It was a rough decision to make.
Nick half opened his eyes to squint seaward. The sun was a gigantic gold medallion hovering just above the water, the skies around it whipped into a froth of superb color, whorls and ramparts of rose and pink and every shade of blue. No one had ever called Killmaster an esthete, but he found himself wishing that the moment could somehow be caught and imprisoned, captured and held until it was again needed. For the first time, vaguely, he understood the impact that great painting could have. A half-smile quirked his firm, mobile lips. It was a mouth that could be stern when he was dealing out death, a mouth whose hard smile could be as frightening as a skull’s. Now, and the firm mouth showed it, Nick Carter was as near to tenderness as he could ever get.
A party of riders cantered past, silhouetted black against the half-submerged sun. The riders glanced at the little boat drawn up on the sand, its red sail drooping, and at the two supine figures so close together. They laughed together briefly and one of them called out a greeting. Nick raised a lazy hand in reply. Then the riders had gone, the clop-clop of hooves on sand slowly dying away. The two were alone on the white-gold sand except for a single greedy pelican who waddled near and eyed the picnic basket.
“Nick?” Angelita’s thigh pressed closer. Her finger began to trace little curlicues on the inside of his left arm, just above the elbow.
“Ummmm?” Nick closed his eyes against the golden shafts of the sun. He told himself that he must make a decision. Soon. He had a feeling that Angie was about to become insistent. She had been pursuing him relentlessly for a week now, her motives transparent from the very first. This girl was determined to immolate herself, to sacrifice the virgin in her on the altar of Nick’s manhood. And Nick, for some strange reason that he himself could not understand, was reluctant to accept the sacrifice. He was vastly puzzled at his own behavior. Not that he had had any great experience with maidens, at least not since his college days when, like all sophisticated young men, he had deflowered a few. Since then, however, he had come to like his women beautiful, experienced, and just a little older than Angie’s twenty-one years. Yet here he was on the beach with this lovely little Mexican hot pants — and still he had not made a decision. To seduce or not to seduce? Nick had to grin at that. It was going to be most difficult to assign the responsibility for this seduction. If it occurred.
“Nick, darling?” Her fingers were tracing his arm again.
He kept his eyes closed. “Silence is golden, Angie.”
She giggled. “I am tired of being silent. Besides I want to know — what is this mark you have, this tattoo?”
It was the tiny blue hatchet, of course. The symbol of AXE. An ultimate identification — and the reason he must swim on secluded beaches. Time and again he had remonstrated with the powers, urging that the little tattoo was useless and a dead giveaway, but to no avail. Axe, in its own way, could be as tradition-minded as any of the older services.
Now he said: “I ran away to sea when I was a small boy. I got tattooed all over. All boys do. When I got back home my mother made me take them all off except that one. I cried so hard she let me keep it.”
Angie punched him in the side. “What a liar!”
Nick smiled at the darkening sky. “Aren’t I, though.”
Her fingers began to trace the corded muscle of his belly. “You are a beautiful man, Nick. I have never seen one so beautiful. You have muscles, lovely ones, but you are smooth. You know — not like the beach boys. They are all knots and bulges. And they show off all the time.”
“I don’t?”
The girl laughed. “You? Show off? Hah — most of the time I cannot even find you. You avoid me. I know it.”
It was true. He had tried to avoid Angie for a time. So much vibrant youth, so nubile and sleek and lovely, had very nearly frightened him at first. How Hawk would have laughed at that! This man they called Killmaster, this professional killer of his country’s enemies, this finely conditioned and perfectly trained machine, as brave as a bull and as subtle as a fer-de-lance — this man afraid of a mere chit of a girl?
The sun had quite gone now. Nick felt a strange, noiseless tension in the air as he put an arm about the girl and held her closely, as yet without passion. The embers of the sunset were glowing, a muted Götterdämmerung without terror or consequence, and over the opal waters, stretching in tenuous threads of non-sound, he could hear the color.
He kissed the girl lightly on the lips. She clung to him, her mouth as sweet as a flower, and wriggled her brown limbs in an ecstasy that was as graceless, and as innocent, as a puppy’s. She whispered against his mouth.
“I have been very shameless, Nick. I admit it now. But I want you very much and — and you are not like other things. I cannot go to my Papa and say buy it for me, can I? So I have to chase you, to make a little fool of myself. I do not mind too much. Because this is very important to me. Very important!” Only occasionally, when she was excited, did the Radcliffe education slip enough to reveal that English was not her first language.
Nick was aware of her. She wore the skimpiest of bikinis, two narrow yellow strips of nothing, and now he had an unobstructed view of one soft round breast.
“Yes,” he said. “There is Papa to consider.” Papa owned half the cattle in Mexico, bred prize bulls, and was very high up in the Mexican government. It was, Nick thought now, with some degree of petulance, a hell of a note when a man had to consider such matters before he made love to a girl. But there it was. Face it. The Mexican government, the United States government, AXE, Hawk — none would look kindly on the seduction of this wholesome, hot-blooded little nymph who looked like a young and very tender Dolores Del Rio.
“I wonder,” said Nick, postponing the moment of truth, “whatever happened to the duenna system? It had its points. Well-bred young ladies didn’t get into situations like this. They didn’t go bathing on remote beaches with strange men.”
Angie giggled. She rolled over on top of him, plastering her warm young flesh to his like a lovely leech. “You are the one who needs the chaperone, Nick. You know... I really think you are afraid of me.” She nuzzled closer and kissed his throat. Nick put his arms about her. For a long time she lay atop him, perfectly quiet. A soft little breeze skittered past, tossing a thin film of sand over them.
When the girl spoke again she was very serious. “You will not laugh at me, Nick, if I tell you some things.”
“I won’t laugh.”
“Then close your eyes. I cannot say them if you are looking at me.”
“They’re closed.”
She lay with her cheek against the great arch of his chest. She was almost whispering. “I... I have never been with a man, Nick. Maybe you guess that? I am sure you did — you who are so much a man of the world. Well, for a long time now I have been looking for my first man. I told you I am a bad girl. Shameless. But I want him to be the right man, Nick! For the first time, I always tell myself, it must be the perfect man. Sometimes, many times, I think I have found him. But always something is wrong. Then, at last, I find you. And I know it is right!”
Nick kept his eyes closed. He could feel the velvet sheen of her back beneath his fingers. Here it was, in all the freshness and directness of youth without hypocrisy. She was only a child, of course, but yet there was about her the wisdom of eternal woman.
Still Nick hesitated. He did not understand it himself. He was all male animal — at times even something of a brute — and her smooth body, with the warmth glowing beneath it, was arousing him. His loins were stirring, fast threatening to take over his mind. And, he told himself, if not he then it would be someone else. Perhaps some boor, some clown, some sexual opportunist who would hurt and disillusion her. It was bound to happen soon. Inevitable. Angie was ripe for the plucking — and quite determined to be plucked!