loosely with a nervous sort of plucking motion.
I don't have to be hit over the head. The handiest portion of her anatomy as she stood in front of me was the
She plucked. The towel was tossed over her shoulder, and she knelt in front of me. Her hand stroked for a moment, and then she converted it into a fist. My own hands slid around the front of her body and dipped into the white halter, sliding past where her suntan ended and squeezing the hot, creamy whiteness of her breasts.
Ilona slip onto my lap then, grasping my manhood with the fast-fluttering muscles of her thighs. She was facing me with her eyes shining brightly, her lips moistly parted. The heat of her desire burned against me through the shorts with a steady, insistent pressure.
We kissed. Her mouth was a suction valve, the lips alive and hungry, the sharp, even teeth playing a teasing game of pleasure-pain, the tongue probing and retreating with a sensuality that was maddening. Throughout the kiss, I clawed at the waistband of her shorts, trying vainly to pull them down over the fleshiness of her writhing hips.
'No.' Ilona stayed my hands. 'First I want to -' She left the sentence unfinished as she slid back to the floor and once again knelt in front of me. Her black hair swept over my naked thighs as her mouth swooped down to capture the target she had selected.
She was no novice. She didn't rush things. Quick, exciting kisses covered the are and then her tongue darted at random, making me squirm. After a few moments of this, she slowed down, her lips fastening for longer periods here and there, her tongue laving me with slow, thorough relish. Her head came up for a moment, and her face was flushed with wantonness. Her hand grasped the base of my manhood and she bent her head once again. This time she seized the target directly.
My body arched like a strung bow and shook uncontrollably. My hands tangled in her hair and forced her head down farther and farther. Her tongue churned wildly. Her cheeks were taut hollows formed by the vacuum-like sipping of her lips. I could feel her very throat contract in preparation for the nectar she had brewed in me, the nectar at the boiling point and set to erupt. And then -
And then there was a sudden loud pounding at the door. For a moment my passion-fogged mind played tricks on me and I was back in London again with Gladys. But the passion subsided and I came back to reality as Ilona, startled, relinquished her erotic meal-in-the-making and half rose to her feet.
'What's that?' she exclaimed.
The knocking was repeated.
'Who is it?' she called.
No answer. Just more rapping.
'Go away!' Ilona responded, frustrated and annoyed.
But the pounding only grew louder.
She crossed over and opened the door. 'There's no one here!' Puzzled, she threw the door wide open to demonstrate her conclusion to me.
However, I knew she was wrong. And a moment later, just after she closed the door, she knew it herself. 'Eek!' she screamed as she turned around and her line of vision fell downward. 'What's that?' She pointed.
'Lagula,' I sighed. I had seen him walk softly between her legs to enter the room while she was still peering out the door. 'What do you want?' I asked him.
'To save your life once again, Mr. Victor. You and the young lady must get out of this room immediately!'
'Your timing is really something,' I grumbled. 'I can well believe Putnam put you up to helping me. He has a sadistic habit of interrupting me at the most crucial times.'
'My apologies, Mr. Victor. But believe me, it's a matter of life and death.'
'Who is he?' Ilona demanded. The way her voice went up the scale showed she was just as outraged at the interruption as I was.
'I guess we don't have time for me to explain,' I told her. 'We'd better do as he says.'
'Can't he wait five minutes until we -' Her hands slid down her body expressively.
'There is no time!' Lagula insisted. 'Please! Come at once!'
'Come on,' I echoed to Ilona reluctantly.
'Just a minute.' She crossed over to a closet and grabbed a dress from a hanger.
I followed her example and started for my clothes out on the balcony.
'No time to dress!' Lagula insisted, tugging at my arm and starting to push me towards the door.
'But I'm stark naked! I can't go out like this,' I protested.
'Wait. There's a poncho here. You can wear that.' Ilona reached into the closet and tossed me the slicker. It was the kind of thing both men and women wear in Africa during the rainy season.
Her dress was on over the shorts and halter but still unbuttoned as Lagula urged us out of the room. He led us down a back staircase, and we left the hotel by the delivery entrance. Lagula had a car waiting, and Ilona and I got in the back while he took the wheel. He pulled the car around to the front of the hotel.
We were just in time to observe the effect of the fate we had so narrowly missed. A man hopped nimbly down from the balcony just above Ilona's, tossed an object into her room, and kept going to the balcony beneath hers, where he threw himself flat on the flagstones. A moment later there was an explosion, and the contents of Ilona's room spewed out over the street. I caught a faint whiff of manure as the clothes I'd been wearing wafted by in fragments overhead. We all ducked instinctively, and when I raised my head, the man who had thrown the bomb had vanished. Lagula hit the gas pedal, and we too sped off in the wake of the explosion.
'I feel faint,' Ilona said, grabbing at me with instinctive accuracy.
'So do I!' I told her, chopping at her wrist to make her loosen her grip. 'What are you trying to do? Unman me?'
'Sorry.' She eased up enough to allow the blood to circulate again. But she didn't let go. She seemed to find some sort of security in keeping her hold there.
'Was that T.U.M.S. again,' I asked Lagula.
'Yes,' he said, his nose, which just barely cleared the steering wheel, pressed to the windshield as he drove.
'You mean S.M.U.T.?' Ilona sounded shocked. But her emotions were all cross- circuited, and her response to the situation was a deliberately erotic tickling motion that sent a sexy shiver up my spine.
'Arrange the initials as you wish,' Lagula shrugged. 'It's all the same organization.'
'But why should they try to kill me?' she asked, her hand starting to twitch frantically under the poncho I'd donned.
'It is Mr. Victor they want to kill,' Lagula told her. 'You just got in the way, and I imagine they consider you expendable.'
'Oh, they do, do they?' Indignation made her squeeze hard again.
'Please,' I moaned.
'Sorry!' She loosened her grip and patted me soothingly. 'So I'm expendable, am I?' she muttered to herself. 'Well, I'll show that dirty pig!' She released me and reached behind her back with both hands. The simple summer frock she'd grabbed before was still unbuttoned, and now she released the clasp of the halter she was wearing. She tossed it to the floor of the car and her breasts bobbled free, only half hidden by the loose material of the low-cut dress.
'What are you doing?' I exclaimed.
'Switching sides!' she told me with grim determination as she pulled her skirt up over her hips and unzipped her shorts. They fell to the floor with the halter as she pulled the skirt down again.
'But it isn't necessary to -' I started to say.
'I never do things halfway! If I'm going to betray Highman, I'm going to betray him in every sense!' Ilona took my hand, slipped it under her bodice, and pressed it hard against the straining of her breast.
'Highman? But what has he got to do with -?'
'Don't worry, I'm going to tell you.' She reached under the poncho again and her hand slid down my belly. 'I'm going to tell you everything. And I'm going to make love to you, too! That'll show that -!' Her legs began moving like feverish scissors.
'Aren't you being just a bit hypocritical?' I asked mildly. 'After all, you were all set to make love before you had
