Katherine

Katherine woke languidly, but all at once. In one moment, she was laying on the pebbled shore of a clear blue river. In the next she lay on a pallet of old wool blankets that smelled vaguely of mothballs and mildew. The transition, while abrupt, was not jarring because for all that the scenery changed, a few important things did not.

For one, the warmth—in the dream a product of the sun and in reality a pleasant combination of the stove and the sun coming through the window and the warm body pressed against her back.

For another, the peace—not a river, now, but a feeling that sprang from within. A contentment that came from the knowledge that she was safe, and the man she loved was with her, and that very soon they would be a family and far, far away from the town that had hurt them.

And finally, the pleasure. In the dream, it had been a strange, amorphous thing. A tingle in her belly and a strange, hungry ache between her legs.

In reality...

He must still be asleep, because Gabe had never been one to touch her without first demanding that she look him in the eye and tell him that she wanted it. Before Jacob, it had been a product of her chaste upbringing, contrasting with the worldliness of his. She'd often suspected, back then, that he was more aware of the sensual chasm between them than she. In her youthful mind, there was an allure to the dark knowledge that he held. She'd felt pretty and pure and protected, carried in the arms of a giant to unimaginable heights of pleasure. Even so, he had treated her as if she were a delicate flower that he was trampling beneath his boot.

After Jacob... well, after Jacob she had grown to fear all men, no matter if she knew they would not hurt her. And Gabe had sensed that. He had moved slowly, never trapping her with his body, always stopping in the midst of passion to check in with her if he thought he saw her stare go distant. And he hadn't been wrong to do so. There were times, even when his body was coupled with hers and his scent filled her nose and his low, gentle voice rang in her ears, when her mind would pack up and move away, taking her back to Jacob. In those moments, Gabe would go still and cradle her face in his hands and look in her eyes, talking lowly to her until she returned to him.

So no, it was not like him to touch her without her permission. Which is why she was alarmed to find that the building pressure deep in her belly came, not from some dreamworld fantasy, but from the caressing press of his fingers in that deep, sacred place between her legs.

She lay on her side, facing the wall, with his body curled against hers and his arm—the one not occupied with coaxing pleasured little sounds from deep inside her—serving as her pillow.

She really ought to stop him. He'd be horrified with himself when he woke, and Jacob's torment and violation were still so fresh in her mind. What if she became confused? What if she feared him or struck out?

But the thought of Jacob—of his soft, thrusting fingers molesting her—only made her arch her back, pressing forward into the safety of a gentle, firm touch that had only ever hurt her with its absence. She closed her eyes and imagined Gabe's touch as a wash of warm water, sluicing away what remained of Jacob's filth.

There was no doubt, now, that he was sleeping. His breathing, still bearing a telltale rasp that made her wince, was deep and steady, if a bit rapid, and he was mumbling something into her hair that had the rambling, slurred quality of a spoken dream.

His body might have been clumsy and heavy with sleep, but his fingers were deft and sure. Her hips rolled of their own accord as he delved deeper, his thigh pushing between her knees, opening her legs to allow him deeper access while his thumb continued rubbing swift, pressing circles around that little spot where a mere brush of contact made her eyes roll back in her head and her breath stutter in her chest.

Melissa, in a conversation Katherine had never asked to have, had once informed her that that spot was called a clitoris. Katherine hadn't paid the information much mind, because Melissa was always assigning fancy foreign names to things that didn't need them. All Katherine had ever really needed to know about that spot between her legs was that it seemed to be connected by a fuse to her innards and a bell-pull to her brain. With the right touch, that one tiny little spot of soft, velvety flesh could ignite a powderkeg inside her belly and set off clanging church bells in her head.

Once, she had tried to play her body the way Gabe did. She had noticed that when he touched her, she became slick and her body seemed to ache with a dreadful emptiness that only a man's body could fill. She had also noticed that when Jacob took her, her body was dry and taut, and unwelcome to intrusion. In those early days of her marriage, tormented by the pain of coupling with her husband, she had secretly touched herself beneath the covers in the vain hope that she could bring that same slick readiness herself that Gabe had always conjured.

