loose, open shirts and tight chinos, glance at us. They had been slouching lazily near our fire-engine red Mustang. As if our appearance were the signal they were expecting, they straightened up and snapped to attention. 

“We'll wait for David," I breathed. 

I felt the tension run like cold water down my spine. I could fight six young Mexicans all alone, if I had to but I preferred to have the big Viking alongside me in a melee. His fists, when he threw them, were like sledgehammers falling. 

My hands fumbled in my handbag for a very special cigarette lighter I carry on some of my assignments for L.U.S.T. It shoots tiny needles tipped with a fast-action chemical guaranteed to put a man under within seconds. I lit a cigarette, puffed deeply, and juggled the lighter in my palm. If those young hoods wanted trouble, I would have the wherewithal handy to feed it to them. 

David came walking along like a juggernaut. His size certainly looked good to me. I think it eased my companion too, for she sighed a little, with relief. 

"Those toughs keep looking at us the way a cat looks at a mouse, David,” I told him under my breath as my case officer and I flanked the Mexican girl on our way to the Mustang. 

"Pay them no heed," the Viking said softly. He rubbed his right hand, the one that had hit the bachelor inside the slave building. “I just wish they'd start something." 

David got his wish. As we neared the car, the toughs moved out of their slouching postures. From behind their backs, they brought out bicycle chains and small baseball bats. They moved toward us in a body, fanning out so as to be able to hit us from all sides. 

"Here they come," I snapped. 

I whirled and aimed the cigarette lighter at the nearest youth. He was lifting his baseball bat sideways, intending to bring it around in a sweeping curve so it would hit the side of my head. He'd have broken my skull if it had landed. I pressed the lighter, there was a swooot sound. 

The young man halted, stared down at his belly. The needle had pricked him, it had gone deep inside him. He had a surprised look on his cruel face. Maybe he thought a bee had stung him because he took two more steps toward me, his bat coming around in a sweeping motion, before he fell flat on his face. 

He lay there, sound asleep. 

I had no time to spend on him. The boy beside him was leaping at me, bicycle chain slashing the air. I ducked, I reached out with a hand and caught him by the arm. I twisted my girl-girl body sideways, still in that crouch. My hip caught him in the loins. I heaved, with both hands fastened on his arm. 

He rose up gracefully into the air, legs over his head. His mouth opened and he screamed. Then the back of his head was hitting the Mustang fender with a hollow crunch. Senseless, his body slid down past the wheel, the top of his head hit the blacktop, and he folded over. 

Our slave-girl secret agent was struggling in the hands of a third boy whose big fingers were holding her helpless as he dragged her toward one of his friends who had a bat uplifted, about to clobber her skull. I fired a needle at this one, then leaped to free the girl by a judo hold on the young man gripping her. 

While all this had been going on, I'd been hearing the crunch of flesh on flesh. I turned my head slightly, seeing David Anderjanian hammering his fist into the bloody face of a fifth youth. The sixth one lay at his feet, absolutely unconscious, arms flung wide, his mouth bleeding. 

My hands caught the Mexican boy by his long hair. I yanked back. He gave a sudden yelp and let go the girl. He tried to turn, but I let him do it only on my own terms, as my hands swung him sideways so that he fell off balance. 

My knee came up. It bonked his head. 

Before he could fall, I hit him with the edge of my hand across his throat, twice. He went into something like a fit, hands on his crushed Adam's apple, his body flopping along the ground, making dull thuds. 

David hit his unconscious opponent a final blow, then snapped, "Into the car, girls. Prisa! Prisa!” 

We hurried, the girl diving between me and David, who sat behind the wheel. We slammed doors. The motor roared to life. We wanted no trouble with the police, we just wanted out, fast. David let in the clutch and we shot from the parking lot like an Olympic sprinter off his blocks. Seconds later, we were two blocks away. 

David slowed to forty miles an hour. 

"We'll talk in the motel room," he said. "Oh, by the way—what's your name, honey?" 

The girl dimpled a smile. "Estela Lopez. Lieutenant Lopez, of the Mexican police, if you prefer." 

I'd prefer Estela," David grinned. "Estela," I chipped in. "It seems as if they're onto us. In the hall, that Mexican bidding for you was something more than a hot-pants Romeo." 

"Si, I think so myself.” 

David growled, "And those toughs in the parking lot weren't just hanging around to beg for pesos. They were armed for slaughter. Mexicans don't go 'round slaughtering American tourists, here in Tijuana. The people in Tijuana make most of their income from American tourists." 

"It was the terroristas, si," agreed Estela. “They've tumbled to our little game?" I wondered. 

The girl shook her long black hair, saying, "I don't know. I thought I'd covered my tracks, but maybe they were too smart for me." She sighed, then added, "It is perhaps better you forget your plans to break up this terrorist gang. It is too dangerous for you." 

