She halted outside it and turned to face me. I could not help myself. I pressed close to her. She set her small hands against my chest and laughed up at me. “You like me already, don’t you, big man?”

“That I do,” I breathed down at her. I reached past her for the doorknob. Her hand was there first, stopping mine.

“I’m going to do you special,” she said quietly. “Trust me. I know what you’ll like.”

She turned from me to face the door, and as she did, she let her breasts, free beneath her simple shift, brush against me. Was it deliberate that her buttocks rested lightly against my thighs before she opened the door and drew me into the small room?

A single candle, a tall fresh taper, burned in a clay holder beside a rumpled bed. The room smelled of sex and other men, and at any other time, I think I would have found it a repulsive odor. Tonight, it was an aphrodisiac. I followed her in, shutting the door behind me. “Sit down,” she bade me, and when I started for the bed, she caught at me and said, “No, not there. In my chair. Sit down. Lean back. Be comfortable. I want to show you something.”

It had begun to seem to me that she was much more like the friendly little kitchenmaid of my first experience than the whores I’d known since then. I could not take the foolish smile from my face. I sat down in a chair in the corner of the room. “Watch me!” she bade me, as if I could have stopped myself from doing so. She reached down and took the hem of her shift in both her hands, and then, in one smooth movement, she lifted it up and over her head and then tossed it to one side. She shook her tousled hair free, and her breasts moved with the gesture. She was completely, smoothly naked. She danced toward me. “Let’s not hurry. Touch me first. However you want. Then I’ll touch you.” She halted before me, feet a little apart and eyes closed, inviting me.

I leaned forward in my chair and ran my hands over her warm, soft flesh. I touched as I pleased, hefting the weight of her soft breasts, discovering the warmth between her thighs. She gave a sudden shiver as I did so. I tried to pull her to me, but she jumped back and then said suddenly, “My turn. Lean back. Shut your eyes.”

I did as she bade me, lost in delight at her playfulness. I felt her tug at my belt, and then the bliss of buttons giving way to her nimble fingers. For one instant, I was free, and then, to my shock, I felt her clamp her mouth on me. I opened my eyes, jolted to my core at such wild and strange behavior. I knew it was not what I wanted. I tried to pull free of her, but she held me fast, and in another moment, I suddenly knew it was what I wanted beyond all else. I gave a groan of protest and delight and then surrendered to her. It was happening far more quickly than I intended, and with an intensity that left me mindless. I had read of such an act, in one of Caleb’s more depraved journals, but I’d certainly never expected to take part in such perversity. I felt unmanned that she had taken such control of me, and yet completely dominant as she knelt before me with my fingers tangled in her hair. Her small hands pressed against the overflow of my belly, holding it back. I clasped her head between my hands and feared my own strength, for her skull felt fragile as a child’s. Sensations I’d never even imagined coursed through me. In the moment before her skillful tongue freed me from all thought, I knew that I wanted, more than anything, to grant her such bliss as she worked upon me.

And even in the midst of sexual release, I felt the telltale tingling of the magic moving in my blood. Her mouth came suddenly free of me and she gave a wild cry, a sound as elemental as a doe calling for a mate. She fell bonelessly to the floor in front of my feet, her wet mouth ajar and moaning. “Are you all right?” I asked her in alarm. I clutched my clothing around me and knelt next to her. Her eyes were rolled back in her head. She took a shuddering breath, coughed it out, and then gasped in another one.

“I’ll get help,” I told her, and tried to rise. She grasped at me with vague hands.

“No. No, please. I’m all right. I think.” She tried to sit up, and then collapsed back to the floor. “That’s never happened to me before,” she said in faint wonder. “That was…oh. I don’t know what that was…” Her voice trailed off into incoherence.

“Isn’t that how it’s supposed to be?” I asked her. “Mutual?”

“I…don’t know, I suppose. I didn’t know.” She caught a ragged breath. “I didn’t know,” she said, almost defensively. “I didn’t know it was supposed to be like that.”

Her comment stunned me. It had never dawned on me to wonder if whores enjoyed their work. I had assumed they did, for the most part, or why had they become whores? Then I recognized the cruelty of that thought. Had I ever imagined that Amzil enjoyed the whoring she did to keep her children alive? “I’m sorry,” I said quietly, not quite sure what I apologized for.

“Don’t be,” she said, slowly sitting up. She peeked up at me shyly, her face full of confusion touched with awe. “You didn’t even touch me,” she said. “I don’t understand what happened.”

Her hair had fallen across her face and clung to her sweaty brow. With one finger, I lifted a sheaf of it so I could see her eyes. She continued to look up at me. “It is supposed to be like that,” I assured her. “It’s always supposed to be this good.”

I helped her crawl up on her bed and tenderly tucked a blanket around her. I knew she was a whore and I’d had the time I’d paid her for. She owed me nothing more than what she had already given me. Reluctantly, I started to leave her there, but with a cry, she caught at my hand and drew me down beside her. “Stay a little while,” she said quietly. “I don’t want Mama Moggam to make me bring another man back here. Not just yet.” She gave a sudden shiver. “It’s like it’s echoing in me,” she said.

I lay down beside her. “You’re warm,” she said, and moved closer to me. She put her head on my chest. “I feel like I could fall asleep.”

“If you want, you can,” I told her. For a time, I held her close in a warmth that I suspect neither of us had felt in a long time. In its own way, it was better than the sex had been.

The candle had long since guttered away to leave us in blessed darkness when I heard a heavy pounding on the door. Stiddick’s voice rousted us. “You! In there! You’re done now. Leave!”

I startled awake, for I’d dozed off for the second time. Even so, I would have lingered for another go-round, but she pushed at me lightly. “No. Enough. Good-bye, big man.”

As I walked out, Stiddick was waiting in the hall. He pushed past me to get inside. As the door swung shut, I heard him ask her, “Did he hurt you? I never known you to let a man stay so long.”

When I walked down the long hall to the entry room, I found it deserted and the fire burning low. Hitch was long gone, I was certain. I rode a surly Clove home in the cold and dark of early morning. Several days later when I came to town again and dined in the mess hall with Ebrooks and Kesey, I heard that rumors about me had circulated through the lower folk of the town. Ebrooks muttered that some were saying I was strangely endowed or unnaturally skilled. Fala had told the other whores that she’d never had such a man. The next night, she’d refused to work. Within the week, she’d abruptly left the brothel’s employ. No one knew where she’d gone, and Kesey warned me to stay away from Sarla Moggam’s, for the brothel owner blamed me personally for the ruination of one of her most profitable whores. My brief spark of fame among the enlisted men was poor compensation for the loss of a welcome at the brothel, nor did Hitch’s evident enjoyment and mockery of me about it make it any easier to bear.

But I held tight to the moment of true tenderness that I’d shared with Fala, and wished her well, wherever she had gone. It was the one warm night I enjoyed that winter.