Perhaps he would teach her, because to date he was the only one who managed to elicit that reaction from her body. Just as he was doing now. Despite the trauma and the fear and the exhaustion, and the fact that he was sleeping, he was pulling her to the edge of an excitement she had never been able to rouse in herself. His thumb rubbed and his fingers slid in and out of the ready emptiness, and it was all she could do not to scream with the pleasure.

Clamping her lip between her teeth to keep from crying out, she clenched a hand in the sheets and wrapped the other around the arm serving as her pillow, her skin itching for whatever contact she could find. Something hard and hot pressed against the curve of her backside, and the sensation sent a new kind of pleasure tingling up and down her spine, her hips rolling of their own accord.

He responded, uttering a hoarse, sleepy groan and rocking into her, the arm beneath her head tugging her closer, his hand slipping beneath the gaping neck of her shirt and closing over her breast.

He was all around her. Inside her. Trapping her. Protecting her and loving her and needing her and carrying her up, up, up into the clouds.

It was only in the sudden taut, silent stillness that she heard the echo of her own wanton mewl of pleasure-- the sound that had woken him up.

Gabe had gone utterly motionless behind her, his fingers still deep inside her body and his other hand still plastered to her chest. She felt his breathing stop altogether, and then resume—shallow and uneven.

She didn't know why she was paralyzed as well. Perhaps it was a sympathetic thing, or maybe she simply didn't want to startle him as he adjusted to the waking world. Either way, she went stiff in his arms, allowing him to retract his touch and slip his arm from beneath her head, slowly shifting away and easing her down until she lay on her back.

She stared at the splitting wood beams of the ceiling while he slowly sat, gathering the blankets into a pile in his lap as if to mask his body's desire for her. She sat up as well, silently retrieving the cold, half-drunk mug of tea from beside the pallet and handing it to him. He accepted it, draining the contents and then setting the cup aside. Moisture beaded on his lip and she wanted to lick it away.

"Kat..." he rasped, glancing at her guiltily from the corner of his eye. "Katie, I'm so sorry."

She had a mind to tell him what she was thinking—that perhaps the pleasure they could bring each other might do something to banish the hurt they had both suffered.

She had a mind to tell him what she was feeling—that she needed his touch the way she needed freedom and music and all the other pleasures of earthly existence that might not follow her to the next life.

Rather than tell him what she was thinking, or feeling, she slipped from beneath the covers and turned, throwing a leg over his lap and sinking deliberately onto the spot where he'd piled the quilts. His eyes went wide with something akin to pain, and his hands clenched in the blankets at his sides.

"Kat..." His voice was strangled, and not just because of the ugly, blue-black bruise that ringed his neck.

"You should be sorry," she whispered, resting her hands on his shoulders and kneading at the knotted muscles. She leaned in and brushed a kiss over his frown. "It's indecent, Gabe, to start something and walk away before it's finished."

His body relaxed in increments as she proved with her body the words that would sound empty and trite if she spoke them out loud.

I want you, she said with her mouth, leaving a trail of wet kisses from his temple to the blessed place in his neck where his pulse beat strong and hard. He tasted of sweat, with a faint echo of the eucalyptus leaves she'd used to ease his breathing. When she pressed her lips to his they opened, and she licked and nibbled and coaxed until he returned her kiss fully, his tongue plundering her mouth and his breath hot and heavy, mingling with her own.

I need you, she said with her hands, wrapping her fingers around his wrist and drawing his hand up, resting it deliberately over her abandoned breast.

I trust you, she said with her eyes, which caught his and refused to let them go as she slowly, gently guided his hand from her breast down to the junction of her legs. She watched his pupils flare as she rocked slowly against his motionless fingers, only releasing his wrist when he took over, resuming the skillful massage of her... what was it called? Oh, it didn't matter. All that mattered was that the bells were beginning to ring inside her head once more, and her gut was burning with cold fire.

I choose you, she said with her mouth, her hands, her eyes, her body, and her soul. Every part of her sang out that song, and she felt that perfect moment when he finally believed her. It was like those times, back when she was a girl, when she'd sung in the church choir and a hymn would hit her right in the chest. The words would vanish and the notes would fade, and all she'd know for a few glorious minutes was the music, flowing through her.