"The General would take a dim view of that," growled David. The General is the head of L.U.S.T. He knows as well as its agents that L.U.S.T. men and women are ready to look the Devil in the eye and spit at him, while on a case. 

I patted Estela's smooth hand. "We'll worry about that, honey. It's why we're here. All we want from you are the details." A thought touched the back of my mind. "Oh! And speaking of the details—maybe somebody's bugged our motel room, David." 

"If they knew we were going to buy a girl police lieu tenant to fill in our lack of knowledge, they certainly must know where we're staying. Good thinking, Eve." 

Estela looked worried. "But if they've bugged your room—” 

“We won't be able to do much talking, will we? Unless—" 

I glanced at the Mexican girl out of the corners of my eyes. "Unless we act the way we're supposed to act—and cover up our voices by heavy breathing, yells of ecstasy and that sort of thing." 

Estela made a perfect circle of her big red lips as understanding came to her. "Oh! You mean we may have to act as if as if I really were your girl slave?" 

"It may not happen," David murmured disarmingly. "If there's no bug, there's no need to put on an act.” 

Estela Lopez giggled. "I would not mind—so much. It would be in a good cause, de verdad?” Her black eyes roamed David and me with something of impish glee in their depths. "I am—how do you say it?—rather ripe for a little fun after what I've been through." 

Then her face sobered. “But of course, as you say only if the room has been bugged.” 

"All right then, it's agreed," announced David. “We enter the room as if we were going to have a party. We'll talk it up while we go around searching." 

Ten minutes later, the Mustang turned in at the lavish motel where David and I were registered as man and wife. A little to my surprise, there was nobody in sight. Of course, it was siesta time in Tijuana, from one o'clock in the afternoon until four, but I felt sure the terroristas took no account of that. In something like relief, I put my arm about Estela and guided her toward our suite of rooms. David followed at our heels. 

As David unlocked the door, I breathed, “Let me go first. I have my cigarette lighter in my hand." 

David nodded and reached into his shoulder holster for the .38 caliber Colt revolver he carries on dangerous assignments. Gun in his big hand, he threw open the door. 

Estela was on my heels as I moved into the coolness of the air-conditioned suite. A blue carpet lay wall to wall below modernistic furniture, a couch and some chairs, a table with a lamp on it, two big blue-glass teardrops attached to a metal pole that gave off a dim radiance. 

Other than its furniture, the room was empty. 

Estela said, "I'm glad it was you two who bought me. You sound like fun. That man who wanted to pay a hundred thousand pesos for me was bad." 

She was moving toward the table, peering under it. David growled, "I'm glad we bought you too, honey." He was studying the blue teardrops on the light-pole. I did my bit by running fingertips over the sofa, examining it with my eyes for evidence that its blue and gray velour might have been slashed to hide a bugging device inside it. 

Aloud I said, "Oooh, it's so pleasant in here. What say we all have a little drinkee before we start the fun?" 

"Great idea, sweetie," said my supposed husband, on his knees checking the blue carpeting. "I'll have a margarita." 

"What is a margarita?” asked Estela, crouched behind one of the chairs, her policewoman's trained eyes studying it. 

"You'll love it, querida,” I told her, moving into the kitchen, 

I uncorked a bottle of tequila and poured while I moved about, searching for any concealed button that would relay our voices on to a listening post. Five minutes later I had the drinks made and was reasonably certain there was no bug in here. 

I set the drinks down and stepped toward the bathroom. David and Estela were searching the bedroom. They were talking as they did so, to throw any listener off the track. 

"I can see all the way up your dress, honey." 

Girlish laughter. "I hope you like what you see. Us Mexican girls who come from big families can't find work so we have to let our families sell us. Sometimes, if you get a nice master and mistress, it is very enjoyable. The menage à trois, they call it in France." 

"Come over here and give Big Daddy a kiss." 

There was the sound of a juicy kiss. Piqued, I peeked into the bedroom. Estela was standing on the bed, running her fingertips behind the headboard. David Anderjanian was crouched down, peering under the bed, kissing his wrist. 

I giggled. They were acting out their parts to the proverbial T. They'd even fooled me, because I thought my case officer might be getting in a little bussing along with his bug-hunting. 

The bathroom contained gleaming white tiled walls, a glass-encased shower, a big bathtub, a two-basined sink in imitation veined marble, the usual potty seat and bowl. There were no windows. Instead, a ceiling fan was rotating swiftly. 

No place in here for a listening device, except for—I lifted my mini-skirt and planted my Pappagallos on the closed toilet seat. This brought my head up to the level of the electric fan. The fan was set behind a metal grille, to protect anybody who might accidentally stick his hand in the twirling blades. The blades were twirling now, because I'd turned on the light switch. 

