Gallows Pole

by Eris Adderly

  Providence appeared to have granted her the smallest of blessings, at least: he didn’t return to the house that night, either.

  Part 3

  She Warmed My Blood From Cold

  Emmat lay curled on her side in the dark, her will to do anything else surrendered up to the bed while a dismal rain pattered down on the roof.

  Four more days had passed since her brother’s unexpected rescue attempt. Not only had her boredom grown to the point of bursting like an overripe fruit, but it felt like her body had, as well. And of course Vane, a man living heretofore without the presence of a woman, had nothing in the way of yarrow or motherwort, or anything else she might steep in a tea for comfort. The man didn’t even have a teapot.

  A headache oppressed from behind her left temple, almost as if the hangman had sent it to nettle her in his absence. Listless as she was after six days by herself, the last thing Emmat needed the man to do was choose tonight to return to the house.

  There was no other possibility then, but that this would be the very last thing he did.

  Was it possible to hate a person with such a bright heat they collapsed into a pile of ash, right before the spitefully squinted eye?

  There was no sound of approaching hoofbeats through the shush of the falling rain. There was no lamp to douse, so no warning bang on the door. The hinges complained at his entry, and the latch harrumphed as he shut out the hiss of the weather. Emmat didn’t bother to stir, aside from the deepening of her frown.

  As if I needed one more thing.

  Something heavy hit the floor with a wet fwap. Possibly the ever-present hood or perhaps an oiled cloak, considering the rain. She heard the chair dragged back, the creak of him sitting, wordless, followed by the thump of discarded boots, one and two.

  Disconsolate silence swelled for a long moment. Then a shuffle, steps. An unwelcome weight compressed the edge of the mattress. She said nothing in greeting. Shifted not a hair.

  A hand fell on her upper arm, traced down to her elbow, her hip, taking in the tucked-in angle of her thigh in the dark.

  After a moment of quiet assessment, he said: “Have you taken ill?”

  Emmat repressed a growl through the pain in her head. Cursed perhaps, but ill?

  “No.” A single word never contained such irritation.

  “Then get up,” he said, standing again.

  Her eyes closed, even in the blackness, gathering strength. Perhaps the faster she let him have what he wanted, the sooner it would be over.

  She pushed herself up on her arm and swung her feet around, setting them on the floor. With sagging shoulders and a bowed head, Emmat stood, her movements coming dogged to obey the man who’d made himself her husband.

  A rough grip spun her, limp as a ragdoll by her upper arm. He began to jerk loose her stays, just as he’d done the last time, indifferent to her misery and the time it would take for her to do the lacing up again on her own. Why should she have expected him to be thoughtful?

  Bindings tossed aside, he went to work on the fastenings at the waist of her skirts, pushing them down over her hips and past her knees as he got them undone.

  A foolish flicker of hope made her take a breath as he tugged the bunched circle of fabric to indicate she should step out of it.

  Not every man, but some men …

  “My courses,” she said as he stood. “Your bed will be ruined.”

  No sooner than the words were out of her mouth but a heavy forearm circled her ribs and hauled her back against his body. His left hand reached down to find the hem of her shift and burrow its way up and under, smashing any ideas she had of fending him off with her feminine problems.

  To her absolute mortification, his fingers went straight for the source of her claim. Emmat’s mouth came open in a mute sob as he pushed between lips to where she bled.

  A beast! A horrible beast!

  His hand came away, bound for somewhere more dreadful, still. She heard him pull the finger back out of his mouth. He grunted an assessment and Emmat’s stomach turned.

  “Fine.”

  The arm released her and she wavered in place, no longer certain about anything in the world. Behind her, the sound of hands clapped together preceded vigorous rubbing. Then he was at her back again, arms circling round, two unnaturally warm palms pressing down over her shift into either side of her lower belly.

