By every account, I am already damned. Why would I not be? 

When he comes to me, I know what he is. I always have known. It becomes its own burden, the knowing and the inability to walk away in the face of it.

He is a killer.

If I were ever found harboring him, those nights and days he spends with me, I cannot imagine I would escape my fate.

Yet, out here, on the edge of law and the place where reason is not always absolute, I exist in some purgatory where I sin but pay nothing.

"Where will you go?" I whisper to him in the early gray dawn, his hands light pressure on my neck.

"You'll be safe."

"But will you be?"

The madness of this is eaten within the nights of wind off the desert. And still, I love him. What fine sheen of civility I once had seems to be whisked away each time I am with him.

His mouth at my breast hungers for nothing so much as the reality that he is making love to a woman of breeding, a woman of refinement. A woman who leaves behind the vestiges of her breeding and refinement in his arms, and only in his arms, as he rips her from her safe existence even as he savors her social status from afar. A woman such as me... whom he hungered for in the face of knowing I would never have conceded to a kiss much less making love with a man such as Cort.

There is not a doubt in either of us that we are carving out some finite moment in both our lives, this one place and time in which we can be lovers... knowing the ending will come rudely, abruptly, painfully. For all that, perhaps it is why the affair between us is heated beyond anything we have ever experienced.

Each time he has ridden away, I swore it would be the last time I allowed him in my bed. I conjure up visions of the first time our paths crossed and I use those visions to steel my resolve. How would I ever explain this to anyone who knows me?

Could I tell them of his eyes? How they saw inside me once and I was never the same? Could I speak of his body, the way it knows mine is its mate? Could I ever describe his hunger, how it is sated only by the feast of my body? Could I explain that my own hunger is never so ravenous as when he is close enough to be devoured by my mouth? Could I ever divulge any secret activity of my bedroom without feeling the reprobation of every decent member of society that I would blindly, gladly, lustfully, willingly indulge every whim he has, every desire I feel when I am with him?

I will not explain. Ever. Why should I?

But then he comes into my bedroom. He chooses the night for it covers his traces from prying eyes. This I know he does on purpose, not to shield me from society's judgment. No. It is to keep him safe for the hours he wishes to lose himself in me.

I don't hesitate. I never really have. I might have made an effort in the beginning. When he first saw me and I first saw him. As if we recognized the other. Some other life? Some dream we never thought would become reality? His body? Mine? His black danger? My clean name? His edge. My softness. He was the predator. I was never so much as the prey, a sacrificial lamb who placed herself on the altar.

He places his hand over my mouth in this night. I struggle. I am so far inside a dream, troubled, restless, wishing he were with me.

"Shhh. It's me. Cort. Hush now. Stop fighting me."

His voice moves over my body as his breath lingers, hot, along my neck. He's hushing me, his mouth at my ear, his eyes drifting down to the breasts he's already touching with reverence and dirty hands.

Days, weeks on the trail. They mark a man. Dirt it takes more than one washing to remove. Stink of horse, campfires, leather, stale sweat of fear and work. He's got another scent. It's him. The essence of him. Even filthy, just off his horse and days in the saddle, his scent still hovers around him. I can put up with the others; they don't mean as much.

He's slipped my blanket off me. I shiver under him. I look at his eyes but they are down, looking over my body. I close my eyes and imagine what he sees. A simple white shift, a dainty blue ribbon at my bodice that he tugs loose. The white cotton of my shift, I know, it moves over my body's contours, giving only the illusion of modesty as I lay stretched out atop my mattress and struggle as he keeps a hand over my mouth and his other hand trails lightly from the rise of my breasts down to the juncture of my thighs.

"Be a good girl. Don't say a word."

He kisses me as his hand slides off my mouth. I never in my life knew a man who could make me come just like this. Just from making me see images of him sliding into my little house under the cover of darkness. He'd have crept in noiselessly, carefully avoiding the creaks in the plank flooring. He'd have stood there in my bedroom, light from the moon silver, as he stripped his coat off, removed his gun belt, toed off his boots, laid down his hat.