I touched the screw-heads. One of them was loose. I got down, went to get a nail-file, and freed the screws. I lifted off the grille. Set just behind it was what looked like a dead insect, a big Mexican wasp. 

I knew better. This was an electronic eavesdropping de vice. Any casual observer would believe the only thing be hind the grille was a dead insect, aside from the fan itself. I replaced the grille very carefully, stepped off the toilet seat and to let any listener think I was employing the potty seat, I flushed the bowl. 

I made a production of opening the bathroom door so the listener could hear the knob turning. These bugging devices are damn sensitive, they can be made to imitate an olive in a martini, a flower, anything small you can think of. And their miniature amplifiers can transmit a signal ten miles or more, over a telephone line. Since no telephone line was involved, I figured our eavesdroppers were very close at hand. 

An expert can rig a gadget in an electric outlet—the ordinary kind that holds the switch by which you turn electric lights on or off in a telephone, in a wristwatch, in a pen or pencil. The false wasp in the grille contained a voice actuator and a tiny antennae. It would be able to pick up the slightest noise all through our motel suite. 

"You two haven't been stealing a march on me, have you?" I caroled, waving an arm at David and Estela. 

They came running. My forefinger pointed at the fan grille. "In there," I barely breathed. David nodded. 

Estela was giggling, saying, “Oh, no. Mrs.—ah,” 

“March,” said David quickly, playing up to the hidden bug. "Eve, Estela and David. One big, happy family." 

"Well, what are we waiting for?” I wondered. "I'll go get the drinks. Honey, why don't you help Estela peel that dress off? It's air-conditioned in here, but I'm sure she'd be more comfortable without it.” 

The Mexican policewoman flushed a little, but she was game. If she had to carry on like a sex-struck peasant girl, she would go through with it. David came up behind her, kissed her smooth throat and began working the dress up her legs with his scrabbling fingers. 

I paused, with a glass half-filled with ice in one hand and a frosted shaker loaded to the brim with margaritas, to study the slim brown legs that were coming into view. They were lovely, they were tinted the shade of rich cream lightly dappled with coffee. 

As her thighs were bared, Estela flushed and moved a hand as if to cover herself. Out loud so the bug could hear, I said, “Oh, don't be bashful, honey! David and I are married and we've been around. Come on, let yourself go.” 

"I will try," she said bravely. 

David chimed in with, "Why not give her a margarita, dear? Maybe it'll loosen her inhibitions." 

A margarita, for the non-drinkers in the crowd, is made with tequila, triple sec and lemon juice. You can substitute curacao for the triple sec, if you like; we did not. Anyhow, it is a potent drink. 

Estela took a sip of the chockful cocktail glass I handed her. She opened her black eyes wide, she gasped and gulped and said weakly, "Ooooh!" 

David let his laugh boom out. 

Under cover of the laughter I moved close to Estela and whispered, "Just what are we supposed to be looking for down here, honey?” 

The Mexican girl whispered back, "You know, the terroristas. They are hidden away somewhere in Baja California—” 

David was kissing her throat. Estela went, “Mmmm," and brushed her chin across his forehead. He asked, “Any way we have of finding them?" 

Estela murmured so low only I could hear her, "Their leader is a devil named 'el oro', the gold one. He is a blond man, very big, very strong." 

David had her dress up to her hip bones. She was pretty sexy, standing like that, with just her privacy hidden by the loop of the cheap, sun-worn gingham rag she called a dress. I handed David a drink, he reached for it with his left hand; his right was sliding under the upraised skirt. 

Estela gasped, eyes wide. She writhed a little, murmuring deep in her throat. I gathered from her look that she was not exactly acting for the electronic eavesdropper. David was really getting to her. 

David sipped, I sipped, our girl slave drank. 

She blew out air with a somewhat dazed look, handing me the glass for a refill. I grinned as I shook my head. I didn't want her passing out. Not until we learned some more about el oro, anyhow. 

I felt left out of the action. The hand that was under her dress was moving around, fingers working, while the policewoman panted. She was rubbing her inner thighs together, she was blinking her long-lashed eyelids up and down. Her thick black hair had come loose from the knot in which she had fastened it, tumbling about her shoulders. 

"Where can we find him?" I mouthed at the girl. 

"Mmmm—hmmmm," she went, turning in David's arms and plastering herself up against his big body. Her red mouth came open, lifted toward the lips David Anderjanian offered her. 

There was no sense expecting her to talk with her lips and tongue deep in David's mouth. I sipped my margarita, felt jealous, and decided to give the little girl a hand, under her upraised skirt. 

She grunted as my fingernails lightly scratched her smooth buttocks, trailing all the way around each plump cheek and in between. My fingertips tickled and caressed her flesh, they almost drove her wild. I could see her own fingernails digging into David's shoulders through his shirt as her hips began a rhythmic rubbing against his front. 

