“Maybe it’s because we fit together so well? Or maybe it’s because I ride better than any other woman you know? It’s a fine night for a ride.” He growled in response, hands tightening further, whether in rage or desire, she wasn’t certain.Possibly both.
“Is there a problem here, sir?” A man’s voice rang out from the front of the stables, and Brom spun, releasing her.
Katrina used his inattention to pull herself up to the stirrups, out of reach. He was right, but that didn’t mean she needed to be within striking distance as he drew his own conclusions.Hishands, she reminded herself, had never been gentle.
Gunpowder never even flinched when the corporeal spirit of Pieter Van Wees stepped into the barn, carrying a club. A whole year of being her mount, a whole year of seeing ghosts, and the old horse was unfazed. Brom Bones, however, was not. He blanched, taking several stumbling steps back at the sight of the dead man. Katrina gathered her reins, taking advantage of the momentary diversion. She saw Pieter Van Wees every single day as he lorded over his property and watched his family from afar, and she was grateful for his intercession now. The dead man nodded to her, a gesture she returned with a small smile.
“I’m going for a ride, with or without you. Try to catch up, if you can.” She knew he would take the bait. An out and out challenge, particularly in an arena in which he excelled, it was too easy a victory for the great Brom Bones to decline. She kicked Gunpowder into a trot, increasing their speed once they reached the road.
They passed pastures and orchards, the field where evergreens would be planted, and had just galloped past a small lake when she heard the pounding of hooves a ways behind her. Closing her eyes, she ducked her head, urging the old horse on. This was going to be the hardest part, wasalwaysgoing to be the hardest part, and she would not squander the gift of time she had been given by the dead man’s ghost, the gift of the younger woman’s presence and pique.
They raced — over hill and dale, brake and brook, and up the road that led to the dark woods before the bridge. A thick fog had settled over the center of town, as impenetrable as the chowder they’d enjoyed that same evening. The path would be trickier to navigate, but it was too late for caution. They entered the trees, Gunpowder automatically dodging left, barely needing her prodding, muscle memory kicking in as they avoided the hidden traps in the road.
The horse coming up on their rear screamed in fear when the laughter rose up out of the trees, shaking the few remaining leaves on their branches. She heard Brom’s voice — whether shouting in fear or at the horse, she did not know. They twisted through the trees, erupting into the fog once more, somehow denser than it had been on the other side of the woods. The air was cold and damp, she couldn’t see more than a metre before her, and Katrina realized too late that she’d not considered the others who were out seeking that night.
The old Major seemed to rise up from the fog, brandishing a sabre, the curved blade catching the moonlight. Gunpowder whinnied as they thundered past, entering the bridge. Shefeltthe moment when a second set of hooves pounded on the plank flooring, shaking the walls, the rider invisible in the darkness. Gunpowder screamed again when they exited the tunnel, the reins cutting into her hands for as hard as she gripped them. She saw the eerie form of two children near the base of the tulip tree, dressed as if they were from the first colony, the bowed head of the old woman, making her way to the church. When they neared the center of town, she pulled the reins with all her might, forcing the old horse to turn.
He was right there. Katrina leaned off her saddle and fisted the front of his dark green coat, heedless of the weal forming on her palm. Brom’s horse was charging through the bridge.
“I’ve brought you your head,” she gasped, dragging the Horseman as close as she could while keeping her seat. “Go and claim it. Claim it and then claim me.”
She did not want to see. She wanted to remember him as he’d been that day, riding after her, whooping in the sunlight, carrying her through the grass to lay beneath the apple trees. She did not want to see it happen, see the life snuffed from the man who had the whole of the Hollow in the palm of his huge hand.What if she was wrong?What if she had reached too high, her hands looking to grasp too much, and this was all a terrible mistake? She did not want to see it and she did not want to hear it, and so Katrina pushed Gunpowder on, making for the churchyard.
She’d never seen the rows of gravestones look so desolate and empty. There were always shades lurking about, but not that night. That night they had gone seeking — heat and warmth, life and breath, the embraces of those they had left behind, and to curse those who had scorned them. The only thing lurking about the churchyard that night was her, pushing Gunpowder on, through the gate and in between the rows of crooked stones.
She had found the place where his body was buried sometime that summer. It happened quite on accident. She had been sitting on the hillside, in the spot where they had sat together the previous year, a spot to which she had returned over and over again. The threat of an afternoon thunderstorm hung in the air, and while she didn’t mind getting wet, being struck by lightning was an altogether different story. She’d been making her way through the rows of stones, meandering up one and down the next, passing through the oldest section of graves for the very first time. She had avoided the original section since that afternoon she watched the young man searching for his missing arm, disliking the prickle that moved up the back of her neck, but as she found herself moving through the stones, she realized he was likely buried there.
It was a single stone, a nameless grave for how many young men, she did not want to contemplate. Bodies from both sides of the fighting, rebels and redcoats alike, and the Germans for hire amongst them. She still did not know his name. Her neighbors in the village came to the churchyard for solace, to speak to the ones they had loved and lost, a place for closure. Katrina felt none as she turned away from the solitary, unmarked stone. It did her no good.
