“There’s a lot of pretty girls in Mozambique and plenty time for good romance.”

Bob Dylan

We didn’t say much to each other, and it wasn’t the language barrier, because what little she offered was in perfectly fluent English, an odd rarity in a country where Pouco Portuguese, Bantu and a dozen other languages made up the gumbo of speech. No, what made us mute were cold fear and the dizzying wonderment of what was going on around us.

Worse still, I think I was still a little drunk from the night before, hung over in that reckless, shut-down way where dulled wits are compounded by a fuck-it-all attitude. But not giving two shits about what was going on around me was not the frame of mind I needed to be in now. She kept glancing up at me with these questioning, rapacious bright eyes that said, “Get me out of here now.”

And yet we kept in lockstep with the march, a dense surge of humanity, slowly but decisively sliding into the dangerous unknown.

Bottles were breaking. People were shouting, and I saw windows shattering and trash cans burning on every street corner all up and down Lourenço Marques Avenue.

It was criminal, this wanton destruction, unwarranted and disgusting, and I wanted to say so, but I didn’t. I didn’t know her politics. Maybe she thought it was righteous and highly appropriate. She lived here. She knew oppression, or at least was aware of its existence. And somehow, whether she was just swept up in the madding street crowd as I had been or she had actually joined this ugly street protest, we were both smack dab in the thick of it, for better or worse.

Right now it appeared it was for the worse, and getting ever more perilously so by the minute — for me. Because I was a visitor in this country, a white guy in a seersucker suit with a three-day-old beard and a low-country South Alabama accent. And my only acquaintance with “rioting” in the streets had come when I drunkenly streaked butt-ass naked through my college campus way back in the ’70s, prancing through the girls’ dormitories back at Troy State with my 18-year-old balls bouncing in the breeze.

Nothing that is human was alien to me, I generally believed, but marching with a mob of angry, dark African Marxists was pretty goddamned close.

As an American, I stuck out worse than a swollen thumb anyway, but in this crowd — angry, aggrieved partisans in the middle of the first night of what promised to be many nights of civil unrest — I felt very lucky to be along-side her. When her slight brown body grazed seductively against mine, there was a spark in my loins. But I only tried making bits of random, awkward conversation, in the hope that others would recognize that we were together and that, despite my appearance, I too was part of this political movement, or whatever it was, calling for the overthrow of the government, or something like that.

Noticing the diamond-sheen sparkle of splintered glass strewn in the road, which could easily slice into the thin plastic sandals she was wearing, I told her to watch her step, but my words were drowned out by the distinctive dull stutter of an AK on full automatic. Nothing, and you can trust me on this one, announces itself over the din of marching, charging feet and shouting revolutionaries quite like a Russian-made assault rifle.

I felt her small hand tighten around my wrist as she shouted, “Watch out, sir, they’re shooting!”

The gun burped hot metal 50 yards ahead from a building above us and to our right. Was it the government troops? The protesters? It was bloody impossible to tell in this corruptibly back-ass-wards country.

People fell flat onto the street, or dived, or made wild, panicked dashes seeking cover. She was already steering me to an overturned jeepney cab as a shower of projectiles, nails and bottles whizzed by ten feet in front of us, smashing into the windshield of an overturned Mercedes.

There was confusion everywhere. I peered over the bumper of the jeepney to determine where the gunner was aiming, but as I did, the firing abruptly stopped, as quickly as it had begun.

“My country is an exciting place,” I heard her say. I turned to look at her, dead on for the first time. It registered immediately: She was easily one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen — high cheekbones, a glorious thick crown of jet black hair and bright deep green eyes set off by amazingly smooth café-au-lait skin. Like me she was an outsider, or at least of some mixed European heritage, the last of the Portuguese colonials.

Not that it mattered one way or another, but I was relieved that she wasn’t a Muslim. A Muslim woman wouldn’t have flouted her cleavage. To avoid gaping at her round, firm breasts stretching the thin fabric of her peasant dress, I focused on the odd way in which her pert nose flattened against her face and pulled her lip up into a sexy perpetual pout.

“We cannot stay here, sir,” she said. “I am afraid there will be bloodshed.”

She was looking up at me, and from my vantage point I could look down her dress. I could just barely make out the top of one of her nipples. You rarely saw much bare leg in this country, and one of hers was stretched out as she knelt. I could see that it was long, toned and tapered, no longer covered by her thin floral-patterned cotton dress. My eyes did a quick check of her exquisite thigh and the appealing gap of her open skirt, down the length of her shiny calf, slim ankle and dainty foot.

Damn it, man! I kind of surprised myself for a second there, then realized that fuck yeah, men can do that. With 7.62mm rounds flying around, we are still capable of pondering all the wicked possibilities and even chewing gum at the same time.

