Raise the Titanic! (Dirk Pitt 4)

Dana , looked at the bed with wise eyes. "You prepared this?"

"Let's just say that like the little old ant who moved the rubber tree plant, I had high hopes."

"You know what you are?"

"A bastard, a lecher, a satyr-- I could think of a dozen apt descriptions."

She looked at him with a secret, womanly smile. "No, you're none of those. Even a satyr would not have been so thoughtful."

He pulled her lips to his and kissed her so hard she moaned.

Her performance in bed fooled him. He expected a body that would merely give response. Instead, he found himself merged with thrashing, undulating waves of flesh, piercing screams that he muffled with his hands, nails that dug oozing red trenches in his back, and finally soft, wet sobbings into his neck. He couldn't help wondering if all wives blossom with such abandon when they make love for the first time with someone other than their husbands. The storm lasted for nearly an hour, and the humid perfume of sweating skin began to soak the air of that old rotted, ghostly bedroom.

Finally she pushed him away and sat up. She raised her knees and hunched herself over them, feet crossed. "How was I?"

"Like a spastic tiger," Pitt said.

"I didn't know it could be like this."

"I wish I had a dime for every girl who said those very same words every time she turned on."

"You don't know what it's like to have your guts churning in both agony and delight at the same time."

"I dare say I don't. A woman's release burns from the inside. A man's erotic senses are mostly exterior. Anyway you look at it, sex is a female's game."

"What do you know about the President?" she suddenly asked in a soft nostalgic tone.

Pitt looked at her in amused surprise. "The President? What made you think of him at a time like this?"

"I hear he's a real man."

"I couldn't say. I've never slept with him."

She ignored his remark. "If we had a woman President and she wanted to make love to you, what would you do?"

"My country right or wrong," Pitt said. "Where is all this talk leading?"

"Just answer the question. Would you go to bed with her?"

"Depends?"

"On what?"

"President or not, I couldn't make my gun stand at attention if she was seventy, fat, and had skin like a prune. That's why men never make good prostitutes."

Dana smiled slowly and closed her eyes. "Make love to me again."

"Why? So you can let your imagination run wild and fancy that you're being laid by our Commander-in-Chief?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Does that bother you?"

"Two can play the same game. I'll just pre

tend that you're Ashley Fleming."

73

Prevlov looked up from his huddled position on the floor of stateroom C-95 as the SEAL guarding the passageway outside turned the newly oiled lock and swung the door open. The SEAL, his M-24 held at the ready, visually checked Prevlov, and then stepped aside to allow another man to enter.