As with the music of her choir days, the mechanics of their love seemed to vanish and there was nothing left to say, with either words or actions, because all that was left between them was understanding.

She felt the sigh rise up from deep within him, and he slumped back into the pillows, dragging her with him with a hand curved around the back of her neck. His lips closed over hers, and he kissed her so deep she felt the breath leave her lungs and fill his. His fingers pushed deep inside her and then withdrew, painting the warmth of her own eagerness across her heated flesh with a slow, patient stroke that had her writhing and panting out moans that he captured with his mouth and swallowed with a seemingly endless hunger.

His hand shifted around to grip her backside and his legs kicked at the blankets, and then she felt it. Flesh on flesh. The straining proof of his need pressing hard and hot against her belly. Without thinking, she reached between them and took him in hand, and his body jolted beneath her. The gasping, desperate kisses ceased, and his hand left the back of her neck to come around and grip her chin, pushing her far enough away for his eyes to meet hers, his gaze branding his name on her heart.

"Okay," she gasped, nodding jerkily. "It's okay."

His eyes fell and then his hand joined hers, guiding himself into place. She pushed away from him then, bracing her hands on his chest and finishing it herself. She sank down onto him and her whimper of pleasure twined around his groan and seemed to stretch around the room, decorating the walls like tinsel. Her fingers clenched, digging into his chest, and she began to rock, her body remembering what her mind had long forgotten.

Coupling with Jacob had always been a painful, passive thing. Even on those nights when he had allowed her a glass of wine at dinner and her mind was loose and languid. Or on the even rarer nights when they had shared in a pleasant discussion and gone to bed without pain or anger between them. Even then, her role had only ever been to lay beneath the covers with her nightdress hiked up around her middle, her legs pushed off to the sides, and her hands clenched in the sheets.

Coupling with Gabe... well, she'd never really call it coupling. That was too common a word to describe what happened between them. When she was with Gabe, she owned every decision and every movement. Every unraveling thread of her pleasure and every resounding thunderclap of his.

Drunk on power, she leaned down, bracing her hands on either side of his head while her hips moved in a slow circle that unearthed a rumbling growl from his chest that vibrated in her own. His hands cupped her backside, pressing into the soft flesh, aiding rather than guiding the swirl of her hips.

"Touch me," she commanded, whispering the word into his ear before sitting back up and rocking back until he probed at parts of her that even he had never touched before this moment.

He cursed and his hips jerked beneath her, his hands coming around and scrabbling at the fabric of her shirt. Buttons popped and flew, one landing on the pillow near his head as he dragged the shirt down her arms and tossed it aside. His lips parted and his touch grew suddenly, agonizingly gentle, his fingertips ghosting over the soft, tender flesh. She looked down and saw what he was seeing—the fading, yellow-green bruise where Jacob had groped her.

For a moment they both froze. She ceased the motion of her hips, both hands braced on his chest. He ceased, it seemed, to breathe, his hand covering the outline of her bruises while the other gripped her thigh.

"Gabe," she murmured, lifting a hand and wrapping it around his wrist, and he sucked in a harsh breath, his eyes boring into hers. "I'm okay, love."

His head shook minutely against the pillow, and she felt the tendons of his wrist shift as his thumb slowly rubbed over the abused, bruised flesh. "I'd bring him back," he whispered, his eyes suddenly glassy. "I'd bring him back so he could die twice over. I'd bring him back so you could kill him yourself."

A laugh bubbled out of her, low and sad, and she bent to kiss him, gently this time. Her lips ghosted over his, and then she flattened her chest to his, pressing with her leg and tugging with her hand until he obeyed her silent command and rolled over, covering her with his body.

"I know," she breathed, arching her back and driving her hips up to show him that she wanted him to continue. He obeyed, slowly at first and then with more urgency, his weight braced on a forearm but his chest nonetheless pressed heavy to hers, never allowing even a breath of air to pass between them.

"I love you," he gasped, reaching back to hook a hand around her thigh, pulling her leg up to deepen the reach of his thrusts.

