The Prize Rules Ch. 04

Cora-leen groaned and her hips twitched. Eden smiled to herself in the dark. Cora-leen was sopping and it had been almost instant.

She pulled her hand away and Cora-leen made a few soft sounds of complaint as she looked.

Eden paid her no mind as she made a slow and silent show of licking her fingers. She put them back then and slowly began to fuck the girl that she'd loved forever with them.

"I have never done that before, " she smiled, "But I have missed your soft scent and in the middle of missing it so badly one night not long ago, I wondered how it come that I have never tasted you."

Their tongues raced between them, from one mouth to the other and back as Cora-leen was swept up and came then, her soft cry let out of her with her lips clamped over Eden's mouth.

They rolled apart a moment later, both looking up at the ceiling and smiling. "I love you Cora-leen," Eden said softly, "I always have and I hope to God that I always have your heart."

Cora-leen said nothing. She was up in a flash and onto Eden as she began to hump on her, "I love you too," she panted a little, "Now I need you to be wet for me."

"I am wet for you," Eden chuckled, "You don't think that you make me that way?"

Cora-leen nodded, "I know, but right now I want you really wet and dripping. I'm not your handsome sailor, but we can pretend the way we always have."

They went at it for a while and when she felt that Eden was beginning to really get into it, Cora-leen abruptly got off her and moved. Then it was Eden's turn to make whining sounds of complaint, but Cora-leen wasn't having any of that. She stood up on the floor and reached to pull Eden's legs over the edge of the mattress.

Before Eden could even ask, Cora was kneeling on the floor looking back, "I've had the same thoughts as you. I think it time that we make this a proper thing."

While Eden wondered about it and before she could even ask, Cora-leen lowered her head and pressed her face against Eden's furrow as her tongue began.

In the darkness, Eden reached for Cora-leen's head and began to play with her hair as she sighed and saw the eyes looking back at her. "Thank you Cora."

Cora-leen didn't have any experience at this one thing, but she knew what she'd have wanted and so she tried to give those things to Eden, who melted into the mattress and made only soft sounds as she rolled her hips until Cora-leen grabbed her thighs so that she didn't need to chase after Eden.

When Eden's orgasm drew near, she had to reach for a pillow to scream into and after that she went limp for a few minutes while Cora-leen fretted and worried until she saw Eden begin to come around.

"Remember what you said to me the day before I left? You said that we could live together. One of my brothers is planning for his wedding and from what was said to me, another one might not be far behind him. I can see the day when our house might feel as though it is full to bursting. Nobody can afford much of a house when they have a wife and the first of the kids begin to appear.

I think that I may want to move away with you," Eden said a little later, "I think that I want to live in a little house close to the beach where we can really be in love and fuck each other forever."

Cora-leen ran her finger over her wet lips and reached over to paint Eden's with her own moisture, "That would be a nice little dream, Eden. But we both know that we still want a man."

She sighed then in a dramatic sort of way as she spoke in an airy tone, "Until that time, we both do as I have done but for each other. I would like to feel that from you and also ... I want to do it to you at the same time."

Eden sighed and it meant her agreement.

Cora-leen looked over for a moment until Eden looked back, "That will keep us a happy pair of girls, but you never told me something."

Eden raised her head and looked over, "What have I forgotten?"

Cora-leen chuckled as she looked at the ceiling again, "NOW I want to hear about the sticks."

"That will still keep for a little time," Eden smiled as she looked up, "If this a proper thing now, then you must kneel over me so that I can do the same for you."

Cora-leen moved then, but Eden hissed suddenly and Cora-leen froze.

"And you must have a care where you put your knees," Eden grimaced after a moment, "I do still have the longest hair between us - unless you mean to pull it out by kneeling on it."

-------------------

The next morning, Cora-leen and her mother had work to do, so Eden made her way to the driving shed, since it was where the shipping crates holding her motorcycle and the spare parts had been delivered to. Loody was already there and had the lids of the crates off.

