The Death’s Head Conspiracy

Fifteen

I took my second shower of the day and drew the blinds against the late-afternoon sun. I stripped off my new clothes and laid them over a chair. Then I stretched out naked on the bed, pulled a sheet over me, and stared at the ceiling.

To simply will yourself to sleep is usually impossible. Every nerve in my body cried out for rest, and my eyes were gritty pouches, but I couldn’t sleep.

Somewhere a former U.S. scientist and a former Russian general were preparing to erase my country, city by city. New York would go first, day after tomorrow. I should be racing somewhere to stop them, not flaking out on a hotel bed in Veracruz.

But rushing into action without preparation would be foolish and dangerous. And if Pilar could locate the smuggler, Torio, there might still be time enough to carry out the mission. I closed my eyes. The vision of Rona swam before me, faded, then returned.

The sunlight filtering through the orange blinds dimmed gradually through all the shades of gray, and finally it was dark. Still my mind wouldn’t rest.

Every sound from the street below seemed to be piped directly into my ears. A toilet flushed in the next room, a gushing Niagara Falls.

Then someone knocked lightly on my door.

“Yes?”

“It’s Pilar,” came the soft answer.

I swung out of bed, grabbed a towel and opened the door. Pilar wore a black dress with tiny flowers that seemed to grow happily in the mounds and valleys of her rich terrain.

“Come in,” I said.

“I didn’t really believe that you would be able to sleep,” she said, and stepped inside.

“Your beauty is only surpassed by your wisdom,” I answered.

“I brought you something to help.” She settled lightly upon the edge of the bed.

“Pills?” I asked. “I never take them.”

She offered me a lazy smile. “No, not pills. Me.”

“Well,” I answered, recovering from my amazement, “you certainly are a delightful tablet, and you wouldn’t be at all hard to swallow.”

Her pretty face sobered, became almost stern. “Don’t make Jokes,” she said. “Both of our lives may depend on your physical condition tomorrow, and…” Here she hesitated, her eyes walked over my towel-clad frame. “And perhaps I, too, would rest uneasily alone tonight.”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“You will leave everything to me?”

“Pilar, I am in your hands.”

“Bien. First I want you to lie here on the bed.”

I moved obediently to the bed and was about to sink down when her strong brown fingers slipped inside the towel I was wearing and whisked it away.

“For this, we will not need the towel,” she said crisply. “Lie down on your stomach, please.”

I spread myself prone across the bed, made a pillow of my folded arms. Something cool touched my neck at the base of the skull and trailed slowly down my back. I caught the light scent of cinnamon. Over my shoulder, I saw that Pilar had taken a tiny vial from the bag she carried, and had spilled the contents down the length of my spine.

“Oil of cinnamon,” she explained. “Now I want you to put your head back down and let me help you to relax.”

“Yes ma’am,” I grinned. There was a whispering silky sound. From the corner of my eye, I caught the flash of a tawny hip and knew that Pilar had taken off all her clothes.

As if sensing my thoughts, she closed my eyes with a butterfly touch of her cool, soft fingers. “Relax,” she murmured. “Now you must only relax.”

Her hands played over my back then in smooth little circles, the pressure of her fingers both firm and gentle. She spread the oil across my shoulders and down over my rib cage, making little humming sounds of approval to herself. She found the crease in my side where the Mayan spear had grazed me, and her fingers caressed the pain away.

She smoothed the oil down over my waist, her hands sliding deliciously over my skin with the scented lubricant. Down and down, across my buttocks and the back of my thighs. A little extra touch at the hollows of my knees, then over my calf muscles, along the Achilles tendon to cup my heels on her palms.

Gently Pilar brushed the oil over the soles of my feet, sliding a slippery finger between each of my toes.

My skin was alive and supersensitive to her touch. It seemed I could sense through my pores the nearness of her naked body.

I said, “Pilar, I don’t know if I’m excited or sleepy. Please make up my mind!”

“Be still,” she softly scolded. “We have just begun.”

She took my toes then, one at a time, caressing them, rolling them between her fingers. With her thumb and forefingers she made an oiled sheath, sliding up and down each toe.

Next, Pilar took each foot between her hands and kneaded it till I could feel the bones crack. Then she moved her hands up my legs again, her expert fingers digging into the tensed muscles, squeezing, manipulating, drawing out the aching soreness.

My rump received special attention. With one hand on each buttock, she leaned and squeezed with surprising strength for a woman, her hands rolling rhythmically from the heels to the fingertips.

The bed sagged slightly as Pilar kneeled astride my legs. From this position she leaned forward and worked her supple fingers over my back, magically loosening the tight muscles.

As she reached far forward to massage my shoulders and the base of my neck, I felt the nipples of her swaying breasts brush against me. Now her hands slid all the way down my naked back from shoulders to feet.

“Roll over now,” she said, “and I’ll do the other side.”

“I don’t know if I can stand it.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure you will bear up bravely.”

I turned over onto my back.

Pilar gave a little gasp. “Why, Nick, I thought you were relaxed!”

“The devil you did!” I grinned, taking the opportunity to peek at my nude masseuse. Her skin was like burnished copper — smooth and flawless. Her breasts were full and ripe. They dipped, then rose sharply. Her narrow waist and her round, firm hips glistened with a faint sheen of perspiration.

She bent gracefully to pick up the vial of oil from the bedside table and drizzled it down the front of me, spreading it with her hands.

“Don’t worry,” she said, as if reading my mind again, “nothing will be left undone!”

So now I surrendered myself to her hands. My eyes closed — no troubling pictures swam in my mind. I had a sense of weightlessness, as if my body, directed by those knowing fingers, were drifting in space. I seemed to be made of taffy… pulled, stretched, deliciously strung out to within a fraction of the breaking point.

I opened my eyes abruptly and reached down to seize Pilars hand. “That’s enough,” I said. “We have just reached the limits of massage. Do you have other talents?”

Pilar gave me a lazy, teasing smile. A shock of exquisite pleasure engulfed me as her mouth closed over me.

And for a time I felt as if I were being pulled through a small, velvety hole into a world of unimaginable delights. Then a shudder of release overcame me. And for the first time in many hours I was empty of thought or feeling, adrift in a void, floating toward the deep well of oblivion.

I drew the warm, glowing body down beside me and covered us both with the sheet.

In less than a minute the sleep that I’d sought for so long enclosed me in a warm, cinnamon-scented embrace.