Hans has risen before she has. She sits up straight in bed and gathers the dressing robe hung over the bed post to her right, she intends on wrapping it around her body this cold morning as silently as possible in order to not wake him (and thus converse with him) but when she turns her head he is no longer beside her.
His share of the sheets and coverlet is tucked over his pillow. When she peeks out the window she is surprised to see that the clouds have not fully revealed the sun just yet and the skies are still painted dusky pink and cool grey.
Years ago, when she shared a bed with her husband, she knew him to be an early riser as a military man often was, at least the dedicated serviceman. But he is 'retired' now and she fully expected him to be enjoying his mornings in bed, perhaps with a partner, perhaps that partner would be Darcy, or Annabelle, or Mary or some other young, impressionable woman of this small neighbourhood.
She opens the drapes and turns back to flip the rest of the covers over the pillows, smoothing the coverlet over the mattress in quick open-palmed motions.
It hardly matters to her what proclivities her husband invests in.
Besides, she doubts his choice of female to subjegate to his carnal attentions would be Darcy. The loud mouthed blond is attractive, most certainly, but after one breif meeting she knows the American pin-up to be the town gossip and therfore the most strategical of neighbours for Hans to divulge his stories of war heroism and his impending (awaiting with bated-breath) reunion with his beloved German wife.
Star-crossed lovers forced apart by the Third Reich, declarations of love and the promise of the American dream. Oh she is certain without a doubt that he has sewn all of these seeds and Darcy has harvested them.
She snorts in irriation as she slouches gracelessly onto the vanity stool, opposite the bed with the sturdy iron frame. Beginning at her hairline she begins to braid her hair back tightly, all the way down her crown and scalp and continuing at the base of her neck to the tips. The style is practical and tidy for the most part and she feels a certain sense of order when it is woven together without bunching.
Her hair has grown long but she does not wear it long, she wears it tucked away and it suits her needs. She cannot stand the feeling of the dead, dark strands touching at her face and tickling her cheeks and forehead. It is too vulnerable.
She stands from the vanity after a quick admiration of her dexterity and steps into the en suite bathroom. It does not have a tub like the main, but a showerhead, toilet and sink. She sniffs around for soap and finds a foiled bar. She washes her face in quick moments and pats her skin dry with a towel that is still damp on the drying rack.
She pauses and inhales. It smells of him. She looks to the shower basin and sees the droplets of water still fresh and she folds the towel back onto the rack. She looks at her face in the mirror. Dark eyes, dark brows, dark beauty marks: one on her right cheek, two more in close alignment on her left jaw under her ear. She has had a light spattering of brown freckles over her cheeks and nose since she was a child, nothing would ever diminish them.
She slips out of the bedroom, steps through the swinging door and in to the kitchen. She hears the wireless and is right in assuming Hans to be there already. He is sitting with his back to the corridor entryway, the morning gazette unfolded in his hands. He does not turn his head, who else would she be?
She follows the smell of coffee beans and pours herself some of the bitter juice from the warm decanter over the stove. She is startled to realize she has reached towards the cupboard above the stove and taken in to her hand a china coffee glass. She is on auto-pilot, she is comfortable here in his house and this disturbs her.
When she walks to the table and takes a seat opposite him he does not look up from his paper, but he does murmer a morning salute. She responds by slirping at her coffee and taking a handful of the ripe strawberries that are set in the center of the table. She holds them in her lap, forgoing the round serving dishes and chews and sucks on them relatively silently. She dabs her fingers clean on the edge of her mouth and swips her hands over her lap, holding them in place over her crossed knee.
"I need some clothes, Hans. For the duration of my stay." she adds. Her bare foot is swinging from where it dangles higher then the other at her crossed position and she is watching him with raised brows as she runs her tongue over her teeth, still tasting the sweetness of her breakfeast.
He folds the paper in quarters and sets it beside him. He responds as he does so, his voice carrying over the sliding of his hands along the waxy print.
"Yes. I'm aware of that." he smiles.
"I'm surprised I did not have a trousseau awaiting me, what with all your other preparations." her voice carries an unmistakable venom.
"Preparations?" he frowns.
She sips her coffee, swallows hard and she scalds her tongue.
"Darcy seems to be quite the biographist on you, more specifcally you and I." she elaborates through a clicking jaw.
Hans chuckles. "I'll admit, I have told her much of you."
"Too much, most likely." she leans forward to look him squarly in the eye. She refuses to regret doing so, as she has in past..conversations.
He regards her with a quirk to his lips and a hardening of his eyes.
"No." he murmers, his voice is tender and it makes her stomach tighten.
"Never too much, darling." he continues.
She snorts for the second time that morning.
"I'm sure." and it is all she can respond with and she throws herself back against her seat like a petulent child and he is watching her with expectancy. He says nothing else, but continues to wait for her to speak. She is seething, and so quickly! She has been conversing with him less than a minute and her heart is in her eardrums. She swallows hard and her tongue is uncomfortable and heavy in her mouth. From the coffee, of course.
"I will need some day slacks to work in. There are parts of that garden that are wilting. I may as well tend to it while I am here, I do not appreicate eye sores." she says quietly as she crosses her arms.
"The American government purchased this property when I told them of my wife's hobby in Botany." he smiles.
She scrapes her front teeth over her tongue and her eyes blink back at him stupidly. He is aware she is a certified Botanist.
"How considerate of them. The government should have no trouble in hiring you a gardener to tend to the soils once I leave-..here." she intends to say leave you but her courage fails her once again.
