Always at her command.
Lower and deeper, the pressure rising in her belly, Hannah swallowed hard and clenched harder as they both wordlessly agreed on a quicker pace. His hips rose with her body up and down as she commanded what little of the increasing tension and release she could. But Hannah felt the wave of energy rising, growing stronger, stronger than her body or her will or those two things combined. His grunts rose up beneath her, louder with the increasing strength of his pumping hips, his pole rising higher inside her, thighs and hips and lips tense and hard as they hovered above him.
His hands found her hips, thumbs pressing in just a bit, fingers reaching around toward the small of her back as her hips wiggled slightly, as if of their own volition. Their will and her own were one, and they matched his, the collision of their energies finally accomplished, if not at all final. There was much more to come, and Hannah knew it.
She couldn’t wait and wouldn’t have to.
All at once, Jack took command beneath her, and the rush of his push beneath her was beyond resistance. Hannah could only wrap her arms around him and hold on as he sat up and then stood. Hannah’s body was thrust upward, legs wrapping around his waist as he found his footing with incredible, almost superhuman ease and power. Hannah felt as if she were swept up, carried along by a natural force beyond her, clinging, holding on for dear life, no longer at her command.
Hannah’s back hit the hard wall, Jack tall and powerful in front of her. He was too much to take in all the way, but his strong hands beneath her thighs kept her in place, elevated, almost floating as he went in and out in a faster, deeper cycle that sent bolts of pleasure through her body.
Hannah’s heart beat faster, mouth going dry before his kiss filled it, tongue warm and courageous as it dodged in and out, twirling around hers to mimic the motion of his manhood between her other lips, a more forceful and dominant presence, and no less sensitive or soul-stirring.
Thump, thump, thump, Hannah’s back became dewy with sweat as he pushed her against that flat, wallpapered surface behind her.
And in front of her, nipples rubbed against nipples, the expanse of his muscled chest pushing against her soft breasts, flesh rolling, smooth against course, hard against soft, compliant against commanding.
Jack’s perfect physique stood before Hannah like a god, pinning her in a confine she’d never imagined but had no wish to escape. Her hands curled into fists, one of them grabbing those stalks of black hair and pulling them hard to his tight-lipped pleasure.
Hannah felt her body stirring in ways it never had before, as if it were a force of nature itself, a mountain seething with steaming rivers, quaking slopes and misty valleys. Jack pushed into her, digging deeper with every stroke, finding tunnels unplumbed by any man, gems hidden in the glistening walls in those unlit chambers.
With another thrust of power and a twirl worthy of the floorboards of the saloon, Jack whisked Hannah off the wall and around, the room seeming to spin around her. Then her world tilted, gravity conspiring with him to pull her down and onto the bed. The momentum poured through him and straight into her, deeper and harder, and Hannah cried out as he kept grinding beyond the point that Hannah could sustain. He read her body like a master, dictating her feelings as much as he was detecting them, their bodies creating a perfect complement, each giving and taking just what the other needed and had to give.
The bed shook beneath them, springs unable to comprehend what Hannah herself had to rely upon them to describe. For her, there were no words, there was no breath, there was everything and nothing all at once.
Hannah’s body trembled, quaked, as her rivers poured out, her gems released from the rock to flow down and into the sunlight at long last. They poured past Jack’s piston and into the valleys of their conjoined loins and groins, legs rising, dewy droplets falling over smooth slopes to find the crumbled bedsheets beneath.
Hannah’s walls crumbled, those heated streams pouring through and flooding the chambers again and again until every lingering spirit was drowned in her passion, Hannah Alexander herself the final victim of that otherworldly baptism, born anew to life eternal.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Marion County, Indiana 1857
Another winter passed and Jack had his men pull the canvas off the orchards, saplings at last strong enough to endure on their own. The stables were filled with six horses, a quarter horse, two paints, two stallions, and a palomino which Hannah had caught wild and had broken herself early that spring.
