Gallows Pole

by Eris Adderly

  Instead he drew back. Slid forward once more, parting her lips, further coating his shaft, but not driving home.

  Twice made a coincidence.

  Oh please.

  Three times made a pattern.

  Please, no.

  Four made Emmat want to scream and he kept going.

  Her backside cushioned up into slow rolling hips and muscle. She could feel the coarse hair at his base bristling between her cheeks, lightly scrubbing the sensitive flesh that bridged her entrances. The inside of her lip knew the bite of her own teeth in her refusal to allow any shameful noise each time the blunt head dipped down to brush her pearl.

  The hand returned to make trouble, wedging itself between the mattress and Emmat’s ribs before moving in a more disturbing direction. He caught up her breast. Or rather, her breast flattened his hand to the bed under their combined weight, though this did nothing to stop a squeeze, a clamping thumb and forefinger.

  There was no stifling a gasp when he caught her nipple. Worse, with the continued lazy slide of his cock, and now the slow tug on the tender bud between his fingers, there was no preventing the arch in her back, either.

  You can’t do this. This is…this is…

  It was nonsense. That’s what it was. Last night it was over and done within a short matter of sweaty minutes, the necessary and resentful distance settling in between them some heartbeats after the last violent grunt. Now he comes in here and, wielding a clergyman like a weapon, says only a handful of words, and sets about dragging her turmoil on for half the night?

  No.

  Emmat made an irritated noise. Wedged her palms under shoulders as though she could push herself upright.

  “Will you torment me all night, husband?” Venom filled the new title. “Rut me and get it over with.”

  “Do you beg for it so soon, wife?” His words came at her ear, humid and amused along with more superficial pumping.

  If blood could have boiled in her veins, Emmat would have blistered the hangman away in an instant. She spat at him, foul words for foul company.

  “Fuck you.”

  His chuckle was a dark song. “As you like.”

  He lifted for another pass but she felt his hips tilt at the last moment. Then pushing. Not a single, impaling thrust, as he’d taken her with the first time. This was deliberate. This was unrepentant girth stretching her, working up inside by measures, filling her to the wavering limit with the blunt truth of Bartholomew Vane.

  The genuine act was no more mercifully quick than had been its predecessor. He moved in an almost tidal ebb and flow, plumbing deep and withdrawing at his leisure. The hand at her breast slipped up to curl into a grip on her shoulder; a handhold to fit her down onto the tortuous length seated hilt-deep between her thighs.

  Which part was worse, Emmat wondered? The flex of muscle as he had her? The controlled, masculine sounds of effort? The warm breath moving her hair?

  Or that she was beginning to …

  A more forceful thrust now, and the Red Bird forgot herself. She lost a strangled whimper into the mattress.

  … to enjoy it.

  There wasn’t far for her breath to go—only to the rumpled wool blanket and back again—and the sound of it filled her blind little world. And it wasn’t breathing, it was panting, made loud by the surrounding silence to damn her.

  It was too slow. It was too slow, and it—

  “Unnf.”

  He caught her at the same time as Emmat caught herself. She was arching, straining.

  Stop, woman! Not one part of this is right!

  But it was too late. The hand at her shoulder found somewhere else it needed to be, and that somewhere was snaking over her hip, around beneath her body.

  She jerked when his fingers found her. The long muscles of her legs squeezed to close him out, to prevent what was possibly the final disaster, but there was nothing for it. He had her unavoidably wedged open and, while the length of his prick continued to drag its perfect, hot madness in and out, the tips of his fingers set about bringing her to ruin.

  The void of light bleeding into every crevice of the room provided Emmat with the most shameful way to witness her own failure. She had to listen to it.

  Plaintive whimpers fogged her lips as Vane’s horrifyingly effective touch made her swell and throb. His cock soldiered on, slow, merciless, destroying her. When he found a particular strumming agitation of his hand brought a sharp, high-pitched noise of frustrated pleasure, Emmat saw the end of it.

  He’d found the trigger now and employed it, over and over with rising enthusiasm as he fucked her. The heat came in waves, the hum getting closer, whizzing past her ear like a lead ball through the air.

  “That’s right.”

  Vane spoke the low words of encouragement into the crook of her neck as he took her to the place she dreaded to go. It wasn’t right, of course, but her breath was too ragged to argue.

  Damn you, Vane!

  It was there, spinning towards her, a turbulent sea at the bottom of a jump from a cliff.

  “Please, I—”

  No!

  She came.

  Spread, helpless, her body clutched at the hangman’s cock like a suckling, greedy mouth. That high, fine thread of light snared her up, made her want to curl in on herself, but she couldn’t. All Emmat could do was cry out and shudder while her peak turned her wrong side out.

  And then, before she had time to remember her name, or what year it was, the man decided he could have his own.

  He slipped the hand from its devastating work in favour of supporting his weight, planting it palm down in the mattress beside her. She caught her own scent on him, a cruel reminder of the way her body had made a thief into a liar.

  The meat between her shoulder and neck felt the ungentle claim of teeth and, slow, deliberate strokes abandoned, Vane began to fill her with a driving purpose. The force of his thrusts bounced involuntary grunts from her throat, and they fell in to accompany an obscene two-part rhythm composed of the dull thudding of the bed against the wall, and the cupping slap of his groin at the hollow between her cheeks.

