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“Esta…”
“Please, Harte,” she whispered, not really knowing what she was asking for. All Esta knew was that she needed this, Harte’s arms around her and the feel of their bodies pressed together.
He seemed to relent, and she felt his body relax little by little as they lay there. The train rocked and swayed beneath them as it carried them onward. Eventually, Harte turned to her, his face so close that she could smell on his breath the sweetness of the wine he’d sipped at dinner. “I have nothing to offer you,” he whispered, his voice a hollow version if itself. “No past, no future.”
I don’t need a future. I might not even have one.
“You have right now,” Esta said, the words coming without planning or any artifice. The moment they were free of her, she felt the truth of them. “I can steal all the time in the world, but right now is all that we’ve ever had.”
“It’s not enough.” Harte’s face turned away from her again, and he stared up at the ceiling. “You deserve more than that.”
“Maybe… but I’m not asking for more.” Esta placed a small, soft kiss on the underside of his jaw, just beneath his ear where his skin was smooth and smelled of whatever tonic he’d put on after shaving earlier that day. It was different from the scent he’d worn in New York, but it still seemed completely perfect for him. Warm with a hint of some spice, it was a scent that felt closer to home than any place she’d ever been.
A long stretch of minutes passed between them with nothing but the shuffling of the rails, the steady rocking of the car, and in the silence, Esta felt a quiet sureness that this was where she belonged, whatever might happen. She knew Harte would turn away from her again. She felt it coming, the shift in his body that would break the connection she needed so desperately, a connection that confirmed that she was still real and whole and alive, when everything else felt like it was crumbling around her.
Harte turned to her instead, surprising her. “I shouldn’t,” he said, his voice as raw as the look in his eyes.
Before Esta could prepare herself, before she could even feel the relief that shuttled through her when she realized what his words meant, his lips were on hers. And she was lost.
THE NIGHT-DARK COUNTRY
1920—A Train Heading East
Harte could no more have stopped himself from kissing Esta in that moment than he could have stopped his heart from beating. Ever since he’d left her on the train, he’d imagined what it would have been like to stay. To remain curled beside her in that narrow bunk and see her wake in the morning, her face soft with sleep and her eyes wanting him. Now he seemed to be handed a second chance, a gift he did not—could not—possibly deserve.
While he lay writhing in feverish pain back in San Francisco, the thought of Esta had been Harte’s only comfort. The knowledge that he had to continue on, if only to make sure he made things right for her, had kept him fighting against the fever that had ravaged his body. How many hours had he spent in that limbo between life and death, holding on only because dying meant never seeing her again? In those dark, painful hours, how many times had he imagined this? Hoped beyond hope to be worthy of it.
Of her.
And then, after she’d saved him, he’d spent all of those days so close to her without ever touching her—not really—even though his fingers burned to feel her skin. To pull her close. He’d held back, because he knew he couldn’t risk it. Because Harte understood too well the danger he was putting her in simply by existing. Because of Seshat.
But thanks to the terrible emptiness caused by the Quellant, Harte didn’t have to worry about Seshat—not for a little while longer, at least. The time would come when the goddess would rouse herself, push past the fog of the drug, and make her presence known. That he didn’t doubt. But for now Seshat was silent. Absent. It was only himself and Esta, alone in the middle of the night-dark country, and the space between them brimmed with possibility.
He’d dreamed often of kissing her, of course. Even as he’d burned with the shame of all that she had to do for him as he had healed, each time Harte had collapsed into sleep, his traitorous brain had conjured Esta in his dreams. But with Seshat within him, he’d given up the possibility of ever having a moment like this.
You are not negotiable, not for me.
Had he been standing at the time, the words she’d spoken to him would have brought him to his knees, but once they were safely out of the hospital, neither of them had approached the issue again. In the hours and days since, he had not allowed himself to hope for the feel of Esta’s hands cupping his face, the weight of her body pressing down on him, as it was now, as she moved over him and deepened the kiss, her legs on either side of his as she caged him in. But now he didn’t have to hope. Now she was there in truth, over him. With him.
He wanted to tell Esta to wait, to slow down, because he wanted to remember every brush of her skin and taste on her lips. But her mouth was ravenous, her hands tugging at his shirt and pushing it up over his head, like she was driven by something more than need. Harte thought it felt too close to desperation, but then her cool palms ran across the bare skin of his chest, and he forgot about slow. He forgot about anything but the scent of her, softly clean and barely floral, and the feel of her, smooth and strong and his.
This time there was no echoing laughter. This time Seshat was locked away and could not mock or threaten.
Esta broke their kiss long enough to pull off the scrap of material she was wearing, and as she lifted her arms over her head to remove it, the moonlight sliced across her bare torso, illuminating the curves of her body. But she didn’t give him nearly enough time to look or revel in the moment. She was kissing him again, hungry and insistent, pressing herself against him, the soft roundness of her body against the hard planes of his own.
Her hands were everywhere, like fire burning along his skin, and Harte was aware suddenly of what his illness had taken from him. His leanness was all bone and sinew without the strength he’d once had. But Esta didn’t give him time to be self-conscious.
“Esta—” Her name was a prayer on his lips, and he could not have answered, even to himself, whether he meant for her to stop or to go on.
“I like the way it sounds when you say my name like that,” she whispered against his neck, a smile in her voice as she nipped at his shoulder.
“Wait,” he panted, as her lips explored the planes of his chest, farther down his torso.
Esta paused only long enough to look up at him, her golden eyes glinting in the darkness, as bright as the stone in the Dragon’s Eye. “I want this, Harte. Tell me you want this too.”
“Of course I do, but…” She moved again, and his words fell away, along with his reluctance.
What was the point of being chivalrous when her touch was turning his skin to flame? The heat of her mouth left a trail of fire across his skin. And when she rose up over him, burning as brightly as a phoenix, Harte knew for certain what he had perhaps always known, even from that first moment in the Haymarket, when he’d seen her across the ballroom and had felt instantly drawn to her. No one would ever match him so well. No one would ever fit with him as she did.
