It had been a very long week. She hadn’t realized how much she would miss him, and then felt foolish for having done so. He was a ghost. A dangerous, malicious spirit, and she would do well to stay far away. Sheknewthat, but the knowledge did not keep her tears from falling, missing his silent, steadfast presence beside her each night.
Katrina felt impossibly alone in the world most of the time, but it had been lessened with his companionship. She missed him, and the absence felt like a tiny mourning, which led her to wonder if there had been anyone there to mourn him when that cannonball had extinguishedhiswarmth.
On the eighth day after the events of that terrible night, she knew she needed to return to normalcy. The Van Wees family, with their chatter and noise and humor, despite the tragedy which they faced, proved to be exactly what she required. She resumed their lessons, traveling from town to their farm each afternoon, returning home after dark. For several days, she made the trip alone.
On the fourth day after her return to her schedule, Katrina encountered a man on the road.
A lone horseman, but notherHorseman, she quickly realized. The man had the stink of alcohol rolling off him, and she vaguely recognized him as being part of the Tarrytown contingency of troublemakers who were known to visit the alehouse in the village.
“It’s awfully late for you to be riding alone,” he slurred, directing his horse to ride closer to her side. “You should let me see you to wherever it is you’re going.”
He pressed in as close as his horse would allow, and her stomach rolled at the stale, sour smell of his breath. The hands gripping his reins twitched, as if they could barely restrain themselves from reaching out and snatching her right then and there.
“We’re quite fine on our own, but thank you for the offer. I don’t want to keep you from getting on your way.”
The man chuckled, a dark, ugly sound that made her back stiffen, but she did not turn.
“I know who you are. I’ve seen you comin’ and goin’ around these parts. You’re that schoolteacher. Making your way from one bed to the next. You know, I never had much schooling. Maybe you want to come stay with me for a while, keepmybed warm. Catch me up on everything I missed.”
Katrina did not bother responding. She had no intention of letting this stranger see her off anywhere. The road was dark, but she had the advantage of knowing this pathway perhaps better than any other she’d known in her adult life for as often as she had traversed it in the past few months. They weren’t that far from that wooded stretch that led to the bridge, darkly shadowed and full of hidden ruts in the dirt road. She knew from experience that their confines were especially black, the moonlight nearly completely blotted out by the denseness of the branches overhead, even stripped of their leaves as they were.
Gunpowder, somewhere along the way, had learned to be a perfectly obedient steed, no longer pulling left when she directed him right, or obstinately refusing to move. Katrina liked to think it was their ghostly escort each evening that encouraged the old horse to finally break his stubborn ways, but no matter the reason, he, too, knew the way through the wood.
The darkly wooded dell was there, just ahead, and she decided to take her chance. They had been plodding along, the stranger wobbling slightly in his saddle, and he was unprepared for the moment she kicked Gunpowder into a run. They entered the dell, black and familiar. Gunpowder crashed through the trees, dodging around the felled log, nimbly avoiding an area where the gravel would be loose under his shoed hooves. She ducked at a low branch, and tightened her grip on the reins, lowering her head as they moved up the hill, over brake and brook, preparing to enter the old Major’s bridge.
The sound of Gunpowder’s hooves striking the wooden beams of the bridge obliterated her senses for a moment, racing, racing until they had broken through the other side. They did not slow down as the wind whipped through her hair, the sound of her pursuer not abating.
They had just thundered out of the bridge, when she heard it. The sound of crazed laughter, deep and bellowing. It rose directly from the dirt road, reverberating in the tree branches, having no need of a head at all. This washisdomain,hisstretch of road. The very earth remembered the sound of his voice and had kept it, and the trees still trembled at its fury. He appeared at the top of the hill, axe held aloft, and her heart thrilled.
Gunpowder was already tiring, gladly following her lead when she tugged the reins, urging him off the road in the shadow of the church, as hunter became the hunted. The Horseman began his descent, demon mount snorting in fury as the earth shook with that unhinged laughter. She watched as the drunkard realized his folly, heard the man cry out at his pursuer’s lack of a head, feinting once, twice, thinking he might be able to dodge his way out of trouble. The axe came down in a smooth arc, narrowly missing the man’s neck by inches, as he spun his horse around, crying out again. Katrina listened to them pounding through the bridge, heard the man scream and a horse whinny, and the night went silent.
You shouldn’t have stopped, should have kept riding. You ought to hide. Maybe the church doors are open.
