Nightingale (4 page)

“My flat. The building has no concierge.”

Von Starck nodded again. “If that will not create complications for you.”

“I’m discreet. I don’t . . .” He’d never brought a man home. There had been nobody really but Maurice, and Maurice had the clubs and the villa, which provided a lot of protection. He’d been tempted a few times, but had been too nervous to take the last few steps. Things were easier when they stayed in Montmartre, in that world of entertainers and colorful lights and music. Once he left that world behind, though, he reverted to the standards he’d been taught —those were a lot less shameless.

“What about your driver?”

“He will keep his mouth shut,” von Starck said without the hint of doubt.

“Well then.” Yves sighed and realized it sounded almost like a nervous giggle. “I’d like to go home.”

Von Starck nodded and drew away, walking at his side back to the car like they’d never spoken about anything private, like they weren’t just headed for a clandestine meeting that could ruin them both.

Chapter 7

The way the officer filled up his kitchen made Yves nervous. In the grand surroundings of the Palace and
Madame
Julia’s, the German seemed to be put together in correct proportion, but in his kitchen von Starck’s solid, immovable quality became almost oppressive. He wasn’t a giant by any means, just well built, broad-shouldered, and with a natural quality of authority that seemed to cast his shadow further and deeper and darker.

Yves kept his hands busy making coffee, but he cast glances at the German every now and then.

Von Starck seemed content to just stand there, taking in his surroundings, possibly thinking of them as a battlefield about to be conquered. The natives, of course, offered no resistance.

“I could arrange you a nicer flat,” von Starck said.

“I’m afraid the kind of lodgings
Madame
Julia is renting are quite out of my budget.” Yves smiled. “Besides, those places would have a concierge.”

“True.” Von Starck took his hat off and stepped closer, but if felt as though the distance between them widened. The sudden intimacy of the dark street hadn’t survived the smaller surroundings, like things that could be murmured into the night couldn’t be said aloud in a lit kitchen.

Yves set the coffee mugs on the table and stretched out his hand. After a moment’s hesitation, von Starck gave him his hat and coat.

Gray, gray, and more gray. The most striking feature on the uniform was a cruciform medal in black, surrounded by silver, that rested near the hollow of von Starck’s throat.

Yves took the coat and hat into the guest room, where he hung them from the hook behind the door. They would be safer there in case his sister showed up. What a nightmare that would be.

When he returned to the kitchen, von Starck was sitting at the table. He’d taken his gloves off, and was resting one scarred palm against the smooth side of the mug.

“Will you be all right?” Yves asked and sat down on the other side of the table.

“Don’t worry about me. I have powerful friends.”

Yves wasn’t sure if that reassured or worried him more. “It’s just . . . things I heard.”

“They might just as well be correct, considering.” Von Starck shrugged. “But things are hard to prove. Some people are hard to prosecute.”

“But they would?”

“They would have to take it to my superior. And my superior would at the very least leave me the option of taking the honorable way out.”

Good God
. Yves did, fully, understand that this man would rather put a pistol to his own temple than be dishonored. Suddenly, his own worries seemed small, and what was about to happen enormous and pathetic and sad.

“I am what you call an
ancien combattant
, or
alter Frontkämpfer
in German. There is a little respect in it, but even if someone is tempted to challenge my rank, they will respect this.” Von Starck reached up and touched the medal at his throat. “The Iron Cross.”

“Where did you win this?”

“Passchendaele.” Von Starck shook his head. His features betrayed a sudden tension that seemed to beg Yves not to ask further. “You were barely alive then.”

“That’s the year I was born. 1917.”

Von Starck smiled. “Compared to that . . . all this, everything that came after, has been child’s play. This time at least, there are no trenches.”

Yves nodded. He had no desire to fight, had never wanted to die for anything, least of all a country or a leader. He didn’t spot any of that desire in von Starck, either. Yet, the German had been there, fought under conditions he could barely imagine. “It was quick here. What I saw. It was nothing like yours.”

Von Starck reached over the table and touched Yves’s hand. “Still disturbing.”

