In a few days it would be winter, and it was growing cold even here in the south, near the coast below Savannah, where a tired man in a tattered gray coat limped to the top of a rise and looked down on a big, gracious house a few hundred yards ahead. It was his home and it looked good to him.

In the dusk he couldn't see that here and there a fence was sagging, that the paint on some of the outbuildings was peeling. It's doubtful he would have cared. He was tired, his feet hurt, he hadn't eaten a full meal in two days, but he was home to the place where his family had lived and farmed and prospered for more than a hundred years.

Though it would have been nearly impossible to tell from the ragged, dirty clothes, the man was an officer in a proud army -- Major John Archer Richards, CSA. But at this moment he was, like so many people in that time and place, a refugee. He had been walking for several days at the moment we see him descending the hill, the joy of seeing his home putting a bit of spring back into a step that had become little more than a shuffle.

More than several days, really. In one sense, he had begun his journey home in August, a few days before Atlanta fell, when he'd been wounded in a nameless little skirmish at a nameless little crossroads.

His wound wasn't serious, but it had appeared so, because he'd been knocked unconscious when he fell from his horse. When he'd awakened -- the next day? two days later? nobody could tell him -- his left sleeve was torn and bloody and his arm throbbed, but the furrow where the bullet had grazed him seemed to be healing itself.

"A good thing," he muttered to himself, as he looked around at the chaos of the hospital. There was little likelihood, he could see, of getting any medical attention there.

His head hurt and his hair was caked with blood and mud, but his mind was reasonably clear, once the long sleep had cleared away. When, after a few moments, he had figured out where he was and why he was there, he had next tried to find out where his brigade was.

At this he was less successful. Many of the men around him were too badly wounded to talk coherently. Most of the rest were from a wide assortment of units and had never heard of the Fourth Georgia Volunteer Cavalry. The few who had heard of it knew nothing about it, with the exception of one young lieutenant, himself hurt not much worse than John Richards was.

"I hear they got cut up pretty bad," he said laconically. "Somewhere west of town -- lost most of their officers, half the whole outfit, somebody said." He paused. "Your unit?"

John nodded.

"Sorry," the lieutenant said.

John acknowledged the sympathy and was about to ask if the lieutenant had any idea where the remnants of the Fourth were, when a burly sergeant came by and, seeing the two men sitting up and talking, came over to them. "You two," he said, ignoring rank, "are you well enough to move on your own?" Getting a positive response, he told them to get to the train station -- anyone healthy enough to walk, he said, was being sent out on the last rail line still open. To John's questions about the Fourth Georgia, he turned a deaf ear. In fact, he turned his back, moving on to find others able to walk.

John and the lieutenant made their way through the panic-stricken streets of the dying city to the nearby train station, where they sat for hours amidst mounting confusion before forcing their way onto an overcrowded cattle car on an overloaded train. There they sat in the stench of the car for another hour before the train pulled slowly out of the station.

Disaster piled upon disaster, however. Only a few miles out of Atlanta, the train was derailed where a Federal raiding party had torn up the roadbed. Luckily, it was travelling so slowly that few were hurt in the derailment. But almost a thousand men were milling about in the dark, confused and disoriented, when the raiding party came out of the woods where they had been lying in ambush.

The result was half comedy, half tragedy. The tragedy, of course, was the many deaths. The comedy was the confusion of hundreds of soldiers, used to fighting with their units, but here in this place precisely because they had become separated for one reason or another from those units. They ran around in the dark, the officers shouting conflicting orders. Some fought, some threw up their arms in surrender, and some ran.

John Richards and the lieutenant were, after firing their pistols ineffectually a few times, among those who decided that the wisest course of action was to fight another day, and hid themselves through most of a rainy night in the bushes along a nearby creek.

Eventually, the sounds of Union soldiers laughing over their easy victory died away, and the two young officers crawled cautiously out of their hiding place and began to walk in the direction they guessed was east.

Through the night they had walked, until the rising sun in their eyes confirmed that they were heading the right way. And through another day they had walked before they found a Confederate cavalry patrol that had taken them back to a nearby encampment. There the brigadier general in command told the lieutenant that his unit was only a mile or so away.

"Fourth Georgia?" the officer mused, checking his maps, after the lieutenant had left. "I think they got absorbed into the Eighth." He scratched his beard meditatively. "But I'm not sure."