"I know," she moaned, fisting her hand in his short hair and yanking him down for a kiss. His mouth was as demanding as the rest of him, and she felt herself grow closer and closer to the precipice, staring down at a long fall onto jagged rocks that would slice her to ribbons and toss her into the waves, reborn.

She slipped a hand between their bodies, down to where flesh met flesh and that sweet little place between her legs was already pulsing and red-hot with need. Sucking in a breath, half-suffocated by his kiss, Katherine pinched her own flesh between her fingers and came undone.

She screamed.

She had never screamed before.

Their love had always been a secret thing—a quiet, shameful rendezvous, even in the deepest, farthest corners of the woods.

This morning, she screamed. Her body arched and bucked and the breath left her lungs in a strained, gasping cry for mercy. She tasted blood, and didn't know if she'd bit her own lip or his, and she didn't care. She savored it, just as she savored the perfect, pulsing pain of her body clenching around his, drawing him deeper, deeper until there was no part of her that didn't bear his mark.

And then it was over. All at once, her every muscle went utterly slack and she fell back to the bed, her sweaty back collapsing against the wrinkled blankets. She lay limp beneath his straining body, as she used to lay limp beneath Jacob's. But where that had been a helpless, painful submission, this was a deliberate, blissful surrender.

She closed her eyes and wound her arms around his neck, cherishing the twanging aftershocks as he plundered her hypersensitive body. She murmured her love in his ear as he finished, his body jerking against hers and his breath coming in hot, jagged gasps.

He had the courtesy to roll as his body gave out, pulling her with him until she lay sprawled on his chest, their bodies still joined. She wondered if he could feel her, weary and aching but still throbbing with the heated remnants of sated desire. Exhausted, she rested her head on his chest and simply listened to the steady, thrumming rhythm of his heart while his hand traced lazy lines up and down the length of her spine.

In that splendid silence, the feeling of safety he had always inspired enveloped her fully for the first time since he had left her bedside to turn himself in to the sheriff. Even so, it seemed to have evolved somehow. Where before it had been like a wall, shielding her from outside forces of evil, now it felt more like a broad green meadow, free of predators, for her to run in. To sit in. To cry in...

"Are you feeling better, now?" she asked quietly, smoothing her thumb over a scar just below his collar bone. He hadn't had it the last time she'd seen him without his clothes.

He didn't answer with words, but with a growly grumble that made her smile and turn her had to press a kiss to the center of his chest.

"That was probably a silly thing to do while you're still recovering. How's your breathing?" She suddenly realized she was resting with most of her weight on his chest, and jerked away. He brought her up short with an iron arm clamped around her waist and a hand on the side of her head, holding her close.

"S'fine," he mumbled, and she had to admit that he did sound better. Still hoarse, but his breathing wasn't so strained. She had been so, so frightened when they'd first reached the cabin and he'd tumbled face-first off the horse. She made light of the whole trial because she knew he'd feel terrible if he knew how she had wept as she shoved and grappled and wrestled his body onto a musty old blanket she'd found in the cabin. He'd feel as if it was his fault that her back was tied up in knots from the strain of dragging him, desperate heave by anguished tug, across the yard and up the single step and into the tiny building. And honestly, he'd probably laugh at her if he knew that she had convinced herself, while in the process of rolling his inert body onto the pallet, that he'd gone and died on her and that she had broken down in hysterical sobs, prostrating herself on his motionless body, before she finally regained her senses and quieted down enough to hear the steady rasp of his breathing.

There was no use sharing all those embarrassing little details about the ways she'd fallen to pieces when she should have been focused entirely on helping him.

"Kat."

"Hm?" She lifted her chin just enough to watch his profile as he raised his head to look down at her, his fingers combing through her hair.

"What's the matter?"

She sighed and broke his gaze, staring instead at the stove across the room. The little fortified door in the front glowed faintly orange, barely distinguishable with the bright white sunlight that streamed through the curtain-less window.

"Nothing."

"Katherine..."

"I was just thinking, that's all."

"'Bout what?"

"Nothing important." She tucked her chin and passed her hand over his body, pausing to trace another scar above his hip. It was an ugly, puffy red thing, and she remembered the incident with Edward Crenshaw. In a sense, she owed the man a thank you for making her realize how much she still had left to lose, in a time when she thought Isobel was the sole remaining occupant of her heart.