Yves laughed, half disbelieving. “Yes. We didn’t think it would happen. For months. All we did was play at being soldiers, and then it did happen, and we didn’t know whether to fight or run. And if to run, where. But we were shelled and attacked by planes all the same.”

He’d never told the tale, because there was nothing in there people wanted to hear. Von Starck, though, was different. His face didn’t close down, his eyes didn’t turn away. “Maybe . . . the strangest part was how we were suddenly amidst all the refugees fleeing south. People looked at us as if they were expecting help, but we didn’t . . . couldn’t.” Yves shook his head, patted his shirt for cigarettes, found the packet, and pulled it free. “What good’s a soldier if he can’t protect women and children?” He lit a cigarette for von Starck, then one for himself. “We stayed in that barn. The women were frantic. There were three young girls, and . . . it wasn’t violent or anything; they just said it was better than being raped by the Germans. That way the Germans would only get the leftovers. That’s exactly what they said. Can you believe it? Girls of what, fifteen, sixteen?”

Von Starck inhaled and watched him, but didn’t judge and didn’t bristle at the implication. “There are few things I don’t believe about people these days.”

They smoked in silence for a while, and Yves tried to forget the faces of the girls who’d been turned into women so they wouldn’t be turned into victims.

“How come you’re in Paris and not a prisoner-of-war camp, if I may ask?” Von Starck measured him carefully, maybe half-expecting Yves to say he was a deserter living in freedom on forged papers while his comrades languished.

“I’d been in one barely six months when the Kommandant had me summoned. There’d been a rumor among the prisoners that a lady in a French automobile had arrived in camp. But it ended up not being a film star or somebody’s mistress. It was my mother. When I entered the office, she and the Kommandant were trading stories about before the war. It turns out he had heard her sing in Vienna and had been a devoted fan ever since. My mother convinced him that I was ‘the only solace of her old age’ or some such, and he offered up my release for ‘medical and humanitarian reasons’ in return for an autograph and being allowed to kiss her hand. She was gracious enough to accept.” Yves shook his head. “On the way back, she called him a ‘civilized human being.’ I guess he was. I don’t know.”

He fell silent. This was the first time he’d told anyone. On the drive back, he couldn’t decide which emotion was stronger—relief to be free, or embarrassment that he enjoyed freedom only because of the sway his mother held over an enemy. That his life had become something akin to flowers placed at the feet of an admired artist.

More insidiously than that, being penned in like an animal had taught him that it was safest to be invisible. Do as he was told. Any and all disobedience would be—and was— punished to the fullest.

“This is the most you’ve spoken,” von Starck said, easing him out of the silence.

Yves glanced at him over the cigarette. “That man onstage—that’s not me. I’ve had that before, people getting close because they want a joker, somebody who distracts them and makes them laugh, but no. I am smaller than life.”

Von Starck’s eyebrows pulled together in a frown, thoughtful or disapproving, but before Yves could really understand what was behind it, von Starck had stood and moved around the table. The man’s strong hand came up to rest against the side of Yves’s neck, thumb under his chin.

Yves shivered at the intensity in the blue eyes, just the proximity of him. By all rights, this man shouldn’t take up space the way he did, like he had branches and roots that went a thousand meters deep.

Von Starck was searching for something in his face, eyes flicking left to right and back very fast, then his breath touched Yves’s skin, and then his lips.

Yves jolted with the sensation of a kiss that was as tentative, as polite, as the whole man.
No use denying it now,
he thought, all doubts turned into dust. He barely had time to respond before von Starck straightened, then stood, offering Yves a hand. Yves took it and stood, too, only to be kissed again, with von Starck’s other hand a steadying, insistent pressure to the side of his neck.

“I would like to stay for a few hours,” the German officer said.

Chapter 8

Feeling the naked body slide in next to him made Yves shudder again. It wasn’t that the man was repulsive. He’d just never been quite so intimate with anybody. Getting completely undressed and sharing a bed was a lot more than what he’d done with Maurice. And he hadn’t even had a chance to look at von Starck. The officer had undressed in the bathroom, then switched off all lights. There wasn’t even any light coming in from the street due to the enforced blackout.