John asked quietly where the Eighth was. This was what he had feared -- the Fourth, in which he and all of them had taken such pride, had disappeared entirely.

The general scratched his beard again. "Not sure," he replied. "I think they might be south of Savannah -- about here," he said, pointing to the map.

"So Hood's retreating to Savannah?" John asked.

The brigadier spat angrily. "No," he replied bitingly. "The damned fool's heading into Tennessee. Leaving Georgia wide open." He paused and took a calming breath. "The Fourth and Eighth were cut off east of Atlanta when it fell; they couldn't connect up with Hood, so they moved back toward Savannah."

The spot to which he'd pointed on the map was almost exactly the spot where John now stood, but now it was December. The general had explained the pointlessness of John's wandering around a dangerous countryside looking for his comrades, and added that he needed officers himself. So John had stayed with him and prepared to help turn back the blue tide when Sherman's army pushed on to Savannah.

He had fought hard and well, as had so many. But it was futile -- the tide was too strong. Once Sherman's army left the rubble of Atlanta behind them, they had pushed to the outskirts of Savannah almost effortlessly, destroying everything in their path. The rebels had fallen back, too weak to offer meaningful resistance, until their backs were to the sea.

There at last they had stood. And there, a few days before, John's horse had been shot from under him near Savannah in a skirmish with a Yankee scouting party. Uninjured this time, but left behind as both sides scattered after the brief fight, John had begun the weary walk back to the camp. The camp had been abandoned, though, and John had begun walking again, not knowing exactly where, when he recognized a road marker that pointed the way home. Barely conscious even of making a decision, he took that road.

And now, after two days of walking, he was here. His own home. He had told himself as he walked that someone here could tell him where the Fourth was -- this was where they'd last been reported, and this was home for most of the men of the Fourth. But had he really come here looking for the Fourth, or had he just come home? He couldn't answer. He was too tired to ask himself the question.

The only thing he knew was that he was so happy to be home that it crowded out almost every other thought. Almost -- it didn't stop him from wondering if Marcy was there, and how she would receive him.

Marcy was... what? She was his slave, and she was his lover. She was the woman he thought about in the long lonely nights. She had once saved his life, and now she was why he lived.

They had been lovers, when the opportunity presented itself, which it too seldom had, for five years. Since he was a grieving eighteen year old boy who had just lost both his parents, and was faced with the man's job of running a large plantation, and she was a fifteen year old maid who crept into his bed one night to bring him comfort. She had come to his bed every night for more than a year, until the war had begun, and John had left his home.

And then, a year and a half later, Marcy and her brother Micah had taken a train up the coast to Charleston, where the Fourth Georgia was fighting, and where the young Captain Richards was dying of yellow fever, the same dreaded lowland disease that had carried off his parents. Marcy and Micah had loaded their master on the train and taken him home to die.

In a moment of coherence he asked that his younger sister Eliza, the child he had protected and loved, be kept away from him, because he feared dragging her to death with him and wiping out the family. But Marcy refused to let him die, sitting by his bed day and night, washing his body over and over to cool him, and feeding him broths and herb medicines one slow spoonful at a time.

At last the fever had broken, and he had been able to speak a few words of thanks, and she had been able to kiss him tenderly to show her own thankfulness. Then, a couple days later, as she washed him, her hand brushed his penis and it moved in response. Marcy had smiled at John, and John had smiled at Marcy, as the penis disappeared into her mouth and her tongue wrapped around it as it stiffened.

Her mouth heated him as her caresses had cooled him through his illness. It was as though his fever had returned, but centered on his groin. His cock hardened and filled her mouth, as her head began to move up and down on it. Despite his weakened condition, it took only a few moments of the warm suction and the sight of Marcy's beautiful face, her mouth open for him, to bring him to orgasm.

As the jets of sperm burst from him, Marcy welcomed them into her mouth and swallowed them hungrily. While his tremors stilled she sucked and licked him tenderly. Then she pulled his covers up, kissed him softly, said "Sleep now", and quietly left the room.

In the coming days, as his strength returned, she took him in her mouth often. Finally she had, after sucking him for a few moments, pulled her dress up around her waist and climbed atop him, both of them sighing with pleasure as she lowered herself onto his cock, and they felt it slowly enter her wet interior.

