Death of the Falcon

Chapter 5

Her body was as warm and receptive as I had imagined. And her appetite for lovemaking proved as much of a challenge as I had ever met. But the tingling invitation of her fingertips trailing on my neck and along my chest aroused my own passion until our caresses became more demanding, more urgent.

I don’t think I’d ever touched such soft, sensitive skin. As we lay tired and spent on the twisted bedsheets, I brushed a long strand of silky hair from her breast, letting my fingers rest lightly on her shoulder. It was like stroking velvet, and even now, exhausted from making love, she moaned, pulling me forward and finding my lips with hers.

“Nick,” she whispered, “you are fantastic.”

Propping myself up on one elbow, I looked down into those wide, hazel eyes. For a brief second I had a mental image of her photograph in the dossier, and realized that it had not at all captured the depths of her sensuality. Leaning down, I covered her full mouth, and in a moment it was obvious that we weren’t nearly as tired as we had thought.

I was never considered a sexual coward, but that night I went to the very limits of pure exhaustion with a woman whose demands were as intense — and arousing — as any woman I’d ever made love with. Yet, after each frenzied climax, while we lay in each other’s arms, I could feel the desire mount again as she let her fingers play idly over my thigh, or brushed her lips over mine.

It was Candy Knight, though, and not me who finally fell into a fatigued sleep. As I looked at the even rise and fall of her breasts, half-hidden now by the sheet I had pulled over us, she seemed more like an innocent teenager than the insatiable woman whose moans still echoed in my ears. She stirred slightly, moving closer against me as I stretched out an arm to the bedside table and picked up my watch.

It was just midnight. A cooling breeze came in through the partly open window, fluttering the drapes and sending a chill over my shoulders. I reached over and picked up the telephone receiver, trying to be as quiet as possible, and pushed the “O” button.

The hotel operator answered immediately.

Softly, casting a glance toward the sleeping Candy, I said, “Would you ring me at twelve-thirty? I have an appointment, and I don’t want to be late… Thank you.”

Beside me, Candy stirred again, pulling the sheet tightly around her shoulders as she rolled over. A tiny noise, almost like a whimper, sounded in her throat, and then she was still looking more childlike than ever. Cautiously, I leaned over, lifted a lock of hair from her forehead, and kissed her softly just above her eyes.

Then I lay on my back, closing my eyes. Thirty minutes would be a sufficient rest for me, and it would have to do for Candy, too. We’d both be awake before Sherima returned to the hotel.

Relaxing, I let my mind drift over the past hours, from the time I had come upstairs after Sherima’s departure. I’d gone to the door of her suite and stood fumbling with my key, trying to force it into the lock…

Like many people do, Candy made the mistake of opening the slide on the door’s peep hole with the light on behind her, so I could tell she was trying to see who was attempting to get into the room. Apparently, she wasn’t put off by what she saw, for the door suddenly opened. Her look was as questioning as her voice.

“Yes?” she said.

Feigning astonishment, I gaped at her, looked at my key, at the number on her door, then back along the hallway to my own door. Sweeping off my Stetson, I said in my best Texas drawl, “Excuse me, ma’am. I’m truly sorry. I guess I was thinking about something and just went one door too far. My room’s back there. I do apologize for bothering you.”

The wide, alert hazel eyes continued their appraisal of me, noting the hat and suit and square-toed boots, and finally sweeping back up over my six-foot-plus frame and taking in my face. At the same time, I was getting a healthy view of her. The bright chandelier in the suite’s foyer outlined her long legs under the sheer negligee al-most as clearly as the thin material revealed every delightful detail of her firm breasts thrusting sensuously out toward me. Desire rose in. me like an electric shock, and almost immediately I sensed that she felt it too, as her glance swept down to my waist and below, where I knew the tight-cut trousers would betray me if we stood looking at each other a moment longer. In a gesture of false embarrassment, I moved the Stetson in front of me. She raised her eyes, and it was apparent that my gesture had rattled her. Her face was flushed when she finally spoke:.

“That’s all right,” she said. “You didn’t bother me. I was just sitting here enjoying my first solitary moment in the past several weeks.”

“All the more reason I should apologize, ma’am,” I replied. “I know just how you feel. I’ve been on the go, running from meetings here in Washington, to Dallas, to New York for almost three weeks now and I’m tuckered out talking to people. I feel like a cayuse that’s been in the corral for a spell without a good run on his own.” Silently, I hoped I wasn’t overdoing my accent.

“Are you a Texan, Mr., ah…?”

“Carter, ma’am. Nick Carter. Yes, ma’am, I sure am. I was born not far from Poteet, down in Atacosa County. How did you know?”

“Cowboy, you can take the boy out of Texas, but you can’t take Texas out of the boy. And I should know; I’m a Texan, too.”

