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Was it that simple? Just gather her things and take Bill’s hand and float away?
“New Orleans will always be here if you want it,” he added.
That was true, wasn’t it? It wasn’t such a frightening leap when she could come back. There was always some house needing another whore. “And you?” she asked.
“I’ll be wherever
you are, love.”
Love. The hope was back, trying to settle over her. This time the pores of her skin opened and let it in. It sank into her and spread through her body until she felt brand-new.
She slid herself over him, straddling his hips.
“For now,” she murmured as his hands went to her thighs, “I’m right here. And so are you.” His cock was already hardening. She gripped it, feeling it stretch and thicken in her grasp. “And we won’t get much privacy on a riverboat.”
She caught his sigh with her mouth and took him into her body, loving the way he whispered her name into the kiss. And at the end, when he groaned out his love for her…for the first time ever, she truly believed him.
* * *
Thank you for reading Angel!
If you’d like to find out where Melisande and Bill wind up, please check out Harlot, a little Wild West romance about an angry cowboy, a fallen woman, and dark, dirty revenge. In fact, you can read the first chapter right here…
Keep reading for a sneak peek of Harlot, an erotic Western by Victoria Dahl…
Chapter 1
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Cooper’s Meadow, Colorado, 1875
Jessica wasn’t a whore.
Caleb Hightower knew that for a fact. She wasn’t a whore, she wasn’t running a whorehouse, and this wasn’t her place.
Yes, the house sat a mile past Black Rock Creek and was shaded by a cottonwood half-dead from a lightning strike, just as he’d been told, but he still didn’t believe the story. She wasn’t a whore, and he wouldn’t find her here.
The paint on most of the south wall of the farmhouse was cracked and peeling, but a small patch of it shone white and new. A ladder leaned against the wall below the freshly painted square. No one stood on it. Lunchtime maybe. It was nearly noon.
As he rode his horse up the long dirt lane, Caleb adjusted his hat to better shade his eyes from the summer sun, trying to give himself a view through the dark windows of the house. There was no movement he could see. Not inside the house, or around the barn or the smaller outbuilding. A garden plot lay beyond the barn, and a small cornfield just past that.
A cow lowed, but no one moved to tend it. A lone chicken edged around the shed and pecked aimlessly in the dirt.
He drew even with the sagging front porch of the house and finally heard voices. A woman. And a man.
He dismounted slowly, realizing that he was doing everything slowly, delaying the moment. He tugged off his gloves and tied his horse to one of the graying rails of the porch, then adjusted his hat again. Slowly.
When his boot hit the first step with a dull thunk, the voices inside stopped. There was a long quiet, and Caleb forced himself to take the three steps to the screen door and knock. His rap met more silence. Then came the sound of sturdy shoes on wood. He caught movement past the screen.
It was a woman, but it wasn’t Jess. He knew Jess’s silhouette, and this woman was too curvy. More importantly, she was too short. Jessica Willoughby could’ve gained weight in the two years since he’d left town, but she couldn’t have lost height. Caleb blew a long breath past his teeth and felt his gut untangle for the first time in hours.
It wasn’t her.
“Help you?” the woman asked from the hallway, her tone unwelcoming for a lady who made coin on charm.
Caleb touched his hat, but his hand froze when she drew closer, wiping her fingers on a worn apron. The sun touched her then, and he saw her dark skin and oil-smoothed hair. This wasn’t the mistress of the house. It was the other whore he’d heard tell of in the saloon.
His hand fell numbly away. “May I speak to your mistress?”
