“Ah, then you’re missing out on the unique opportunity for the teacher to become the student. One-on-one instruction is something I’d happily provide.”
Katrina jumped when the heat of his mouth sought the side of her neck, a hot wet trail, his teeth catching at her earlobe. She was unable to make out the press of his erection through the layers of her many skirts, but she had no doubt that if she reached back, she would be able to feel it — a rigid bar of flesh at the front of his breeches, thick and solid andhungry. Brom Bones’s cock hardened easily, eager to ride at any time, day or night, regardless of the season.
“I hardly think that would be appropriate,” she gasped out as he sucked at the pulse point at her neck. They were on the side of the building at the back of the church, just outside her classroom door. She’d only just waved goodbye to the last girl leaving for the afternoon when he came around the side of the building, trapping her. Katrina didn’t mind the entrapment itself, but their positioning in broad daylight with the corner of the general store in plain view made her nervous. “Brom, please . . . someone might see us . . . for pity’s sake, it’s the middle of the day.” She twisted out of his arms, wincing when he held tight.
Looming above her, Brom Bones scowled. “You’re too good for my intentions in the middle of the day, too good to come ’round to my farm. You’re staying with a new family every time I turn around . . . when exactly am I supposed to come courting, Katrina?”
“Is that what you call this? Courting? I suspect you’re a bit more chivalrous in your courting when it comes to that Verhoeven girl.” He grinned, sly like a fox, and she scowled, taking the momentary distraction from his previous action to spin away from him entirely. “In any case, I can’t think of a thing you’d be able to teach me. I ride quite well, remember?”
He didn’t immediately follow when she flounced away to the small paddock where Gunpowder grazed during her lessons. It wasn’t until the old horse was saddled and mounted, the reins gathered in her hands, that she even saw Brom again, mounting his own horse on the other end of the churchyard. Katrina didn’t know if he intended on following her, and she decided at that moment that she didn’t care. She was free and independent, and it was a beautiful day for riding.
She was off like a flash, pushing Gunpowder to a gallop, down the long stretch of road that pushed away from the center of town, moving past endless fields and orchards. Sleepy Hollow was a valley of abundance, and she liked it here. They approached a small plot of crooked headstones, bleached white in the sun, two old men who wavered at their edges conversing beneath a tree. By the time she was passing the family plot, the old men were gone, and was reminded that this area had sustained much loss in the war.
It was then that she heard it. The pounding of hooves, another horse approaching, déjà vu rippling up her spine. Katrina closed her eyes and let go of the reins, holding her arms out wide. There was nothing to fear. Either he would catch her at last, or his pursual would cease. He would run her down, take her head, and she would join him . . . or else things would continue on as they were forever. Life tethered to death.
Brom Bones whooped behind her as he approached and Katrina jolted, remembering who it actually was chasing her as she gripped the reins, but it was too late. Gunpowder had slowed, and Brom was upon her, trapping her once more.
Katrina Van Tassel did not put up a fight as she was pulled from her horse, nor did she struggle when she was carried like a bride to lay in the grass beneath a canopy of apple trees. His mouth was hot against hers and his hands were insistent as they pushed up her skirts, but she was far from helpless. She sunk her fingers into his thick, wavy dark hair, scraping her teeth on his square jaw, stubble rasping against her lips. Her nails dragged down his wide back, digging into the lawn cotton.
Unlike every other eligible young woman in the Hollow, she did not want to marry Brom Bones . . . but she loved the weight of him above her, his thick thighs and broad chest, his heavily muscled arms caged around her shoulders as his fat cock cleaved her in two. She loved the broadness of him, theheatof him, the way his heart thudded as he pumped into her.
He had her knees hitched over his elbows, her thighs burning as they were stretched apart, the punishing rhythm of his hips mirroring the earlier rhythm of his horse’s hoof beats as it ran her down. He was hot and alive, and if she closed her eyes as he fucked her beneath the apple trees, she could almost pretend that he was someone else, riding her down and claiming her for his own.
It was silly that she felt a stab of guilt once she leaned against the Van Wees kitchen table, her mind still wandering over the afternoon’s unexpected but not unwelcome diversion. She wondered if the smell of him clung to her, if what they had done left a visible mark another man would sense.You’re being silly. Ridiculous. And even if there were, it’s not like you have another suitor to worry over.
When she left the Van Wees farm later that evening, Katrina felt knotted with nervous anticipation, holding her breath as Gunpowder plodded up the road. When the Horseman melted from the darkness, she let out an exhalation of relief. The reality that she was more excited to see a ghost than she was to potentially marry a flesh-and-blood man, a man who desired her, whom she desired in turn, seemed preposterous, the height of foolishness, sealing her oddness and why she always felt like an outsider, but she pushed it away. The time spent with her strange escort was brief, and she wouldn’t waste a single moment withhimthinking of another.
