“I’m sure you could also be a very good nurse.” He retreated with his walking stick to the stool by the hearth and picked up the balalaika, idly stroking its polished surface. “And if you cured me, I could go back to…to do my part for the Rodina.” All the lightness left his voice. “In truth, I should go back now. I knew, when I managed to pry that fuel tank away and carried you with the Valkyrie’s aid all the long way back here, that I was well enough now to do whatever must be done.”
“And what…” Yelena hesitated. “How did…”
“A building fell around me.” Arkady stared into the fire.
She didn’t press him, and instead asked, “Is the balalaika your own, or your grandmother’s?”
“My mother’s. The music is all I remember of her.”
So much for finding a more pleasant topic for conversation. But then he said, so quietly she could scarcely hear, “I have not played for years, but tonight I had the strangest thought that she was telling me to play the music to wake you.”
“I’m very glad she did.” Yelena struggled to find words to tell him how truly she meant that, but nothing came.
After a time he rose and walked to the bedroom door, body taut with the effort not to lean on his stick. “You sleep in my grandmother’s bed tonight. I will keep watch out here and tend the fire.”
Yelena made her way around the table. While Arkady stood at the bedroom door, she deliberately slipped out of the lovely robe, folded it neatly, and set it on the couch. Then, her back toward him, she wriggled out of the clinging undershirt. If words could not tell him of her feelings, she would find a different means.
“We will both sleep in your grandmother’s bed tonight.” She turned back and picked up the lamp. “She would call you a hero of the Rodina as well, and approve of some good nursing.”
As she brushed past him he gripped the door frame so tightly that his knuckles showed white, and not, she thought, because of his injured leg.
The lamp went on a bedside table, and Yelena sat on the bed’s feather-stuffed coverlet. “Surely,” she said, “after so much death, we can have a brief taste of life. And of comfort.” The quaver in her voice was both genuine and deliberate.
“Your injuries…” But he moved closer with no trace of a limp and stood looking down at her.
Yelena shrugged, knowing his gaze followed the lifting of her breasts. “And yours. Don’t worry, I will be gentle.”
“I will try,” Arkady said, with a gleam of amusement, “but I cannot promise such a difficult thing.”
“Begin with something easier.” She grasped his arms and pulled herself up along his body. “Let me help you take off your clothes. Fair’s fair. And I’m your nurse.”
He glanced toward the lamp; this was not so easy, and she knew it. His hidden scars, those of the body at least, must be severe enough that he feared to reveal them. The flesh, however, had already revealed by its urgent thrust against hers what she needed most to know; that part of him was intact, and so eager that her own desire intensified. She pressed in even closer.
“Please, Arkasha,” she murmured. Under her hands the buttons of his shirt gave way, one of them even flying off into the shadows. “Let me feel you. I have seen many wounds, even unto death. Yours are precious to me.”
Arkady groaned at the stroke of her fingers on his bare chest. She touched her lips to the raised, livid streak along his left side, then kissed all along it down to the point where it descended beneath his trousers, and further yet when she had managed to unfasten those and pull his underdrawers lower. “Ointment would be best,” she said, “but we must make do with what we have,” and she applied her tongue to the task.
Yelena sat back down on the bed, pulled his garments all the way down to his boots and licked gently along the cruel scar that tapered off just where the tender skin of his inner thigh met even more tender flesh. He thrust his fingers into her thick russet hair and tried to pull her head to where he clearly needed it most.
Yelena stopped just short of his goal and pulled back, the bruise on her head aching from the pressure. “Come into the bed, Arkasha, between the covers. I’ve seen now where I must be gentlest, and where I may play at will.” Her fingers traced a promise along his quite startling length before she folded down the bed’s coverlet and lay back.
“Gentleness be damned!” he growled, but threw himself down beside her and pulled the covering over them both.
Yelena was on him at once, straddling his body while his hands moved over hers in a storm of stroking and pressing and tormenting. Their mouths clung and moved against each other, each pressure speaking more than any words, until the need for even sharper sensation made her pull free. Her aching breasts and nipples claimed the attentions of his lips and tongue and teeth, and her mouth was now free to let out sighs and moans and inarticulate pleas. Meanwhile he explored her tender folds and swellings until she could bear the protracted pleasure no longer and settled herself firmly onto his searching cock. By stages she raised up and slid down as he thrust from beneath until she had taken him in completely. Their movements became a dance of lust, a give and take with no room for thought, only for need, and more need, and at last a pulsing demand that burst into a blaze of fulfillment.
When their cries diminished, Yelena thought she heard the throb of a Po-2 engine, familiar as her own heartbeat, pass by overhead on a bombing mission. While sleep claimed her, held close in Arkady’s arms, she wondered fuzzily which of her friends had been piloting the plane and whether even there in the sky they had heard her cry out.
The sun was high when Yelena woke. The bed beside her was empty, and a skirt and blouse in an old-fashioned style were laid out on a chair, along with a wool shawl and shabby boots such as a farmwoman would wear. More things Arkady’s grandmother had left behind. Her handgun lay on top of the pile. She dressed quickly in spite of stiffness, some of which was really quite pleasurable, and went out into the main room, her gun in the skirt’s capacious pocket.
