0 comments/ 20863 views/ 18 favorites Morenian Mystery By: EmpressB ADULTS ONLY. This story is a work of fiction which contains potentially offensive subject matter, especially in the form of comments by characters, which would have been appropriate in the thirties but are not appropriate today. This story was written for personal enjoyment and shared for entertainment purposes only. All characters are fictional and any resemblance to real persons, locations or events is strictly accidental. A knock at Reinhard Pleske's office door interrupted the letter he was dictating. Betty Landgren put her pencil and tablet in her lap and looked up, hoping this might be her opportunity to escape. A girl came into the room. It was one of the local Morenian girls, a beautiful one too, with skin as smooth and perfect as coffee with cream. She had glossy black hair and expressive dark eyes, and red lips naturally pouted. She walked across the room to Pleske, exuding sensuality with every movement of her body. "Herr Sturmbannführer? I was told, to report to you," she said carefully. Betty asked, "Shall I leave?" "Oh no, no, stay there. We'll go on." Pleske inquired of the girl, "Do you speak German?" "I do only, a little," she said, then added a whole paragraph, with hand gestures, in her own language by way of excuse. "That's a problem." "I thought you could speak Morin," Betty said. "I do, but you don't, unless you've learned it by now?" "This surely doesn't concern me, does it?" "You can be a chaperon at least. You can witness what isn't going on." Chaperon? Betty had heard some things about Reinhard Pleske. The last thing on earth he needed was a chaperon. Well, maybe he needed it most, but desired it the least. He said to the girl, "Do you understand that I might take my belt to your backside, but I really will not fuck you?" Betty's mouth dropped open in shock. The girl's face looked pleasantly blank. "She doesn't. All right." Pleske put his gleaming boots up on the desk, and continued, "Therefore, as well as taking the usual security measures, I've also had the place surveyed and drafted some natives for preservation work, as his majesty neglected all parts of the castle that did not directly affect his own comfort level. Finish that off, until next time, Heil Hitler." Through force of habit, Betty wrote it all down on the tablet. "Shall I change that to the Prince's proper title?" she asked. "If you like." Betty crossed off 'his majesty' and wrote, "Prince ben Hider." The Morenian girl, finding herself ignored, came closer. "Now, to her. This is Maliza Yanzi. She's employed by us in just that capacity, housekeeping, but her tongue has been busy. Miss Landgren, what have you heard about me and my-- habits?" Plenty. Betty said, "Not much-- besides maybe that you're a reckless driver." He took that as a compliment. "Hmm. Well, Maliza's been telling her friends about me as if she had personal knowledge. She says she's submitted to my lust in order to calm the fierceness of my wrath and save her people from being slaughtered in great bloody batches. Isn't that rich? Some of the details are even more entertaining, but I'll spare a lady's ears." Betty kept her hands in her lap and her eyebrows up. It all really didn't concern her, anyway. Pleske spoke to the girl in her language. His spoken Morin was a little less melodious than the girl's accents. The girl looked abashed and apologetic, though not wholly repentant, and pleaded with Pleske a while. He listened to her pretty speech but he was looking mostly at Betty. "It wasn't her fault, she didn't mean to, it's all been blown out of proportion. Do we believe her?" "I wouldn't know." He made a gesture at the girl's body and gave an order. Her eyes opened wide and she protested, but with a sideways smile. "What did you say?" Betty asked. "I told her to take her clothes off despite your presence, as you were an SS secretary and would take notes about the submissiveness of her attitude, for her file." "I am leaving," Betty said definitely. She picked up the tablet and the pen, and found Pleske's gloved hand hard on her wrist. "But Miss Landgren, I've noticed that you are the curious type, always observing. I admire the sort of person who continues to gain knowledge throughout their lifetime. So this must be something new for you, and don't you want to watch?" She twisted her wrist ineffectually. "Watch you and her-- ack! What on earth could be educational about that?" "No, not that. Do you think I've lost my mind? I don't consort with the local girls, that's the whole point of this discussion." "Then why--" "A reason." When Betty stopped struggling he released her wrist, and tapped the desk with his finger. The Morenian girl started stripping. Not one-hundred-percent unwillingly, Betty noticed. She wiggled her hips and looked shy yet alluring, while somehow translating taking her clothes off into the Dance of the Seven Veils. Betty tried not to look at her, but it was more difficult when the girl obviously liked being looked at. "But what if the Morenians hear about this?" Betty murmured. "Will the rumors stop, or quadruple? The problem is, that Miss Maliza feels overlooked. She wanted to be conquered too. She's most disappointed with me so far. I've been making her feel unwanted." "Don't be silly. They have their own boys." "Their boys lost." Betty kept her mouth shut. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Pleske looking pleased with himself. The girl's body was as pretty as her face, and as unashamed. Her large young breasts defied gravity despite their considerable size, and quivered with every move she made. Betty wasn't used to seeing another woman naked. However, it wasn't the girl who embarrassed her as much as Pleske, the perpetrator. Well, she had come here to observe, hadn't she? She had arrived as an escort to General Drehmann's five-year-old son Sebastien, and seen everything she needed to see about the castle and the Army presence within a day. She would have left immediately, but that was where the problems began. She couldn't leave the castle without General Drehmann's or Sturmbannführer Pleske's permission. Drehmann might have given it but Pleske had one excuse after another why she should stay. Betty wondered if he thought she was just another unemployed secretary who should be glad for any chance to make herself useful. The real reason he detained her was obvious, though Betty had tried to make it clear that his interest was not returned. She had just one time insisted that she wanted to leave, and Pleske, seeming oblivious that she wanted anything else, agreed with her about how useful she would be and how inevitable it was that she stay. It wouldn't be wise to press the issue too much. She had to just cool her heels a while. Betty had always been told that it was always useful to note distinctive personality traits of high officers. This qualified as 'distinctive', for sure; an astonishing new side of severe, hateful Nazi Pleske. "Whatever unspeakable things it is that I've done to her, at least don't seem to have left marks," Pleske said. "Not bad, is she? Until you came she was all there was to look at." Betty ignored one side of that statement, and argued with the other: "She's prettier than I am." "That would be a matter of opinion-- which I would disagree