He'd have watched me sleeping the whole time. The thought of that makes me moan when he touches between my legs. He'd have been hard and needy as he tugged the blanket off, watching my nipples peek in the sudden cool air. Maybe I'd even hugged my body tight, if he'd stood there watching me for very long.

"Oh Cort!" I moan as my body arches in supplication.

There is a man in this moonlit room with me tonight. A man I should not be with. A man forbidden by all that I have come to accept about right and wrong. A man I was meant to be with like this.

Moonlit nights. Chasing nothing so much as what cannot be but is, nonetheless.

I love him.

God help me.

He loves me.

God help him.

"Hush now," he whispers against my throat.

I am silent in the night. I hear the drumbeats of savagery; it is my own blood, surging in response to his fingers as they inch my cotton shift up. I feel the rhythm that makes me feel as I never have, want what I never even knew existed before Cort first touched me.

He and I crossed paths one gentle April morning. The church bell tolled; I responded. Wasn't that as I should have? What fate put him there, leaning against the railing of the hotel, a smile lingering, sharp eyes assessing me? One of the ladies of Miss Flo's brothel whispered in his ear; a crude display on a Sunday morning when respectable society strolled to church or rode smart buggies up the hill.

I looked at that woman's hand, at what she felt called to stroke, caress, squeeze. He never moved, just accepted the touch as his due. I followed her hand to her mouth; red, garish, smeared. Her lips went to his ear; her eyes latched on to me. But mine followed the line of sight to his eyes; to his wicked wicked smile.

He did nothing else. Nothing.

In the days that followed, my curiosity met his. How we came to be alone, out on the windswept desert ... was it a dream? One I'd never seen a sign for? Or had the sign been in the sky... 'I have come to set you free.' I saw fire. Fire and brimstone. I walked willingly into the fire. I was set free.

The Bible speaks of that moment when the sun stops and all is dark except the faithful can see. Fire and brimstone.

That is not offered as an explanation. I feel no need to explain what has been inside me, tamped down. I won't give a name to what I give only to him.

He told me once that he was born by a river. Just like the river, he's been running ever since.

In this night, he stops running for a breath of life. He speaks in hushes and manly whispers. He swells around me.

Through many dark hours when he is not with me, I think of him. When he is with me in dark hours, I think of him. He fills my head, his words fill my conscious. I am a captive with no shame, no remorse. He is a captor without relent.

I cannot help the gasp that rises like a bell in the darkness. His hands spread my thighs; his mouth sucks in at the fabric that covers my sex from him. His tongue presses up even though it cannot hope to break this cloth barrier. It feels dirty. It feels like the cusp of release of convention. I clutch at his head; his hair gritty from trail dust.

My fingers flail in panic between his mouth and my body. They drag the crotch of my underclothes away. My other hand presses his mouth back to the place from which it had withdrawn. I groan when flesh meets flesh, wetness seeks wetness.

A low, wicked chuckle rumbles from him. In the next instant, his fingers grip cruelly into my thighs and he dives into me, his tongue a corruption of my vestiges of innocent denial of my needs.

"Missed me?" he whispers to me, long minutes later. His face is next to mine; he rubs wet whiskers against my pale, soft cheek. I hold him to me. I smell myself on him.

"Missed you. Missed..." His mouth opens wide; his teeth feel indecent as he bites in around my neck. "... you."

"Me?"

"I want to feel you."

"Get this off. I want to feel you. Been thinking of nothing but your skin for so long."

"You have to help me."

"If I help, I'll just rip it off."

"Then do it."

"I needed you tonight."

"Then take me. But I warn you... I will take you also. I will."

He rips. I lie there exposed and let him look upon the skin he's been dreaming of for so many miles. I look at him as he crouches above me in silver light that makes him seem colder than he feels. When he has looked his fill, I sit up before him and shove him back onto his elbows. All he's wearing are his shirt and pants. I rip down the front of his shirt; my mouth notes the rivulets of dried sweat edged in dirt. I know that if my face were in his groin, the combination of his body's masculine odor, the leather of the saddle, the horse's unmistakable smell and the days without a bath would be something I would gag at if I thought about it.