He reached forward to cup her small breasts in his hands, feeling the nipples grow through the thin fabric of her dress. She leaned over to give him better access and said, "I've needed you in me. I've needed to feel you touch me like this."

He started to reply that he needed her, but found himself unable to speak as his seed burst out of him and buried itself deep into her.

The next day, when she again straddled him, he had smiled at her and gently pushed her off him and onto her back. Then they had made love properly, as he unbuttoned her dress and lowered it off her shoulders, kissing her down her neck and on to her breasts. Taking each small breast in turn into his mouth, while his hand played with the other.

Marcy gasped in pleasure as John's lips and fingers sent shockwaves through her body. She arched her back as though to push more of her breast into his mouth. Meanwhile his other hand began pushing the simple dress lower, exposing first her smooth, flat belly, then the hips, fuller than one would have expected on so slender a girl, flaring out invitingly. She raised her ass to let him push the dress down, revealing her full beauty, then she lowered herself back to the bed, spreading her legs and saying, "I want you."

But she couldn't have him yet. Not in the way she meant. He kissed slowly down from her breasts, down the smooth, taut flesh of her abdomen, down to where the flesh softened on her lower belly, down to the edge of her sparse bush. Then as her breath caught and her legs widened farther, he teased her by detouring to kiss down the inside of her right thigh while rubbing upward on her left.

Her legs widened further still, and she breathed raggedly as his hand rubbed the sensitive flesh where her thigh met her mound, and his lips and tongue kissed lazily back upward. "Oh, please," she whispered, "please."

He gave her her wish then, using his thumbs to open her lips, and gazing at the beauty within, the darkly crimson interior, the labia crested in black. It was small pussy, dominated by a disproportionately large clitoris that was now aggressively pushing itself out at him. Lower down was her vagina; it was just a small opening now, but the tissue around it was glistening with her excitement and it seemed eager to be opened wider.

One touch of his tongue to her clitoris and Marcy's hips twitched upward. He licked her again, just a bit more, and the hips moved again. He put out his tongue and dragged the full length of it across the clitoris, and Marcy shook with passion, grabbing John's head and pulling it deeply into her cunt, groaning loudly.

John let her recover, then began again, licking the outer edges of her cunt, then working his way slowly down to the little hole that now was pulsing with anticipation. When he reached it and licked lightly at the entrance, the girl sighed with pleasure, then her body tensed as he speared his tongue into the darkness within.

As he stroked his tongue in and out of the hole, Marcy's hips began moving in a gentle fucking motion to match him, and he knew she was ready. After a few moments, he pulled himself away from her. She sighed with disappointment at first, then realized that greater pleasure was to come.

She smiled at him as he positioned himself above her. Her legs were wide and her knees rose up in the air as her hands reached out to guide his cock into her. The cock pulsed as she took it, and he groaned with pleasure at the touch. Then as he lowered himself down and she placed his cock at the entrance to her vagina, they melted into each other.

After he was in her, feeling her tightness, the wetness, the warmth, he simply lay atop her for a while, enjoying the closeness, the feel of her, as her hands massaged his back and she purred with pleasure. Then he pulled back slightly and she hissed with an intake of breath. He pulled out very slowly, then entered again equally slowly. Several times more he moved in and out, speeding up only slightly. It was something they had done often, in the time of peace. She smiled up at him, raising her head to kiss him lightly, saying simply, "I like that."

Gradually he sped up, and gradually her hands worked their way down to has ass and her legs locked around him. Then he was pounding hard and fast into her and she was thrusting her hips back up at him, matching his speed and power. Harder and harder he drove his cock down into her, and harder and harder she threw her hips up at him, saying, "Fuck me, fuck me," over and over.

And then their movements became still more frenzied as she began groaning, straining for her release, and he felt the pressure building up within him. Faster and harder still they drove into each other until, at last, blessed relief washed over her and she shouted out a single high, sharp note as her body tensed. He stroked hard into her stiffened body once, then again, then finally felt his seed shoot out into Marcy's womb.

They lay together for a long time afterward, enjoying each other. Then John slowly raised himself off Marcy and rolled onto his side next to her, pulling her close for a kiss. "I didn't think you were ready for that yet," she said.

"I didn't either."

She smiled. "Since you are, let's do it ten times a day, every day, forever."

John laughed, but shook his head sadly. "I have to go back."