But Yves didn’t want to ask why—why the officer preferred not to see or be seen. Was it his own shade of deniability? As if he wasn’t actually breaking the rules or a degenerate if he did it in the dark?

Von Starck leaned in and kissed him slowly, but deeply this time, parting his lips. His tongue flicked over Yves’s lips, teeth, then touched his.

Don’t just lie there; do something,
Yves could almost hear Maurice chide. He ran his fingers up the man’s shoulder, the side of his throat, brushing his ear, before he pulled him closer by the neck. They brushed, naked skin on skin, made more intense by the cool sheets around them that hadn’t yet taken their body heat. Yves couldn’t help the arousal when von Starck’s hands began exploring his body, his chest, his sides, leaning over him as if he were about to climb on top.

The kisses never let up, an increasingly hungry exploration that became demanding, breathtaking, until all that Yves could smell and taste was von Starck, masculine, powerful as he was, taking his whole attention until he didn’t have time to be nervous. It was oddly liberating that the man didn’t know how inexperienced Yves was, or if he noticed, he didn’t seem to particularly care.

Act as if you know what you’re doing.

Just one of those things that got him through the beginning of a show. Singing was easy. Acting, dancing, entertaining patter—all those demanded expertise. His body just reacted, and he gasped when von Starck’s hand closed around his dick.

That he knew, but why was it all so much more intense when neither of them wore a scrap of cloth, when he couldn’t see anything, just guess the man’s shapes with his fingers, his ears, and his skin. He ran his fingers down the powerful body, felt shifting muscles and a hint of sweat. He wondered how he’d taste, how he’d feel in his mouth, how the officer would be when he lost control, but that thought faded, caught up in the pleasure that von Starck gave him right then, stroking his dick.

The German only stopped to, yes, get on top, rubbing against him, their cocks sliding against each other. This sensation was rapidly becoming a new favorite, feeling the man move over him, kisses getting more and more frantic, now more teeth than tongues. Hard to imagine that this was the same reserved, aloof man.

“Turn around.”

Dazed, Yves obeyed, felt the man shift on the bed behind him. Von Starck reached past his head and pulled one of the large pillows closer, then pulled Yves’s hips back and up to stuff the rolled-up pillow underneath. Yves lay back down, too aware that now he could barely touch and would struggle to kiss. He waited, though for what, he didn’t have the best of ideas. Maurice had alluded to it and joked around with his coarser friends, but Yves had ignored that talk. He’d been happy with what he’d done so far.

Shifting his weight, von Starck tapped Yves’s inner thigh, prompting him to open his legs further. Pressure and heat, the big body all but descending upon him, and the pressure became insistent, then uncomfortable, and then nearly painful, before he slipped. Yves groaned, felt the man withdraw, and attempt this again, the pressure again, a greasy feeling, then a burning that felt wrong.

The officer’s breath was labored, harsh against Yves’s neck, and the pressure grew, filling him up with something large and powerful. He wished he’d drunk wine at the restaurant, wished he didn’t have to feel this so clearly, the invasion, the weight, and the fact he was helpless against it, especially as they hadn’t spoken a single word in the darkness.

He hadn’t expected it to feel like this. When Maurice or his friends talked, it was always about pleasure and hunger, but pain hadn’t figured.

What are you doing to yourself? Allowing the enemy to do this to you. Have you no pride?

He pressed his face into the mattress and tried to will his way through this, somehow, when it stopped. No movement for several harsh breaths, but that brought no relief. He wanted, so very much, to tell von Starck to get off him, to stop this, because every moment that passed, it hurt worse.

But he hadn’t expected things to get quite so bad, when suddenly the man began to thrust into him, movements first slow, then harder, with every motion clenching his guts and flaring up more pain along with something else, deeper, barely understood.

He struggled to stay quiet, stay calm, not show his distress, but the groans that escaped him could have meant anything—maybe even pleasure. Yves hoped that the officer mistook them for lust and hated himself at the same time for that deceit.

Finally, the movement stilled, and von Starck remained on top and inside him for a little while longer before he rolled off, breathing heavily.