The Bellamy Brothers had proved loyal and hardworking, Barney and Jasper were overseeing the ranch workers and the guards while Don served as Hannah’s personal assistant and chief gofer.
And with the mining operations having resumed immediately after the snows gave, there was much progress to discuss, even so early in the year.
Seth Jenkins stretched out one of several maps that charted Hannah’s extensive network of coal mines which snaked through the mountains to the northeast. Seth rubbed his chin and pointed out one area of her holdings.
“We’ve got a rich find here, half-a-million short tons a year or more, with a tunnel coming out on the other side. But we’d be a lot more efficient if we could tunnel in from the south —”
“I don’t want to have to see it,” Hannah said.
Seth shrugged. “It’s hardly noticeable.”
“Hardly noticeable now,” Hannah said. “But do you really think I intend to keep trucking that coal out of here by horse and cart?”
Seth smiled. “You’ve reconsidered my suggestion to start refining the coal right here on site?”
Jack Kincaid, now almost always by Hannah’s side especially at important meetings such as those, shook his head. “We’ve been through this.”
“Maybe I didn’t make myself clear! This coal you’ve got, it’s sub-bituminous, it’s low-rank, almost thirty percent moisture. If we can extract that moisture, we’ll make transportation a lot cheaper and more efficient, not to mention —”
“Not to mention construct a factory right on my property, to be baking coal all day?”
“Processing it, Miss Alexander.” Seth glanced at Jack, then back at Hannah. “It is still Miss Alexander, isn’t it?”
“It is,” Hannah said, not without a trace of her contempt. “And I share Mr. Kincaid’s position that this is no place for such a thing.”
“We could build one nearby—”
“I’m more intent on having a railroad built from that side of the mountain, with my property as its destination.”
Seth seemed beguiled, his smile wriggling between his cheeks. “A … your own railroad?”
“Why not? The railroads are among our chief clientele and your other mining associates. I imagine the B&O or some other railroad wouldn’t object to running a track off their main line to loop around the mountain, right to where we need it to be. A train could pull a lot more unrefined coal than any number of horses and carriages.”
“Yes,” Seth had to say, scratching his chin and nodding, “yes I’d have to say it would. But the expense of such a project —”
“Won’t be altogether that much for the railroads to bear.”
“You … you want them to pay for it?”
Hannah smiled. “Why no, my dear, sweet Mr. Jenkins. I expect them not only to pay for the construction, but for the rights to do so.” Jack watched as Hannah let silence envelop their conversation, the sheer strength of her will overwhelming him as she knew it would any interested railroads.
And she expected more than one.
“Unless your own company would like the contract,” Hannah said.
“Well, um, I would have hoped that—”
“Perhaps I should simply call W. A. Barns myself, old friend that he is. Surely he’s got the wherewithal to get the matter accomplished.”
“I … I’ll do what I can, of course. Some of it may require your … personal touch.”
“Then lean into it, mister,” Hannah snapped. “You kno
w what I want, get it done! Call my lawyer in New York. If and when you come across the obstacle you cannot hurdle, I’ll be here to come to your rescue.”
Seth nodded and collected the maps and charts. “Leave those,” Hannah said.
“But … I need them, my foremen and their workers—”
“Copies, then, Mr. Jenkins, I’ll have copies of everything recorded. Everything.”
Seth was clearly imagining the mountain of extra work he faced, but his weary smile held up. “Yes, of course, Miss Alexander.”
“From the beginning of our association up until the present.”
“You … I … that’s quite a —”
“Too much to ask, Mr., Jenkins?”
“No, I … of course not, Miss Alexander.”
“Then it’s so simple a task that you have time to linger here?” A long silence hovered around them, Seth looking at Jack and then back at Hannah before turning and walking backward halfway across the study to the exit. Once he closed the door behind himself, Jack burst into a little chuckle.
“You are a peach,” he said.
But Hannah wasn’t amused. “I mean it, I want that railway.”