She avoided the old section of the graveyard once more, making for her spot on the hill. She did not want to see and she did not want to hear, but the sound of the two horses was unmistakable. Brom Bones was an admirable horseman, his skills earning him the respect of the others in town, but she knew he would be no match, and she did not wish to see him being cut down, even if she had been the one to engineer his fate.
The opportunity with the rich farmer’s daughter had presented itself unexpectedly. A small gift, but one she’d not been expecting, and she had seized it greedily with both hands. Arousing his lust, stoking his annoyance with her overtures of jealousy, hardening his cock and luring his to follow her . . . she had no great talent with the written word, but Katrina felt as if she had committed the entire farce to parchment with her own hand, each actor playing their part.
It was then that she heard it. The silver-white slice of the axe through the air, practically singing as it swung. The scream of the horse, a deep voice crying out, a gurgle . . . and then silence. The entire village was at the Van Wees farm that evening, and there were no witnesses milling about to put eyes on the tragedy. Katrina waited, her heart sitting at the back of her tongue.
It seemed a small eternity before she heard the steady clip clop of a horse returning to the church yard. It seemed foolish for her to be afraid to look.What if it didn’t work? What if you lost them both?
The man sitting astride the huge black horse was just as big and imposing as his mount. Wide shoulders and a broad chest, arms heavy with muscle, thick thighs encased in tight riding breeches. The shadow he cast upon the ground was a formidable one. His dark hair was wavy and unruly from the wind, the sharp angle of his square jaw casting a striking profile as he turned in her direction, slowly dismounting.
The head turned this way and that, not wobbling or bobbling, an indication to her that it was affixed firmly to his neck, as if it belonged there. As he stood over her in the moonlight, Katrina took in the dark coat he wore. Dark green, nearly black without the moon. Blood red fronting, and a brilliant white strap across his chest, denoting his place in the mounted artillery amongst the Hessian troops. Brom Bones had been dressed for a party that night, his habiliment bearing no resemblance to the military garb worn by the man before her.
She shrieked when he fell upon her without warning, scooping her up if she were no more than a feather. His hands were firm and insistent — holding her around the waist, palming and squeezing her breast over the laces of her dress, freeing the cloak from her shoulders, grabbing at her legs beneath her skirt. When he gripped her face, her heart panicked for the briefest moment, but the gloved thumb that moved over her cheekbone was gentle and soft, following the curve of her jaw, tracing her mouth lightly.
He growled when her lips parted, sinking her teeth into the meat of his thumb. She did not have time to play games then, for he met her mouth in a bruising kiss. His mouth was hot, his tongue a burning trail over her lips, down the white column of her throat, sucking her pulse point where it thumped like a jackrabbit at the base of her neck. He seemed gripped by the feverish need to use the mouth he now had — kissing, licking, biting, sucking — and she remembered desperately wishing last autumn that he had been able to do all of the above.
It was hardly a surprise when he lowered her to the cloak, opening her legs. She spread them for him gladly. She was ready for his thick cock, ready for his girth to stretch her open and plumb her depths, hitting that secret sweet spot within her that only he had ever excited before. She wanted him to fuck her, to ride her, to flip their positions and let her ride him, to kiss him on the lips as she did so, ignoring what she’d had to do to get here.
He was not done using his new mouth. If there had been any ghosts lingering in the graveyard that night, they surely would have come to peep the goings-on of the hillside when she cried out, a guttural sound that ripped from her throat as blunt teeth nipped at her inner thighs. He bit lightly at her skin, at her mound, taking it between his teeth like a dog with a particularly juicy beefsteak. The first swipe of his tongue moved from slit to clit, spreading open her inner lips with a hot, wet trail. She had never had a man put his mouth between her legs before, and the sensation made her arch as if lightning had found her after all.
Katrina felt stiffened with rigor as he lapped at her – sucking, licking, kissing — the same treatment he’d given her neck, although there was no comparing anything tothis. His tongue moved over that little bundle of nerves the same way his fingers had rubbed it last autumn, the wet heat of his tongue and the suction of his mouth giving the sensation a heightened sense of urgency. When she sunk her fingers into the dark hair on his newly borrowed head, her insides quaked. That too, was a familiar sensation. She had run her fingers through Brom Bones’s dark hair before; had gripped it the same way she did now. But there was no time for a second guessing her actions, for the pressure behind her navel was about to burst against the persistency of his tongue.
This was the way things were meant to happen, she reminded herself. She had been put here for a reason, and this was the outcome the fates had decreed.
Katrina gasped in a shuddering breath, her lungs hitching as her control unraveled. His mouth was relentless, tongue moving against her unceasingly, licking and sucking like a man starved, as she clawed at the ground, dragging her nails through the grass, across the wide expanse is broad back, gripping his hair so tightly, she feared she would decapitate him again. When she came against his mouth, Katrina sobbed. She was unable to see, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but writhe beneath him, as if she were possessed by the demons with whom she had always been accused of cohorting. This was how it was meant to be, how it was meant to happen, and there could be no walking back on the things she’d done to get here.
She was still unable to move, unable to do anything but pant when he climbed over her, the rigid length of his hard cock slapping against her belly.
“Ich werde dich ficken, mein liebling. Immer und immer wieder.”