“Well I’ll be—” I exploded. “How about that? But you sure don’t look like a Texas girl.” I let my eyes move with less caution up and down her lush, skimpily clad body again, then tried to lift them to her face with a sheepishly guilty expression. Her satisfied smile told me I’d succeeded in flattering her the way she obviously enjoyed flattery.

“I’ve been away from Texas for a long time,” she said, adding almost sadly, “Too long.”

“Well, ma’am, that’s not very good,” I sympathized. “At least I get back home pretty often. Not as much as I’d like to lately, though. It seems I spend most of my time running back and forth between here and New York, trying to explain to the people here why we aren’t bringing up more oil, and to the people in New York why people down here can’t understand that you don’t just turn the faucet more and let more flow out.” My drawl was coming easier now that it had convinced a native Texan.

“You’re in the oil business, Mr. Carter?”

“Yes, ma’am. But don’t blame me if you can’t get enough gas. Blame it on those Arabs over there.” Then, as if suddenly remembering where we were talking, I said, “Ma’am, I’m real sorry, keeping you standing here.

I know you were enjoying being by yourself when I interrupted and I’ll just mosey on back to my—”

“That’s all right, Mr. Carter. I’ve been enjoying just listening to you talk. I haven’t heard a twang like yours for a long tune, ever since… for a long time now. It sounds good and it reminds me of home. By the way,” she went on, extending a hand, “my name is Candy, Candy. Knight.”

“It’s a real pleasure, ma’am,” I said, taking her hand. The skin was soft, but the grip was firm and she shook hands like a man, not with that dead-fish grip some women offer. As if struck by a sudden inspiration, I rushed on. “Ma’am, would you like to have dinner with me? Uh, that is if there’s no Mr. Knight to object.”

“There’s no Mr. Knight,” she said, again with a touch of sadness in her voice. “But what about Mrs. Carter?”

“There’s no Mrs. Carter, either. I just never had the time to tie myself down that way.”

“Well, Mr. Carter—”

“Nick, please, ma’am.”

“Only if you call me Candy and forget about that ma’am for a while.”

“Yes, ma’am… uh… Candy.”

“Well, Nick, I really don’t feel up to going out for dinner.” Then, seeing my look of obvious disappointment, she hurried on. “But why couldn’t we just have dinner in the hotel? Maybe even right here? I don’t want to be alone so much that I’d pass up a chance to talk to a real live Texan again.”

“Fine, Miss Candy… uh… Candy. That sounds just great. Say, why don’t you just let me rustle up something from room service and get it all set up in my digs and surprise you. That way, you wouldn’t even have to dress.” She glanced down at her negligee that had gapped widely during her animated conversation, then lifted coyly accusing eyes at mine, which had followed her gaze. “I mean, uh, you could just slip into something comfortable and not worry about getting all dressed up.”

“Don’t you think this is comfortable, Nick?” she asked archly, as she pulled the peignoir a bit tighter in the front, as if that would do anything at all to conceal her bosom beneath the gauzy material.

“It looks like it to me,” I began, then, playing embarrassed again, I added, “I mean if you’re coming down to my room, you might not want to wear that through the hall.”

She stuck her head out the door, looked pointedly along the twenty-odd feet or so to my door, and said, “You’re right, Nick. It is a long walk and I wouldn’t want to shock anybody at the Watergate.” Then added with a wink, “There’s been enough scandal around here already. All right, give me an hour or so and I’ll be over.” A laugh came into her voice as she added coyly, “And I’ll try to be careful not to let anybody see me coming to your room.”

“Oh, ma’am, I didn’t mean that,” I blurted, purposely backing away and stumbling over my feet. “I meant—

“I know what you meant, you big Texan,” she said, laughing heartily at my apparent embarrassment as I continued to back toward my door. “I’ll see you in an hour. And I warn you, I’m starved.”

It turned out food wasn’t the only thing she had a craving for.

It was hard to believe that someone with such a slender figure was packing away so much at one meal. And as she ate, the words spilled out. We talked about my job and Texas, which logically led into her explaining how she happened to be in Adabi and ended up as companion to Sherima. She faltered only once, when it came to discussing her father’s death. “Then my father got mur—” she started to say at one point, only to change it to “And then my father died and I was left alone…”

By the time I served the chocolate mousse, which the waiter had put in the kitchenette’s almost bare refrigerator to keep it cold, Candy had gone over her background pretty thoroughly. It checked out closely with what I already knew from the AXE report, except for the way she avoided any reference to men in her life. But I wasn’t about to bring that up. It was difficult to keep from thinking about, however, as I watched that firm body straining at every seam, or as she bent over to pick up a napkin that had slipped from her lap and one.perfectly formed breast almost escaped from the deep V of her shirtfront.