with completely." "Her breasts are bigger." Pleske looked delighted to find his own daring matched. With a grin he admitted, "Yes! But, look at them." He gestured to the girl to come closer, and when her big breasts swung above him he caught one of her nipples and held it between his fingers, pulling it sideways to exhibit it to Betty. "Brown," he commented. "Dark brown. Not at all to my liking. While yours-- I should imagine--" he added that disclaimer as he saw Betty gathering herself to protest, "Are rosy pink. Am I right? I would never do this to you," and he twisted the girl's nipple cruelly, making her gasp in pain. Betty stood up quickly, but the girl didn't even try to pull away from Pleske's hand. She sank to a half-crouching position, making her body as low as she could without pulling her breast away, and her hands came to hover over Pleske's gloved hands but she didn't touch him. "Because that's what she wants," he said triumphantly, like a laboratory professor whose experiment has just proven his theory. "See?" "Nobody likes to be hurt," Betty said weakly. "Look at her face, then." The girl's eyes were half-closed, her mouth slightly open, and she was panting with excitement. She spoke soft, pleading words in Morin that sounded like caresses. All the objection Betty could think of was, "Wait until her Morenian boyfriend hears about this and comes to kill you." "No such person, unfortunately. She has a crush on me; only because she knows such a thing's punishable by death, of course. But you're right, a boyfriend would solve the problem. Maybe I can help with that?" He reached for his pen and turned the girl around so her bottom faced him. He wrote in black ink on her skin, first large in the loopy Morin characters, then a smaller translation beneath in German, "FREE TO GOOD HOME." The girl tried to crane around to see what he had written, but she couldn't see it. Pleske's half-suppressed laughter was her only clue that she was being made fun of. Betty said, "That's not nice. If she really does like you, she can't help it." "Nice," Pleske said. "Like. No, no. She's nursing a passion for me, sweating into her sheets at night and then talking about it to her friends. This needs to stop. She can certainly keep her mouth shut." "I didn't mean--" "You feel sorry for her? I had understood that you had no interest in me yourself. Yet you have sympathy for someone else who does. Interesting." His hand was still on the girl's backside, keeping her motionless with only a light touch. He turned her around, dragging his hand over her hips, down the triangle of hair and into the secret place between her legs. "No," Betty said, feeling weak. "No, that's not what I meant." "Isn't it?" He pushed the girl so she sat down on the edge of his desk, and nudged her legs apart. She spoke in Morin, singsong and emotional, asking questions and cooing pleas. Pleske didn't answer her, only looked at Betty's eyes while stroking Maliza with the backs of his leather-gloved fingers. "So I should 'show mercy to the natives' in some way that only pleases myself?" "That's not what I-- not what I--" He turned his hand over and pushed his thumb out of sight. Betty watched the muscles in his wrist move as he caressed the girl, watched his eyes. Betty, innocent, standing there fully dressed in a proper business suit with her steno pad in her hand, was the one who felt out of place. But she couldn't look away from Pleske's cold blue eyes. He held her gaze while his hand held the girl. The girl didn't look at anything. "Do you know what this is?" Pleske said, showing his thumb moving in rhythmic circles. "Yes," Betty said. "Oh, yes. You've got one of those, too." He sounded light-hearted. "So, you know all about it! How many lovers have you had?" "Two," Betty said. Her first was her commander, Colonel Haveral, who was old enough to be her father, and once to spite him she had entertained his adjutant, Lieutenant Peterson. That small bit of truth had tumbled lightly from Betty's lips without any forethought or discretion. "I'm disappointed. You seemed so angelic." He didn't look disappointed. He looked like a wolf. Betty leaned against the filing cabinet and was glad for its support. Perhaps she should have claimed virginity. Innocent in one way might imply that she was innocent in other ways. The girl was moaning, and tried to invite herself into closer proximity to the Nazi officer. She only got as far as laying a hand on his shoulder before he snapped at her, but he quickly added some more words, more gentle and soothing, with a command that caused the girl to sigh with pleasure and reached up her hands for her own nipples. Pleske continued what he was doing with an air of noblesse oblige. Betty couldn't move, couldn't breathe. She had definitely never seen a naked woman climax in public, as inevitably happened next. The girl moaned, her breasts shook deliciously, her eyelids fluttered. Pleske waited politely for her to finish, then slapped her naked backside with his free hand. The sound startled Betty out of her trance. She dropped her steno pad. The beautiful tan-skinned girl sprang up but lost her balance and almost fell. She wrapped her arms around herself and stood there trembling. Pleske picked up her clothes and handed them to her, then pulled his leather gloves off and dropped them on the floor. "Is that better?" he said. It brought Betty back to reality. The girl came to Pleske and wanted to kiss him, and when he refused she accepted his rebuff tranquilly. "You'll do that to her, but you won't even kiss her?" Betty burst out. His head came up, and Betty, finding herself fixed with that blue glare, took a step back. She was forgetting herself. Suddenly she was afraid, though not so much of him as of her own carelessness. No-- it was of him. She was afraid of him because he made her careless. It was happening more and more frequently now. She would think she was handling him well, and then she would just say things, things she didn't mean to say. From the day she arrived at this castle she had had his complete attention, as a new character in his world, a new personality for him to to learn. An interesting new frog for him to dissect. She was in mortal danger every moment she was with him. He produced a coin from his pocket and put it on the desk. "Perhaps this instead?" "Gold?" Betty couldn't help but comment. The coffee-skinned girl accepted the gold with a smile, and sashayed from the room in a sunny mood, hips swaying even more than they had on her way in. "You can't buy love," Pleske said. "Though I got much less for my money than I would usually expect." "Good evening," Betty said firmly, and exited the room. * * * Her legs trembled all the way back to her own room. She was in a strange castle in a foreign land, in enemy-occupied territory, and yet was relieved to get to her room inside it. When the door was closed at least her heart felt a little safer. She flung herself across her bed and stayed motionless until her heart rate slowed a little. She wasn't totally without friends. In the drawer of the little table by her bed, there would be a letter from her admirer. This was his castle. His name was Prince Mushall ben Hider. His first letter came a few days after Betty arrived, and since then she had accumulated a stack of them. Every