There are times you find yourself at the whim of perilous circumstance, and this was one of them for me. I had come to this country to the south of the Horn of Africa to write a story about antiquities for an archeology journal. Two days after my arrival in the capital, a Marxist military junta had toppled the government, already weakened by years of drought and a huge refugee problem, and now there was an uprising of people who opposed the hardliners. Whether these demonstrators were good old-fashioned free-market types like the Republicans back home or European-style socialists or tribal clans seeking a return to pre-colonial days, it was impossible to tell in this country. Politics is a mixed bag of dirty tricks, especially in Africa.

There was no way I was going to have safe access to the archeological digs. My university contact, a man named Negasso, had failed to call or answer any of my calls since my arrival. The airport had not reopened since the new government shut it down on the first day. I was stranded in the middle of a revolution. I wired my editors in New York and explained to them what was occurring. Then I proceeded to get very drunk.

In the hotel bar, a Swiss businessman told me to avoid the natives, or anyone I didn’t know, for that matter, which struck me as odd, since I didn’t know him. “And don’t go anywhere near the women,” he said, “especially the ones you see on the street. They’re beautiful, and as tempting as any women anywhere can be — but they’ll steal your soul and take your wallet too, mate. Their hearts are blacker than their skin.”

“We must get off the street, sir,” she said. “The alley there, it’s safe. I know where we can hide.” Again the soft hand firmly grasped mine. “Okay,” I said, and off we went.

I was doing exactly what the Swiss businessman had warned me not to do, but I didn’t mind. This wasn’t a wanton-street-slut come-on — or maybe it was, but we were being shot at! She dropped my hand and led me down a narrow alley littered with trash. I wasn’t looking at the debris, though. I was watching the sway of her sinuous round ass, billowing firmly like curtain drapes against the wind.

“What’s your name”? I asked.

“Prudence, sir.”

“Like the Beatles. You know the song?”

“My mother might. She named me. But many girls have the name Prudence here.”

“It means wisdom,” I told her. “But you’re not wise. Wise people don’t join street protests when people with automatic weapons start shooting them off. What are you doing here?”

She swept away a curl of hair that had fallen into her eyes.

“I might be an addict, sir,” she said.

“Drugs? You’re out here in this crowd looking for drugs?”

“Not drugs, sir. Excitement. The thrill I get from new experiences. I like that very much.”

Her voice had a pleasant lilting quality, breathy and sexy.

“Anything out of the ordinary that raises, how do you say, the sangue, the pulse, gives me great pleasure.”

A danger junkie, I thought. But the way the word “pleasure” had dripped off her tongue, sticky like the street slime in the alley, didn’t give the impression of a skydiver or a high-altitude rock-climber. There was something more organic going on with this chick, some sort of chemical imbalance in the brain. It was definitely in the psychosexual realm.

“Would you like to be with me, sir?”

My cock stirred, and to be honest I had to wonder why. I thought, how fuckin’ crazy is this broad? With two human beings in a dangerous, highly unorthodox situation, it is plausible, even likely, that signals get crossed. But in this situation, what kind of question was “Would you like to be with me?” — when we were evading fucking sniper fire, and marching into God — only-knows-what.

Did she realize what she was asking me? What the hell did she mean? Did it even make sense? I didn’t know who she was, or if I could trust her. Was she genuinely concerned for my safety? In her thick Bantu-accented English, did she know how provocative what she said was?

I momentarily imagined the CNN headline: American science journalist held for ransom by desperate African revolutionaries. If I were an honest man, I would have told her I was going back to the hotel.

“Yes,” I said, not understanding what I was saying yes to. Fleeing for safety with her. That was the only plausible explanation.

We amble down the alley before we crisscross several narrower pathways. Prudence pulls me through a gate into a courtyard. It appears to be the back of some kind of shop — pottery maybe, as there are bowls, statues and decorative objects everywhere.

She opens a door off the courtyard and we enter a small, empty workroom. It’s very dark inside, but I can see her moving about the place in a familiar manner. There is a work desk, some chairs and a table.

“My uncle’s shop, sir,” she explains. “He has gone to the countryside.”

Prudence sets her bag down and climbs up on the table. Kicking her sandals off, she pulls her skirt up to her thighs, all the while looking at me for approval.

Instinctively, I forget where we are and what we’ve been doing for the last 30 minutes. I run my hand up the back of her leg, pushing her skirt further up her belly. She is wearing baby blue cotton panties with pink stripes and a sexy kitty logo. In the dim light I can see that they’re spotted with her moist essence. She raises her knee slightly and parts her leg so I can get a better look.

Prudence is enjoying this. I can tell. She has what I can only describe as a proud look on her face. She is fully aware of the power she has over me, and I am simply flabbergasted. I’ve never had a woman I’ve never been with oblige me so easily. No kissing, no foreplay. But we are both definitely aroused, and she — much more than me — is conspicuously self-assured and self-satisfied.

“Are you sure you’re not a hooker?” I ask her.

“Hooker? Not a hooker, sir!”

Now that I’m this close to enjoying her, the pout of her upper lip is even sexier, and her breathy accent is slightly slurry.

