I break, body seizing tight around him.
He bears into me harder until another wave rips me open, and another. My sobs tumble over themselves, raw, near-hysteric, as he carries me through one shiver after the next.
“Goddamn, Alice.”
His thrusts turn ragged, urgent. For all his power, he’s ensnared in me. Just as defenseless against me as I am from him. He groans like a man in pain given mercy. Pulling free, he spends hot across my belly, my thighs, his cry tearing from him raw and guttural. He collapses to his forearms above me, trembling, sweat dripping onto my skin.
Catching his breath, a dazzling smile emerges as his head rolls back. “Christ almighty.”
His mouth presses rough to my hair, my forehead, my cheek, as if he’s overcome with affection. “Stay put, sweetheart. I ain’t done taking care of you.” He rises, his Herculean silhouette striking against the morning light as he steps away in his bare skin. How can something so delicious—so beautiful—be wrong? Every fear, every anxious whisper shutters itself away, leaving only the quiet, steady hum of my body remembering his.
He returns with a damp towel, kneeling beside me and gliding the cloth over my skin, erasing his mark with a tenderness that feels like worship. “You’re so damn beautiful,” he whispers, his voice thick with devotion. “And all mine.” His touch lingers, fingertips tracing the paths he’s cleaned, as if re-mapping me as his own.
He pulls me into his chest, his arms a fortress around me, and tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, his touch both gentle and possessive. “I’ll keep you close, Alice. Not just tonight, but every damn night. No one else gets to hold you like this.”
We settle together, the soft roar of voices and train cars outside like quiet music.
“Reckon you’ll go pray now,” he teases. “Beg forgiveness for wantin’ me and call it a mistake.” Though his tone is playful, there’s tenderness underneath.
Regret blooms in my chest for having been so desperately repentant after our first intimacy, as if he were a stain on me. Perhaps that was cruel.
“I hadn’t meant it that way. You mustn’t believe it was you. A lady is meant to protect her virtue, and yet when I’m with you…I’m powerless against my desire.”
He nuzzles closer, the mattress dipping beneath his weight. “Yeah, but powerless ain’t a sin. Just means there ain’t no say in it. Same as I had no say the first time I laid eyes on you.”
Something deep and long-quiet inside me stirs to life.
“No say in it,” he echoes. “You and me. Always was.”
The earnestness in his expression undoes me, my heart swelling with a sudden aching affection for him. Perhaps I had named it sin out of fear, but fear is not faith. Faith is trust in the path laid before me. And if that path runs through his arms, perhaps I was wrong about virtue all along.
Our union occupies more of the morning than I would confess aloud. Once my body can endure no further indulgence, we are spent and compelled at last to seek some other pursuit. Kodiak proposes a breath of fresh air before his mysterious business visit. We promenade along the levee, the Mississippi rolling slow and brown beside us, steamboat whistles splitting the heat.
Ordinarily, I am occupied with the labor of running the inn. But here with Kodiak, very little is expected of me. I never understood until now how leisure—the business of being idle, of existing only to enjoy the day—could be a full occupation. This was a luxury afforded to other Sherman women, but never me. I was equal parts servant and wife. But here, I’ve walked withoutpurpose, let my mind wander where it pleases. Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop, and now I understand why. The Devil finds such favor among the idle because they have the time to entertain him.
Here, the streets thrum with life. Carriages rattle past and ladies step daintily along the walks beneath their parasols. Vendors call their wares, and a gaggle of ragged boys weaves through the crowd, their voices high and urgent as they cry the day’s news.
“Extra! Extra! Opera holdup! Thousands stolen under their noses. Read how they done it!”
The headline nearly makes me stumble. I steal a glance at Kodiak, but his expression betrays nothing, as though the words have no meaning to him at all. While there is no doubt this was Kodiak’s scheme, I was with him the entire night, his hand in mine, his voice steady in my ear.
It defies reason.
“How did you do it?” I whisper.
“I’m sure I haven’t the faintest notion what you are speaking of,” he replies in his gentlemanly accent, smooth as polished silver. How easily he wears it, how easily he casts it aside.
I release his hand and about-face, hurrying toward a boy with a stack of papers under his arm.
“One paper, please.”
“A penny.”
I give him the coin and take the sheet, the ink smudging faintly against my gloves. Ahead of me, Kodiak slows his pace, glancing back with thinly veiled irritation. Without a moment's hesitation, I unfurl the paper and see the story plain as day on the front page.
Daring Robbery at the French Opera House
The French Opera House was the scene of a daring robbery last night, the fact not discovered until some hours after the curtain had fallen. An usher, a watchman, and the box-office clerk were set upon by unknown parties and confined during the entertainment. Though no lives were lost, the men were badly beaten. Upon the alarm being raised, it was found that the treasurer’s strong-box had been rifled and several thousand dollars carried off. The perpetrators made good their escape unobserved. No arrests have yet been made. The management announces a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the guilty parties.