evening when she came back to her room she would find another, and sometimes more than one letter a day. The letters were in English. When she had first seen that, she had been afraid; although it was no secret that she spoke English, in fact, Pleske occasionally called on her to translate English newspapers for him. It wouldn't matter what language the letters were in if she was caught with them. Would Pleske blame her for something someone else had written? Yes, definitely, for harboring them and having not reported it to him the moment it happened. This man who said he loved her was a coward. She knew he was a coward; that had been her first impression of him. He was overawed by the German invaders living in his home, and he ate from their hands. Betty, both in her original capacity as Drehmann's son's companion, and new role as Pleske's secretary, was Reich property. Yet the prince had fallen in love with her from the first moment he saw her. Coward that he was, he had loved her from a distance. Wildly, madly, and getting worse all the time-- if what he said could be believed. He had to have her or die, he said. He couldn't even speak to her when Germans were around, and when were they not around? so she had no way to ask how he'd learned his English. However he'd learned it, he was a master of it, and also of the art of verbal seduction. His letters were spectacular. Betty shivered when she read them. She was mostly in love with him and already completely ready for him. With each successive letter she became more ready, if that were possible. Her imagination had taken over. The letters were a private, secret treasure amidst the stressful secrecy of her normal life. They told her all kinds of forbidden things that the writer said he wanted to do with her, sweet things, loving things, things Sturmbannführer Perverted Pleske probably didn't even know existed. Betty had some of those sweet things memorized-- I want to make breakfast for you, and feed you every bite. Come with me to Tambaikis, I will be your guide and show you its history for the pleasure of seeing that ancient city afresh through your beautiful eyes. Wait for a rainy day, we will walk together and I will drink the water from your skin. If it stays hot, we will go behind the hill to a small stream thick with watercress, and you will lie down in it and the current will wash your golden hair around your body, and I will hold my breath to kiss your throat. I want to scratch my name on your belly with a rose's thorn. I can't look at the north courtyard wall without a vision of your smooth white body against it on a hot day. We must take you there and stand you naked against that wall. I will tell you not to move and you will obey me. I will stand away from you, touching you only with my eyes, waiting for the sweat to show on your forehead. We will talk while we wait. When you finally have to move I will catch you in my arms and kiss your hot face. I want to walk on the beach with you. We will row to the breakwater, you will sit on a rock on the seaward side, and I will kneel before you and make love to you with my teeth. I want to wash every inch of you with soap and my bare hands, dry you with a towel and dress you in garments I have bought you, so that you, whom I desire to possess, will be wearing nothing but other things that belong to me. He spent long paragraphs telling Betty how her hair looked in the candlelight and how her eyes looked in the sunlight, about how her breasts would feel in his mouth and her ankles in his hands. He had studied the curve of her cheek, he said, and it took all the willpower human man had ever possessed not to touch that cheek. I want to fill up your body with children. Seventeen of them at least! Betty wasn't too sure about that part. She might have to speak to him about it. But for that to be a danger, first you had to get closer than a hundred yards to each other. Half of her mind told her not to do anything so insane. Not to fall for a man's honeyed words when what he wanted from her was obvious! But-- too late! She had fallen for it. Her natural reserve belonged to her old, sane life. This place was like a terrifying dream, and she could use a little relaxation. She could use a friend in this friendless castle. She had done everything she could possibly do to let him know she was ready for him. She couldn't dress like a slut because she had the Nazi ideal of womanly modesty to contend with; Pleske's looseness of behavior for himself didn't translate into tolerance for other people's. Betty had only tried wearing makeup once since she arrived at the castle-- Pleske had caused all of life to grind to a complete halt while Betty was sent back to her room to try it again, "this time without that stuff on your face!" She had only made him do that once. Morenian Mystery When her prince was in sight she waggled her hips at him in that same way that the Morenian girl had done with Pleske tonight. It wasn't a motion that came naturally to her, but she had cultivated it. Of course she could only do it when the prince was watching her and Pleske wasn't, and how often was that? A few days ago there had been a dinner to which Prince Mushall had been invited in order to be exhibited to some important visitors. The Germans treated him with a heavy tolerance designed to remind him how very much a thing of the past he was, and for the most part ignored him. Betty couldn't have cared less that both the high-ranking Nazi officers were at the table. She had been in a position at the table where she could easily make eye contact with the Prince, and she had spent most of the dinner shamelessly doing so. She was filled with longing now. How long? How much longer could she wait? She didn't think much longer. She opened tonight's letter, that she found in her drawer. It said: I cannot resist you much longer, my darling. You show by your every look and movement that you desire me. The thought of it consumes me. I know I risk both our lives by coming to you. It's a balm for my aching heart to be able to write to you like this, to know that you read my words and have come to desire the man who wrote them. I would come across time and space to you now that I know you want me. Nothing can stop me any more, not even my own scruples. I must have you. It will not be long now, and having said that I don't know how I'll wait between now and then. I can hardly breathe until I hold you in my hands. Scruples. Betty found them charming and gallant. Scruples that he couldn't charm her openly? Scruples that he couldn't marry her? She couldn't do that anyway, for reasons he had no way of knowing. She wondered what he would say if he knew she was a foreign agent, that she was helping to fight his enemies in ways he couldn't. * * * Coward that he was, the prince waited until a day when Pleske was gone. General Drehmann was his official jailer, and Drehmann had been courteous to him. It was Pleske he feared most. If Pleske noticed that, it probably pleased him. It was natural that the prince should make his move while Pleske was absent. Betty read the letter three times and wanted to die of joy. There was nothing sexual in it at all this time, except for the most sexual thing of all: "I come to you tonight." So simple. I come to you tonight. The instructions