  The pounding hastened to a fever pitch. Emmat received him in a delirium, convinced the spearing cock would split her like this, in unending assault for the rest of time.

  It wouldn’t, though. At the height of his furious ride, Vane planted himself deep and lost a feral growl right below her ear.

  She could feel the pulse as he came: that wild kick of male flesh, sheathed on all sides, pouring fourth seed in wicked bursts of achievement.

  Twice. He’s spent in you twice, now.

  Emmat stared into nothingness, reeling as Vane suffered his final, violent twitch. This was no longer a game of wits. It would be raw survival.

  “God damn it, woman.”

  He might not have even meant to say the words aloud, control abandoned as it was while she felt his body ease down from the heights of straining tension. Some soft pressure from his mouth—Emmat refused to call it a kiss and rejected the idea of it being any sort of apology altogether—crushed against the smarting lines his teeth had made.

  And then, with a trio of languorous parting strokes, he left her, rolling onto his back in the space left between Emmat and the wall. This time there was no trapping male arm, and she still couldn’t move.

  What had happened? What had happened in this narrow bed, in this forlorn little house miles from anywhere? Not only had she been made unclean by the hand of an executioner, but that hand had wrought the cruellest of jests upon her person. She winced as she felt part of a fluid reminder seep back out of her. Then the bed moved.

  No, the blanket was moving. Vane had collected himself enough to do more than lie there and breathe, and was now tugging the woollens out from under her. The weave of the material scraped her breasts and belly as it departed and, spurred from her stupor, Emmat curled in on her side, lost and alone.

  Then the blanket came down, warmed from what their bodies had done in the d
ark, settling over her hip, her shoulder. The intimacy of the act was more of a potential threat than possibly any other that had already occurred.

  Right up until his arm came around her waist, and he nested in around the curve of her back.

  No, not alone. Emmat blinked wide eyes into the silent black. His breath was on the nape of her neck and, unless she wanted to put her right arm over her head, there was no choice but to let it rest over his. This was not what should be happening. Not to her, foolhardy choices be damned.

  Her feet became restless, fidgeting under the cover as they always did when she was anxious. The sated, nude man at her back squeezed her closer, halting her movements with a trapping ankle.

  “Go to sleep, Mrs Vane.”

  The words were more effective than any tether.

  Mrs Vane. The hangman’s wife.

  What have I done?

  * * * *

  Two days.

  Two days had come and gone, and Emmat made her morning ablutions at the well again, with only the crows for company.

  Vane had left her to wake in an empty bed a second time, and the night before, she’d gone to sleep in it alone. Whatever reasons had him stealing away before dawn, it was clear he gave them priority over letting her have any idea how long she would need to fend for herself. She hoped what stores of food he had would last, and then cursed at the notion of her reliance upon the man.

  Her brother had better be somewhere making the utmost of the reprieve she’d bought him, because the price had been steep.

  The weak sunlight of the day seemed to mock her depressing state of affairs and, drying her hands on her skirts, Emmat strode back towards the stone house in a huff of spite.

  Inside, she left the door open, the wood resting all the way back against the wall, and then moved to fling the shutters wide. The man could insist all he wanted on humiliating her every night in the dark, but she would air the place of his scent—of their scent, she noted with a scowl—while he was away doing the grave work of the law.

  The law. Emmat snorted. A highwayman wed to a duly appointed executioner. The crime and the punishment both, in the same bed. Did he take a sick joy in the fact?

  She began to straighten the bed. Not out of any respect, but more out of a need to do something, anything, lest she go irrevocably mad.

  Emmat had never gone looking for a husband. And with the sort of life she’d led up to this point, a husband had never come looking for her. A lover here and there, why not? Social propriety was the last thing keeping her awake at night.

  Now she had one though. Was it even official? In the dark like that, not a witness but her and Vane? But if she ran and he caught her up? Claimed her as his wayward wife, could she deny it?

  Already, she knew the threat he’d have waiting. The word of a known criminal against a chaplain and the hangman? And this was all before she might even bother considering the gallows or her brother.

  The bed finished, Emmat quit the house again and went to stand in the sun, fists on her hips, glaring into the treeline where the road disappeared. Of course, he’d taken the dagger he’d found in her boot that first day.

  And will he make you squirm and come for him every night in that bed of his, as well? Is that the way of things now?

  The worst thing, she decided, was the lack of control. How many days would pass in uncertainty before she had to endure him again? If she wouldn’t run, what were the risks should she resist him on his own ground?

  What if you start to—

  No. She would not ask that question. Turning about in a slow circle, taking in the house, the well, the hay barn and lean-to, Emmat decided that, for now, she had problems aplenty, without the need to nurture more.

  * * * *

  She hadn’t bothered lighting the lamp this evening. Her mind wasn’t yet fit for sleep, but she’d already exhausted the things she could find to occupy herself before sunset. Washed and dried her stockings, pulled some of the less stubborn weeds from around the base of the well, scoured every drawer and cabinet in the house for anything of interest.

