Partisan Years Pt. 02

"You fucking bitch," he said. "I should kill you for that. My father did that, he was a Graf you know, he killed one of you peasants for talking back, back when the Czar was around."

"Dzerzhinsky should've--"

And that was all I got out.

"Chekist cunt." He hit me so hard across the face I saw a flash, then kicked my legs out and fell on me.

I fought him hard.

It'd only been a minute or less since I'd thought maybe Lazar or my family had survived somehow and escaped the war and the thought of them made me unwilling to accept whatever Heinrich wanted to do. Then, there was a sense of residual loyalty to Vladimir, as if letting another man have me would drive him to greater violence or jealousy. Something about being raped on a dirt floor seemed less dignified than it happening in a dacha. And then, as strong as Heinrich was, as tall as he was, he didn't have the brute weight of Vladimir, he was ten or fifteen kilograms lighter than the Captain, strong from exercise and training rather than hard labor.

But he liked that I fought. Within a few seconds I could see his cock hard under his trousers. I drew blood from his neck with my nails, slapped him, even landed a couple punches. But his hands were everywhere, pinning a wrist, crushing my face back, closing my throat, his legs tangled with mine so there was no way I could stand or get power.

It was a futile fight, but it was mine, and the more I struggled the wetter I got, more from fear or memory of Vladimir than anything. This was my body's own defense.

He pulled my boots off, one-by-one, tossed them by the door, then he kneeled on my stomach and drove the breath out of me so completely I couldn't interfere when he stripped the trousers from my body and pulled my underwear off. I felt exposed, weak, ashamed of my vulnerability. I regained my breath and pushed myself up trying to make for the door, but he was on me.

I tried to kick him back, but he got within the reach of my legs and pinned them back, so that my knees nearly touched my chest. My undershirt was one of those peasant smocks that only buttons halfway from down the neck, and he ripped it open the rest of the way so that my breasts and body stood completely exposed. That was when I started to cry.

He shoved two fingers inside of me and I yelped. He covered my mouth. I hated that my body now reacted to any penetration as a neutral fact.

It was the first time I encountered a phenomenon I would grow to loathe, my body, my nerves, told me that I was enjoying what was done to me, but I was so emotionally violated by it that it was tinged with pain, no matter how wet I got or how sluttishly i moaned. I could neither enjoy sex nor reject it. Pleasure would come to me with rape, pain with consent. During the worst of the war the two feelings would be virtually indistinguishable.

I just wanted him to take me and get it over with.

Then he spit on me. I knew it was a return of the saliva I'd put in his face earlier, and that thought, strange as it was, brought me to something like full arousal. It hadn't hit my cunt full on, though, more towards my ass. He spit again and I went white with terror. He drew his fingers out of me and rubbed the spit over my anus, then over the head of his cock.

"Stop," I said. "Please. Please just fuck me."

"I'll teach you to spit on an officer and a gentleman."

With one hand he covered my mouth and with the other he pushed the head of his penis against my asshole. It didn't even hurt. It just felt wrong, violating. I clenched against it and that's when the pain started. He thrust and I felt something twinge, his head impossibly large as it shoved through my ass. I looked down to see most of him still outside of me. I'm no great judge of length or girth, but he felt and looked larger than Vladimir. I tried one last time to push him away but he pinned my hands back above my head and levered himself into me.

The pain of it was shattering. Some kinds of pain are like fire, they produce a mental smoke, which makes it easy to slip from the self into the dim realm of observation. But the intensity of Heinrich's assault produced a cold clarity. I could see every detail of the ceiling above me as he pushed inside, all my senses were heightened.

His cock pushed at my asshole, and it gripped him as he forced his way in, offering resistance. The pain peaked as he shoved into me and I cried out against his hand, feeling something give or tear, then the hurt fell away to a dull ache and the long centimeters of his cock slid into place.

"Look at me," he said. "Look at me."

I refused.

He put one hand on my throat, crushed the breath from me, then drew himself back until he was almost fully outside me. He spat on his cock again and hovered there. My world had become very small, big enough to fit inside the palm of his left hand. This was far, far worse than what Vladimir had done, and I realized it was my struggle and resistance that gave him his rush, that he was hunting for something now, something I could give up to him, or something he would take from me.

