He wasn’t rough with me anymore like he was in the very beginning. Now he was just enjoying his victim, intentionally slowly but still insistently. He was caressing my whole body with his free hand, sometimes pushing my legs further apart when he wanted to go even deeper. I dug my nails in his shoulders, partly because I wanted to hurt him and partly because of the growing heat inside my abdomen. He was going to do it to me again, make me completely lose control. Again. And again, just like he said.
I felt his heart strongly beating against my chest. He touched my lips with his fingers and then covered them with his mouth. He wanted it all from me, but I wasn’t going to give in and kept my mouth pressed shut.
“Kiss me, Annalise. Open your mouth, kiss me.”
“No.”
“Open it.” His voice was more demanding now. He put his thumb in between my lips and teeth trying to make me open my mouth, but I clenched my teeth biting it hard. He grinned at me but didn’t move his finger away. Instead he just increased his tempo again and started thrusting harder and harder, already knowing what effect it would have on me. I bit him even stronger, but he wouldn’t let me win. Because he was the General. Because he was the one who always wins.
When I couldn’t take it anymore I shut my eyes tight and moaned loudly, letting go of his thumb. He knew that I was all his at least for this moment and covered my mouth with his lips, forcing his tongue inside. He was everywhere now, inside my body and my mouth, hungry and demanding. This time I was kissing him back, because I liked how it felt, I hated and I loved what he was doing to me at the same time. I wanted to revenge him for what he did and make him feel as weak as I was, so I hugged him tight with my legs and started moving along with him, moving my hips to meet his every move. It was driving him crazy; I knew that he was getting ready to finish, but so was I. He was moving very fast and very hard now, almost hurting me, but the pleasure taking over my body was way stronger than pain. He even stopped kissing me and was looking me straight in the eye, with his jaw line hardened.
“Say my name.”
“No.”
“Say it!”
“NO!”
I felt my whole body exploding, but I knew that he wouldn’t stop until I did what he told me to. And I really couldn’t take his thrusting anymore.
“Say it!!!”
“Ernst!”
He crushed his mouth on mine again with a loud groan and finished with me after the last several violent thrusts. Then he just laid on me, the weight of his body hardly allowing me to breathe. I pushed my hands as hard as I could against his shoulders.
“Get off me, you dirty pig! I can’t breathe!”
He laughed but finally got off me and went to the chair where he’d taken off his uniform. I pulled the sheets up to my neck and was watching him getting dressed; I never felt angrier in my life. At the door he turned around and grinned.
“Don’t think it was a one-time deal, sugar. You’ll have to make it up to me for the lost time. From now on I’ll be fucking you at every opportunity I have. I’ll be fucking you good, long and hard. So better get used to it.”
With those words he left my bedroom and closed the door. I never hated anyone so much.
Chapter 17
“The codename of the operation is ‘Bernhard.’” Rudolf was putting my words down as I was speaking. “They’re making counterfeit money in one of the camps, Sachsenhausen. Over one hundred counterfeiters are working in a secluded barrack, all of them are inmates, most are Jewish. Now the production has reached over one million British Pound Sterling monthly, part of which goes to Italy for laundering, another part to the Swiss banks. The operation is top secret and is under total control of the RSHA. All the attempts to falsify American dollar have been unsuccessful so far.”
“That’s amazing! Your report is even more detailed than we were hoping for originally.” Ingrid couldn’t contain a smile. “I told you he’d tell you everything.”
He did tell me everything, the very next day on the plane, because it was the only thing I agreed to talk to him about. After he had nothing else to tell me, I turned back to my window and spent the rest of the flight in the same position. Heinrich wasn’t flying with us; he had sent him away the night before together with Georg for some ‘very important meeting’ with some ‘very important man’ somewhere near Warsaw. Probably there wasn’t even any man.
Our host’s wife brought me the note written by my husband the next morning, saying that he had to leave immediately, and that he’d see me in Berlin. When I asked the woman why she hadn’t brought me that note right away, at night, as soon as he gave it to her, she apologized a million times and explained that she thought that I was already sleeping.
I wasn’t yelling this time and wasn’t threatening with my resignation. I silently listened to the already familiar excuses, explanations, begging, allowed him to hug my waist when he was standing on his knees in front of me, when we were alone on the second floor; I didn’t even take away my hands when he was covering them in kisses and saying how sorry he was. This time I just quietly said that since now on our relationship must be purely professional and not more than that, otherwise I’d make sure that the whole Reich will find out how the Chief of the RSHA was treating his secretary. He agreed to it of course.
Everybody finally left me alone. The Americans were happy: their dollar was safe for now, and they had a person inside the almighty RSHA who’d tell them right away if the counterfeiters would start printing their currency. Dr. Kaltenbrunner seemed to turn permanently into the kind and polite Dr. Jekyll, and wasn’t even joking around me anymore, a fact that greatly surprised Otto Skorzeny.