He'd been prepared to do what he could to help, but his lovely daughter surprised him by only needing him at certain points during the re-assembly and setup. It didn't matter. They enjoyed the time together and it was a lot of fun.

Loody was impressed at how Eden could work, pointing out that with these new skills she might consider setting up a business. Eden nodded, but said that things might be best left for after the war, since she couldn't set up shop and be a despatch rider at the same time.

When Thumper was back together and her brother had returned from the errand of buying a little gasoline, it wasn't even noon and most of Eden's immediate family were present as she opened the fuel valve to fill the carburetor bowl and then swung out the kickstarter.

With the machine idling a few minutes later, Loody mentioned his slight surprise as how easily it had gone.

"It was no surprise, Papa," Eden grinned as she patted the fuel tank, "I made a deal with her back in England. If she would carry me and never fail me when I need her, I would take her to a sunny place where she'd never be cold again."

After that, Eden was riding, working out the best routes for her all over the island. There were government offices in several towns and even a little place such as Trinidad was coming to set up a few small shore batteries and observation posts. Telephone service was spotty and scarce, but that was why they had Eden, after all.

Best of all, it was a paying job, and as the storm clouds gathered, a very vital one as well.

---------------

She came to know it in no uncertain terms when they heard the news that it had begun on 1 September of that year.

The stormclouds of war had turned into the storm itself.

From Eden's perspective, it was just the beginning of what she'd foreseen and positioned herself best for. As serious as she'd been about it all, there was still a gap in how she saw it and how others did.

That gap closed for her the day that she reported to Robert that she was ready.

He nodded and before he did anything else, he had Eden swear an oath to her king and to Trinidad.

"For our purposes here, I needed to have a title to this job that you will do. To that end, you are now a Special Constable attached to the police force here. They are aware of this and so I'll leave it up to you to establish a relationship with the Chief Constable of the Island here in Port of Spain.

As well, you are a representative of the government of the island insofar as your duties are concerned. It was a little bit of hair-pulling stuff, Eden. But I had to put you somewhere in the paperwork, didn't I?

I can't just hand you a weapon and send you off. So on paper and I'd guess in a very real sense, you are now a Constable on permanent special assignment to the government of the island. See the Chief Constable as soon as you can. He'll give you the bits to put on your uniform and tell you where they are to go."

He handed her a thin message case, "Take these to each government office and leave a copy there," he said, "Pick up any messages to be brought here - if they have any yet."

She noticed the grim way that he looked then as he handed her the other articles which went along with her occupation as a despatch rider in wartime service to Trinidad.

She looked at the belt and the pouches on it and her eye went to the old leather holster. What sat in it, a little hidden by the leather flap which snapped down to cover it, was the Webley Mk VI service revolver.

She looked up.

"It's wartime now," he said, "so wartime rules apply. You are on official government business from this day forward, so you might as well begin right here. Lives could hang in the balance as you carry the messages around. Those despatches must get through in a timely manner each and every trip. You might need this one day and I understand that you have been trained in its use and care.

Good riding, Eden. Stop off here at the end of each day so that I know that you are alright."

----------------

As soon as she had the routes and all of the possible detours worked out and pencilled over on her maps, Eden and Robert sat down and decided that the service provided this way was fairly timely and it offered secure transport for the communications.

Prudence and planning said that they needed a second rider.

"Just get us another bike, Robert," Eden said, "There's no safe way to send anyone off for the training that I had and it would take too long regardless. Find us a rider, or if you've no one in mind, I think that I know of somebody who's been riding a motorcycle for a lot longer than I have.

Get us a bike and I'll train her on the specifics of riding despatch. Then you have her sent to the police station here to be trained with the pistol."

-------------------

1937 - 1939 Germany

At the end of his own crossing, Hans-Joachim visited his family for a little while, since he was on leave. His father still worked as a fisherman and his mother still taught at the little junior grade school there in the village. It was a bit of a happy time for him, though it was tempered by the presence of his sister Anneliese, who he'd always loved very dearly.