He didn't care if I died.

I met his eyes with mine. They were a harsh blue, hard to see in the dim shadows cast by the oil lamp, I can't say what emotion was in them, if any, but I knew then that I preferred to be raped from behind.

He eased the pressure on my throat, moving his hand over my mouth.

Then he slammed back into me, and I screamed with all my strength into his hand, the noise falling to a whimper as he drew back out. I was folded under him, my body completely exposed, my breath came in great gasps but I couldn't catch up to it. At the end of each thrust he ground his hips into mine, his body hair abrasive on the sensitive skin around my asshole.

This was a humiliation I hadn't considered possible.

As my ass started to get used to his thrusts--slow because of the resistance--he began to play with my breasts, massaging them, twisting my nipples, taking one in his mouth. All this made my cunt wetter and he fixed me with his eyes, trailing one finger along my slit.

Then he began to play with my clit as he fucked me, his pace increasing, then settling into a steady rhythm, his strokes matching the moves of his fingers and the gasps of my breath. It still hurt, being fucked in the ass, but I could feel something building in me. I was so aware of him, his intent, his hatred for me, that I couldn't let myself drift into darkness where the automatic response of my nerves could take over and guide me to a shameful pleasure. I had to make the decision to like this.

The heat in my belly built and the tension in my thighs and hips, down into my back. He slid his fingers into my cunt, beckoning with them against the front wall while his thumb teased my clit. I moaned, sweat breaking out on my body, and he moved his hand from crushing my mouth, slipping his fingers between my teeth, down towards the back of my throat, penetrating all of me now. I could taste the dirt of the floor, the salt of sweat, the faint metallic hint of ink. All the while, tears streamed out of my eyes, half for shame, half for the immediate pain in my anus and deep inside me.

Heinrich pulled his hand free from my mouth and grabbed one of my breasts with shocking force as he redoubled the force of his thrusts. He plunged his other fingers into my cunt as far as they would go, rubbing my clit with his palm as he did.

I looked in his eyes again and saw, finally, a desire I could understand. That made my fear ease, so that I could focus more on the strange pleasure he was giving me. There was something in the depth of his strokes, the violence of his urge, the sheer pain and intimacy of being fucked like this that I found intoxicating. I was dizzy under him, gasping.

"Cum for me, you bitch."

I could hear the moans coming from me, almost all pleasure now, the cold pain turning to a burning want, a reckless rush towards an unseen edge, that terrified me and humiliated me in ways I could not articulate. I opened my mouth, unsure what I was going to say.

He spat on me, some of it fell into my open mouth, some landed on my cheek.

Then his fingers slid out of me and over my clit and back inside and I came. It was a hard, strange orgasm, less pleasant than what I'd felt with Vladimir, less biological, if that makes any sense, than a vaginal orgasm. It was more technical, each muscle group shivering at once, my ass pulling him in, my legs quivering. The muscles in my back gave and I arched towards him, my hands clawing at the ground beside.

He crushed me with all his force, pinning me in place as he fucked as fast as he could, then I heard him grunting, felt him shake, his orgasm coinciding with the last flicker of my own. He stroked my clit, hyper sensitive in the immediate aftermath, and laughed when I shivered.

He lay on top of me for a while yet, unwilling to break the contact of flesh. When he pulled out, I was horrified by the feeling between my ass cheeks. The muscles felt damaged, worse than my pussy had after Vladimir finished, and whatever I could feel between them and could smell, I couldn't stand to think of without shame.

I took him in my mouth still, the cum and blood I was used to, but there was a baser taste, as bitter as shame.

I swallowed, then begged him for water, but he gave me liquor instead and I swirled it around and spat on the ground.

"Spit at me again, you worm" he said, and threw a handkerchief at me. "And I'll grind you into something so low you won't recognize yourself. But you will know your place."

I knew he meant it, that he'd made me cum to show he had control over me, not to give me pleasure. I measured his hatred of me against Vladimir's indifference. Heinrich was a freak, a machine formed to wound and rend and tear, Vladimir just believed his own desires came first.