  There’d been nothing aside from the usual sort of odds and ends that tended to gather in the rarely frequented storage areas of a home. A loose button or two, a tangle of string, a dried-up cork estranged from whatever it had once stoppered. It was clear the man occupied his house for not much longer at a time than it took to sleep and occasionally eat in it, and little else.

  Her temple was on her right forearm. That forearm was crossed over the other, and both were resting on the table as Emmat sat in the lone chair. In the dark. Again.

  She was no more alone now than she had been in any of her years thieving and running, but somehow the silence of the place forced her to look at it. A person could ignore their essential separation from others in a crowd of people noisy with drink and a disregard for laws. But not now.

  If it weren’t for the mantle of hopeless resignation lying over her shoulders, Emmat could have laughed. The hangman, his home here miles from anyone—because respectable people wouldn’t tolerate the herald of death but at the far fringes of their awareness—was probably as alone as she ever had been.

  If the lamp wasn’t lit, would he bother banging on the door the next time? And when would the next time be?

  Vane, you incredible bastard.

  And now, they could be alone together. Separately.

  There was a knock at the door.

  Emmat lifted her face from the nest of her arms, twisted her upper body in the direction of the door. The next time had come sooner than she’d thought.

  Another knock.

  Her brows drew down in the dark, head cocked to the side. It was not the hangman’s demanding banging. Not like the night with the chaplain. And no orders barked through the door.

  She stood, sliding the chair away from the table with as little noise as possible. Padded towards the sound. Who was here? In the night?

  “Emmat!”

  What?

  Her tension dissolved and she stepped forward, yanked open the door.

  “What in the nine Hells are you doing here?” she hissed at her brother, glancing around as though Vane would appear out of the night behind him at any moment.

  He fidgeted, holding his hat close to his chest, looking flighty as a hare in the light from the moon.

  “Emmat, come away,” he said, urgent and low as if anyone else was around to overhear them. “Come away now, while he’s gone!”

  For a breath or two, she couldn’t close her mouth. Peter Bird had chosen now to be a hero? How had he even found her?

  “Did Mother and Father send you?” she said, incredulous.

  “They’ve no idea. I haven’t been home.”

  She didn’t know whether to be offended or impressed.

  “And now you’ve ridden in to ‘save’ me, is that it?” Why did his presence pluck a thread of annoyance between her shoulders?

  “Emmat, don’t talk nonsense,” he said. “Come on!”

  She sneered, leaning on the doorframe. “Do you know, Brother, that the sheriff believes you properly hanged at the moment?”

  “Wh…what?”

  “Have you considered,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest, “the reason no one is hunting you like a dog is that the hangman hasn’t given them one? Or do you think it in his best interest to report back to the sheriff he’s accepted a bribe for your neck?”

  He blinked at her, hunching less out of nervous stealth now that she’d blown him off course.

  “As long as I stay here,” she explained, making the words clear and slow to pierce through the confusion she could see wrinkling his features, “he doesn’t talk. Do you understand me? If I leave, it’s both our heads. He knows who I am, Peter.”

  It took her brother a long moment to leave off gawping like a fish and come stammering back into the conversation.

  “He knows who you are? Emmat, you can’t just—”

  “I’m the ruddy hangman’s wife now, yo
u useless twat.”

  It wasn’t the snap of irritation in her words, nor her language that made him step back; that he’d heard aplenty.

  “You…you what?”

  “You heard me. It’s done.” Emmat curled her lip to hear herself use the words Vane had, when he’d hustled the chaplain out the door. It’s done.

  “But …”

  “I’ve no idea when he’s coming back, either. So you’d best be gone now, before he does.”

  “I don’t understand, Emmat.” And she suspected he truly didn’t. “How can you stay here when he’s—”

  “I’ve made my choice,” she said surprising herself with the sudden strength behind her conviction not to run. “And I suggest you run along and try not to do anything else that risks either of our necks, hm?”

  The silence went on for a long time, made larger by the hooting of an owl from somewhere in the direction of the hay barn.

  “What should I tell our parents?” he asked, at last, eyes on the ground.

  For some reason she couldn’t name, his inability to meet her eyes—even in the less accusing light of the moon—put the final seal on her decision. No one would be meeting her eyes any longer, would they?

  “I don’t care what you tell them, Peter,” she said, levering herself away from the doorframe. “Now count your blessings and run, as I told you on the hill.”

  He finally managed to stare at her.

  “And don’t come back.”

  Emmat shut the door on his pale, dumbstruck face. There was no other way to end it, she thought, without the scene dragging on and becoming tiresome.

  She went back to the chair and laid her head down on her arms again, trying hard not to listen for the sound of departing footsteps. There would be no pleasure in assigning meaning to either an immediate departure or a lingering one.

  Emmat Bird belonged to the hangman now when she’d never belonged to anyone but herself. Whether it ought to be a source of pride or of shame, she wasn’t certain, but the decision to do so in both cases had been none save her own.

  And when he makes you squeal again, Emmat, who’ll be to blame for that?

  She pushed a groan into the crook of her arm. A woman ought to know enough to stop asking questions when she already knew the answers.