The ominous part of it was that she was also there, her husband missing and presumed dead during the blitzkrieg storming of Poland. He kept it in mind when his father brought over a friend or two to celebrate the rapid advancement of his son's career. What bothered Hans-Joachim to a degree was the way that the press had managed to be able to galvanise public sentiment - as though they were cheering for their favourite soccer team in an insane sort of way.

He had to hand it to the propaganda machine, he thought. Whatever he thought of the party personally in general and the Fuhrer specifically, they'd taken a shattered and torn nation in the depths of a depression and turned it around.

What bothered him was when he asked himself to what end they'd done it. When would it end, or would it? He had no answers within himself.

He stayed the week and then left for his transfer into the U-boat service. From the time of his arrival, he was given so much in the way of technical and command training that he thought that his head would burst.

About a month after his departure, a letter arrived for him at his home, but by then, he'd joined the 1st U-boat flotilla based at Kiel. Things were a little rustic there still and the only type of boat in the flotilla were the old type IIs, which were a coastal type, short on range and muscle and long on discomfort, most of the 22 man crew having to bunk around the spare torpedoes which were stored behind the three torpedo tubes.

He progressed through the training rapidly - mostly out of both his ability and his intense desire to be away from the training vessels. He grew to love submarines and he was prepared to inure himself to the trials of living at sea in the things to a great extent, which was unavoidable anyway.

Just not the Type IIs.

He served on several boats during his time. Often in a private moment, he recognised a sort of hope in himself that he'd prove himself - which was bound to happen, and then be given the rank to command, which was usual and normal in the service. But he felt a bit of a pull to be allowed to be present as a boat was built up with him in attendance.

What would have happened then was that he'd be there for a time at the shipyard as the boat was fitted-out and the crew assembled and trained - often from all over Germany to be turned into a cohesive unit from the boat's keel-laying through her launch and past her shakedown cruises before she went into action.

That was what he'd have liked to do.

But he also knew that he was being groomed - as were several others - with a different area of operations in mind. That pretty much ruled out the long process of building up a boat and her first crew.

The months flew past and when he wasn't thinking about these things, he very occasionally thought about Eden with some sadness because he still missed her in a way, though it had been a long time by then.

------------------

1939 1st U-boat Flotilla, Kiel, Germany

He was surprised one day when he'd thought about Eden after not doing so for about a month, but she stayed on his mind for a time that night as he remembered her fondly. He glanced at his desk calendar and thought that she'd had to have gotten home safe long ago. He certainly hoped that she had, though he knew that he'd never see her again.

He supposed that his remembering her must have played a large role in the way that the pit of his stomach dropped the next day when he received a copy of War Order No. 154 - a directive to all Kriegsmarine officers from Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, the head of the Navy.

The Prize Rules had become difficult to adhere to with the advance of technology and communications. He knew that the British submariners had the same trouble. You'd want to do what you could for survivors, since it was about removing the use of a ship from your opponent. You couldn't take them along, so you had to do your best to see that they had a chance to use their lifeboats.

But to make the initial contact, if the target was not an obvious combatant, it only meant that their radio operator had the chance to broadcast their distress that they were being stopped by a U-Boat. Everyone with a radio would know where it was happening and if there were enemy warships or submarines not far off, it could get interesting.

Aside from one or two events which had involved a lot of innocent lives being lost, passenger liners were not a target, since there was no military reason to attack one, though some of them were being pressed into service as troop transports and armed, so one had to look closely beforehand anyway, but now ...

Now, Dönitz was playing a different card entirely. He was sweeping the Prize Rules right off the table and replacing them with:

"Do not rescue any men; do not take them along; and do not take care of any boats of the ship. Weather conditions and proximity of land are of no consequence. Concern yourself only with the safety of your own boat and with efforts to achieve additional successes as soon as possible. We must be hard in this war..."