At some point, my tears had stopped, but they resumed as I grew aware of all I could feel and see. My thighs and pussy, still slick with my cooling, unwanted arousal, the dirt under my nails and staining my torn shirt, the burning in my ass, the sudden freedom of my limbs, a faint chill in the air, all of it was too much. I gathered my trousers and underwear, slipped my boots on my feet and staggered to the latrine.

I didn't care if anyone saw me. The faint glow of orgasm was replaced with burning shame, deeper than any I'd felt before.

The cold night air dried my thighs and I shivered so hard my teeth clattered. A low, wounded moan accompanied the shivering. I soaked the handkerchief, a rag really, in a bucket set aside near the latrine for handwashing, then in the latrine I cleaned the mess from my ass. Though I winced at the pain, I was grateful there was hardly any shit, mostly blood and spit and cum, the last still leaking from me like some foul ooze from a mostly closed wound.

If men wanted me for this, loved this feeling of humiliation and hurt, how could I live in this world?

I needed someone to want me as a girl, not as a toy, or to want me for what I could give instead of what they could take. But the hunger in both of their actions made me question if I could ever find that.

Maybe, I thought, Lazar had been an exception, or the fact that we hadn't consummated anything meant the fire of his flesh was still contained. What would he have done if I'd refused him as his wife?

All that night I couldn't sleep. The weight of Heinrich recurred to me. The feeling of his eyes piercing mine, searching my face, the dull throb in my ass, conspired to keep me awake.

The next day, I stayed as far from the others as I could, working with a sewing kit to repair the damage done to my undershirt. I couldn't eat, I could barely talk, I missed the showers in the Minsk dorms and the feel of soap and scalding water. There were bloodstains in my underwear.

Every few hours I took a pinch of salt and water and rinsed my mouth.

Kiril Denisovich found me.

"Natalia," he said.

I ignored him.

"Natalia Yakovlevna."

I looked up at him, he leaned against a tree. He'd known about Vladimir, I was sure, he was looking at me all the time. He wanted me too, I could see it in his posture. I resigned myself to being fucked on the forest floor in broad daylight like a bred bitch. And something in me wanted this, because at least when he looked at me it wasn't with disdain.

Kiril approached.

"You're reticent."

"What do you want?"

"You have to eat to keep your strength up," he said, then extended something to me. "Some good cheese. Some nuts."

I took them and he offered a slice of bread too, the way you'd offer a stray cat something. He drew closer.

"Heinrich," I said, speaking softly to keep my words between us. I didn't know what I'd say, but I wanted to keep him looking at me. "Lieutenant Stauffen..."

"Did he hurt you?"

Then it spilled out of me. At first, Kiril regarded me with sympathy, ("that's a dirty trick," he said when I told him of the telegram ruse) but as I went on his face grew grave, drawn. That serious expression made him more handsome than ever, there was something scholarly in his look, the passionate intensity of a revolutionary. He sat at the base of the tree and I curled by his feet, staring into the distance over his shoulder as I whispered my tale.

When I finished, he spoke.

"I'll tell him not to do that again."

"Kiril, he'll hurt you. He'll revenge himself on me."

"I'm a Commissar of the Red Army," he said. "You're one of my soldiers. I won't have him hurt you like that again."

"No," I said. "No please." I moved my face close to his, made him meet my eyes.

"What would you have me do then?"

"I-I-" I stammered. "If it happens again, can I come to you?"

He nodded, his head moving forward an inch. I'd never wanted any man so bad as in that moment, I'd have fucked him right there, I'd have taken him in my ass if he'd wanted, anything to keep what I'd said secret, to keep Heinrich from having reason to hurt me again. Or even just to have someone I could go to when my bruises were still blossoming and the pain was still sharp.

But I just kissed him, it was all I could give him, and I wanted that feeling of connection so badly. For a heartbeat he hesitated, then he returned it, our heads bent together as I slipped my hands about his waist and grabbed him hard.

He broke the kiss after a moment and looked up at me.

My face was wet with tears.