Last Licks

by Troy Conway

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 1968 by Hachette Book Group

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Popular Library

  Hachette Book Group

  237 Park Avenue

  New York, NY 10017

  Popular Library is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Popular Library name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc. The Coxeman name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com

  First eBook Edition: May 2008

  ISBN: 978-0-446-54049-0

  Contents

  LAST LICKS! WILL THE COXEMAN GET HIS? AND IF HE DOES, WILL HE SURVIVE?

  OTHER BOOKS IN THIS SERIES

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  LAST LICKS!

  WILL THE COXEMAN GET HIS?

  AND IF HE DOES, WILL HE SURVIVE?

  As a prominent sexologist, Rod Damon—The Coxeman—knew that often the pleasure of sex becomes so acute that it approaches pain.

  But this was an untried theory until Rod was captured and tortured by a depraved band of beautiful enemy agents—part of an inhuman plot to rule the world.

  Their erotic practices brought his mind and body to an almost unbearable pitch of agonizing ecstasy—a torture of unrelenting pleasure that he could not satisfy.

  He had to escape their clutches to save his sanity, his sexual powers and the whole free world.

  Wild?

  Full of incredible surprises?

  Yes! Yes!? Now, read on! You won’t stop till you come to the last line!

  Other Books In This Series

  by Troy Conway

  Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew

  A Hard Act To Follow

  The Billion Dollar Snatch

  The Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma’am Affair

  It’s Getting Harder All The Time

  Come One, Come All

  Keep It Up, Rod

  The Man-Eater

  The Best Laid Plans

  It’s What’s Up Front That Counts

  Had Any Lately?

  Whatever Goes Up

  A Good Peace

  I’d Rather Fight Than Swish

  Just A Silly Millimeter Longer

  The Big Broad Jump

  The Sex Machine

  he Blow-Your-Mind Job

  The Cunning Linguist

  Will The Real Rod Please Stand Up?

  All Screwed Up

  The Master Baiter

  Turn The Other Sheik

  It’s Not How Long You Make It

  Son Of A Witch

  The Penetrator

  A Stiff Proposition

  The Harder You Try, The Harder It Gets

  Up And Coming

  The Cockeyed Cuties

  I Can’t Believe I Ate The Whole Thing

  CHAPTER ONE

  At first I thought sharks were attacking the woman.

  I had seen her before, walking along the white sands of St. Tropez, which is a recently fashionable sector of the French Riviera and possesses the most attractive harbor on the entire coast. Always she wore gold lamé bikinis, from which her golden tan body flowed up and down in a series of soft, undulating curves.

  Embarrassing as it is to say, I had tried to pick her up and had failed. Her dark brown eyes, which could have been so warm and melting, had been pools of dirty ice, cutting me cold. Her long, flowing brown hair had flicked the air with indignation when she gave a pert toss to her head, erasing me completely from the scene.

  But now she wás in trouble.

  I was sculling about the waters off the fashionable Epiplage beach, just exercising my muscles, trying to keep in shape even though I was on vacation, when I heard her scream. My eyes bulged a little. I had been watching her smooth crawl stroke, trying to think up a better means of approach, when suddenly she gave a nervous squawk and disappeared from view.

  A shark has her leg! I thought.

  I rose to my feet and dived, all in one fast movement. I had no knife, I lacked any kind of weapon—after all, I was on vacation, here along the Côte des Maures—but I had some vague notion that if I splashed around a lot I could rescue my bronzed bathing beauty from the jagged teeth of a whale shark.

  I hit the blue waters and went down in a long slide. Ahead of me, I could make out the woman, floundering and trying to fight in the hands of two men. Even as I shot toward them, I found my eyes searching for their scuba equipment, for the sight of an oxygen tank or a mouthpiece.

  There were none. The men had only tiny black minibriefs the same as myself, about their loins. They were lean, hard fellows, and they were just about to strangle my unknown lady.

  I came in straight for the man on the left.

  My name is Rod Damon. I am a Coxeman, a member of the Thaddeus X. Coxe Foundation, which in turn is an organization of secret agents whose task it is to do the dirty work around the world in the interests of American democracy and international peace. As a Coxeman, I have become extremely proficient in the arts of karate and judo. I have made my body into a living weapon. I felt quite confident when I saw my two opponents.

  The man on the right had a strangle hold on the woman with his forearm. I could see her hands pawing weakly at that flesh-bar choking out her life as the man on the left turned and came for me.

  I did a backflip in the water, I rammed my foot against his jaw. I drove him back, but he was tough. He came in for me from below. His intention, I believe, was to clasp my legs and drag me down.

  My lungs were straining at this point. I needed air.

  Apparently these underwater swimmers did not.

  Muscular arms were wide apart to clasp me when I flutterkicked with my feet and rammed my head into the man windpipe-wrecking the bronze lady. I felt him grunt and turn a little. My hand was shooting upward as fast as I could send it, the fingers formed into a cone and driving for the right side of his throat, just under the jaw. This is a human weak point. Had we been in open air—and had my blow connected—he would have been off the scene, but the water slowed me down. The man dodged the blow just enough to deflect it from its target so that I hit him in the throat itself. But he was forced to let go of the woman to do this.