His head drops back even as he puts out one hand, half-heartedly, to stop me. He accepts this from me only as long as it takes him to regain control.

When he moves, it's lightening. A crack of his body as he rises before me, on his haunches. A flash of arms pressing me against him, pulling me up his chest. A low rumbling after as he lowers me atop him. His teeth glint in a grimace; his eyes nearly shut in concentration; his jaw tightens; he swallows.

His eyes open after he thrusts a few times. I give a little gasp each time he drives in deep. I am watching his face, rapt at the sight of the man holding me, fucking me, loving me, losing himself in me.

For a moment, the sun has stopped again and all is black. But I can see. I am the faithful.

I put my hands on his face. Gentle. Searching. My eyes on his.

"It's been too hard living." His voice is husky, weary when he says this. I stroke over his forehead. My heart begs him to finish this thought for me. A gift of dark times. "But I'm afraid to die."

"Oh, my love."

"Because I don't know what's up there beyond the sky."

He must live with death, every day. A man who brings death into other men's lives. Surely he must know, as I must, that someday it will be brought into his. Did he see his death written out as if it was coming soon? Did he fear he might not make it back to me?

There are no answers. I believe he believes I might have something I can tell him that would excuse the man he's become. I lay claim to the part of him that is in love with me. I have no need for the part of him that will someday be his burden to account for. What person do I know who would understand if I said that in him I can see the man he would have been if only his life had not begun on the banks of a river?

I had a dream once. I was sitting on my bed. The moon turned red. I saw a sign in the sky: "I have come to set you free." A light shone down on me. I saw fire and brimstone. I looked around. I saw ice. I heard a voice say, "Come to me." The whole world shook around me. I saw the sun stand still. Everything was dark. But I could see.

"Come to me," I whisper to him. "Be free with me, my love."

He closes his eyes; shoves his face into my neck. We move softly against each other; moved beyond ourselves at these revelations of doubt; weakness within our souls that are as tattered and open as our clothes in this night when we would not feel free or safe with any other person in the universe.

I run my hands down his back to feel the muscles there. He tightens his grip on my back. He lowers me to the bed; he begins a rhythm I first felt as savage drums. He is large within me, pushing into me, pulling out. I feel the beginnings of the reaction I cannot control. Sometimes, he orders me to resist him, to not give in so easily, to fight what he makes me feel. In this night, I give in freely, completely.

Can someone tell me why this is wrong? I can never find it so when I am in his arms and he is losing himself inside me. I cannot fight a man whose eyes glisten with unshed tears as he watches me come, shuddering, whimpering, laughing, gasping for breath. I cannot consider it surrender when he is coming in my arms, thrusting in one final push, pulsing inside me, his strength evaporating, his harsh sigh ending with a low grunt of naked joy.

His mouth is still at my neck; his body still presses mine into the softness of the mattress. My face is still buried in his hair; my body is still wrapped around him. His thighs are still between mine. My legs are still around his waist. His voice is soft, virile, restored. Mine is gone.

"I asked him for help," he says to me. I know who 'him' is... it is the man he owes allegiance to, the man he returns to the trail for even when he looks back at me as he leaves and his eyes tell me he wishes nothing more than to earn the right to stay there with me, in the sun, in the light.

"Will he help you?"

"No. He's never going to. He just winds up kicking me to my knees."

"What will you do?"

"There's been times I've thought I couldn't last for long." His face rises before me. I reach to stroke over his jaw, my eyes pleading with him to hold on, hold on, never give up. "Now I think I'm able to carry on."

"You must. You must carry on. Always."

"It's been a long time coming. But I know change is gonna come." He smiles at me when he says this, his voice a low, lethal whisper. "Yes, it will."

He leaves me in the morning, just as dawn streaks across the desert. He looks back at me this time with a change already coming over him. I think of my dream. Fire and brimstone may be the only thing to set him free.

I pray to the Lord for his salvation. Someday he will stop running.