"Don't lie, Katherine."

She hesitated, knowing that even her own thoughts were skirting around the issue that had haunted what little sleep she'd had since they had reached this sanctuary.

"Kat..." the single syllable, uttered with such calm reverence, reminded her of where she stood—on a spring-green prairie hill, breathing clean crisp air, as free and as safe as she would ever be.

"I..." Her voice caught in her throat and she swallowed hard, closing her eyes and comforting herself with the smell of fresh sweat on his skin. "I killed Robert Mulligan."

Because she was so close, her body pressed to his wherever it was possible for skin to touch skin, the spent length of him still nestled inside of her, she felt his reaction as if it were her own. She felt each muscle tense minutely, the way a deer goes still in the woods when it senses movement. An instinctual ready wariness. She heard his heartbeat speed up, from the languid thump of post-coital lassitude to a jittery, uneven flutter.

"Kat," he breathed, and she felt his decision to relax, softening his body even as his hold tightened around her. "I'm so sorry. Did he... I shouldn't have... when? How?"

She sniffed back the tears that had arrived without any telltale burning in her nose or blur of her eyesight, but simply ran in warm streams over the bridge of her nose and across her temple. Gabe muttered something that may have been a curse and may have been a sweet nothing as stroked her hair.

"I'm sorry," he murmured. "If you don't to tell—"

"No," she croaked, sniffling and shaking her head. "I ought to tell you. I want to. I think until I do it won't be real. I have all these memories running around inside my head. The attack on the bridge and what happened in the church. The whole week without you felt like a dream. I kept just... going away in the middle of playing with Izzy or conversations with the Tuckers, revisiting what happened. And the strange thing was that the memories felt more real than reality."

Now that she was talking, she couldn't seem to stop. She felt a little badly. He must be thirsty and exhausted, and probably starving half to death. But the words ran out of her like blood from a wound, and she couldn't help but feel that if she stifled the flow that she'd be trapping bad things inside of her that would fester and rot and eat her up from somewhere deep within. And there was something easy about talking inside his arms—like the real world wasn't quite real and everything she said would stay in this strange safe place, letting her return to her life without the burdens that plagued her.

"But then we hatched our plan," she went on, nuzzling her cheek against his skin—blessedly cool after two days of burning. "And I felt... I don't know how to describe it. It was as if I'd been floating a few inches off the ground and then we started planning the rescue and it was like I had been dropped back to earth. The night I rode to town it was like what happened with Jacob didn't even exist. They were someone else's memories. I lived only for the next step in the plan."

He listened as well as he ever had—offering little noises of encouragement to move her forward without ever stopping her. Now that his initial shock had worn off, his body was carefully relaxed beneath her, giving away nothing of what he thought.

"Mulligan spotted me in the crowd at city hall. I stayed near the edge, but... I don't know. Maybe it was just bad luck. But he recognized me and he grabbed me and hauled me off into an alley. He threatened me." If she didn't know him so well, she wouldn't even have noticed the way his hand lingered on the back of her head for a moment, or the deep breath he took to steady himself against her story, his chest rising and falling like a rolling wave beneath her head.

"He tried to... he tried..." Older memories than Mulligan's death overtook her, and she gave in to the dormant anger and fear that had lain untouched and suppurating beneath her worry and determination. She was no longer able to keep her voice steady, and it occurred to her in a staggering instant that she didn't need to. He didn't need her to protect him from her anguish, just as she didn't want him to protect her from his. He had always been strong enough to carry the weight of her hurt, just as she was finally whole enough to absorb his.

'When Jacob had me," she said, her voice a croak and her tears falling freely, a steady flood of exorcised despair, "he told me that in order to cleanse my soul and regain God's favor, I had to give my body back to God the way I had... the way I'd given it to the devil."

