"Thunderbolt!." he called.
The men shouted the name of their ship and dived in with the Haitians. Soon it was almost impossible to tell black skin from white-or Grog skin, for that matter, as all were covered in the grayish plaster.
Valentine, grinning behind a mask of mud, rose and advanced on Carrasca in a threatening crouch.
"Oh, no!" she said, backing away. "I'll never get it out of my-"
He vaulted out of the mud, landing beside her before she had time to turn. He clasped her around the chest and dragged her, shrieking and kicking, into the mud. He flopped into the morass, and she landed astride him.
"Bastard!" she laughed, flinging a wet handful of soil down at him. "At least you were undressed."
"I'll wash them myself."
Valentine watched her bind her partially despoiled hair up in a bandanna, and pull off her shirt with muddy fingers. Her shorts followed. She pinned him into the wallow with a knee, her eyes wide and hot. He felt her take his head in her hands and she kissed him, pressing against his body tightly enough to squeeze mud out from the join where their bodies met. When she came up for air, he saw her nipples hard beneath their gray coating.
Sailors, marines, and Haitians followed his example, grabbing women out of the hooting crowd and pulling them into the mud. A few ran or struggled, laughing all the time,
but the only screams were ones of delight as the men planted muddy kisses on flushed cheeks, necks, and breasts.
Valentine rolled Carrasca over and kissed her, and then she returned the move. When their lips finally parted, she was on top again. She looked around at the muddy figures, dancing, playing, and making love.
"You've started an orgy, Captain," she said. "I don't know what I think about an officer that lets his men get out of hand like this."
Valentine cupped her buttocks. "I'll let them be, my hands are rather full of something else at the moment."
"Is that some kind of crack?"
He explored further with his fingers. "No, but this is."
She giggled an un-captainish giggle. "Another bad joke like that and a certain marine of my acquaintance won't get his brains fucked out momentarily."
"We'll talk some more in the bushes." Valentine picked himself up and offered a hand.
"Your tongue's going to be busy elsewhere."
He slapped her mud-covered buttock and followed her into the forest, first running and then walking, until they splashed across the stream and found a clearing, a field next to an abandoned hut, perhaps a former garden. Long grasses and palmettos had supplanted the rich soil's food crops. Valentine was in no mood to search for the perfect glade, especially with Carrasca exploring his hardness from behind, using it like a divining rod to find a spot to make love.
They sank to their knees, tongues exploring one another's mouths.
He found mudless patches of her body to kiss, and explored the rest of her coated skin with his hands. "Val...," she began, and then trailed off into a Spanish-English murmur that grew more and more feral as he pressed her into his arms. She sank limp to the ground. He lay next to her, cradling her and running his hands up and down her body, lingering at her inner thighs. His mouth explored where his fingers left off, and she again took his head in her hands; she
pressed her mons up to his mouth. The salty-sweet feminine musk hardened him beyond self-control, and he rose up from her sex and positioned himself between her legs.
He felt her open for him and he moved inside her, everything inside her warm and wet and magic. Her face grew contorted as he moved in her, ever deeper and faster as their passion waxed. She raked at his back with her nails, sending chips of dried mud flying like a sculptor working with ten tiny chisels. He shut his eyes, lost in his own sensations yet still aware of her. He felt an irresistible, toboggan-ride rush of pleasure, and the draining spasms came.
They drowsed away a few moments in each other's arms, tingling as if joined by a low voltage circuit.
"Another kick in the teeth," he mused, feeling the matted-down grass beneath his back.
"Huh?"
"For Death. There's more than one way to strike a blow for life."
She furrowed her brows, and then evidently gave up trying to figure out what he was talking about. Her hand explored him.
"Blow for life ... and they say men don't come with instructions."
She moved downward, and took his limp penis in her mouth. Tongue and mouth, passionately applied, worked a resurrection.