  The twin centres of heat cupped right over the well of her ache melted the instinct to stiffen away from his touch in the blink of an eye. For a moment much like one awakening in a strange bed, Emmat forgot where she was. She was too busy with her struggle to uncross her eyes at the unexpected relief.

  “Come on,” he said after a time, withdrawing his hands and stepping around her again.

  Emmat’s feet and knees took her the few numb steps to the bed, pulled along by his grip on her wrist. She was tired, swollen, weary of the throbbing in her head, and when he lowered himself to the mattress and hauled her down with him, Emmat could no longer muster the will to care what he did.

  They were on their sides just long enough for an arm to insinuate itself between her waist and the bed, scooping and rolling her with him as he settled on his back.

  As if by rote, her palms came down to push herself up and off, but he had her about the middle in an unyielding circle of arms.

  “Be still.”

  She sighed. Gave over.

  How very odd it was, she thought, to lay limp atop this man she knew next to nothing about, her cheek settling into the coarse weave of his shirt, knees sunk between his. Was it two weeks ago now she’d stolen that horse? Or less? And now here she was.

  His right hand left her waist and moved up to sink fingers into the mass of her hair. He made a fist and her brows drew together, preparing for violence. The fist released, clenched again, tugging bunches of her hair with it. Again he did this, and again. Release and clench, shifting around the side of her head as he went.

  The creases fell out of Emmat’s forehead. The rhythmic clusters of pain became good in the counterintuitive way a stretch against sore muscles was good. Each pull at her scalp made way for a gentle flood of release.

  Not understanding and not caring: were they the same thing? She did little of each.

  The hand extracted itself, shifting the mass of hair off her shoulders as it went, just before the hangman rendered her utterly useless.

  Thumbs met in the meat of her shoulders, one on either side, and carved a trench down her spine all the way to the rise of her tailbone. Then, at the well of her lower back, they dug in, rolling in circles where she hurt the most.

  She wanted to cry, but couldn’t. His hands carved her up, laying meat away from bone it seemed, the way her body pooled and draped over the warm table of his chest.

  How? How could he know to do this for her? And why?

  The excruciating passes of thumbs down her back went on and Emmat languished in their unlikely balm, indifferent to where she was, or with whom. She lay there, accepting the inexplicable offering, limp as any poor soul Vane had likely ever let down from his noose.

  But then, after a time, the first unsurprising thing of the night came to pass. She felt the twitch of a cock coming to life, pressing through fabric into her belly.

  Each successive circuit of his hands began to stroke and squeeze at her flesh more, and work her sore muscles less. His touch would linger at the swell of her backside now, fingers fanning out, before abandoning restraint and dipping to knead whole handfuls of bottom through her shift. When she felt the first subtle grind of his hips, Emmat knew her peace was at an end.

  His left thigh came up and they were rolling. This time her back was to the wall as he settled them on their sides, the interest of his hands in her fleshy parts never pausing. By the warmth of his breath, she felt his face close the distance in the dark and turned her head just in time to avoid what she feared might have been an attempt at a kiss.

  He’s gone barking mad if he thinks we’ll be playing
at any of that.

  Undeterred, Vane accepted her throat instead. Kissing, biting, lapping…whatever he was doing couldn’t rightly be called any of those things, and yet it was all of them at once. Emmat wasn’t sure whether this was any better than the alternative.

  Amid his unnecessary ventures beneath her jawline, at her collarbone, the hand he didn’t have trapped behind her back fumbled and found her right arm. His grip slid down to her wrist, took up her hand. Thrust it between them.

  The way she gasped made her feel like a fool. Larger, male fingers curled around hers, insisting she acknowledge the hard length he enfolded in her hand. When he pushed himself further against her palm, circling their layered hold tighter and losing something akin to an abbreviated growl just below her ear, Emmat panicked.

  “Vane.” The word was warning and protest both, laced with the barest shameful squeak of desperation.

  Still? Still, he’s going to do this?