were easy enough: If you want me, drape your white sweater over the balcony railing. Turn off your lights. Your room must be in complete darkness or we might be in danger of being seen through the balcony. I love you, and I will love you even more by tomorrow morning, if I see the white sweater over the railing tonight. Wait for me in your bed. Betty put that letter in the drawer with the others, then turned off her light. The sky was dark that night and it was black as pitch in her room. Betty stripped her clothes off, went out to the railing and draped her white sweater over the thick stone railing. She stayed another moment with the warm night air washing her naked body, knowing her skin rivaled the white sweater for luminescence. She stayed long enough for the prince to see her, if he was looking, then went to her bed, shivering with eagerness. She had given the signal. Now she would have to wait for him to come. When would he come? And how would he come? Down over the balcony, perhaps. If the letter had not said to wait in bed, she would be out there straining her eyes and ears for sign of his approach. She would be craning her neck to look up at the wall and the next balcony on the wall above her. She hadn't been encouraged to get to know any Morenians at all. The German soldiers were expected to be her only companionship. She was an unmarried Aryan woman, after all, and thus fair game for some and forbidden for others. The prince had been discouraged from even looking at her, but she was also kept away from the Morenian girls. That one in Pleske's office had really been the first one she'd gotten a good look at-- and such an intimate view. How Pleske would seethe if he had any idea what she was doing right now! Yet she was only taking a page from his book. She would be him, and the prince would be the Morenian girl; and it would be good, yes, very good to be with someone. It would be good to be alone with someone not a German. The prince was a prisoner just as Betty was, each of them imprisoned in their own way. The door to the balcony was a lighter area than the pitch darkness of the room. As Betty stared harder she could define its edges, and when her eyes got used to the dark, she would be able to see easily when someone appeared in it. It made her feel better-- only, as soon as she felt better for that knowledge, she realized she already wasn't alone. For a moment her skin crawled with fear, but her rebellious excitement bubbled up too. Betty couldn't lie tamely in her bed for an invisible stranger to touch her. She scrambled to her knees and looked around wildly. "Who is it?" she whispered, and strained her ears for an answer, hardly daring to breathe. "Are you there?" The only sound was a low, deep laugh, almost like a chuckle; a sound that made her hackles rise. This frisson of thrilling fear added to her excitement, but it was still fear. "Please answer me," she said frantically. He was on the bed with her, and in the dark found her naked shoulders. She shivered at the touch. It wasn't a good kind of shiver this time, but a strange premonition of danger. "Your Highness?" she said tentatively. "My darling," he answered. He spoke carefully, precisely, and his low voice was comforting. The English of his letters had been more grammatically correct than her own, if that was possible, so that his writing was like that of a century-old poet revived. She relaxed a little. But he went on. "And a good thing it was me. Do they know you speak English?" She froze with her teeth together. So much for relaxing! It didn't matter that she had avoided saying his name. She hadn't chosen to speak English, it had been as natural as when a child cries out in the dark. "I'm not expecting anyone else," she said shakily. "Besides, yes, everyone knows that. My father was English." "But you came from America?" In the darkness she stared, though she could only locate his face by his voice. "You can tell?" Another of those blood-curdling chuckles. "Would you think I couldn't?" That slow laugh aroused her senses. She said back, "I can tell you're a savage, from that laugh." "Are you a Nazi too?" "Obviously not." His hands came up from her shoulders to her face, and in the darkness his face lowered to hers. He touched her lips with his only briefly. It was a good-night kiss with something in it more like good morning. Suddenly Betty didn't want to say another word, or hear one. What was talking, after all? The idea to demand how he'd come in disappeared like a soap bubble. Non-verbal communication would do better. Yet there was one thing that had to be said. Just as his hands began an initial exploratory roaming, she interrupted him with: "I don't want to get pregnant." He paused for a moment, then said slowly, in that deep rich voice, "Such a modern woman you are!" "Sorry. It's a fact." Another pause. "Then you will have provided for it," with the accent very faintly on the you. She said impatiently, "How could I, surrounded by a bunch of prissy Nazis? Sex is for making babies, thank you very much, lots of little Aryan babies for the Fatherland. For a woman to stop that from happening is a cardinal sin." A faint sigh. "I understand." The tone in which that was said could have broken her heart, if her heart was breakable. She fluttered her eyelids and consoled herself with the delightful thought. "Pleske would kill me if he knew about this!" "Would he?" "Yes! He thinks he owns me, though I've never given him any reason. My God, he would be so angry--" her voice trailed off. He would be beyond angry. She'd seen his anger. He did it very well, and it was frightening. "He'd go into the stratosphere." The voice said lightly, "Perhaps he would stay there and never come down to trouble us again." Thinking of Pleske was making her angry. "Well," she said, "Very well." "'Very well', meaning--?" "Meaning, please proceed." She lay back on the bed, and crossed her hands contentedly on her breast. That low, rich chuckle again. She was finding that sound very much to her taste. It was like the heh-heh-heh of the villain in the movies, with love added. He came over her, slowly, gracefully, like a tiger. "Such a modern woman you are! You'll let me have my way with you to spite another man, and you're not even married to him!" "My motives shouldn't matter." She was very aware of his nearness. "They don't. Except that I love you, and I care about your fear, and, my darling Bettina, he's the enemy of the Morenians, too." Betty laughed a laugh like his, and whispered, "So, we have something else in common." He spoke the German word deliberately: "Natürlich." Tangled up with his beautiful modulated English, it grated Betty's ears even more than she was used to enduring from the Germans. She made a face, which of course he couldn't see. "Oh, please, not that! I hate the sound of it." "As you wish," he said equably. "I've been learning their language, as it could be useful to me. But, as you wish, my darling." And he began another kind of language, a much nicer one. His hands came to her face again. He explored her features with his fingers. In one of his letters he'd said: I caught your scent once, not of perfume, because you weren't wearing any, but the scent of you, a hundred times better than any fragrance. I remember it well. Now I taste you with every