Page 65 of The Hardest Part

“Like who?”

Brigham Young and his Nauvoo Legion, or whatever the fuck it is they call themselves.

“Those Mormons.”

“Good, because it will only ever be us three.” She leaned in, gently biting her lip, and laid her head on his shoulder. “You, and Fallon, and I.”

“Oh, so that’s how it works?”

“Yes, silly.” His question was rhetorical. She answered it, anyway. “Brothers share a wife. Sisters share a husband. Cousins, sometimes. It’s how impenetrable community is built.”

“We’d be shunned, Lucy. Ostracized. The very thing you fear.” Levi had to make her see reason, to cast aside this foolishness. They ways of her mother’s people would never be accepted in this world.

“Would we be, though?” She combed his hair with her fingers, gazing up at him with hope-filled eyes. “In a new, unspoiled land, a place where we can all live a life of our own choosing?”

Isn’t that what they’d left the East and everything they’d ever known behind them for?

“Wild and free.”

“As the earth intended.” And she smiled.

But Levi knew better. “It doesn’t work that way.”

“It can and it does, I promise you.”

He held her chin, tracing the outline of her lips with his thumb. “Lucy…”

“Talk with my sister.” She turned her head to kiss his fingers. “Then, you’ll see.”

How could he say no?

He waited for her at the river.

She came to him like an offering.

“Behne.” Hello.

“Fallon.” While rubbing his jaw, Levi tipped his chin. “You’re agreeing to this?”

“Yes.” Her smile tremulous, she looked up at him with eyes of warm chocolate suede. Shimmering with flecks of cinnamon and honey, he could see every broken promise, every wish left behind, untold and unheard, within the soulful orbs.

Fearing he’d get so lost in them he’d never find his way out, Levi lowered his gaze to see her breasts heaving beneath the thin, worn cotton of her gown.

Christ.

“How old are you?” he asked. Anything to keep himself from touching her.

“Eighteen.”

Then she reached for him, and it all went to hell. Fallon bent his head at the neck, and bringing his lips to meet hers, she kissed him.God’s blood. Unexpectedly, his cock sprang to life in his breeches. Giving in to his baser nature, Levi reached inside her bodice and, fondling her breast, his thumb flicked over her nipple. She whimpered, making no attempt to remove his hand from her person. And considering that her acquiescence, he freed them from the confines of their cotton prison to reverently gaze upon them.

“Do you have a Shoshone name, Fallon?”

“Kimana.”

Beautiful, like you.

“What does it mean?”

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