“What happened, you kids broke up?” he asked me one evening while looking for chocolate in a cupboard. He already knew the anteroom like his five fingers, and kept eating and drinking everything he could find while waiting for his friend to finish working.
“We were never together.” I shrugged indifferently, without taking my eyes off the paper on my table.
“Right.” Otto finally found his chocolate. “You two are just one of those movie couples, who hate each other and can’t live without each other at the same time.”
“I could definitely live without your boss, and very happily.”
Otto smirked.
“Is that why you were risking your life to save his?”
“Did you get your chocolate? Get the hell out of my office!”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what I thought.”
Laughing, he went back to Dr. Kaltenbrunner’s office, to guard his master like a loyal dog for as long as he needs him to.
And at night I would curl up by Heinrich’s side, feel his warm hands on my back, and try not to think of those other hands that burned through my skin right to the bones, all the way to my dark soul; I was sleeping with an angel and dreaming of a daemon. But he’d never know about that.
_______________
“It’s now or never. There will never be a chance like tonight. Give me the keys from the office.”
“Heinrich, it’s too risky.”
“No, it’s not. It’s a Christmas party, everybody’s celebrating, I’ll sneak right in and out, ten minutes at the most, no one will even notice.”
I know they wouldn’t; Heinrich could move like a shadow when he wanted to. The reason why I clenched the keys for Dr. Kaltenbrunner’s office in my hand and was contemplating about putting them discreetly in my husband’s pocket was fear. Simple as that.
“Heinrich, let’s not do it.” I pleaded with him again.
“The Allies need us to point them out the position of our ammunition factories. And the maps are in your boss’s safe.”
“Right, so they can bomb them, like they bombed Berlin already! Heinrich, I don’t want them to destroy our country. I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s gone way too far. Let’s not make it worse.”
“The war is lost for Germany anyway, sweetheart,” he whispered, gently tucking the hair behind my ear.
“The best thing we can do is not to prolong its agony. The sooner everything is over, the better for everyone.”
We were standing in the little park on the territory of the Reich Main Security Office, but I didn’t even feel cold in my thin silk dress. My heart was beating way too fast. Heinrich was trying to make me look at him, but I kept looking on the snow under my feet.
“Sweetheart, give me the keys.”
“I don’t want them to bomb us again,” I hardly whispered.
It wasn’t the first time the British Air force bombed our capital, but the first significant one. The distant but overpowering roar caught the Berliners at night, in their beds, probably sitting up and freezing motionless – like I did – trying to understand what was going on. We got used to our aviation flying over the city, but this time it was too many of them, too loud, too close… And then both sirens and explosions burst through the quiet night air.
“It’s not our planes!” I turned my head to my husband, also sitting in bed next to me, and pronounced the words together with the rest of my fellow Berliners. “They’re bombing us, Heinrich. They’re right here, in Berlin.”
Then we were counting our losses. Over two thousand people dead and more than 175 thousand left homeless. We never thought it would come to this.
“We deserved it,” Heinrich said one day in his office, looking at the Führer’s portrait hanging above his table. “We brought the war to Europe, and now the war has come to our Fatherland.”
In the frosty December night every breath turned into a little sparkling cloud. I turned my head back to the entrance of the RSHA building. Light music was heard through the closed doors, people were dancing inside and drinking French champagne, absolutely oblivious to everything going on outside their safe little world. It was them who brought the war to the other people’s land, and now the innocent civilians would have to pay for their sins. I finally looked at Heinrich, and handed him the keys.
“What are you going to do if somebody comes?”
“I’ll get out through the window. As usual.”
“I’ll go with you then.”
“No, stay here.”
“No, I’ll go. If I see someone coming I’ll start talking to them, and you’ll hear me and will have more time to get out.”
Heinrich was taking too much time in Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner’s office, time that we didn’t have. I started to nervously tap my foot on the carpeted floor, silently praying for my husband to hurry up. He knows the safe combination, he should have long been out, what the hell is he doing there for so long? I looked at the anteroom door behind my back and to the hallway again. And then I froze in horror: Obergruppenführer Kaltenbrunner had just turned the corner and was heading straight in the direction of his office. My heart sank.
“Herr Obergruppenführer!” I called him out loudly, loud enough for Heinrich to hear my voice and at least try to hide the papers back in the safe and get out of there as fast as possible. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“You have?” He stopped in front of me with an inquisitive look on his face. “What can I do for you, Frau Friedmann?”
“I’ve meant to ask you for a long time, but… never had a chance.” I was feverishly thinking of what I could possibly ask him to prevent him from going into the office, and nothing was coming into my mind. “It’s a… personal request.”
He was looking me straight in the eye, and I could swear that he knew that I was waiting by his office for some other reason and was just dragging time now. Dr. Kaltenbrunner remained silent for some time as if appraising my behavior, and then finally said, “Why don’t we talk about it in my office?”
I almost broke into cold sweat. Not in the office!