“Where?" I whispered, crowding my loins against her rear. 

She broke off the kiss, panting harshly. Three times she had to swallow before she dared trust herself to speak. We were all conscious of that listening bug. We did not dare smash it, because that would have tipped off the listener that we damn well weren't what we professed to be, a married American couple down here for a seance à trois with a pretty Mexican slave-girl. 

"Nah—north of Mulege," she finally said. Then she flung herself at David again. "Lo haremos?" she panted. "Shall we do it? Shall we?" She was giving a great performance for the benefit of the unseen eavesdropper. Or maybe it wasn't an act. She was moving like a serpent all over David, her hands were in between their bodies, I couldn't see what she was doing with them, but David was getting that glazed look that always contorts his face when he is about to do a mount. 

I hadn't learned very much, yet except that Estela Lopez had a low boiling point for margaritas and David Anderjanian. I knew about Mulege, it is a little town on the gulf of California, with the Sierra de Lagiganta mountains towering up behind it. It is real wild country, back of Mulege. A great place for terroristas, if not for touristas. 

"Hey, don't forget me," I complained. 

David was gripping the worn, faded gingham in his big Viking hands, his arm and shoulder muscles were bulging, and the sound of that ripping gingham was loud in the living room. I could see the brown, creamy skin of the Mexican girl all the way to her behind. She had nothing on but the dress. 

"You tore my dress," she wailed, then stifled a giggle behind a palm. 

David grated, “Hell, we'll buy you a dozen more, won't we, Eve?" 

"Sure." I agreed like a dutiful wife on a three-way orgy. “Don't fret, Estela. But why don't I get in on the fun?" 

I walked up behind Estela, she was naked in the rear as the dress fell in flaps from her upper arms, and passed my left hand around her waist, under the dress. In my right hand I held my cocktail. I offered it to the girl while I began a southpaw search across her smooth belly, teasingly, down into the wiry tangle of her pubic hair. 

She gasped, sipped, and moaned. 

I stepped back, lifting my hands to the torn remnants of the gingham dress on Estela's otherwise bare shoulders. My fingers tightened in the stuff and drew it down. I stared past Estela's bared shoulder at David Anderjanian. 

His whistle was loud, admiring, as the gingham fell to reveal her smooth brown shoulders, then slipped slightly so her left breast was all but nude. In the mirror above the imitation fireplace, I could see her reflection. Her breast was full, heavy, tipped with a large boysenberry colored nipple. It quivered slightly as she moved, bobbling lazily. 

"Kiss it, David," I urged, for the benefit of the bugging device. 

David opened his lips, bent down. I watched the stiffened teat slide in between his lips, heard him make loud sucking noises to cover up my words as I leaned my lips against the ear hidden behind her long black hair. 

"Where does he hole up, this el oro?" 

The Mexican girl moaned. Her fingers had caught David, held his head, moved his mouth deeper into her heavy breast so the flesh bulged around his lips. I repeated my question, pinching her right buttock. 

"Oh, oh," she was gasping. 

Then a little of her sanity came back. She turned her lips to me, began to speak. Her eyes were half closed, but behind her long black lashes I could see the glitter of her eyes. 

“Not far from the desert, he has a place, a little camp. The desierto de Vizciano, it is called, along the southern part. And a place in the San Ignacio mountains, too. He comes andaaggh!" 

She was practically collapsing from what David was doing to her. I sighed and decided it wasn't any use asking her more questions. She was in no condition to answer them. Curiosity would have to wait on concupiscence. 

I ran into the bathroom, got up on the toilet seat, turned my back on the grille-work, and undid my zipper. It made a nice metallic noise. Up this close to the bug, it must have sounded like a landslide of crackling metal chunks. Maybe it even deafened them a little. 

A swift glance in the mirror showed me the police woman standing naked to her bellybutton with David kissing everything in view. His hands were tugging down the rest of her skirt, so that the mirror and I got a fine view of her plump brown buttocks, quivering gently as she went on rubbing her thighs together and moaning. 

"You're cheating on me," I shouted into the grille. "I can see you in the mirror. Ooooh, David—you never did that to me!” 

That blasted their eeky little eardrums, I'll bet! 

It might also get their minds off spying while they were trying to imagine what David was doing to the slave-girl that he hadn't done to his wife. 

My fingers yanked up the hem of my David Crystal A-liner. 

“Whoooops!" I screeched at the grille, "Here I come!" 

I draped the dress over the grille, to make it harder for the boys in the next room to hear. Then I turned and ran for the bedroom wearing nothing but my Olga garter-belt and sheer black nylons. 

Also Available in a NEW Edition RePrint Paperback