He had stood there, he remembered, in the narrow hidden passage that ran along this side of the hall, enabling researchers to observe the conjugal rooms without being noticed. He had stood and watched through the little lens in the wall, and now felt embarrassed at the memory.
* * *
Niklaus walked up the narrow, dim hidden passage, long after supper when the base was quiet and nobody was likely to be looking for him. He stopped at one of the tiny, glowing circles in the wall, closed an eye, and looked through.
The room was empty, of course, the bed curtains tied back, the furniture dusted. Only a single small lamp provided illumination. It had slipped his mind that they’d already moved Sebastian and Mia out of the room. He’d come here out of habit, along with a dim hope that maybe some other couple had been moved onto the hall.
He’d watched Sebastian and Mia several times over the weeks. At first, it had only been out of curiosity and boredom, a late-night search for entertainment. Watching their bare bodies grind against each other had been far more exhilarating than he’d expected. They fucked with a raw abandon, thanks to Alise’s enchantment. On subsequent nights, now and then, Niklaus found himself sneaking back for another look, and once he’d gone so far as to unzip and pleasure himself while he watched, never mind the scientists who might walk in on him at any moment.
They were gone now, and he would not get to see Mia squirm in pleasure again, unless they decided to breed her again in another year. Maybe that would be with Niklaus. He’d asked Alise to arrange it for him, but she’d stalled, and now Mia was pregnant by the American instead.
Niklaus started to turn back, feeling disappointed, until he heard a gasp farther down the hidden passage. He followed it to the last room on the short hall. The walls near the hidden lenses were perforated with pinpoint holes, allowing sound to pass through to observers. He heard the sound again—a high-pitched squeal, then a gasping sound.
Grinning, he wondered who had been paired up now. Tonight’s visit might not be a complete waste, after all.
He closed an eye and peered through the lens.
This room was the nicest of them all, everything trimmed in marble and traces of polished gold. The bed was the largest he’d ever seen, its frame and high poster columns carved from ebony. On the bed, he saw the visiting American banker, Jonathan Barrett, stripped naked and furiously mounting a girl Niklaus couldn’t clearly see, but she was blond. He assumed it was a nurse or typing pool girl the visitor must have picked up. Whoever it was, she shuddered, screamed, snorted, and writhed, shaking and lost in pleasured agony as he took her faster and faster, to the sound of a Wagner overture on the phonograph.
Niklaus wanted to laugh at the girl’s grunting and howling. The guy was really reaming her hard. He’d never known a woman could make sounds like that.
Then she turned her head, and he recognized that the squirming girl with her knees locked around Barrett’s hips was his own cousin Alise.
His smile vanished, and he felt his heart shrivel and turn cold. He felt it like a fist in his gut. He’d been with Alise several times now, even though each time, when he finished, he told himself he would never do it again. The part of him that stewed in guilt and shame kept losing out to the part that still lusted for her—he’d never been able to turn her down when she came to his door.
It stung to see her with another man, especially lying back spreading herself wide for him, when she’d always insisted that she be on top with Niklaus, never letting him truly take her. Now she gave herself freely to this foreigner, making sounds like he’d never heard. With him, she had always just panted a little, then panted a little faster near the end. With Barrett, she thrashed and cried out like a wild animal.
He saw, too, that Barrett was substantially thicker and longer then he was, filling Alise far more fully than Niklaus ever could. His cousin seemed enthralled, in a state of ecstasy, looking up at Barrett with droopy lids. She’d certainly never given Niklaus a look like that...a look of surrender.
He quivered where he stood, opening and closing his fists. He had an urge to charge in there, scream at his cousin, and maybe put his Luger to Barrett’s head and shower his brains all over the wall. No, Niklaus thought. I won’t start with his head.
Before he could do anything, the door to the conjugal room opened. Gruppenführer Kranzler was there, arms crossed, eyes looking coldly at Alise and the foreign man. Niklaus froze where he was, wondering how Kranzler would react to seeing Barrett on top of his best aide.
Kranzler just watched for a minute, while Alise and Barrett continued on, faster and louder, wrapped in their own world.