breath I take. She had noticed a scent about him, too, when she'd been in the same room with him for dinner. It was a heavy combination of jasmine and musk, and something like incense. She hadn't liked the idea of a man being so scented. Perfume was for girls, said her upbringing, with the marginal exception of aftershave; but what she smelled now was different, more like flowers. Like crushed lilacs. His clothes drifted it to her. In such intimate circumstances the scent made her head spin with excitement. He touched her as though trying to memorize her with his fingertips, and it was like being touched by an angel. His hands drove her mind away. He caressed her ears and her eyelids with worshipful fingers. Betty hadn't known there were so many nerve endings in those places. He passed over the usual places a man would try to touch at first. That was all right. Those more blatantly sexual places were humming too, and she sensed that he would get to those in good time. He didn't seem to want his caresses to be returned. He didn't even want her to touch his hands and face. He kept her hands away. Betty was confused, then smiled at this display of chauvinism. He kissed her, softly, slowly, gently, and for a long, long time. It was just as dark whether her eyes were closed or not. But now she closed her eyes in a gesture of trust, and a tear slipped from under her eyelid. It caught her attention. Was she that affected? And from somewhere far, far away her conscious mind shouted: You weak little fool! The prince paused. A sixth sense must have told him about it. He moved himself up ever so slightly, hovered over her eyes, and removed that tear with his own lips. When he kissed her again she could taste the salt. She opened her mouth to it. His breath in her mouth was like a warm south wind through a dark pine forest. Then she was sobbing unashamedly. "Bettina," he crooned. "Liebchen. Not your tears. I can't live while you cry. Bettina!" And she laughed through them. "That must be the only one of their words that I like." "Liebchen?" He laughed at himself for saying it. "I like it. Little love. It sums things up. I won't say it, if you don't like it." "I just told you I did. Say it again." "Liebchen." "I want you," she said softly. "You have me." "I mean I want you--" she stopped. She knew better than to say forever. None of his letters had ever said anything about duration of time. She accepted that for what it was, but she was a woman, and the uncertainty bothered her. "As long as you want me, my darling. Ah, please. Don't cry. You have me. Do you want to marry me?" Betty's breath caught in her throat. "Are you asking me?" "No. I would not dare ask you." "But if you did--" He was still as a statue. Betty had rested her hands on his arms, and beneath his velvet sleeves she could feel his tension. He said hesitantly, as if the words gave him pain, "Would you?" "If-- If. My God. If you had your castle back. If the Germans weren't here." "Say you will marry me someday, and I'll make it so." "Then I will," she said happily. "If you want me." The ifs could die a natural death. She could feel the power of his body, and her mind was comfortably in neutral. He was a prince, and an angel. Anything was possible. This playful consent must have signalled that the seduction was over. Betty could feel the difference, and not with any regret. He took her as his own. His hands became hard and rough, his lips passionately possessive. She cried tears of rapture that he didn't even notice. She felt him pause to remove his heavy robes and drop them onto to the bed. His penis must have been there all the time. She felt it against her thighs now, the perfect answer to her needs. It was so large and hard it seemed almost unnatural-- was it painful to him? If that part of him could talk, it would have been shouting with frustration a long time ago. It must be dreadful to be like that, and to wait and wait, and touch her so slowly, and think only of her pleasure. She moved her body invitingly. He must be wanting to tear her apart by now. She slid her hand down to touch him, but felt her wrist captured in a grip of steel. She cried out in a strangled whisper, "Oh, you fool, let him have me!" He could still manage that sexy chuckle. "'Let him have me'?" he mimicked. "Let him have you like he wants you? Don't worry about him. He can wait." She moved again, impatiently, opening her thighs, reaching out with herself, and she was going to say something else but she felt it unnecessary. He came to her, and it felt like a steel rod probing her soft flesh. That was not a moment for words. It was the second-best moment of all-- then he leaned into her and the whole solidness of him slid home, grinding exquisitely through her tender insides and coming to rest deep inside her belly. Betty writhed just once, twisting against him like some small animal caught on a sword. She was full now, full of him, and full of herself. So, so, so much better than the emptiness before. He wrapped her up in his arms. He must never leave her. Never. Or she would die. In that moment, she was convinced of it. She heard him groan, an almost inaudible sound carrying waves of desire and an echo of her own immense satisfaction. She wrapped her legs comfortably around him: see, it's all right now! It didn't hurt this time. She had cried and bled with Haveral, and she hadn't enjoyed Peterson much either-- too clumsy and impatient. This was totally different. Her body was already singing with joy. He moved slowly within her. She thought her eyes would roll up in her head, or that she might simply lose her senses. He moved out a little, and came back into her with a fresh feeling of satisfaction, then almost all the way out, and then plunged deep and hard back into her--and she gasped, feeling pleasantly stuffed as her body moved to adapt to him, and she writhed like the first time. It was as if the pleasure was made more startling by letting her feel it taken away before giving it back. It was torturous. "Bettina," he said gently, in that sweet gentle voice, despite what he was doing which should be driving him mad just as it was her. She couldn't speak. "Bettina," he said again. She would change her name to Bettina. Elizabeth was too prim, and Betty so ordinary. Bettina. That was her. Perfect. "Do you love me? Tell me, Bettina. Say it." "Yes. Yes, I love you--" Her mouth was smothered under a passionate kiss, then released, and his movements turned from hypnotic to passionate. He thrust into her, hard, again and again and again. She braced herself and cried for more, and more she got: hard and fast, relentless, crashing into her body, stunning her out of her senses. She braced herself, grabbing at his shoulders as he churned her insides to passionate mush. "Oh, my God--" she gasped. "Oh!" Every muscle in her body shuddered and clenched, long beyond the control of her own mind. Ah. It was like something too tight finally breaking. Like a dammed torrent bursting into a maelstrom of released power. When she had no further need of his penis, he pulled it out, and Betty felt his seed splashing hot and slick across her naked belly. Thank you, thank you, she thought to herself in immense relief, as the natural forces equalized and she became herself again. She had forgotten all about it. She lay her