Arkady stood by the window that looked out over the valley. Beside him was no walking stick, but a long rifle of antique design.
Yelena went to him and leaned as naturally into the quick pressure of his arm around her waist as if they had always been together. “You have a gun,” she commented unnecessarily.
“An old one. No wolf has come down from the mountains after our sheep for many years, but one never knows.” He manipulated the rifle, checking its parts, making adjustments, then raised and sighted along it. Merely an exercise, but even to Yelena it was clear that his skill with guns went far beyond that of an ordinary farmer, or even foot soldier.
He saw her expression. “I was on the shooting team at the Academy of Agriculture when I studied there.”
She was not deceived into taking that as the whole story. “And where were you when the building fell around you?”
There could be no more secrets between them. “In Kiev,” he said. “And now there is need of me in Stalingrad. I cannot run, but I can still shoot.”
A sharpshooter, sniper, picking off selected targets on city streets, through windows, in blasted buildings as shells landed around them, and a target himself. If only they could run away together!
But her own duty called as firmly as his. “I too have a gun,” she said. “And now they are coming.” She could see through the window where a German motorcar had emerged from a wooded area a mile away and was making its slow bumpy way along the lane.
“Shooting a man face-to-face is a different thing from dropping bombs. Especially in your dreams.”
“I can do it.” Yelena hoped she spoke the truth.
“You may need to, but not here. Leave right now. Our troops are directly to the east, judging by the planes overhead last night. I will persuade these invaders that you were never here.”
They both knew that there was no time for her to travel across the open fields and out of sight behind the next ridge. His plan was to kill every German in the car, sacrificin
g his own life if necessary, to give her a chance to get away.
“You will never persuade anyone with a nose that there was no woman in your bed last night. And why should your new bride not be with you? Can you play the simple sheepherder? If after all it comes to killing, two guns are better than one.”
By now there could be no other choice. Arkady smoothed her hair over the bruise on her temple, scarcely swollen now, kissed her deeply, then went outside. When the motorcar lurched to a stop, Arkady waited, leaning heavily on his walking stick. “You have frightened my sheep!” he called in a querulous voice as soon as the interpreter opened his door, and indeed five sheep could be seen running off on the grassy hillside.
Four uniformed Germans emerged, barking questions faster than the interpreter, an ethnic German born in Russia, could handle. At last Arkady shrugged and let them file past into the house. Yelena stood stirring a pot on the stove and looking very young and frightened.
“They search for the crew of the plane that crashed down below.” He came to stand beside her, moving with an exaggerated limp.
“Was it their plane?” she asked the interpreter timidly. “I only returned yesterday, and he told me of it.”
“You should have obeyed me and stayed in the north with your mother,” Arkady growled at her. “I told you it was too dangerous here!”
Yelena dared to show a flash of spirit. “You were glad enough that I was not with my mother last night!” She mustered a convincing blush as she looked around at the others. One of the younger Germans laughed and muttered to his comrade, who snickered and shook his head. Yelena knew little of the German language, but was quite sure she heard the word Nachthexen. Night Witches. From the way the soldiers looked her over, she was very nearly sure that they had judged her too pretty to be a witch. Their officer watched her keenly with a different sort of assessment.
“And if I am not here,” she went on, “who will sew on your buttons? See what a state you get into without me!” Arkady wore the shirt from the night before, when she had sent a button flying in her haste to strip him. “Who will make cheese from the sheep’s milk? And rub ointment on your scars?”
It was Arkady’s turn to duck his head and look embarrassed. “Tell them to look around as they please,” he muttered to the interpreter. “Women pilots, did you say? If you find any, take them away! One woman is trouble enough.”
More laughter, followed by a thorough search of the house and outbuildings. One young soldier emerged from the bedroom carrying the embroidered wedding nightrobe, and whispered a sly comment to his friend, but at last the group went on to search elsewhere. Yelena knew by the officer’s backward glance that they would still be watched from time to time.
“Hold me,” she begged Arkady, who pulled her so close that her voice was muffled against his shoulder. “They will spy on us, I’m sure.”
“And what should they see but a man whose wife cannot bear to stay away from him?”
She swatted at his firm buttocks, then pulled away. “A virtuous farmer’s wife is what they should see at this time of day.” So she checked the henhouse for eggs, scrubbed such accumulated laundry as there was and hung it out to dry, and even took the bit of worn carpet from beside the bed outdoors to beat the dust from it. By dusk, when they had eaten soup of her making and the last of the rye bread toasted with cheese, they were so ready for the best part of this game-that-was-no-game that Arkady lost two more buttons from his shirt, and the gathered yoke of Yelena’s blouse would need considerable repair.
“Surely a new bride would be submissive to her lord and master,” Arkady teased as they fell together onto the bed.
“Of course.” Yelena rolled onto her back. “And besides, it’s your turn to be on top. So I can use my hands.” Which she did, running her fingers over every delicious part of him she could reach, probing between their bodies to find the most rewarding bits and discovering which sorts of touch, and where, could drive his gasps and moans to the highest pitch. When finally he pounded into her with fierce intensity and she raised her hips upward to meet his thrusts, there was no up or down, top or bottom, only shared need mounting higher and higher until it soared past all thought into release.