And so that continued as well.
He escorted her from the wooded dell to the churchyard almost nightly now, her fantasies growing more vivid as his outline grew sharper, closer to being fully realized, sending her imagination into a tumult. Each evening, he met her on the road, escorting her through the wood, over the bridge and up the hill, as solicitous as any suitor. When she rode on from the churchyard alone, she would lean forward against the pommel of her saddle, each pebble in the road exciting the ache between her thighs he was unable to slake.
She chattered and pretended that he was listening, glad for the company. Katrina saw the evidence of life after death everywhere she went, tried her best to treat the dead as she did the living, but never before had she ever possessed the slightest inclination to suck a spectral cock. The residents of Sleepy Hollow were too frightened of the Horseman to have ever gotten on their knees for him, but she would drop to the dirt happily.
“Tomorrow is Sunday. There are no classes, so-so I won’t be crossing.”
She did not know if he understood. She didn’t know what she was doing, what sort of danger she was courting by allowing this to happen, but she saw no way around it. She needed to get home each evening, and the way belonged to the Horseman. She treated his ghost with courtesy, and he showed her the same in kind.That’s all.Give them what they want, and they won’t bother you. Something had led her here, she was certain. Some strange wind had carried her to Sleepy Hollow, had put her on this path, and she had no choice but to see it through.
He bowed in acknowledgement of her words, the first time he had done so, and her cheeks heated once more.He’s a ghost, of course he doesn’t need ears. Dipping her head to hide her blush, the sight of the church’s small vegetable patch caught her attention. Before she could control it, her traitorous tongue babbled out the thought that crossed her mind the instant they passed the pumpkin patch, too fast for her to snatch the words back.
“This is what they think you wear as a head,” she blurted, realizing her folly instantly.
She’d never acknowledged his lack of head, a sudden cold leaching up her spine.Too late now. He just showed you that he can hear you perfectly well. See, this is your problem. This is why people think you’re a witch. You never know when to hold your tongue.
Katrina was positive she heard a dark chuckle come from her decapitated companion, the same sound she had heard the night he had followed her up the road to the covered bridge. It wasn’t loud and it didn’t come from any source, and she thought perhaps that it was merely an echo of the man he had once been, a thought that flipped her stomach.
“These here. The pompions.”
She’d never taken note of the axe at his side. She wasn’t sure why or how it had escaped her notice. Black and sharp and deadly looking, he unsheathed it as easily as swiping up a feather. Holding her breath, he prodded his horse up alongside her, crowding Gunpowder until she was able to feel the brush of his arm.His perfectly solid-feeling arm.
He swung in an almost lazy arc, spearing the side of the fat-bellied pumpkin and raising it before her as if it were no larger than a pebble. Katrina watched as his fingers moved over the face of the gourd, those same long, glove-encased fingers that had been the star of what she had since been calling a nightmare. As she watched, his index finger moved in an oval, a third of the way down the pompion’s rounded face. She didn’t understand his meaning until his hand lifted, gripping her chin and tilting her face.
Her breath ceased. Her lungs froze, like a shallow puddle in the first frost of the season, glazed in ice, unable to move. As he held her chin in a firm, unyielding grip, the pad of his thumb ghosted over her mouth, the soft leather never quite making contact with her lips as he traced a similar circle. His hand was huge, and he would easily be able to palm her skull as if it were no larger than an autumn apple. She felt the strength there, a strength that owed nothing to supernatural ability and everything to that fact that he had been a strong, hale man in his prime when that cannonball had removed his head from his shoulders. Strong and able to do her a serious injury with a mere flick of his wrist, no doubt . . . but his touch was gentle, far gentler than she’d been expecting from the gruesome, murderous specter the whole village delighted in fearing.
He was cold. She could tell even through the gloves that his touch would be cold, and if she were to press herself to the front ofhisbroad chest, it would be like laying against the frozen earth in winter — icy cold, unyielding and lifeless.
His hand moved swiftly back to the pumpkin, a press of his gloved fingers — cold, but corporeal — and then back to her mouth, the softest pressure against the swell of her lower lip. She understood his meaning then, heat rushing over her, thawing the ice in a blazing rush, the resulting liquid reforming itself as tears that burned at the corners of her eyes.
“A mouth? You wish that you had a mouth?” She nodded in understanding, pressing her tongue into the roof of her own to stave back the tears. Of course she understood.Life tethered to death. “I think I wish that as well.”