My hands were itching to get inside that shirt and I had a feeling she knew it. At the end of the dinner, as I got behind Candy to help her from her chair, I suddenly leaned over to kiss her full on the mouth, then pulled quickly away. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t resist… ma’am.”

The big hazel eyes were soft as she spoke. “The only thing I object to, Nick, is that ma’am. The rest I liked…”

“Let’s try again, then.” I took her in my arms and pressed my lips over her full mouth. She tensed briefly, then I felt the warmth flooding into her lips as they parted. Slowly, but instinctively, she responded to my caresses, relaxing into my arms. I held her tighter, moving one hand slightly forward until my fingers rested just below the curve of a breast. She moved in my arms so that my hand slid upward and I cupped her tenderly, then more harshly as I felt a nipple swelling and hardened under my fingers.

Candy sank back on the couch and I followed her, my lips still glued to hers in a kiss that seemed without end. She moved aside to give me room to stretch out beside her, never saying a word. She didn’t need to, for I felt her body mold itself against me. Her eyes had been closed, but they opened wide, seeming afraid or confused for a moment before closing again.

My hand slid inside the V of her shirt, and her silken skin felt velvety and hot under my touch. Candy moaned deep in her throat and her hands became more demanding.

Still not speaking, she squirmed around on the overstuffed pillows. For a moment, I thought she was trying to push me off the couch, but her hands that had been clawing at my shoulders in erotically irritating scratches, moved to my waist and I realized she was trying to give me room to lie back flat so she could shift to a position on top of me. She succeeded easily, with my cooperation, then the soft hands slid firmly up over my chest to the collar of my shirt. At her insistence, I already had removed my tie before we sat down to eat so there was nothing to interfere with her questing fingers as they began opening the buttons.

Lifting the top half of her body, but never breaking the kiss, she spread my shirt wide and tugged the tails out of my pants. My hands were busy, too, and with almost the same motions, we pulled off each other’s shirt, then lay back, locked together again full length, our bare chests touching and caressing.

We stayed like that for a long moment before I grasped her waist, lifting her slightly, then sliding a hand between us to open her belt buckle. She twisted onto one side to make it easier for me, and I responded by quickly opening the big Levi buttons. She lifted again slightly so that I could slide the jeans down over her hips.

Pulling her lips away from mine and raising her head, Candy looked down at me. “My turn,” she said softly. Inching her way backward down along my body, she leaned down to plant tiny kisses on my chest, then rose to her knees. She slipped off first one leg of her jeans and her panties, then the other before she leaned down again to open my belt buckle.

We moved in an embrace to the bed, and in another moment I was no longer play-acting…

The phone ring was short, but it wakened me instantly. I picked it up before it could ring again, saying softly, “Hello.”

“Mr. Carter, it’s twelve-thirty.” The operator had automatically spoken softly, too, and she hastened on, almost apologetically, “You asked me to call you so you wouldn’t miss a meeting.”

“Yes, thank you very much. I’m awake.” I made a mental note to spend some more of Hawk’s hard-fought-for money and send a little something along to the switchboard operators. It doesn’t hurt to have as many people as possible on your side.

Candy sat up, and the sheet fell away from her breasts. “What time is it?”

“Twelve-thirty.”

“My God, Sherima must be home.” She started to slip out of bed, demanding, “How could you have let me sleep so long?”

“You’ve only been asleep for half an hour,” I said. “It was midnight when you dropped off.”

“God, where did the night go?” she said, swinging her legs to the floor and standing up beside the bed.

I let my eyes sweep pointedly over her nude body and then over the rumpled bed without saying anything.

“Don’t say it,” she laughed, then turned and ran toward the couch to pick up her jeans and shirt. As she scooted into them, she said, “I hope Sherima isn’t there. She’s bound to be worried, and Abdul will be angry.”

The latter part of her words was said with a touch of fright. I decided to follow up on it. “Abdul? Why should he be angry? He’s not your boss, is he?”

Flustered for a moment, she didn’t answer. Then, collecting herself as she headed for the door, she laughed and said, “No, of course not. But he likes to know where I am all the time. I think he believes he’s supposed to be my bodyguard, too.”

I had gotten up and followed her to the door. Taking her in my arms for a last, lingering kiss, I said as I released her, “I’m sure glad he wasn’t guarding your body tonight, ma’am.”

She looked up at me, and her eyes were filled with coyness. “Me, too, Nick. And I really mean that. Now please, I must go.”

I picked up my Stetson from a chair and flourished it across my naked thighs. “Yes, ma’am. See you at breakfast.”

“Breakfast? Oh yes, I’ll try Nick, I’ll really try.”