  She started toward the surface, swimming frantically.

  I tried to follow, but the man below me had a grip on one leg now, and was letting his weight go dead. He was like an anchor dragging me bottomward. I felt ready to explode. My lungs were collapsing from the need for air. My vision was blurring.

  I expected the strangler to come at me too. Between them I wouldn’t have stood the chance of a snowman in Hell. I doubled up in the arms of the man who had tackled me, and put both my thumbs on his eyes.

  Sure, dirty pool. But my life was at stake.

  I got no chance to gouge out his eyes. His arms let me go. I gave him a kick in the back of the head as I went up like an Apollo missile out of Cape Kennedy. Moments later I was gasping for some warm Mediterranean air and floundering like a beached fish.

  The bronze lady was going up over the moldboard of my narrow boat, curvi
ng legs kicking, her smooth white buttocks half out of the abbreviated bikini loincloth. Then hands were on my ankles, yanking me downward.

  I drew in a lungful of Riviera air.

  I was mad by this time. And scared, as well.

  What kind of men was I fighting? They didn’t need scuba equipment to breathe—apparently didn’t need to breathe at all under water. Were they some kind of outer space creatures who looked like men? Were they from some underwater Atlantis, submerged thousands of years before and by now acclimated to living beneath the surface of the sea?

  I had to act fast, before they did me in. All they had to do—since they could breathe in these watery depths and I couldn’t—was hold me until I drowned. By that time my unknown tanned tomato might be safe on Epi-plage beach, but I would be a dead Damon.

  I like life too much to let that happen, so I bent and fastened my fingers in the neck of the nearest swimmer and tightened them like a vise in throatflesh. He started kicking and struggling, and his hands came up to my wrists and tried to pry me loose.

  I knew one thing for sure then. He had to breathe. Somehow he was able to extract oxygen from the water as a fish does, so he didn’t need any apparatus to stay beneath the surface for long periods of time. My fingers locked in place, I kicked back at his companion at the same time, getting his nose with my heel.

  I swam upward with my hands on a throat. I held that throat, I ignored the pain of fingers scrabbling across my face while searching for my eyes. I saw a dark shadow right above me and headed toward it.

  With all my strength, I lifted his head toward the keel of my shallow boat. Even underwater, the hollow thunk made a heartwarming sound. I indulged my heart. I hammered his head five times against the wooden keel until his every muscle was limp.

  I let his body sink downward, lazily drifting through the clear water while I grabbed the moldboard and hoisted myself upward for another gulp of air. I saw the woman in the golden bikini staring at me with wide eyes, crouched forward.

  I winked. “Relax, honey. One down, one to go.”

  I let go and sank, just in time. The other merman was coming for me with a chunk of jagged rock in his right hand. I swam backward and down, kicking up with a foot. I landed right on his genitals. He shuddered and doubled up, letting go the stone.

  I dived under him and grabbed the rock. It was sharp, it damn near cut my hand when I wrapped my digits around it. The hell with a few cuts! I swam upward behind my victim.

  He was still doubled over, so I wrapped my legs about his back and hammered his skull with the rock, again and again. I kept right on doing that until my need for air was greater than my desire to crack his head wide open.

  I let him go and moved surfaceward.

  My shallow-draft scull was maybe ten feet away. The bronze lady was still crouched in it, her eyes scanning the water, off to one side. She did not see me until I put a hand on the boat. Then she whirled, crying out in alarm.

  “Easy, easy,” I grinned, lifting myself into the boat.

  “Toll!” she exclaimed in excellent German. “Did you really defeat them? It cannot be! Impossible!”

  “Honey, nothing is impossible to the president, founder and chief field worker of the League for Sexual Dynamics.”

  Those honey-brown eyes widened as an imp of laughter brightened them. Their lashes were long; they added to the overall loveliness of the heavily tanned face with the long brown hair hanging on either side.

  “Ach, so? An Amerikaner?” The full red lips moved into a smile. “You are the fresh one who has been ogling my body for the past three days, nein?”

  “I’m afraid so, ma’am,” I admitted, reaching for the oars. “My parents instilled a love of beauty in me while they were bringing me up, and you’re the most beautiful thing I’ve seen since I arrived!”

  Her laughter was deep, sensual. Being a woman, she could not resist letting me see just how beautiful she was, by stretching her arms up over her head, exposing her shaven armpits and most of her extremely voluptuous body. Her breasts pulled out of the bra almost completely, so I saw the upper arc of her nipples, while her belly flattened out to the beginning curve of her mons veneris. Here thighs were tanned from the sun and looked like dark whipped cream.

  Her laughter choked off quickly as a look of alarm touched her features and she turned her head to scan the water. She had a great profile, full mouth and dimpled chin, with a broad forehead and perfect nose.

  “What about—them?” she asked.