I stood quiet for longer than I should have, and I saw how he started to turn his head towards the door of the anteroom, which I knew wasn’t locked. As soon as he sees it, Heinrich and I both are done for. My hands reacted faster than my brain as I caught his face and turned him to me, pressing my lips hard against his. I couldn’t let him turn away from me, I had to kiss him the best I could, to throw my body into his arms and to make him forget what he came here for in the first place; my husband’s life depended on that.
I grabbed his neck with both hands, clinging onto him as close as I could; I started covering his face in kisses, whispering that I couldn’t lie to myself anymore and that no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t forget our night together, that I needed him and wanted to be with him again.
He was kissing me back already, on my open mouth, on my neck and shoulders, leaving wet traces on my hot skin. I moved even closer to him, until there was not an inch left between our bodies, wrapped one hand around his shoulders and ran my fingers through his hair. With my other hand I was unbuttoning his uniform jacket. This time I had to give him everything he wanted, so I put his hands on my shoulders and with my fingers on top of his pulled the straps of my dress down, until the black silk fell down to my waist.
He realized finally that I came to him myself, at last, so compliant and obedient to every request, that he could do anything he wanted to me, and it awoke some primal instinct in him; he grabbed me by my hips and lifted me up in the air, until our faces were on the same level, kissed me again while I was holding onto his shoulders, and then kicked the door open to the anteroom.
He closed the door in the same manner and pressed me against it. For a second I started panicking when he pulled up my skirt and wrapped my legs around his waist; I was almost absolutely naked, hardly breathing squeezed between the wooden door and his chest, which felt even harder than the door, with his tongue so deep in my mouth, and his insatiable hands everywhere. I dug my fingers onto his golden Obergruppenführer’s shoulderboards in a last desperate attempt to push him off, but he only pressed harder into me instead.
I felt how he was undoing his pants with one hand, and closed my eyes trying to think that everything was happening not to me, but to somebody else, and very far away. I clenched my teeth when he started fucking me, not even having sex with me, but fucking me hard against the door, bruising the inside of my thigh with his holster, scratching my cheek with his – he didn’t shave today again.
“Ernst!” I finally couldn’t take that torture anymore. “You’re hurting me!”
I called him by his name for the first time. He stopped moving immediately and looked at me.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered into my mouth before kissing me again, this time more gently. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…”
He lowered me down to the floor and started softly caressing my tense belly with his fingertips, relaxing every muscle little by little, moving his tongue and lips along my neck down to my breasts until I closed my eyes and stopped resisting him. I knew how hard it was for him to control himself, but he was moving very slowly now, letting me get used to his size, trying to seem almost a normal human being before he could turn back into his animalistic self.
“Don’t be afraid of me,” he purred in my ear before slightly biting the end of it. “I want you to feel good. Just tell me what you want me to do.”
“Kiss me,” I asked him not even knowing why. He did, just the way I wanted him to, and I felt how my heart started beating faster. “And get rid of that gun, it’s scratching me.”
He grinned at me, but took the holster off and threw it on the floor.
“Since you’re in command now, why don’t you get fully in charge of the process?” He smiled at me again, and pulled me up until we both were sitting on the carpet, me on top of him.
No, I don’t want to be in charge, before I could at least pacify myself with the thought that he was doing something to me, and I was just a helpless victim. But now he turned me into the initiator, and it was so embarrassing, so shameful… I felt the heat coloring my cheeks in light blush as I started kissing him now, slowly moving my hips up and down on his big hard flesh. No, it wasn’t shameful, it was shameless, sinful, exciting and very, very arousing.
&n
bsp; I pulled his uniform jacket down his shoulders, undid his tie and first few buttons on his shirt, slightly scratching my lips of his unshaven neck and cheek. He had light scars on his neck too, and I kissed every single one, and the ones on his face, and then, I don’t even know why, I just wanted to do it really bad, I traced the tip of my tongue along the double one on his left cheek; I might as well have sent an electroshock through his body to get the same effect. He inhaled sharply and dug his fingers into my back.
“Annalise, what are you doing to me?” He breathed out, looking to meet my lips again. I was kissing him the way he liked it now, very deeply, holding the back of each other’s necks. I started liking it too now, I liked feeling power over him, he was all mine, the man who everyone else was terrified of.
I didn’t notice that I started moving faster, letting him go almost all the way inside, harder, stronger, driving both of us over the edge, until he pushed me down to the floor and attacked me again, worse than in the beginning, with all the force he had. This time I was screaming from pleasure, leaving scratches on his back and shoulders, arching my back and gasping for air, saying his name over and over again.
He wouldn’t leave me alone for another hour. We gradually made our way to his office, and were laying on the carpet next to his table now, happy and completely exhausted.
“Why did you make me wait for so long?” he finally asked me gently stroking my hair as I was resting my head on his chest.
“I didn’t know if I could do this to my husband,” I answered honestly after a pause. “I must be a horrible, horrible person.”
“No, you’re not. You’re a wonderful person,” he answered seriously. “You’re the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”
The Girl from Berlin: Gruppenführer's Mistress Page 26