“I don’t take you for jesting, not in the slightest. But you’ve got something else in mind, I know it.”
Hannah tried to hide her private smile. “I’ve got a lot of things in mind, Jack, don’t waste your time trying to map them all. It would take the rest of Seth’s life and his children’s as well.” Hannah stepped closer to Jack. “And I’ve got other things in mind for your time and energy.”
The knocks fell quickly on the study door. Hannah and Jack backed away from one another. “Miss Alexander?”
“Come in, Don.”
The door opened and Don poked his head in. “There’s new, Miss —”
“I said come in, Don.” Don stepped into the room and closed the door.
Jack asked him, “Those spies still skulking around?”
Don nodded. “Indeed, Mr. Kincaid. Low in number, and they stay back. But they do linger sir, yes.”
Jack turned to Hannah. “If we could get the jump on ‘em, maybe bring of one of them in on charges—”
“What charges? And why bother? We know he works for Chisholm and we know there’s little enough to bring back.”
“Little enough? Those mines? All this property? You’re vulnerable in any number of ways!”
“This isn’t the Wild West, Jack. We have laws here, laws that protect the rich. If Chisholm has any hope of coming against me, he’ll come at me through the law.”
“Then why the spies?”
Hannah had no answer, but she couldn’t help notice Don tarrying by the door. “Something else, Don?”
“Yes, Miss A. … a visitor, my brother Barney escorted him onto the property.”
Jack asked, “Who is it, what’s the name?”
“Milton, he says sir, Eugene Milton.”
*
The man had lost weight since Hannah saw him in the waning months of the previous year. His tan hair, thin, had disappeared to reveal his shiny, bald pate. He sat slouched forward, and Hannah could see that he was exhausted, beaten down, run to the end of his rope.
“I … do your worst if that’s what you’re going to do,” he said, raising the brandy to his lips. “At least you’re gentle about it.”
Hannah asked him, “Why would you think that?”
Jack added, “You think we’d bring you back here to kill you and not have our man just gut you in the street?”
Hannah was silently offended, but the storekeeper, Milton, only nodded. “That’s the only reason I didn’t force his hand. That and, frankly, I’m just too tired.”
Jack said, “You look like you spent all winter under a rock.”
“Quite so,” he said with another hearty sip of brandy, sighing to enjoy the medicinal, soothing aspects. “I can’t say where I’ve been, of course, but … it can’t last, I can tell you that.”
Hannah didn’t doubt it. One look at the man told her he had a few more months of life left, his pallor gray and receding, face nearly melting off his skull. A life of running and hiding, being assaulted and hounded, and Hannah already had a good idea why.
“You never reopened your bookstore,” Hannah presumed. “You were selling abolitionist literature, I take it, Frederick Douglass and the like?”
Milton’s bitter smile described most of his decision. “Nothing of the kind,” Milton spat out. “Do I look like a fool?” Another sip of brandy was all the inspiration he needed, but not enough to blot out his suspicions. “You don’t really think that.”
“Don’t tell me my own mind,” Hannah said.
Jack leaned toward Milton. “I can attest to that, Mr. Milton. Listen, we mean you no harm. I understand your position, we both do.” Hannah leaned back and let Jack take the reins of the conversation. She knew where he was directing it, and it was just where she wanted the conversation to go. “We understand how it may seem to you, that we’re landed gentry, trying to pry the truth out of you about your place in the Undergrown Railroad.” Those words sent a jolt through Hannah’s mind and body, but she stayed calm and didn’t flinch, revealing nothing of what she was really thinking or feeling.
It was a skill that would someday save her life, Hannah had little doubt.
“Why would folks like us want to help the abolitionists?” Jack asked. “We’re more like the folks behind Big Cotton than any Northern banker, am I right?” Milton nodded. Jack went on, “But we don’t have any slaves here, and we don’t do business with anybody who does. Don’t tell me you didn’t look into it after that day in front of your bookstore.”