The rumble of a growl in Gabe's chest infused her with a warmth that made her smile through her tears. "He had his men strip me naked. They tied me up, where you found me. He... he touched me. Where you saw the bruises. He didn't force himself on me. He wanted to wait for them to bring you. He wanted to make you watch. But he did... with his fingers. He..." She broke off, and for many long minutes she simply sobbed, coating his skin in slippery tears. He held her as her body shuddered, his hands stroking away the evil she expelled, the low rumble of his voice promising her safety and keeping her planted in that safe green meadow where she could scream as loud as she needed and the sound and the pain would just keep running, running, running away from her until they vanished into the distant blue cut of the mountains.

Eventually the tears eased, and she was able to speak again, though her throat ached and her nose was clogged and the words were a hoarse, nasally struggle.

"He teased me," she said, watching the sneer on Jacob's face play against the back of her closed eyelids. "He threatened me. He threatened you and Isobel. I wanted to kill him, Gabe. So badly. He always preached about sin and the call of Satan, but I don't think he ever understood the way it rises up inside you and takes you over. Jacob was a bad man, but it's a sin to want so badly to kill a human being as I wanted to kill him. Not for the sake of the world or for the sake of my child or you, but because I wanted to watch him suffer. And when you came to rescue me, you shot him just like that. He just dropped to the floor, and I was so happy to see you but also... over and over, as you were carrying me away, I just kept thinking that it was too quick."

The surface beneath her jerked with a huff of a laugh, and his fingers scratched playfully at her scalp. "If you're looking for condemnation, you won't find it here," he said, his voice light. "I've been thinking the same thing. Wish I could have strung him up and made him hurt. Perhaps I'm a bad influence on you, Katie."

"No," she said resolutely, lifting her head and propping her chin on his chest. She must look like a puffy, snot-nosed animal, but he smiled tenderly and tucked her hair behind her ear, his eyes glowing warmer than the stove.

"No?"

"No," she repeated, bracing her weight on one arm and lifting the other to trace her fingers around the shiny purple lump above his eye. "Don't lay claim to my bloodlust, Gabriel. It's mine. As Melissa would say, it's awfully chauvinistic of you to think that women can't possess a vengefulness of their own."

He grinned at her, his hand casually slipping beneath the blankets and following the curve of her body until it rested on her thigh. "I s'pose you're forgetting how I came up," he said grittily, his fingers tickling the back of her leg until she twitched and smacked him playfully on the cheek. "I am well-educated on the vengefulness of the female mind."

"Good," she said, sniffing and swallowing the dregs of her tears as she laid her head back down. "Because it's such a powerful thing, Gabe. I didn't even realize it had been eating at me until I found myself on my back in that alley with Mulligan hanging over me fumbling with his belt. And I wasn't even afraid. Looking back, it frightens me how little fear I felt. All I felt was anger. It burned my blood so hot I think you could have tossed me in the river and the whole thing would have gone up in steam."

The memory made her skin tingle, the echo of the rage mixing bitterly with the very real, very present ache of guilt.

"I had your knife on me, in my boot. I pulled it out and stabbed him." She pressed her fingers gently into Gabe's ribs, where she had driven the knife into Robert Mulligan. "I felt it go through his jacket and his shirt. Skin, fat, muscle. And I swear I could even feel it when it pierced his lung." She smoothed a hand over his side, as if she could ease away the damage she had done to another human being. The damage she had gladly done and perhaps would not undo, even if she could. "I could have stopped, you know? Maybe he would have survived. But I kept going. Just because I wanted to hurt him. I dragged the knife through his body and I imagined the blade slicing through his insides and his blood was spilling over my hand and up my sleeve..."

Gabe's hand left her leg and captured her fingers, which she realized she was flexing into a fist, the tacky residue of Mulligan's blood an invisible, lingering memory on her palm.

"Kat," he murmured, bringing her hand up and kissing the back of her fingers, one by one. Then he turned it over and pressed another chaste kiss to her palm. What would he say? He wouldn't condemn her, she knew. He understood the feelings she was describing. Maybe he would tell her that she wasn't a bad person, or remind her that Mulligan was a bad man, or simply reassure her that her eternal soul was safe so long as she repented for her sin. "Thank you."

Thank you?

"For what?" she asked, pulling their joined hands down and studying his fingers. Strong, rough fingers that had drawn so much more blood than hers, and yet she still loved him with a tenderness as soft as silk and as pure as the crystal water of a mountain spring.