  He pantomimed another stroke, making sure to roll his hips and crowd her further against the wall.

  “It’s not your hand what’s running its courses, now is it?”

  She both knew and refused to know, at once. He released her hand.

  “Take it out.”

  He expects me to just…to just—

  “Do it.”

  The low command made Emmat start, and more to her surprise, to obey. She fumbled with the fastenings of his breeches, biting her lip as she tried to figure out in the dark what she needed to pull where before fabric came loose. Was this better than the alternative? Was it?

  Emmat drew the material aside, bringing her hand away with it. Vane was having none of her reluctance.

  He guided himself into her palm again, not violent, but firm, wrapping her fingers around heat and girth.

  Dear god.

  “Go on,” he said, sliding her fist along the length of him.

  As with the other nights, Emmat blinked into the darkness, lost. What were her other choices? Fight him? She would lose. Pleading her courses had only bought her safety between her thighs.

  There were worse things, she supposed, than having to tug on his prick for a few minutes. In her head, Emmat echoed his earlier irritated resignation.

  Fine.

  She gave him a squeeze, to signal her intent to cooperate, and felt him let go his trapping hand.

  The hiss sucked in through his teeth at her first stroke sent a sizzle of something inexplicable whorling down into her belly. Outside, the admonitory whisper of rain told Emmat she should hide this. She should be ashamed and as silent as possible as she went about giving the hangman what he wanted.

  There was enough of him that she couldn’t touch her fingertips to her thumbs, which explained much about their previous two encounters. Without any elbowroom, backed into the wall as she was, she had to turn her arm out to the side to get any sort of reasonable grip. This had the unfortunate consequence of bringing her entire body closer to his, prompting him to take up worrying at her neck again with his mouth.

  He could leave off doing that at any time.

  Down to the root, up over the blunt, flared head and back again. For a rough man, his skin slid like silk under her palm. Each time she came to the tip he would lose a controlled groan into the crook of her neck.

  On impulse, she stopped there, circling the pad of her thumb over the taut skin that descended from the arrow point at his crest. This brought a jerk of hips and a growl.

  Something grey and vast uncoiled beneath the shifting surface of whatever was happening there between Emmat and this man in the remote stone house.

  Power.

  Emmat gripped him, sliding a ring of pressure down to his base before tugging upward again, bunching the skin for a moment, only to relax her hold and let the ridge of his head slide over the successive tiny hills of her fingers.

  The noise this brought from him had nothing to do with control.

  Neck tired from craning to avoid his hungry mouth, she shifted her entire body downwards and laid her temple on his chest. This gave her arm more space and she took him in hand once more, stroking now with the aim of hearing, of feeling the man react.

  He planted his chin on top of her head, his left hand free to light where it would. She felt his fingers squeezing her working arm, her hip, her waist, closing the gap between them where she’d just made space.

  Vane didn’t seem to care, making up for the diminished play in her wrist by pumping himself into her grip. The flat muscle of his lower belly brushed against the backs of her knuckles as it bunched with the work of his hips. Some fleeting notion buffeted past her then, of sliding her palm further under his shirt to see what the rest of him felt like.

  But those were things lovers did. Emmat and Bartholomew Vane were not lovers. She was a tool whom he’d brought here to scratch an itch.

  You’re husband and wife though, now, aren’t you?

  Her own thoughts taunted her, and she wasn’t sure whether being his wife was better or worse than being his bed-warmer.

  For better or for worse! The voice in her head chimed in, amused. That’s what you said to the chaplain!

  His hand was at her breast, brushing nonsense aside. Through the linen of her shift, he found her nipple and plucked at it. Emmat whined and made to settle the score by casting her touch lower, finding and kneading his balls before moving back to the warmth of his cock.

  The rolling and grinding escalated to a heady point, breath coming heavy from both of them. There was no longer any denying the hum of arousal between her legs. The question was, why now? Why this man?