  “They aren’t in any condition to come visiting,” I reassured her, sliding the oarblades into place, cutting deep into the water, feathering them for a return stroke.

  “You do not know them,” she muttered.

  “But you do?”

  Her eyes stabbed at me, alert, suspicious. For a long moment she hesitated then nodded. “Ja, ja.I know them. They are mermen.”

  “I figured that out for myself. They breathe the same way a fish does. They don’t have to come up for air. They can extract it from the water itself.”

  She scowled prettily, still nervously glancing back and forth over the limpid blue water. “Yes, you know. That much, at least.”

  What I don’t know is, how come?”

  “How come?” she puzzled over the colloquialism.

  “Why did they do it?”

  Her face cleared, and she smiled. “Oh. Yes, I understand.”

  “But you’re not talking.”

  She turned and looking behind us at the distant beach which was becoming more distant with every stroke of my oars. Her heavy lips smiled faintly as she turned back to me. “You’re going in the wrong direction,” she pointed out.

  I shook my head. “No, I rented this scull to get some exercise, and I mean to get it, no matter what humdrum happenings in our everyday world interrupt.”

  “You are mad,” she exclaimed; then added, “like all Amerikaner.”

  “Maybe. I was just wondering why those mermen wanted to kill you. It seems such a waste of beauty.”

  She leaned over to trail her fingers in the water. The action lifted her big breasts in the bra cups. They were not tanned as was the rest of her lush flesh; they were white, with faint blue veins, and they formed soft globes with a deep vale between them.

  “I may not tell you that,” she murmured.

  “Fair enough,” I nodded. “Then just be quiet, sit back, and enjoy the ride. I’ve been loafing for the past week, traveling here. I really do need to tone up my muscles.”

  Her eyes assessed my chest, moving across my shoulders and along my arms, and studying the washboard musculature of my torso before settling the washboard musculature of my torso before settling on the black mini-briefs that did not quite contain my manhood. She stared steadily for long moments, but the mini still bulged. She did not know, of course, about my priapism, the state of being perpetually erect.

  She lifted a cupped hand and leaning forward, splashed my minimum with the cooling water. “There, there. Your muscles appear to be in excellent shape—but this isn’t the time to use them.”

  Her hand went on giving me cold baths while her body tried to keep me interested, because every time she leaned forward, her thighs opened to display the crease in her gold lamé bikini pants and her breasts almost spilled out into the open. She seemed very intent on her work; she never took her eyes off it. Under the bra cups, I saw that her nipples were quite stiff.

  After a while she leaned back and asked softly, “What did you say you were president of?”

  “L.S.D. The League for Sexual Dynamics. I teach the young and sometimes the not so young all about sex and its many diversifications.” I eased the oars out of the water and let the bateau glide.

  “It is very rewarding work,” I explained, watching her reach behind her with her arms and clasp the moldboards, moving her shoulders a little so her soft breasts jellied. “I make sure the young realize how happy their lives can be by properly understanding the pleasure their bodies can give
them. I open the formerly locked doors to my older clients, so that they may realize what they have been missing.”

  “A carnal crusader, a diddling do-gooder,” she murmured.

  “In a sense, I suppose you can say that. It has become a very important adjunct to my sociology work. When my students leave, they are better fitted for life outside the university halls, believe me.”

  “You seem unusually well-equipped to do such work,” she said, glancing boldly at my briefs. “And you can fight too.” Her eyes were curious. “Why is that? Most professors I know are doddering old scholars or scrawny young idealists. What makes you so different?”

  “A healthy mind in a sound body, sans mens, sans corpore, as the Romans say it. You have to be healthy to enjoy sex. That’s a basic fundamental. So I keep healthy by eating good food, plenty of fresh air and exercise, and all that advertising jazz.”

  “I feel as if I’m back in school.”

  “You might enjoy my course, at that.”

  Her eyes mocked me, so I dipped the blades into the water and began rowing again. We were silent, the bronzed lady staring out to sea, my own eyes caught between her exposed flesh and her lovely face, and the sight of the yachts riding at anchor in the harbor more than a mile away.

  St. Tropez is a tiny little fishing village that has become world famous only in the past decade. It is part of the French Riviera, but it does not cater to visitors the way Cannes and Monaco and Portofino do. There is one road in or out of town, and there are accommodations for maybe two thousand people, no more. It is the playground for such French movie stars as Brigitte Bardot and Juliette Mayniel, for directors like Roger Vadim and Claude Chambrol. It is avant-garde, it is groovy, it is the place to be.

  There is no golf, no tennis, no gambling salon. There are the fishing boats—if you are with it, the crusty pecheurs will take you along when they put you out to sea—and the palatial yachts, the several beaches like Epi-plage and Tahiti, a couple of hotels and some shops.

  There is also the hot sunlight and the cool water.

  For a rest spot, it was ideal in my eyes, because as a professor of sociology I enjoy studying the social mores of the boys and girls, men and women, who swing our world. I do not study their actions from the bound volumes of newspapers or magazines. When I can, I like to get turned on with them and become a real day-tripper.