The drone of planes overhead seemed at first an extension of their heavy breathing. When the pounding of Yelena’s heart subsided, she realized suddenly what she was hearing. “Listen!” she said against Arkady’s sweaty neck, and raised her head. “They are flying in force to raid the German lines. So many close together! Usually we go in, two or three at a time, at five-minute intervals.”
He listened, and after a while rose, went into the main room and opened the window. Yelena joined him with a blanket to wrap around them as they listened to the distant thunder of bombs.
“So many! And look, such fire and smoke!”
“You wish you were with them,” Arkady said.
“Of course! Yet I am infinitely grateful that the choice is not mine to make.”
They clung together watching until they could stand no longer, then lay entwined in the bed, unable to sleep, though the sound of motorcycles outside the door near dawn startled Yelena so sharply that she knew she must have been dozing. Arkady was out of bed with his rifle ready before she had tossed aside the blankets.
“Yelena!” Someone pounded at the door. “Yelena, come quickly!” It was Yevgeniya, with a young Russian soldier at her back.
Arkady lowered his gun. Yelena reached him swiftly, again with a blanket to cover their nakedness, and Yevgeniya flashed a broad grin.
“The Germans are falling back!” She could scarcely get the words out fast enough. “We hit the fuel depot at Armavir, and some aircraft as well. Our troops are advancing, only twenty miles away now, and we will meet them halfway.”
“Arkady comes too.” Yelena disregarded the soldier’s gawking and rushed naked into the bedroom to find her clothing.
“Just as well I brought two motorbikes, then,” Yevgeniya said cheerfully.
Arkady, as soon as he was dressed, scrawled a note to leave on the table. “My neighbor down the hill brings fresh bread every week, and this is the day. She will see to the care of the sheep and hens.”
In seconds, it seemed, they were off, two to a motorcycle. Off to more bombing raids, to the ruined buildings of Stalingrad, to three more years of war; to letters written and sent, and many more days without, and weeks of no news culminating in rushed visits in hospitals. But the day did come at last when Yelena and Arkady climbed the lane to the hillside farm, crossed the threshold and stood together at last where they belonged; and, though no one else was there, both heard far away the achingly sweet music of a balalaika.
SHATTERED
Shanna Germain
While he was gone, I thought about divorcing him. It wouldn’t be unheard of. It was happening all over. All my friends whose husbands had gone off to war, they’d found someone on the side. Someone cute and reliable and most important, nearby. Close enough that you could smile at them in the grocery store line. Close enough that they could offer to bag your groceries or take you to dinner. Close enough that you could touch them across a table, across a plate, across the space of the front seat of their car, their fingers and wrists, their hair, the pointy edges of their elbows. Close enough that you could remember the way a collar lies buttoned against a throat, the way it opens under your fingertips like the flap of a letter, holding the promise of joy or grief. Close enough that the morning bed would hold a real body, a physical presence of heat and sleep and thereness.
In those days, that alone was enough of a reason for a divorce, because someone wasn’t there and someone else was.
I didn’t do that. I didn’t do the grocery store. Or the dinner. Or the feel of someone in my bed. Don’t think I’m some saint, some holier-than-thou. There was none of that.
The truth of it is that men asked me and I was afraid. The truth is that other men tried to touch me and still I loved him. And as time went on, I became afraid that th
e only reason I loved my husband so much was because he had not yet come back to me.
Now that he has come back, he goes to meetings. Places with folding chairs and bare lightbulbs, places where the coffee runs free, the cigarette smoke slinks into the fiber of sweaters, the creases of jeans, the kinks of pubic hair.
He talks about the war, and what it meant and what it was like. He sits there in his chair in the back, his palms running over and over on his knees the way he does now. He waits until last to talk. He has to be pushed into it by the dark-haired woman who runs the meetings. In the end, he slurps his coffee, clears his throat, tells this story:
“I wasn’t supposed to go ahead of the rest of them. I was supposed to wait outside. But I was impatient and stupid, and there was an explosive.…”
Or maybe he doesn’t talk at all. I don’t know. I don’t go to the meetings. I’m not allowed. And he’s never talked to me about the war. I make it up in my head, what the horrors were, what the jokes were, how they survived, just enough pieces of them left to glue together and ship back home. What do I know of what he went through?
What I do know is that he comes home to me after the meetings, smelling of fake creamer and words that have been exhaled like stale smoke and of the despair that lingers in the folds of metal chairs.
What I do know is that he comes home and he needs something to do with his fingers. They itch. He chews them sometimes while he watches TV, nibbles roughly on the edges of them as if to eradicate something they remember. Or to remember something they forgot. He likes to open nuts, hard-shelled. Walnuts, mostly. Crack. Crunch. Things breaking into pieces.
Lying in bed, I wait and I wait and I wait. Out in the living room, he breaks his nuts, crackles his knuckles, bites his fingers. I wait some more. Sometimes I fall asleep, but I try not to. I want to be ready for him.
Duty and Desire: Military Erotic Romance Page 3