She didn’t know what she was expecting. For him to act as kind and soft as Jansen, perhaps, or as brash and bold as Brom Bones. Either supposition would have been foolish, she realized, when his horse reared upon exiting the bridge, the severed head held up like a trophy. Her stomach turned over when he set the man’s head on his own neck, deeming it an inferior fit after only a moment. Her blood ran cold when he flung the head away and the horse began to gallop up the hill, shaking the earth with each strike of its hooves, the air around her still wavering with the vibration of that laughter.
Katrina was unsure of what she was meant to do or say, her throat running dry when he dismounted before her, just as substantial and corporeal as she. He still gripped the axe.
He took a step toward her, then another, every muscle in her body screaming out for her to flee.Give them what they want. Get it over with quickly, and give them what they want. Men and ghosts, life tethered to death. She did not know what he wanted, but if it was her head, best he be quick about it.Maybe he doesn’t even realize it’s you. Or maybe he does and he’s mad you stayed away. Maybe all he wants to do is use that axe tonight.
She had never seen him unmounted, had never had the opportunity to fully appreciate the way he loomed over her. Hewasjust as tall and broad as Brom Bones, and his grip was just as firm and insistent when it locked around her arm. She gasped, the sound nearly leaving her throat as a sob.
His chest was solid beneath her hands when she stretched them out to press against him, whether to push him away or pull him closer, she wasn’t sure. Her hands didn’t seem to know either as her palms flattened, fingers curling to rake her nails against his front. They slid down the wide expanse of him, feeling his ribs expand with each heaving inhalation of his lungs, despite no longer having a need to breathe. His stomach was a hard plane beneath her hands, the gloved grip around her forearm tightening as she continued her slide down.
Katrina waited for the moment when her fingertips would slide through him, waited for the edges of his form to waver like a shadow, but it never came. He was solid and strong, broad chest and thick thighs . . . and a rock-hard cock, as thick as a cudgel, erect and straining at the front of his tight riding breeches.
Give them what they want.She swallowed hard.He tightened his grasp on her again when her hand moved over the iron-like bar of flesh, but he made no move to stop her. In his other hand, his grip on the axe slackened. She squeezed the shape of him when she heard the axe thud to the ground, his hold on it loosening entirely. He might have wanted violence, might have wanted to sate his appetite for bloodlust and find a head that fit his shoulders . . . but his blood was hot and his cock needed satisfying first.Give them what they want.
Katrina told herself she was doing the whole town a service. If she kept him occupied throughout the night, he would do no more haunting that evening and the residents of Sleepy Hollow could sleep soundly.Altruism. Is that all? You’ve never been that good of a liar.She rarely found herself undoing the front of man’s buttons with a willing hand, but as she freed his erection — fat and hard and already pointing up at the stars — it was difficult to pretend she wanted this any less than he did. Katrina Van Tassel was no stranger to ghosts, but she had never before felt as connected to one as she did tothisunnamed, headless man.
When his gloved hand gripped her chin, it was as firm and gentle as it had been that night she’d brought his attention to the pumpkin, as gentle as it had been in her imagination, every time Brom Bones had touched her with far less gentle hands. The soft, black kidskin traced her cupid’s bow, his thumb dragging against her lower lip. Katrina loosened her jaw, letting her mouth open slightly. She imagined tracing her tongue over the tip of his cock, the same way it slid against his gloved thumb. When she trapped his thumb between her teeth, the cock in her hand jerked.
She gripped him from the root, squeezing the base of his thick shaft before pulling up slowly. The pads of her fingertips learned the width and direction of each snaking vein, pausing over the flared edge of his cock head, concealed in its snug membrane of skin. She pulled up at the tip, tugging his foreskin until it snapped back, pooling loosely around his head.
She wondered when had been the last time he was touched in such a way; when was the last time such a magnificent member had been serviced. He was just as big and thick as Brom Bones, and there was no doubt in her mind that he would be able to fuck her just as deeply. It seemed a waste, practically a crime that so many of the men with wandering hands who pressed to her their unwanted demands possessed cocks half this size, and here he was — aghost! A ghost carrying a truncheon in his tightly fitted trousers.
Bringing her fingertips together in a loose circle, she squeezed his cock head into it, pulling back his foreskin as she did so. His thumb pressed into the inside of her lip, caressing the shape of mouth, gently, reverently . . . before thrusting inside, invading her. This was always the way it went. They wanted her to use her hands, then her mouth. Stroking down his shaft, she pushed into the root once more.
For the very first time in her adult life, she found the idea of opening her mouth for a man to fill to beexciting. Katrina hummed as she sucked his thumb, a poor stand-in for the cock in her hand, laving her tongue over the leather. Once, twice, three times more she pumped him from root to tip, rubbing her fingers over the shiny pink skin of his exposed glans.