“Okay, you’re not a hooker. Never mind that. But excuse me for asking then, why are we doing this here?

Why now? We could instead go back to my hotel room where it’s comfortable, where it’s safe.”

“Safe,” she said. “I don’t need safe, sir. I could be home with my husband if I want safe.”

I’m not going to argue with Prudence. Not with a woman who is this breathtakingly beautiful. I lean in to kiss her neck and reach for the waistband of her panties. This trick is apparently new to her. She lets out a muffled cry.

“Oh no, please, not that, no,” she pleads. Realizing that I don’t intend to tear her panties to shreds, she smiles knowingly and opens her legs further. I gather her panties into a bunch and stretch the fabric taut against her cunt.

She has never been stimulated with her own panties, and approves, eagerly. “Ah yes, that feels good, sir. Please pull it harder.”

She lifts one of her sumptuous brown tits out of her dress and massages the hard stub of nipple — slowly at first, then quicker. I yank the panties through her pussy. It’s a succulent little pink oyster, well taken care of and neatly trimmed. She lets out tiny yelps when I grind over her tiny hard clit.

I bend down to see what I’m doing, and notice that she is practically sitting in a puddle of her own juices. The wispy hair is drenched, and I marvel at how her pink lips gape wide with each pull of the cloth. She squirms and yelps louder when I pull the panties over her clit and twist.

“Ohmygod, you are fucking me with my panties, sir!” she moans, as if this is something no one anywhere has ever done before.

“Yes I am,” I reply. “That’s because you’re a hot little whore, aren’t you?”

“Yes, sir, I am a whore.”

I pull her panties aside to get at her hot hole with a finger. She’s so dilated that my fat football-battered index finger feels totally inadequate to the task. I thrust two and then three fingers in her insatiable, clasping little cunt.

“That’s what you wanted instead, right?” I say. “You want my fingers inside you, and then you want my big fat American cock.”

“I want your tongue, sir.”

I’m astonished by her intense state of arousal. She is like a river flowing wet and wild.

“Tell me, why is your juicy little figlet so dripping wet, Prudence? You’ve been drowning poor little kitty. I want to know how you got so excited so fast.”

She gently lifts her butt as I grab her waist and pull the panties off her slender brown legs. Again, I admire how well manicured she is between her legs, and I think about the fluky twists of chance that led me here to be with her. Before I came, a colleague told me that parts of Africa can look and feel very much like Hell to a Westerner. With her thighs wrapped around me like earmuffs, blocking out the world, I’m not even sure I’m alive. The whole thing seems completely surreal.

Prudence tastes like some strange fruit on my tongue. Her wrinkled bung is rosy and bright, and presents a hell of temptation. I run my finger over her rectum and poke. She wiggles but she doesn’t seem to mind. Do they do this in Africa? I push my finger in just to see what she’ll do, and the horny little bitch begins to slide down on it — to fuck herself!

Her juices cover my face like some exotic skin cream, drooling down my chin, and because it’s sweaty, pink and puckered like a raisin, and it’s right there under my damn nose, I fuck her asshole with my tongue. I am face-deep in hot ass, and can die of suffocation if I choose to end it all right here, right now. But I’m having the time of my life. Not many men can say they’ve performed analingus in deepest, darkest Africa with a beautiful girl whose wild cunt apparently gets overly lubricated at the sound of small-arms fire.

I want to fuck the shit out of this crazy bitch and then get the hell out of there. I step back to unfasten my belt so I can pull my pants down and mount her. Just then a voice from the darkest corner of the room says, “If you fuck her, I will have to kill you.”

“Uncle!” she blurts. “What are you doing here?”

I can see what appears to be a shiny handgun being held by a man whose features are indistinguishable in the gloomy shadows. My erection vanished as suddenly as the uncle appeared. Somewhere in the back of my mind I have been prepared for this — a robbery, a mugging, a political act of kidnapping. It has all happened so quick, I never allowed it to register.

“I couldn’t get to the country because the soldiers have all the roads blocked. Why did you bring him here, Prudence? I’ve warned you it will not be good for you or for me if you are ever caught.”

The uncle steps out of the shadows. He is old and frail, but well-dressed, a merchant. And rather than looking angry or threatening, he looks, well, disappointed.

“You must leave,” he says to me. “My niece is having one of her spells, and I must take her to her family.”

Spells? I’m not sure what that means, but I have my suspicions.

“Yes, of course, ah, her family?” I say. “You mean her husband?”

“Oh no, not her husband,” he says. “I will take her to her mother, who knows how to see to her. We try to keep her condition as quiet as we can with her husband. He is on the Military Council here. He is a very important man in the government, and he must not be bothered.”

“Of course,” I say. “I wouldn’t want to see anything bad to happen to her because of — because of me.”

Prudence had gotten up and was straightening herself, but as I walked toward the door she ran toward me and kissed me like a child would kiss a relative. “Thank you so very much, sir. You brought me such excitement today.”