I repeated the maneuver a few times, switching breasts. It had its effect. Jana was swinging against me harder now, more eagerly. “Oh, yes,” she said as we paused a moment. “You’re up to it.”‘ Her dark eyes really smoldered now as she stared beneath my flapping shirt-tails.
“Okay. One. Two. Three. Now!”
We swung together, and I stabbed eagerly. My aim was off. I missed. By a mile. I gouged the cleft of Jana’s navel. But she wasn’t able to hold me there.
“If at first you don’t succeed . . .” I panted. I swung again. This time I was too low. I damn near compromised her knees.
We tried again. It was a near-miss. Jana managed a squeezing grab with her upper thighs. For a minute it seemed as if she was trying to break it off. But strong as her thigh muscles were, she finally had to let go. Again we swung free.
“We’d have to be contortionists,” she gasped.
“One more try,” I insisted.
This time I was right on target.
“Ahh! ” Jana sighed. “Now just hold onto it,” I cautioned her.
“Oh, yes!” She bounced up and down cautiously, and I could feel her getting a firmer grip.
I stretched my head up and fastened my teeth on the rope binding her wrists. I started nibbling as best I could. “Stop moving like that,” I mumbled after a moment.
“I m not moving! You are!’
“I am not! Control yourself! Can’t you?”
“There! You did it again!”
“I was only responding,” I insisted, still biting at the ropes.
“Well, that’s all I’m doing. I can’t help it if I get excited. I mean, after all!”
“But when you get excited, I get excited. Now cut it out! ” I told her.
"You're certainly not very romantic!”
“Well, this isn’t exactly a romantic situation.”
“Still, considering our intimacy, you could treat me more like a woman and less like an object.” Jana’s pulsing grip punctuated her words.
I treated her more like a woman. I reacted to her grip by slamming against her hard. “But that’s all,” I told her. “Because if I get too cooperative, I won’t be able to control myself, and then there won’t be anything left to keep us together.”
“Then you do like me a little bit, don’t you?” she sighed. “I knew you did. It’s not just because it’s necessary.”
“I think you’re terrific,” I assured her. “Some other time or place, I’d really enjoy this.”
“You mean you’re not enjoying it now?” She altered her rotary movement, and the effect was a suction that sent a tingle up the length of my body.
It was too much. I reacted with an automatic lunge. Our bodies bounced apart, and the contact was broken.
“Damn!” Jana exclaimed as we swung apart.
“We need a more secure grip,” I decided. I made Jana turn around, and then swung for her from the rear. It was a bigger target, and I pinned it on the second try. Her skirt hung down over my thighs, tickling them, but otherwise the position was much more practical.
Jana, however, didn’t like it as well. As I began chewing the ropes again, she made her distaste known. “It’s all very well for you,” she said, “but what about me?”
“It’s tighter,” I pointed out. “And you’ve got a much better grip on me.”
“Yes. Ouch.”
“Sorry. Does it hurt you?”
“No. You bit my wrist. . . . It might not be so bad if you could move up just a little,” she said after a moment.
I obliged. “How’s that?”
“Ooh! That’s the spot. Yes!” Her derriere began moving like a frenzied eggbeater. “Yes! Yes! Yes!
“I’m going to be through the rope in a minute,” I told her, my voice cool, but my body hotly explosive. “When you feel your hands freed, grab onto the cable. Otherwise you’ll fall.”
"Now?"
“Now!”
“Now! Now! Now!”
Several things happened simultaneously then. Jana slammed back against me as spasm after spasm shook her body. Unable to hold off any longer, I joined her with a mighty surge of passion. At the same moment the rope parted under my teeth. Jana grabbed the cable, but not before she had slid down an inch or so. This movement virtually engulfed me as I exploded.
“Wow!” Jana said finally.
“Yeah. Wow! ” I agreed. “But we’ve got no time for evaluations. Hold on with one hand and untie my hands with the others.”
She did as I said. Then I swung down and untied Jana’s ankles. She untied mine, and I pulled myself up to the ceiling beam. I pulled her up alongside me. We crawled over to a cable that had been lowered almost to the floor. I started down it, and Jana followed. Gazing up at her, I saw that her chubby cushions were still flushed from our recent activity.
Down on the floor again, I crossed over to the sliding door and tried it. It was locked from the outside. We searched for another exit in vain.
We were still searching when we heard the noise of the sliding door being unbolted. I grabbed Jana and pulled her behind a couple of the containers to one side of it. A moment later the door slid open, and two men stepped inside.
One of them was the moustache. The other I’d never seen before. I waited until they’d walked a few paces into the shed, and then Jana and I silently slipped out behind them.
The trucks were gone. There was one car still parked a short distance away from the shed. I figured it must belong to the moustache. Jana and I crawled into the bushes behind it and held a consultation.
She wanted to steal the car and return to Manila. I told her I wasn’t going back to Manila just yet. I wanted to scout this place, find out what it was, see what its connection with S.M.U.T. was-—if any. But of course I didn’t fill Jana in on my reasons.
“You’re nuts,” she told me succinctly. “If ‘Baby’s’ boys find you around here, they’ll kill you for sure now.”
I was still telling her to go on without me when the two men emerged from the shed. I couldn’t see his face, but from his tone of voice I guessed the moustache must have a pretty red visage. He was telling the other man that his cohorts had assured him they left the prisoners in the shed and he couldn’t understand how they’d managed to escape.
The second fellow was pretty annoyed. “Unforgivable!” he pronounced judgment. “If you really had Steve Victor and allowed him to escape, your stupidity is unforgivable! Rest assured that Torres will hear about this.”
The moustache was still calling out apologies as he got into his car and drove away. The second man started walking down the trail toward the big house in the distance. Jana and I stayed quiet until he was out of sight.
Then Jana exploded. “Now see what you’ve done! The car is gone. Now we’ll have to walk back to Manila.”
“You'll have to walk, you mean,” I told her. “Like I said before, I’m going to hang around here. But once you hit the road, you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting a lift.” I handed her the balance of the money I owed her. “Thanks and good luck,” I said. “I hope we’ll meet again.”
“All right. Goodbye, then.” She started off the way the car had gone.
I watched her hips swing as she went. I’d really meant my parting remark. Jana was a swinger I’d not soon forget. And some day I’d like to meet her when we weren't both all tied up.
When she was out of sight, I started out for the house. I kept to the underbrush until I reached the lawn surrounding it. It was a large, sprawling mansion in the Spanish style typical of older plantation houses in the Philippines.
My brush-beating walk had brought me around to the front of the place. It was well-lit, but somehow I couldn’t see myself marching in the front door. Still keeping to the bushes, I worked my way around to the back.