  A lover of her choosing Emmat would have expected to please. Although she had chosen Vane, in some backwards way, hadn’t she? Had made the bargain. Knew what it would entail. Perhaps the pendulum had to swing such a long way back from the extreme of him taking what he wanted—even wresting pleasure from her, whether she willed it or no—that there was some wicked thrill in forcing him to take leave of his senses instead.

  “Stop.”

  Emmat sucked in a breath as he crushed her to the wall, scattering her thoughts, stopping the motion of her hand between them.

  His hand brushed over her arm, shoulder, neck, seeking and finding her chin in the dark, tilting it up with a knuckle. Her lower lip felt the graze of a thumb.

  “I want your mouth,” he said, the words coming hot and coarse at her hairline.

  “What?”

  Now her head jerked all the way up, and she forgot for a moment how close their faces were. His mouth was at her cheekbone when he answered.

  “Either you can be on top for it”—he drove home the baleful amusement in his tone with a pointed thrust of hips—“or I can.”

  The image his words conjured, however fleeting, made the tight feeling in her belly unfurl and rise up to bloom beneath her lungs. And just like everything else, the bastard had been so casual about it. So irritatingly confident his threats would have the desired effect that he had no need for anything but nonchalance.

  But after her initial, rote flash of disgust, Emmat allowed herself a glimpse of what was real.

  What was real was the wall of a man pressing flesh and bone against her in the darkness. She’d never seen his face—a fact that was coming to devil her more by the moment—but she’d felt him inside her. Heard his moans. She wanted to hear more.

  And you know how to get it.

  “You want my mouth, husband?” she asked, brandishing the name like the blade he’d taken from her back on the hill. “Then make me some room.” Her body gave a wriggle in its current tight space for emphasis.

  He lost no time rolling onto his back. Emmat had to exercise a fair amount of self-control not to suck down what seemed like the first full, free breath of air she’d had in hours in a great, noisy lungful once he wasn’t crowding her.

  Her bold response might have bought her time, however brief, but it was best, she decided, not to dawdle. If she began to question, she’d lose her nerve. And, more impor
tant, she’d lose the handhold of power she’d carved out for herself since she discovered the hangman, too, could be made to curse and groan at her pleasure.

  She shifted her body further down along the mattress, her hand finding him erect and bobbing, eager for what she brought. It took her just a moment to raise herself on hands and knees, to negotiate a spot between male thighs, and to settle in, sitting on her heels, leaning low with her weight on her palms.

  Palm. Singular. She needed one hand for grip, aim. Vane wasn’t the first man she’d taken into her mouth, but it wasn’t the same. There was something…defiant at play here. Something hungry. There was no making sense of it. Rather than try, she bent her head and went to work on his cock.

  Her first move was meant to jar him, and it did. Nothing tentative, nothing shy. She closed her lips around the entire head and then some, letting him feel every wet, hot thing he wanted, before drawing him back out with a rude pop. The muscles in his thighs stiffened on either side of her, aggressive with lust, shock, as if he couldn’t believe she’d made good on her word without a fight.

  He relaxed with a groan as Emmat settled in with her tongue to know the length of him.

  The scent of man rose to greet her as she painted him with long, sloppy strokes. The circle of her fingers and thumb had him around the base, pulling from time to time, in part to direct more of his cock into her mouth, but more to hear the sounds he made when she added this sensation to the rest.

  It was as if the darkness had loosed something in her. He couldn’t see her face, either. Couldn’t look at her jaw stretched wide and sneer or judge. Just like her, Vane could only hear. And feel. She would make him feel everything.

  Emmat gorged on his cock. The more she could get into her mouth, the more she tried to fit. After a number of wet, enthusiastic attempts, she sealed her lips near his base and swallowed, feeling the head plump near the back of her throat. Vane convulsed and she had to cough to avoid gagging when his hips jerked him deeper.

  “Christ, woman!”