head back in gratitude. The feeling was like the lights coming back on after a blackout-- but the room was still dark. She lay sprawled in the tangled sheets, helpless to move even one of her muscles or to pull one sheet to cover herself. The prince lay next to her, drawing her to himself, and they stayed wrapped up together. She could feel his breathing against her body. He knew she was an American. After the German defeat--and that was a hope which she would take for certainty-- she would be revealed for an American agent. Prince Mushall ben Hider would take her as his bride. Hopefully his only bride? And they would live together in this fairy-tale castle in peaceful, independent Morenia. She would be a Princess. Princess Bettina. * * * She woke to a shaking-- someone was violently shaking her foot. The sun was streaming in from the balcony and there were two SS guards standing at the foot of her bed, waking her up in the comradely way they would use for one of their own. She sat straight up and at the sight of them nearly screamed. Then she clutched her blankets to her naked breasts and said sternly, "Stop it! I'm awake!" "It's ten-thirty," the sergeant said, which explained everything. "I'm sorry." "Get up. The boss wants you." "Pleske? I thought he was gone away!" she said in sudden alarm. She'd also thought her prince was with her. He must have left while she was asleep. The ache of his absence was overwhelmed by relief that he had gone in time. "He's back." "And you're late," said the other one. "All right. I'm coming." "We're supposed to escort you," the sergeant said, and there they remained, by her bed, looking at her in a funny way. "Sorry--it's orders." They didn't seem to comprehend that they had to leave before she could get up. She explained that little detail as tactfully as she could. If they were like their objectionable boss, they would see nothing out of the ordinary about being in the same room with a naked woman. She wondered if it was one of them it was that her Prince was bribing to deliver his letters. Both of them had that hard, lean, warrior-type of face, full of cherubic innocence, and as incorruptible as if they didn't know the value of money. Not necessarily of high morals, but simply too stupidly loyal to take a bribe. They would probably love to have someone attempt to bribe them, so they could tell Pleske about it and have the offender put up against a wall. And knowing Pleske's sense of justice, he might make sure they got the offered money anyway. Morenian Mystery Betty watched them leave, then got up, washed and dressed quickly. Her body was deliciously tired. She wondered if it was going to show. She wanted to weave on her feet and smile stupidly at everyone she saw. She would have to resist that. She watched for the Prince as she walked through the corridors. It wasn't surprising to not see him. He usually kept very close to his own little warren of rooms. She had always pegged him as a coward, but she would never think that again. Nobody as magnificent as he was could possibly be a coward, or if he was she would choose not to believe it. Discretion was the better part of valor, wasn't it? He acted servile to his oppressive 'guests', and behind their backs seduced one of their women. That made her smile. And she, while playing Nazi and secretly spying, was also betraying her race. Wouldn't Pleske just hit the ceiling if he knew about it! She made up her mind that if Pleske found out either of her crimes, she would be sure to tell him the other one also, since either one alone was enough to get her killed, and she'd like to make sure he felt as much of a fool as possible. Or, even better-- would be when the American Army had come and Colonel Haveral had Sturmbannführer Pleske in front of a firing squad. Under those conditions, Betty would enjoy the telling very, very much. She smiled with anticipation as she walked along, but doused the smile just before she reached his office door. "About damned time," was Pleske's greeting. "Why don't I just do the typing myself, and use you for a kitchen maid?" He had lost all power to hurt her, now that she had a friend. Someone in this rambling pile of an ancient stone castle knew all about her, and loved her. She said calmly, "I'm sorry. I overslept." "Slightly!" Betty closed her lips, picked up her pad and pencil and brandished it for his notice. She could look at him with a new clarity this morning. She had always thought of him as something naturally frightening, but he was just a man--in fact, a human being. He had to put his black britches on one leg at a time, the same as everyone else. His eyes were still the same, that sparkling cold, piercing blue, and he still had the trick of making her feel creepy; but that was probably because of her 'guilty' conscience. And that was her own nervousness. It didn't make him so terrible. Killers didn't have any particular look about them. That was just people's imagination. She decided it firmly now as she studied his face, though she knew his face well enough to know that it was getting that I'm-being-patient-with-you expression that meant he was feeling anything but patient. He was studying her right back, and she wasn't shriveling under his look. She had never actually seen Pleske exhibit signs of unusual brutality. He might be the type to do dark deeds and keep quiet about them, then again he might not. She had only assumed it. He was observant and clever; he could watch her movements and tell her what she was feeling. That made him dangerous. But, if she didn't reveal the delicious weariness of her still-glowing body, and didn't smile at him like a dope, he wouldn't have any more notion than anyone else. He did his usual once-over of her person and dress. Betty had always thought he missed nothing, but evidently he did. He missed the one biggest thing of all. She stood bravely under his eyes, and then he was finished and life went on as before. They sat in their places and he dictated letters at a merciless speed. At the end of one Betty suggested, "Excuse me, but since it's so late, shall I not go say good morning to Sebastien and see if he needs me today?" He looked at her with accusing eyes. "Of course he needs you. That didn't bother you when you slept until lunchtime." "Then, shall I--." "No. You shall sit there and do as I tell you. Sebastien is with his father and I want your attention. Your full attention, young woman, if you please. Read that back." Betty kept her feathers unruffled and read the letter back. She was somehow keeping up with her shorthand, but sparing not a thought for the content of the letters, so she understood the meaning this time as little as before. Her new mission was to experience unbelievable pleasures during the dark hours and waste the light hours dreaming of them. She could feel Pleske's eyes on her. When she was finished reading back the letter she didn't look up. She poised the pencil over the pad, waiting for more. More wasn't forthcoming. She waited patiently, pencil ready, as if nothing was wrong. Finally she had to look up. "You're even more beautiful than usual today," he said. "Sleeping in must have done you good." He had complimented her before. Some of his compliments were as simple as this one and could be taken at face value, but lately she had