Chapter 13

Larry Wilson did his best to forget New Year's Eve. But dreams of his partner's wife started to affect his ability to sleep and to think straight. Even more confusing was the fact that during some of those dreams, Dawn Estevez's face would blur into the face of another woman he didn't recognize at first. But the look in her eyes was what he had wished to see in Dawn's...

The other woman looked similar to Dawn; she was petite and they both had beautiful dark brown hair, but her skin was darker and her eyes were a deep, dark brown ... like Rick's. The more Larry concentrated on trying to recall the woman's face from his dreams, the more he started to remember that she was a young Hispanic woman that he and Rick had met one night just a few weeks before Rick had met Dawn the previous July.

She had originally come on to Rick in the little cantina they had visited that hot June night. She had excused herself to go to the restroom for a moment and Larry had suggested to his partner that he would like to get a piece of her as well. She had also looked familiar to him somehow...

When Rick had asked her if she'd be interested in having the both of them take her to bed, she had immediately spun around to look up at Larry. She had stared intensely into his eyes as she'd whispered, "Yesss..." They had gone to Larry's apartment since he lived closer.

Larry had been the first one she kissed and he had kissed her the way he did every woman that turned him on ... hotly, deeply and passionately. And she had kissed him back just as fiercely. He recalled the way his dick had throbbed when she'd moaned desperately as he'd kissed her. He could tell she was a very passionate woman and that she would be a very hot lay for him and Rick to share. And that she was...

He frowned as he recalled that she had wanted to be face to face with him instead of Rick each time they took her. And she had spent the majority of the time kissing him. Rick had been the delegated ass man that night, even though most of the women they'd double-teamed had wanted Rick's thick cock in their pussy and Larry's slender shaft in their ass!

Larry closed his eyes as he recalled that night. She had been a very passionate lover ... begging Larry to fuck her just one more time before she left. He'd had one more condom, so Rick had dressed and slapped his shoulder as he left and told him, "Try not to let Santa Maria wear you out completely! We're on duty early tomorrow."

Maria Delgado ... that was her name. Santa Maria they had dubbed her because she had invoked the Sainted Virgin's name every time they made her come. Most women moaned to God during orgasm, but Maria had called to her namesake in the throes of ecstasy! Except for that last time Larry had taken her...

But Maria had taken him first ... She had rolled him over to straddle his cock and ridden him with more wild abandon than Larry had ever experienced from a woman. He remembered how hot it was to watch her so totally lose herself to the moment while riding his dick. The sexy way her slim, creamy caramel-colored body had writhed on top of his ... the erotic looks of pure pleasure on her face ... her loud groans and wails of passion as she came twice while impaled on him.

Larry smiled and laughed sexily as he recalled how difficult it was to keep from coming each time her pussy had squeezed his dick ... even though he'd already come several times that night. Then his smile faded as he suddenly realized why she'd been invading his dreams about Dawn.

When Larry had pulled her down to his chest to roll her over and take her more forcefully, she had looked up at him with tears shimmering in her eyes. She'd whispered in her sexy Hispanic accent, giving the "a" in his name a longer vowel sound and rolling the "r's" softly, "Do you think you could pretend, Larry ... just once ... pretend that you love me?" It was the same request he'd made of Dawn New Year's Eve.

He had paused to stare at Maria for a moment. Something he'd seen in her eyes had suddenly made him nervous ... he'd felt a strange fluttering in the pit of his stomach. And he'd felt he had to do as she'd pleaded. So he'd kissed her tenderly and softly stroked her body as he slowly fucked her. That's when he'd had the thought that had startled him... She'd be so easy to love...

Her body had continued to respond more and more ardently to him and he hadn't been able to hold back. He'd ended up driving into her forcefully again as she clung to him and wailed passionately as she came with him.

She'd said something in Spanish at the height of her climax that he hadn't paid attention to or understood until he heard Dawn say it to Rick New Year's Eve while they were both making love to her. He'd been stunned when he asked her what she'd said. "Te quiero, mi amor! Siempre..." The literal translation was, "I want you, my love! Always..." but in Spanish, "te quiero" was the same as saying, "I love you."

Why had Maria said she loved him? He couldn't remember if he'd ever seen her before that night and she had ignored him the next time he ran into her at the cantina a few months later when he'd gone looking for her. She had done more than just ignore him ... she'd looked scared to death and had immediately left.

