Malcolm took control once more, clutching my hips and shifting me full-length beneath him, there pausing for the space of several frantic heartbeats. Breathing hard, he smoothed hair from my sweaty forehead, cupping my cheek, bracketing my lower back to anchor me against the hard length buried fully within my body. He smiled so sweetly I came all over him yet again, quivering and gasping as he grasped my right ankle from his lower back and drew it gently higher, latching it around his neck as he resumed our rhythm. Kisses deep and deeper still, on and on, an eternity of living and loving, enclosed within the barriers of this one precious, stolen night.
Much later we lay entangled, utterly sated and lax in each other’s arms, unwilling to release hold; dawn could not be more than an hour away. I didn’t want to waste one second sleeping, my forehead against his neck, my right arm and thigh draped possessively over his torso.
Ending, I kept thinking. You’re coming to the ending.
Devastation hovered close, ominous and unavoidable.
Malcolm rolled to an elbow, bracing above me; his eyes told me with no words he knew my thoughts. His beautiful, sensual lips appeared slightly swollen, his dark hair standing on end; bite marks decorated his shoulder muscles and thick stubble covered his jaws and chin. The only illumination in the little room came from the guttering candle on the dresser; we hadn’t touched our dinner. In the dimness, which masked exact eye color, he could have been Mathias. There had been moments last night in which I had confused the two of them – Malcolm became Mathias in my mind, and back again – my husband and my lover, their passionate, sensitive souls one and the same. My love for them was inextricably braided together in my heart, no separating one from the other.
“You’re thinking of him, aren’t you?” he whispered, fingertips trailing along my flushed cheek.
“You are him,” I whispered. “And he is you, just like Cora is me.”
“If I had any less honor, I would beg you to forget him and stay here with me.”
I cupped his jaws, tears rolling down my temples. The words cut at my throat. “I can’t stay…”
“I know, love, I truly do.” He kept his voice steady but the torture in his eyes could not be so easily hidden. His expression grew all the more intense, his arms tightening hold. “How much time?”
“I don’t know.” I pressed closer to his naked warmth; I harbored the notion that once we’d succeeded in preventing Fallon from altering the timeline, I would be returned to 2014. But I assumed, using my severely limited experience in the matter, the moment of return would occur without warning – a few seconds from now, or much longer.
“They’ll have received word by now, out in Howardsville. The station operator there wired back last night that a rider was sent to Grant’s. I forgot to tell you I checked. And Cole will have taken Patricia far from our original route by this time.” Malcolm searched my eyes. “This Yancy from your own time, he is to be trusted?”
“He wants Fallon dead as much as we do. My sister trusts him.”
Malcolm’s gaze went suddenly to the middle distance, sending a spike of pure foreboding down my spine. His voice came from far away; he sounded like a stranger, a man full of menace and dark purpose, a man who had seen things I couldn’t imagine. “Ain’t no one alive wants Fallon dead the way I do.”
“Tell me why. There’s so much I don’t understand…”
And so he spoke, low and quiet, explaining the hatred between the Yancys, Carters, and Davises. Of an ancient wound never healed, of vicious loathing between men who fought on opposite sides of the conflict I knew as the Civil War. Of Fallon’s intent to enact vengeance, to drive the blade of pain so deeply within our families it could never be removed.
“He tried to hang you?!” I cried at one point. How had I ever imagined understanding what Malcolm had lived through, what horrors he’d faced in his life?
“Fallon would never have been able to hang me on his own. He was no older than me. But he had others to help disable us, including Virgil Turnbull, the rotten bastard. Ruthann told me of an association that yet exists between the Yancys and the Turnbulls, even in her own time. I suppose it ain’t no surprise. There was a rumor I heard once, of a child Virgil had fathered with Isobel Faucon…” He drifted to silence, overcome by an onslaught of memories. I held fast, listening with all my attention, and at last he whispered, “Boyd and Cora saved me from hanging that night. There’s been many a time I wished they hadn’t, if only to kill the pain that came later, after Cora was lost.”
“Cora forgave you long ago, sweetheart. Never forget that.” Tears built in my eyes at the expression in his; dawn threatened the window by now, our time leaking away. Rebelling against its encroaching expiration, I gripped his strong hands and threaded our fingers.
“Once more,” he whispered, a command and a plea, both at once.
Yes – the word lost between our mouths as I rolled atop his chest, taking him back inside the sleek wetness in which he had spilled over countless times since yesterday evening. Urgency tinted everything now, each kiss, each touch – no longer secure in the night with the promise of another hour to follow. We both knew it, clinging, coupling with the desperation of those who understand how little control they truly possess. He cried out, low and harsh, as he came, and I wrapped arms and legs around his body, unable now to restrain sobs.
“I love you, Malcolm, my sweet Malcolm…” Crying hard, gasping between each breath.
“Don’t cry, sweetheart, it breaks my heart. I love you more than my next breath, more than my own life. I’ll never stop.”