discovered that the most pleasant-seeming remarks contained veiled insults. No matter; they all bounced off her armor and with each one her armor grew thicker. "Thank you, Sturmbannführer," she said primly. "You might call me Reinhard." "Thank you," she said again, briskly. "But it might be better if we kept this professional, don't you think? Shall I--" she gestured with the writing tablet. "When I'm ready," he said firmly. "When I am ready. What were you doing last night?" She wasted a moment in searching her past few remarks for whatever mistake she had made which caused his suspicion, and another in horror at the betraying heat that rushed over her body. Then she said too quickly, "Sleeping. Why don't you ask your armed guards? I know you told them to watch me." Had that sounded defensive? Of course it had. But there was nothing she could do about it now, since it was already said. He was in charge of security, after all, and could have her shot by saying the word. She tried not to think of that. She tried to look at him the way an innocent person would. He said, "They aren't armed especially for your benefit, you know." "I didn't say they were." "And you're not a prisoner. Do you object to being watched?" "Of course not," she said in an even voice. "Why do you ask what I was doing? I was in bed. Am I suspected of something?" "No." He watched her like a snake watches a mouse. His eyes were killer's eyes. That hadn't been her imagination. She met his look until it began to make her sweat, then she lowered her eyes and fiddled with her pencil. She didn't dare another hint about getting back to work; it might have all kinds of inadvertent admissions that she wouldn't realize until after they were out of her mouth. He said, "If you ever leave your room in the middle of the night, I hope your destination is my room." So, he was only flirting after all. She tried not to show her relief. "Wouldn't you shoot me if I crept about in the middle of the night?" "No. As a matter of fact I was thinking of you last night." What if he was thinking of making the opposite of the visit he had just invited? Betty went cold. If he took it into his head to pay a midnight call while the Prince was there, her silken lover would die a bloody death in her arms, and she might as well die with him. "Something the matter?" Pleske inquired. "No. No! I was only thinking, ah, do you mean, you were thinking of me while you were gone on-- on your trip? That's a-- that's a--" She tried to say it was a compliment, but couldn't stretch the truth that far, when in truth it felt like an invasion of privacy for him to think about her, and gave her a shiver of fright. Watching her all the time was bad enough. She tried to smile pleasantly, but felt the result hanging oddly on her face. "I can spare a few thoughts for a beautiful woman no matter what else I'm doing." "Oh. Well. Look, if you want to get on with these letters--" He slammed the flat of his hand down so that everything on the desk jumped. Betty jumped too. He wasn't in a rage. He had done that just to make a point and to watch her panic. He examined her and she quivered under his gaze, not daring to meet it. Her first impression of Pleske had been the accurate one. He was the enemy. He was hard and cruel, cold as ice and more than a little bit debauched. He was also a German, a Nazi of the worst kind-- belonging to the SS heart and soul, dedicated to it. She shouldn't let herself forget it. He wasn't one of her mother's kind of German, and she must not, whatever else she chose to do, start thinking of him as a person. She sat still, picked little pieces of paint off her pencil, and waited for him to say something. Pleske stood up suddenly and reached over the desk. Betty saw the movement as a black blur in her upper vision. It took an effort of will not to put up her hands. She looked up. He was handing her a letter, but before she could reach to accept it, he simply dropped it on top of her neatly-written lines of shorthand, and sat back down. "Read that to me," he ordered. It was a letter from her prince. She froze. How did you get that, had to be bit to keep from coming out, but she couldn't think of anything less dangerous to say. She said nothing, and felt her sweat spring up afresh. "What is it?" she finally said, her mouth dry. "Well, it has your name on it. It's written in English. Tell me what it says." She picked it up with hands that trembled. The familiarity of the envelope made her want to cry and press it to her lips. The letters were never dated. She would have no way to know if it had been apprehended long ago or recently. It was unsealed. "I see the censors got to it," she commented. "That would be strange since it's not addressed, and never went through the post." What a stupid thing to say. "I meant you," she corrected. She gave him a frank look. "You would make a very good censor, I think. So, who is it from?" He made a motion with his hand. "Read it to me," he said with slightly less patience. "Then we'll both know. And I should tell you, it's only because I know you that I let you see it at all. Aren't you the least bit curious?" She spread out the sheet of paper, glanced over that achingly familiar writing, then folded it over again. "It seems to be a love letter." She forced a flirtatious smile. "A secret admirer?" "Your secret admirer writes to you in English? Read it to me. Translate." "I--can't. It's--" she shook it a little in the air. "It's kind of-- ah, complimentary!" "I gathered that much, as I see the word 'love' a dozen times. No. Read it. Right now, please. Not after you revise it in your head." She paused, looked at the letter. "Betty." His tone of voice made her look up and his eyes made her chilly. "Begin now." "No, I don't--" "Spare us both the few minutes it would take for me to make you read it." She had never seen him exhibit signs of unusual brutality, because such things weren't for a lady's eyes. She spread the letter out, flattened it with her hand, then didn't touch it. "'My darling love, my Bettina--'" She stopped in mortification. "Continue," Pleske insisted ruthlessly. This letter wasn't signed, not even the Prince's signature in the loopy Morin characters that she'd grown used to seeing. That was a small miracle in itself. Timing, coincidence. So much of life depended on it. Betty said calmly, "I don't know anything about this. I don't know who wrote it." "So, naturally you're curious about it?" The word he used was natürlich. And it reminded her of the silken prince sleeping off their love in his sheltered quarters so far from her. She spared a moment to send up a prayer for his safety. She must be as clever as she knew how. It wasn't only her own safety which she had to think of. "Naturally," she said, with a smile. "So, I do have a secret admirer! How nice." "Read." She began again, in the clinical voice of a school nurse reading a confiscated love letter to the principal. "'How I long for you. I long for your skin and your sweet lips. I want to touch you. I see you every day--'" She paused, and said cleverly, "Then it must be somebody here." "It would seem so." Pleske would make a good headmaster, that emotionless dispenser of justice, contemplating the foolish passions of the children under his control with his eyelids half lowered and a patronizing