“I did,” Milton said. “But such a reputation could easily convince almost anybody of anything.”
“You’re dubious, Milton,” Jack said, tapping his shoulder. “I like that. And I’m glad you’re here. I don’t speak for Miss Alexander, but I imagine she feels the way I do.”
“Or you wouldn’t be here,” Hannah said, once again taking the reins of the conversation. “We’ve been plagued by the question of abolition since that day, Mr. Milton. That’s why we sent for you. We want to help.”
Jack’s cocky smile melted away, but Hannah ignored it, as was her power and her delight.
“Help,” Milton said weakly, “how?”
“You tell me.”
Jack interjected, “Our thoughts and prayers?”
But a stern glare from Hannah silenced him. Hannah turned to Milton. “What’s the weakest front? I’m a wealthy woman, perhaps I should try a political angle.”
Jack couldn’t seem to resist saying, “A woman … in politics?”
“Not outright,” Hannah said, “I’m not suggesting that. The country’s not ready for that … not yet, anyway.”
“Not ever, God willing.”
But Hannah ignored him and went on to Mr. Milton, “But I have powerful friends in politics, the mayor of Cutthroat—”
“The sharks in Washington will eat your little mountain stream guppy alive,” Jack said.
“What about my connections with the Indiana legislature—?” But Jack’s stone-faced expression, unmoving and unimpressed, told Hannah all she needed to know. “What about demonstrations of some kind?” Hannah suggested instead. “What about that hall in Philadelphia, perhaps something like that right here in Indiana—”
“They burned it down opening night!” Jack interjected.
“That’ll only bring the opposition down on us,” Milton said, shaking his head. “The key is to be quiet, lay as low as possible.”
“Is that what you were doing in your bookstore, laying low?”
“My bookstore didn’t have anything to do with it, Miss Alexander. But I have done what little I could do, help the folks coming up from the south to make it over the Canadian border.”
“And what little could you do?” Jack asked.
“Leave food at designated points along the way, water sometimes. One or two folks might h
ave found refuge in my basement from time to time. Sometimes I’d ride ‘em out in my hay cart, but that only happened once, and not long ago.”
Hannah guessed, “That’s why they hit your store?”
“Among other things, I guess. That’s when they caught me, let’s just put it that way.”
“What about your home,” Hannah asked, “are you still conducting?”
“They hide in the burnt-out shell of the place, I suppose, they’re welcome to. But Slaughter’s onto that, onto me—”
“Slaughter,” Hannah repeated, “the sheriff. He’s in with the slave-traders.”
“Makes a good living sending ‘em back and a good salary just reporting back to his masters down south. He’s the one sent those men to burn my shop, he’s the reason no justice ever came of it.”
“He’s the reason you’re hiding,” Jack guessed, Milton nodding and finishing his brandy.
“We’re a little far west for this sort of thing, aren’t we?”
“Eastern routes have all been found out,” Milton said to answer Jack’s question. “More and more the slaves are diverting to the west, not counting on the great lakes to the north.”
Hannah asked, “How do they get across?”
“Private boat, mostly. It ain’t easy, so many of ‘em wind up at the bottom, but a lot get through.”
Hannah glanced at Jack, but she didn’t need to explain the many thoughts passing through her head, settling quickly into her heart.
“What if we could help them,” Hannah finally suggested. “Run them right through here?”
Jack’s expression turned pallid, pale, but he held himself back and kept himself silent. Hannah was grateful and pleased, but she knew the condition was only temporary.
*
“You’ve really gone around the bend this time,” Jack said, pacing the study after Mr. Milton retired to his new guest room in the Alexander mansion as Hannah’s new hire. “You have no idea what you’re getting yourself, and the rest of us, into!”
“I won’t turn the man out into the streets, Jack.”
“Yes, you’re compassionate, and that’s one of the things I so admire about you. But this man in particular, you know him to be a criminal! That makes us parties to his crimes.”
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