"Well," he said thoughtfully, pulling his hand free and returning his fingers to her hair. "If you hadn't killed him he'd have killed you. And if he had, you wouldn't have made it in time to cut me down. We'd have both died, and Izzy would have been left without either of her parents. I know it was a terrible decision to have to make, but it was the right one, Katie."

"But that's the thing," she argued. "It wasn't a choice. I didn't do it for Isobel, or even really for you. I just did it because I was angry. It feels evil to have given in. Like I'm no better than Jacob, giving in to his own perversions."

Gabe snorted out a laugh at that, his chest jerking beneath her head. "Katherine, you are as far as a person can get from that kind of evil. Tell me you know that."

"I know, but—"

"There is no 'but' here, Katie. Look... I know the way we think of people doesn't always line up. You were brought up by your pops, who taught you that everyone is God's child and has a soul that's destined for heaven or hell, depending on how you spend your time on earth. I was brought up by my mother, who taught me that all any of us are is barely-civilized animals with baser instincts that turn to ugliness when they aren't properly heeded."

"They both sound pretty smart," Katherine said thoughtfully, thinking of the sinful act they had just committed and how much better and more alive and full of godly love she felt for having committed it.

"They do. I reckon there's a reason both kinds of folks exist, you know? So maybe for Mulligan, you have to consider both. Once we get out of here we'll go to a church and you can talk to God and apologize for letting your anger speak for you. But it might help, too, if you consider that there's an animal inside of you that has been cornered for years now. And cornered animals get angry, Katherine. That's natural. It's how they survive. Maybe your logical, Christian brain doesn't think you killed him for me or for Izzy, but that anger came from somewhere. God gave it to you, same as he gave it to every animal, to protect yourself and the ones you love."

Katherine was silent for a long time, staring idly at the stove, thinking about his words and about Mulligan's dying breaths and about how wonderful it felt to have given herself back to love.

Finally, with a pensive sort of giddiness, she raised her head and propped her chin on his chest once more. "So," she said, narrowing her eyes. "I have an animal inside me, do I?"

By the hunger in his answering grin, she wasn't the only one.

"Mmhm," his fingers brushed lightly over the back of her neck and between her shoulder blades, following the long path of her spine. She shuddered, her inner muscles squeezing involuntarily, and she felt him begin to harden in response.

"So this is a sin," she went on, levering herself up to drop featherlight kisses in the hollow of his throat.

"Mmhm." His fingers broke to the right just above her tailbone, tracing around her hip and then back to the center, pressing between her legs and stroking her gently.

"But God gave it to us," she giggled, leaving wet, needy kisses on a meandering path up the curve of his jaw and down the bridge of his nose. When she reached his mouth, his hand closed around the back of her neck, drawing her deep with a desperate, throaty groan, and she wondered if he could taste her surrender.

"So," she gasped, pulling back and placing a careful kiss first at one corner of his mouth and then the other. "It's got to serve some purpose."

"It does," he choked out, eyes delving into hers, sparking with satisfaction as her whole body shuddered with the pleasure of his sinful attentions. "This is how we make another baby."

Katherine laughed, high-pitched and strained with the effort of keeping her body in check. Already, she was ready to fall, just from the teasing and the freedom of her confession and the intoxicating awareness of his body's clear desperation for her.

"I don't know," she breathed, sitting up and rotating her hips in a slow circle that had him squeezing his eyes shut and clenching his jaw so tight she saw his pulse ticking away in his temple. "Isobel probably doesn't want to share you just yet."

"That's too damn bad," he said through his barred teeth, and he really did look like an animal. Like the devil incarnate. Like everything dark and unspeakable and dangerous that separated heaven from earth. He was everything that she was not, and together they were utterly perfect. What they created together was utterly perfect. And as if he had heard her thoughts, he gripped her hips and flashed a wicked, knowing grin. "Because you know, Katie... procreation is one of God's commandments."

*** 

I hate writing sex. 

I hate it I hate it I hate it I hate it. 

I hate it. 

I hate it so much. 

Alright, thanks for reading! 

Love,

Liz

***