He flushed and took the coffee. It was both real and excellent. “Did you steal my uniform?”
“It was not a difficult achievement. You were sleeping so soundly I probably could have shaved your head and painted your body green without your noticing. I cleaned your uniform with a sponge and pressed it with an iron. You may put it on after you shower.”
On top of the coffee, the thought of a shower was an outstanding idea. But then he realized something. “Natalie, I’ve been here all night. What will your neighbors think?”
“Thank you, brave soldier, for being worried about my reputation, but, even if someone did see you, I don’t particularly care. In case you haven’t noticed, I am not a child and my life is my own.”
He mulled that over and had a second cup of coffee along with some toast that had been lathered with margarine. Coffee she could get, but not butter.
She gave him a robe. “In case you’re curious, it belonged to an old and very dear friend of mine. He was killed in a battle in the Pacific. Midway. Now go take your shower. Leave your filthy underwear outside the door and I’ll clean them as well.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Steve said.
“I know.” Natalie smiled.
The shower was a luxury and he wallowed in it. After drying, he put the robe on again, absurdly conscious that he had nothing on underneath.
In the living room, Natalie was still in her own robe. “My, my, don’t you look refreshed.”
He laughed. “I do feel like a new man.”
“When do you have to report back?”
“Not until tomorrow. General Marshall and the war will just have to go on without me.”
“I’m glad,” she said, moving so that she stood directly in front of him. Barefoot, she came a little taller than his shoulder. She reached out and caressed his cheek with her hand. “You really are a gentle, sensitive, intelligent man, Steven Burke, and you’re all mine until tomorrow.”
The touch of her finger on his face was electric and he felt himself immediately aroused. She slid her slender body up to him and kissed him softly on the lips, gently pressing her belly and hips against him.
“Now it’s your turn to kiss me,” she said, and he complied. He tried to keep his kiss as soft as hers was, but he was having difficulty breathing. The two of them pressed tightly against each other while she responded and their kisses grew more fervent.
They separated and he became aware that his robe had parted and was open. Natalie looked down and smiled. Then she slid hers off her shoulders, and let it fall on the floor, standing naked before him. He gasped at her beauty. She had firm, full breasts, a slightly curved but still fairly flat belly, gently rounded hips, and the legs of a dancer. Natalie walked behind him and slid his robe down his back. Hand in hand they went into her room, where they fell on her bed and made love with a degree of pent-up urgency that shocked him.
As they lay beside each other, temporarily sated, she ran her finger down his chest and smiled. “Steven, you are so skinny. Doesn’t anyone feed you?”
He chuckled quietly. “And you, Natalie, are so lovely.” He could scarcely imagine this was actually happening to him. Natalie Holt was the most beautiful woman in the world. “I’m afraid I’m going to wake up and you’ll be gone.”
Natalie rolled over on his chest so that she was looking directly at him. “Don’t worry about it. You’re not going anyplace and neither am I.” She laid her head on his chest. “Did anyone tell you I was cursed?”
“No,” he answered, puzzled.
“Yes. Ever since I was twelve, I became aware of the effect I had on men. I could look in a mirror and see that I was what men think of as beautiful. Unfortunately, I also had a brain and that was my curse. Men-and women too-thought of me as a lovely ornament, only to be looked at, and not as an intellect to be taken seriously. I had to do twice as well in school and often I was accused of cheating or trading sex for a good grade. Very few people could accept the fact that I could succeed on my own.”
She raised her head again and looked at him in wonder, almost shyly. “Everyone wanted to touch my breasts and not my mind, while you, dear Steven, wanted to do both. First, however, you did actually touch my mind by respecting my thoughts and opinions, and doing it so sincerely and so gently. That’s when I started to fall in love with you.”
She stopped talking and began to caress his manhood while kissing his chest. He felt himself stiffen again and, this time, didn’t care if the world knew.
“Steven,” she purred, “you are one in a million and I’ve waited a long time for someone like you.” She guided him back on top of her and into her, wrapping her legs tightly about him. She smiled, biting her lower lip. He was aware of a bead of sweat on her forehead as she moved her hips in response to his thrusts. She took a deep breath.
“Do you love me, Steven?”
“Yes,” he gasped.
“Now that I’ve found you, I have no intention of letting you go. When you go to Europe you will always remember who is waiting here for you, won’t you?”
“Yes,” Steve answered as their bodies moved in primal tune with each other. “Yes, yes, yes, yes!”
Tony the Toad squatted alone in the living room of a little house outside the Spandau district of Berlin. He didn’t count the two corpses upstairs in the main bedroom. They didn’t stink too badly yet. For a little while, he had been puzzled, since they didn’t show any signs of wounds. Then it dawned on him-they had taken poison. They’d either been Nazi bigwigs who couldn’t deal with the fall of Hitler and the Third Reich, or they were ordinary Germans who saw themselves dying in agony at the hand of the Russians.
Either way, he didn’t give a shit. They had died and left him with a house that wasn’t too badly damaged, and a storage room full of food they had probably hoarded while other loyal Germans went hungry. Fuck ’em, he thought. They probably deserved to die. Even if they didn’t, it didn’t make a helluva lot of difference.
Tony shifted his rifle to a more comfortable position and again looked out the window for a sign of the returning American army. As usual he saw nothing, only the lengthening of shadows that preceded the coming night. There was no sign of the Russians, either, which somewhat cheered him.
Count your blessings, he told himself. He was alive and unhurt. He was also safe and had a roof over his head. There was several weeks’ worth of food in the basement, maybe more, and he had a rifle with some ammunition. It could have been a lot worse.
Tony stiffened as he heard a noise. It was a soft and gentle scratching. A cat? Possibly. A dog? He didn’t think so. He quietly slipped off the safety on his weapon.
The sound of a window opening in the next room sent a chill down his spine. Should he run? Should he fight? If intruders were inside, they were probably outside the house as well, and, besides, where could he run to? He hunched over and walked to the doorway, took a deep breath, and lunged in, his rifle at the ready.
A small, thin, ragged man sat on the floor while another dangled awkwardly from the window, his head and chest inside the room and the remainder of his body still outside. They were both dirty and emaciated, and his first impression was that of human rodents. They were wearing what he immediately realized was some kind of prison uniform. The second man slid onto the floor and they both raised their hands stiffly in surrender and glared at him and his rifle in feral anger. Tony had never seen humans who looked so much like tortured animals.
For what seemed an eternity they stared at each other. Finally, the first man inside muttered something at him that Tony didn’t understand but thought was German. The man then followed in what Tony took to be French. Perplexed, Tony asked if either man spoke English.
The man who had just come through the window responded, showing a mouth full of rotten teeth as he looked down the barrel of the menacing rifle. “I do,” he said with a heavy accent that Tony didn’t recognize.