Yves didn’t dare move for a long time, just felt relieved that it was over. And that there was no light. He wouldn’t have trusted his skill at lying that far.

Von Starck reached over and pulled him closer. Yves’s feelings were in disarray. The worst of the discomfort had faded fast. Now he just felt sore and disconcerted, maybe disappointed in the officer—and himself.

Von Starck’s hand cupped his shoulder, and he shifted Yves over until Yves was resting against the man’s shoulder, smelling the fresh sweat and a hint of shaving soap. That solid presence was calming again, rather than threatening and painful, and that was probably fine. The kind of price any mistress or wife had to pay to be held and taken care of. Despite the soreness, he could relax there, his face on von Starck’s shoulder, listening to him breathe deeply, and he could even close his eyes because he didn’t see anything anyway.

He must have dozed off, because when the man next to him shifted and sat up, he felt as if he’d rested, and there seemed to be thoughts missing between the “then” and “now.” He rolled onto his back and noticed a hand stroking his cheek, then a light kiss as if he were not yet awake.

The mattress shifted and Yves heard von Starck walk away. He reached over to switch the light on and had to blink to adjust to the sudden brightness. But he still caught a glimpse of von Starck’s back and noticed the lines on it. Not lines; scars. They had to be old—white and barely touched with pink—but they hadn’t healed well. Was that why he preferred the dark?

Yves slipped out of bed and followed, with the excuse that he wanted to work because he was awake. The bathroom door was open, the light on, and von Starck was just slipping into his trousers, but paused when their gazes met in the mirror.

Scars. Von Starck stood, revealing one long scar that began below his sternum and ran up to the side of his throat, like something had been dragged through his skin there, deep enough to leave a permanent mark. A few others, none as long or prominent, on his lower arms and chest. A few more lines and points on his back.

“I overslept. I should go.” Von Starck looked somewhat alarmed.

Yves reached for the bathrobe hanging from a hook behind the door and held it in front of himself, then, almost in an afterthought, put it on, gaze caught on the German officer’s marred skin. He found he didn’t mind. He’d been surprised at his scarred hands, but had grown used to it, so the rest of him just seemed to fit.

Von Starck hastily put his shirt on, buttoned it, and only then turned to him, relaxing a bit. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

“Your driver is waiting downstairs.”

“He is. People will notice the car. There are no secrets in this city.”

“Apart from the ones you keep.”

Von Starck ran a comb through his hair. “Ask me.”

“What happened to you?”

Von Starck exhaled slowly, half sigh, half relief. “Barbed wire. I spend a night trapped in barbed wire, entangled like an animal. I wouldn’t give up and in my delirium thought I could tear the steel with my own hands.” That explained those scars. “I still sometimes dream it, sometimes I wake, believing that all this is the fever dream of a dying man trapped in wire, a life he imagined because he was too young to die.” He swallowed and briefly pressed his lips together. “I try not to show it.”

“The scars . . . they aren’t ugly.”

“I just prefer to not see that look of pity in your eyes.” Von Starck stepped a little closer. “I’m very bad at accepting pity.”

Especially from a civilian.

“How did you escape?”

“I was cut free and survived.” Von Starck continued to dress, layer by layer, piece by piece turning back to his old self, dignified, stiff, and overly correct. “I’m not nearly as handsome as you are.”

Yves shook his head. “You’re selling yourself short.” He hesitated, but there was something about von Starck that he liked; many things, if he’d had to make a list.

Von Starck finished tightening his tie and reached for the Iron Cross, weighing it for a moment in his hand. “What about dinner tomorrow?”

“I’ll be at the Palace.”

“Before the show?”

“I won’t eat much.”

“Lunch? I can make it from the office.”

“Good, lunch.” Yves watched the medal take its place under the officer’s throat, then watched him put on the tunic and belt.

“Will you be here?”

“Yes. I’ll be home,” Yves said. “I tend to sleep long.”

Von Starck stepped closer, touched his cheek, and gave him a short, quick kiss on the lips, as business-like as to a wife. “I’ll send the driver.”