look on his face. For a moment Betty was furious with him. She'd seen him with that Morenian girl. Who was he trying to fool now? Of course he was loving every minute of this, the sick bastard. He was probably loving her shame, too. What fun to see Betty Landgren squirm! Well, she would deny him that pleasure. She started at once on the letter and read quickly, tonelessly. "'Do you know how helpless I am? My hands are tied, because you seem to hate me.'" She smiled a secret smile. He would know better by now. There would be no more of that nonsense. She started again, but Pleske interrupted her. "Why do you smile? Do you know who this is?" "I have a few guesses," she said, now casting about wildly for something appropriate to say. "Such as?" She found one, and produced it triumphantly. "Perhaps the gate guard? Wahl, I think it is. He's always looking at me." "He doesn't speak English." "Well, I don't know who does and who doesn't. I don't go around looking for them, I'm comfortable in German. And I've definitely never spoken to this-- fool!" "It couldn't be anyone on the staff, could it?" he said thoughtfully. "I'd hate to think it could be any of my officers." And maybe it's the beautiful, silken-skinned, flower-scented prince you keep locked up like an animal. The prince didn't even cross Pleske's mind as a suspect. "Why hate, Sturmbannführer?" she said flirtatiously, fluttering her eyelashes. "Would I not be a catch for anyone on your staff?" He said, "I meant I'd hate to think of anybody I know writing such drivel. Although--" He paused, as if a suspect had just crossed his mind. "You mean somebody's been talking about me? How many admirers do I have? Goodness, what a flattering day this is turning out to be!" He gave her a squelching look. "But from this, it has to be somebody you hate." "I don't hate anybody here." "Someone who thinks you hate him." "Someone who's timid and unsure of himself," Betty corrected, with her nose in the air. He said gruffly, "Read." She read, and since it was her prince's voice speaking to her, it was very hard to keep the quiver of tenderness from showing through--but she tried, and thought she managed well enough. The letter said: I would give up my life for a moment with you. I would give up everything that I am. Do you think me less than a man, that I write to you this way? Shall I come in and take you? I will never. My passion would crush you like the beautiful dream you are. I want you to want me. Take my life and my soul. I'm only a man. If what I am displeases you let me become what you wish for. Aren't you free-thinking like your American father? Let your thoughts be free toward me. Love me as I love you. I know you and I want you as you are. Everything I have will be yours. I will be yours forever, or for as long as you want me. My darling, my Bettina, come to me. That was a nice letter. Some of them had given details of her anatomy and what the prince would like to do to it. Those had been nothing short of pornography, which if a censor really came across, all that would be left would be the margins. But this one was about love, the emotion. It made her tremble with awe and thankfulness, and want to run down the corridors of this stone castle and claim her silken prince in the eyes of the whole world. Yes, she loved him just as he was. And could he think that he wasn't worthy of her? What nonsense. She said coldly, for Pleske's benefit, "What nonsense! Somebody's off his rocker." She made herself scornful. "A frustrated poet, too, who writes like a schoolgirl." "Have you had other letters of this kind?" She didn't answer. Pleske, unfortunately, interpreted that correctly, and went on doubtfully. "And you don't have any guess who's writing them?" Why hadn't she done better? She was in a rosy glow thinking of the Prince, and could easily ignore this demon incarnate who could steal her happiness away before it began. "No, I have no idea," she said quickly. "You must have a suspicion. Why didn't you tell me about this before? No wonder you're always so preoccupied." What would her parents think? They were free-thinkers, but were they that free-thinking? Our daughter, Princess Bettina ben Hider --she could get used to that name. She hoped her parents could. Pleske stood up and came halfway around the desk. Betty rose automatically, with her pad and pencil still in her hand. She caught herself just before folding the letter into a square to slip into her brassiere--it wasn't, technically, her property. "Do you want to keep that?" Pleske said. "I might as well," she said casually. "It's addressed to me, and quite unforgettable! Maybe I'll find out who the shy sweetheart is, and marry him, and name our first child after you, because you were the matchmaker!" "Who gave you the other letters?" "Ah-- nobody. I would just find them lying about-- at various places." "Such as?" "Well, once in Sebastien's picture book when I opened it. One was under my dinner plate--" Those were both lies, and her imagination ran out quickly. She couldn't think of many good places for them to be. The absolute last thing she wanted was for him to find out that one of his guards was leaving them in her bedside table drawer. Pleske would ask the guards one straight question, he would get one straight answer, and her silken prince would die. She couldn't think with this Nazi bastard looking at her. It wasn't fair for him to have so much power! Who did he think he was, controlling other people's lives with a casual word or a flick of his finger? "Would you like me to assign you an escort?" She looked at him blankly. "Escort? For what?" "Just in case this is gets nasty. Someone obviously obsessed as this man is-- we're assuming it's a man, aren't we?" He looked thoughtful for a moment, as if running some of the letter's statements through his head to see if they would make sense coming from a female admirer. "We assume it's a man," Betty said firmly, which made Pleske look at her with a glance she didn't quite like. "And you're assuming he won't suddenly go crazy, do something violent? Frustrated lovers have been known to snap. No, I see, you're not afraid of that. Never mind, then." He smiled again, which Betty liked even less. "I suppose it's inevitable, since you're alone in the castle with all these men. And honestly I would approve of any one of them for you. Let me know when you find out. You will tell me, won't you?" "Of course, Sturmbannführer," she said. After a significant pause he asked, "Do they touch you?" That wasn't what she expected. "What?" "Do they affect you? Do the letters please you?" "Oh, you mean--are they getting to me?" "Yes." She shook her head. "I'm not upset. Just as you just said, it doesn't matter who it is. This certainly isn't the right way of doing things. But I'm sure he doesn't mean me any harm. If I find out who it is, I'll tell you, and you can ask him to stop." "I asked because I wanted to know." "What?" "I don't want a defense. I want to know if these letters touch your heart." She said patiently, "Even if they did it won't affect my work. I promise." He took a breath and was going to ask another question, and then perhaps he saw the futility. Even he couldn't be so arrogant as to suppose that he could intimidate her one minute and inspire soul-searching confidences the next.