She stands from her seat and begins to march-
But he is extending his arms and he has snatched her into his lap, one hand clamping around her right buttock, the other around her ribs. Her breasts break her fall, cushioning against his collarbones and she yelps and swats at his hands. But as she twists and pivots and she falls further parallel to the floor and her left side is entirely across his lap with her feet extended, pointing towards the tile. Her bare soles make rubbery sounds as they fail to find purchase.
He has slipped his arm between her shoulder and her head with her cheek resting on the crook of his elbow and he smiles down at her almost reverently. Her left hand is useless against him as her fingertips now graze the tiled floor, the inside of her arm dangling beside his chair. She is enraged and reaches her untrapped hand to hit at him but he catches her wrist and presses his lips to her palm, humming in pleasure.
"What the hell are you doing, Hans?" she tries to jerk her wrist away but he holds fast.
"Thanking you, Greta." he looks mildly offended, as if she should realize the significance of his sudden assault on her person.
"For what?" she chokes out. She is still pulling her wrist and he is still holding her tightly. Her face turns into his chest and her lips graze his nipple and she can feel it harden with her hot breath.
She suddenly tightens her buttocks and tries to angle herself up and away from his groin, just in case.
"First I should apolgoise for waking you from your sleep last night. I know your journey has been a difficult one and to be roused when you only just settled was no doubt startling for you."
She stares at him and does not reply. He does not need her to, he is already speaking again.
"And then you so gently cared for me, how could a husband not thank his wife?" he grins.
She sputters.
"You..you were asleep!" she flushes to her hairline.
He looks as if he is contemplating his words.
"Yes, and no. Your ministrations touched my heart, and I didn't wish to startle you..or for your tending to cease. I have a weakness for nurses." he is enjoying himself far too much.
She goes still and narrows her eyes at him.
"Did the nurses have such a soft spot for you when they changed the bandages on your forehead?" she whispers.
He flashes the frown she desires, but his eyes absolutely shimmer in delighted fury.
"Oh Greta. Very good. Very good, indeed." he breathes.
And he bends down and pushes his tongue past her lips and her fist pounds at his chest, hard enough that surely she must be bruising him but he growls and holds her tighter to him, his teeth biting at her lips and he is rocking his hips against the flesh of her thigh.
His hand pinches around her jaw, opening her mouth to him and she gasps for air and she is allowed one inhale of rushing oxygen before she is again covered by warmth, and wetness, and cedar, and clover, and strawberries, and coffee.
She will think back to this morning for years to come, the morning that she enabled her own debasement. She will try to rationalize herself, as she always does.
That afternoon as she works on hands and knees over the sagging tulips in the garden, she pulls on the stiff muscles lining the insides of her thighs and the backs of her calves as she rocks back and forth with each thrust of her shovel. She draws her knees tighter together as she leans on one hand, using the other to churn the soil with her own fingertips.
She sits back on her heels a moment as the strain on her back becomes too great and groans softly. She is sore between her thighs and she exhales roughly then and lurches herself forward once more, churning and digging and patting and smoothing and indenting and deepening and curving and ribbing. It is not enough, it will never be enough and her sore body mocks her efforts.
That evening she sits at the kitchen table with him and they speak of the beginning war trials in Germany over soup and sandwiches. She has been in the garden since the afternoon and where he has been she does not know, nor does she ask. She has awoken alone twice today.
She washes the dishes in the sink and dries them with the rag over her shoulder. The wireless is on and a woman sings in english and she recognizes the tune as a german redux. She laughs out loud and begins to hum along, singing softly in the language in which the chorus was originally written.
She fills the bath in the main bathroom and washes herself diligently. She scrubs at her loose hair with her nails in tight circles until she feels nothing but smooth texture under her fingertips. She runs the cloth inside her ears and in between her toes. She takes the straight-edge razor, lathers some creme and carefully shaves the areas in which stubble has sprouted. She hears Hans' measured footsteps falling down the corridor towards her and freezes in her motion, her foot dangling over the mouth of the tub.
But the footsteps turn and go presumably into the strategical master bedroom and after a moment she resumes her bathing.
She too walks into the bedroom not long after him. Her hair is damp still and slung over her shoulder and the dressing gown is cool against her flushed skin. She strolls to the vanity as if she were at perfect ease but her knees are watery. He is sitting up in bed, chest bare and his eyes remain on the book before him. Again, with An American Tragedy.
"Tomorrow maybe, or even the day after, we will see about some clothes in town?" she murmers. She is running a brush through the ends of her hair, quickly removing the tangles. She watches him through the vanity mirror and he does not look up from his book.
"Yes." he agrees.
She nods and sets the brush down on the table. When she stands and removes her dressing gown he is marking his page and putting the book on the side table. He turns off his lamp as she slings the silk gown over her side of the bed post, the rest of her is clad in a starched sleevless nightgown, another of the limited clothing choices that had been given to her to travel with.
When she slips under the sheet and coverlet he immediately comes closer to her. She allows him to kiss her (again), to press his mouth and tongue to her neck (again), to bite down on her breasts (again).
And this time she is absolutely participating in her debasement because her hands are in his hair and her calves are around his back and then she is raising above him, and her hands sweat as they grip the iron frame and she shows him what she wants and how he is to give it to her.
She cannot truly say that she has missed him, but she has missed feeling and pleasure.
She can be like him. She will be like him. She will take her uses and she will break his heart (unlikely) and she will be free of him.
She is doing a service to herself for once because she need not bother with courting a lover or with instructing a young man on how to please a woman. How to please her.
Hans Landa already knows.
This (not the beating of his rapid heart beat or french murmerings) is what comforts her into a deep sleep.
This time, both are undisturbed until dawn.
...
Again, I never grammar check when I first upload. I am too eager so, apologies.
Wasn't sure if I wanted to go uber-descriptive on the sexy times the first time around. How do we feel about it? Tell me if you want :)