He remembered feeling somewhat relieved then. He was not looking for love and he had been afraid that he'd given her the wrong impression that last time he'd taken her. He'd held her tightly as he came and moaned her name over and over, "Ohhhh, Maria ... Maria ... Santa Maria!"

She had kissed him passionately one last time before he fell asleep. When he woke up again a few hours later, she was gone. She had simply disappeared from his life as quickly as she had appeared. And that had been fine with him ... until a few weeks later when he found one of her shoes under his bed. He'd struggled with the urge to find her again for several weeks. That was why he'd gone back to the cantina that one night, hoping to see her and return her shoe, and maybe...

Now, all of a sudden, she was invading his dreams ... dreams that had started out plaguing him with the knowledge that he felt he'd given his heart to a woman who could never love him. So ... why was his mind now bringing up the images of a woman he'd spent one night of passion with months before and substituting her for the woman he thought he'd fallen in love with ... a woman he could never have?

Larry squeezed his eyes shut and rubbed his hand over his forehead. He simply couldn't think straight any more. He was too tired at the moment. The only thing he knew he had to do was to try to find Maria again and ask her why she'd said she loved him...

Toward the end of February 1957, Larry went back to the cantina. He asked everyone there if anyone knew Maria Delgado. He felt an inexplicable surge of anger when one man behind the bar replied, "Maria Delgado? Why would you be looking for that whore, gringo? Can't you find any nice white girls in your own neighborhood?"

Rick stalked over to the man. "Don't say anything else like that to me. I just want to know if you can tell me where to find Maria. Can you?"

"Yeah, sure ... she lives a few miles away on Rialto, number one thirty-five. Good luck trying to see her, though. She doesn't set foot out of her house these days and she only answers the door for people she knows. And it's no wonder ... the mess she's gotten herself into, the stupid whore!"

Larry grabbed the front of the man's shirt and pulled him across the bar. "Listen, mister ... I told you to stop talking about her like that! Why do you keep calling her that?"

The man snorted a short laugh. "If you see her ... you'll figure out what that means!"

Larry pushed the man away from him and walked out. He got into his car and drove the few miles over to where her house was located. He parked out front and walked up to the door. He used the brass door ornament and knocked three times. He heard her voice call from inside. "Who is it?" She still had that soft, sexy accent.

Larry was afraid if he told her it was he, she'd just refuse to see him and send him away. He deepened his voice to the way he spoke when on duty. "This is the L.A.P.D. Miss Delgado. We need to ask you a few questions."

"About what? I haven't been anywhere or done anything that I should be in trouble for!"

He could hear fear in her voice. "Oh, no, Miss Delgado ... you're not in any kind of trouble. We need to ask you some questions about ... a personal item that was found that we think belongs to you. Could you please come to the door and identify it for us?"

He heard her approach the door. He stood to one side so she couldn't see him by just cracking the door open. She opened it just far enough so she could peek her head around from behind the door and peered out. She looked around. "Where are you? And what item are you talking about?"

Larry stepped in front of her door and braced his foot and his hand on it, so she couldn't slam it in his face. She stared up at him with a mixture of fear and ... longing. He frowned sadly at the look on her face. "Hello, Maria. Why do you look so frightened of me? What did I do to scare you?"

She looked down. "I'm not frightened of you, Larry ... I just ... don't want to see you! Please ... go away!" She looked back up at him with desperate pleading in her eyes.

He frowned harder and swallowed a lump that was trying to form in his throat from the look on her face. "All right, Maria ... I'll go away if you answer one question for me." She raised her eyebrows slightly as if in question. "Why did you say you loved me that night?"

Her face contorted and she couldn't stop the tears that sprang into her eyes. "Aye, Dios! I didn't say I loved you! Where did you get that idea?"

Larry closed his eyes as he heard her voice inside his head from that night. "Yes ... you did, Maria. You said 'Te quiero!' I don't know Spanish so I didn't know what that meant until recently. By the way, the other man with us that night was my partner, Rick Estevez, and we are L.A.P.D. officers..." He paused and frowned in confusion.

She had closed her eyes and nodded quickly. "Yes ... I know! So... ?"

Then he continued. "And you know damn well that, in Spanish, te quiero means 'I love you!' So ... why did you say that to me the last time I made love to you?"

She hung her head down as she said, "I don't know! It was stupid! I ... I didn't mean it!"

He put his hand on her chin and lifted her face to him again. "Yes, you did, Maria ... I could see it in your eyes. I didn't want to see it ... but I did. And now I can't forget it ... that look in your eyes. And it's still there ... even through your fear and your tears I can see it!"