FURIOUS
1904—St. Louis
Outside King’s, the night air was damp and still held the coolness of the storm that had passed earlier. Esta pulled her cap down low over her eyes, but she kept her shoulders squared and her strides purposeful, remembering what Julien had told her. She was still annoyed with Harte, still thinking about the train and the Antistasi and about what all of it might mean, but as they walked, her annoyance eased.
Around her, the unfamiliar city felt strangely comfortable. Maybe it was that the energy of the city—the feeling of so many people living and breathing and fighting and loving all in a small parcel of land—was the same. Crowded. Eminently alive, even in the dead of night.
When they reached the boardinghouse, Harte hesitated. The sky had cleared and now moonlight cast its pall over his features.
“What is it?” Esta asked.
“Nothing. I just . . .” But he shook his head instead of finishing the sentence and led the way up the front porch steps and then up the narrow staircase to the room they’d rented a few hours before.
Once she’d unlocked their door, all she could think about was getting out of the stale-smelling clothes she was wearing. Everything reeked of the cigars Julien insisted on constantly smoking and the body odor of the clothes’ previous owner. She stripped off the jacket and tossed it aside, then started unbuttoning the shirt before she realized that Harte still hadn’t moved any farther into the room than just inside the doorway. He had his hands tucked into his pockets and a look on his face that made her pause.
“Aren’t you coming in?” she asked, shrugging off the shirt.
His eyes drifted down to the strips of bedsheet that she’d torn to wrap around her torso, binding down her breasts to better hide her natural shape. “This isn’t going to work,” he said.
Not this again. “Julien thinks it’ll work just fine. No one in that saloon even looked twice at me, and you know it.” But he was shaking his head, disagreeing with her. He was always disagreeing with her. “You’re just angry you didn’t think of it first,” she told him.
“You think I’m angry?” he said as he took a step toward her. There was something oddly hollow in his voice, something unreadable in his eyes.
“Aren’t you?”
He took another step, then another, until he was close enough that she could feel the heat of his skin. “Furious.” But he didn’t sound it, not even a little.
There was an odd light in his eyes, but it wasn’t the strange colors she’d seen in them before. Instead, it was a question, a spark of wanting and hope and need so fierce that she couldn’t do more than simply tilt her chin up in an answer and invitation all at once.
Then his lips were on hers, firm and confident, without any space between them for more questions. She could have stopped him, could have stopped herself from wrapping her arms around his neck and pulling him closer, but she didn’t want to. All the fear and frustration and worry of the night was still there, but suddenly it simply didn’t matter. All that mattered at that moment was the feel of his lips against hers and the reality of Harte, solid and warm and wanting, as he deepened the kiss, pulling her into it. Losing himself as well.
And then all at once he backed away, breaking the connection between them. His eyes were brighter now, and she could see the unnameable colors shimmering there as his chest rose and fell with the effort of his breathing. She wanted to draw him back and kiss him again, but she waited, because she sensed that any movement would break the fragile hope spun out of the moment.
Slowly, tentatively, he reached out to brush the fringe of hair back from her face. “I can’t believe you did this to your hair.”
“It’s just hair, Harte,” she said, the warmth that had blossomed inside of her cooling a bit at his words. But his fingers sifting through her short locks were making it hard to stay angry at him. “I don’t really care if you like it or not.”
He frowned at her. “I never said I didn’t like it,” he told her softly.
“At the bar, I thought . . .” He was running his hand down the bare nape of her neck. “You looked so upset.”
“Can you blame me?” he whispered, and then he leaned in until his forehead rested against hers. “You surprised me. I thought you were safe, and then you appeared . . . like this—”
She pulled back, about to snap at him again, but she stopped when she saw the expression on his face. The desire and need that matched her own.
He ran his hand down the side of her neck, and in its wake, she felt her affinity ripple and warm, felt herself warm as well. “You might as well have arrived completely naked, with your neck so exposed and the shape of your legs in those pants where every person in the bar could see them.”
“No one was looking.” She was frustrated and amused all at once at his prudishness.
“I was looking,” he told her, and he drew her in to him again, kissing her with a desperation that made her lose her breath.
She was only partially aware that the door was still open behind him because all of her senses were taken up with the kiss. His hands ran down her neck, over her shoulders and her arms, smoothing away the anger and fear of the day, pressing aside the emptiness she’d felt when her affinity had slipped from her grasp and sparking something else—something warmer and brighter than she’d felt before. Then he was tugging at the bindings around her chest until they fell away completely and her bare skin brushed against the rough fabric of his coat. She could have stopped him at any moment, but she didn’t want to. Instead, she threaded her fingers through his hair, drawing him closer, urging him on. Meeting him will for will, want for want.
It wasn’t until the back of her legs hit the low bed that she realized they had been moving across the room, but then they toppled together onto the thin mattress, Harte’s weight pressing down onto her and boxing her in. Yes, she wanted to say, but the second they were horizontal, Harte went completely still. He pulled back from her, and she watched his expression close up like a house before a storm, while the strange colors bloomed within his irises.
“Harte?” she whispered, touching his face when he didn’t move other than the ragged rise and fall of his chest as he caught his breath. But even though his eyes were open, staring straight into hers, Esta had the sense that Harte wasn’t really there.