Though he had no illusions as to what had happened between him and Eden, Ullmann now prayed that she was not anywhere near the ocean and most especially not on a passenger ship.

The Grand Admiral had taken something at least a little civilised and replaced it with unrestricted submarine warfare.

He stared at the darkened window of his quarters for a long time that night.

---------------

1940-1941

As a junior officer serving on a warship and needing a clear head so that he could do his job, he tried to avoid the drunken parties which his new service was a little famous for, not liking to have to function with a pounding head the following day after the first time, so though he went if he had to, he worked at staying a little sober.

He met women now and again and he always allowed those chances to slip past. He didn't feel much of anything in his heart these days. The one woman who he managed to fashion any sort of relationship with over the entire time was Ilka Eindorf, the stunningly beautiful and heartbroken widow of his best friend and it had not been intentional on the part of either of them.

They'd met at the church service for her husband. Sadly, the remains of the deceased remained in the watery coffin of the U-boat where he'd been in the role of 2nd watch officer.

As he sat in the chapel, Hans-Joachim felt very strange to have never met the wife of his best friend and though he wasn't obvious about it, he had to give Friedl credit.

She was tall and very fair, with very light blonde hair and a figure which he was certain could cause roadway accidents. The thought passed and he remembered that his friend had gotten married under a cloud of secrecy - even he had not been invited, though it was explained to him afterward that he was out on his first coastal patrol at the time.

"I do not wish for Ilka to come under scrutiny because of me," Friedl had said one evening, "she competes in pageants now and then, and she gets work from fashion companies as a model. To have it known that she is married is bad enough, but ..."

Ullmann was never able to forget the moment which came not long afterward when his old school friend had looked at him a little sadly, "You know the kind of life that we lead is hard on marriages and it also produces many widows.

Hans-Joachim, if something should happen to me - if it comes to that ..."

At the time, Ullmann had thought that it was just a little needless worry on the part of a young man in a dangerous business, but Friedl had been adamant in asking his friend to do what he could if things turned to the worst and Hans-Joachim had agreed, seeing the seriousness of the strain there on Friedl's face.

As the church emptied out, Frau Eindorf had turned down several offers of a lift home. She stayed and wept softly and Ullmann remembered that they'd had a child very recently, a baby girl. He'd only known of it at all because Friedl had gotten a little drunk in his private celebration of it and as Ullmann had tried to get him to his quarters, the news had come out and then they both proceeded - under Hans-Joachim's semi-sober gaze at first to get quietly blasted over it.

Now he wondered what the woman would do and he remembered his promise as well. A widow, he thought, in a profession which almost demanded unmarried women ...

And a young mother as well ...

He shook his head, what was the harm in a beauty pageant competitor being married? It was just stupid to him.

Long after she'd thought that she was alone, Ilka gradually became aware of the presence of someone else in the chapel, and when she'd turned around, Hans-Joachim cleared his throat and got to his feet. He introduced himself and the widow recognised the name in an instant as the one mentioned often by her husband.

As she dabbed her eyes, Ilka said that her husband had often wished that he was more like Hans-Joachim.

Ullmann was surprised and asked why and Ilka told him that her Friedl had always looked up to Hans-Joachim in many ways.

"He always told me that in a moment where a decision must be made - even if it was something on which survival hung, he said that you always made the correct choice - and had the daring and courage to push it through with no hesitation and that your way never failed you."

Hans-Joachim looked down, "I have always thought that I was only being brash. Friedl was my best friend. We joined the service together. We were boys together and I miss his laughter very much already. I am very sorry for your loss and your pain and sadness even more than I am for my own."

He thought that she was hanging on somehow and he was beginning to see a little of her courage fray right before his eyes.

"Come," he said, "Please allow me to take you home, Ilka. I have borrowed a car to come today and Friedl was my best friend. I would feel awful if ..."