"No!" Marcy cried out. "You're still too sick to go back."

He laughed again. "Not if I'm well enough to fuck you like that."

They argued, but John was adamant that he would leave the next day. That night, Marcy came to his bed and they fucked over and over until at last they both collapsed into sleep. The next morning, John arose early, kissed the sleeping Marcy, went into his sister's room, where his kissed that beautiful sleeping girl, brushing her golden hair aside and wondering at the tenderness he felt for her, then walked downstairs and outside where Micah had prepared his horse for him.

He shook hands with his boyhood friend, asked him to watch over their sisters, and began the long ride back to Charleston.

Up to that time, he had never known that he loved her. She had been an important part of his life, he had cared about her, but she had been just someone he had sex with. Even then, when he knew he loved her, he couldn't bring himself to say it.

Nor had Marcy ever said anything. He wondered if she loved him. She was, after all, a slave. Had she simply been performing what she felt to be her duty toward her master? Had she done so cynically, to gain privileges?

He had thought about that often on those lonely nights in the following months, when there had been too much time to ask himself too many questions. Why had he never told her he loved her? Did she love him? And most importantly -- even if their love was real and mutual, what could they ever do about it?

It wasn't simply that he was white and she black, nor that he was her master and she his slave. Though either of those obstacles was on its own insurmountable. Beyond that, though, he was John Archer Richards -- his father Georgia's Senator at the time he died. His grandfather, John Archer, had been Senator and before that Governor. At nineteen John had been elected an officer when the Fourth Georgia Volunteer Cavalry had been assembled.

How could such a person love a slave, he asked himself. He had wrestled with the question alone -- whom could he talk with about such a thing?

Many times in those months after he had returned to the Fourth he had gone into Charleston with other young officers to find release from the questions among the ladies at fashionable (and, sometimes, unfashionable) brothels. He had put his cock into the cunts and asses and mouths of women white and black and every shade in between. Many of them were beautiful, all of them willing, but none could satisfy him as Marcy had.

Once he had found, in one of the town's most exclusive houses, a beautiful young girl with the same smooth cafe au lait skin and much the same slender, sensuous build as Marcy, and he had thought to himself that here he could rid himself of his foolish obsession. Now, he told himself, he could prove that Marcy, like this girl, was nothing more than just another attractive mulatto who fucked exceptionally well.

He had sat for a few moments with the madam, a still-beautiful if well-worn courtesan who had known his father, though she was too discreet to reveal the context, and they had discussed, as though in a parlor in any nice house in the town, the day's events. After a polite interval, she mentioned that she had a couple new "boarders" since his last visit, giving a pull on a tasseled bell-cord, and then asking the maid who answered to send in Marie and Fancy.

The madam saw his eyes light up when he saw Marie and she quickly dismissed Fancy. Marie wore a risque version of a standard plantation belle's dress, a dress much like those John's sister often wore to parties, except with a deeply scooped neckline that showed the graceful curve of her neck and much of her breasts.

At the madam's suggestion, the girl sat next to him. She allowed her knee to touch his lightly, and leaned ever so slightly toward him to afford a still better view of her breasts.

"Marie is just eighteen," the madam said, "but she's very experienced and very skilled. She was in one of the best houses in New Orleans when she was just fourteen -- before the yankees came there, of course. All the gentlemen who visit here say she's one of the most pleasing of our ladies." Marie smiled prettily and placed a soft and tiny hand on his knee, while the madam asked if John would like to have a drink. A moment later, the maid appeared again, with three glasses and a bottle of good Cuban rum, brought through the blockade at great risk and offered here at even greater cost.

While toasts were offered all around, to each other and to the Cause, Marie had pulled closer to John, until her arms were around his neck and her head on his shoulder. Then she had looked up invitingly into his eyes and suggested softly that perhaps they might finish the bottle in greater comfort in the privacy of her room.

Once in the room, Marie had turned and looked questioningly at him -- did he want her now, her eyes asked, or did he want to drink and talk a bit more first? Weeks with no release except what his hand could provide -- and little of that, given the lack of privacy -- combined with the impetus of her resemblance to Marcy to rule out further conversation.

Almost as soon as she looked at him, John had grabbed Marie and pulled her tightly to him, kissing her hungrily and grabbing at her breasts. Marie, having had her share of experiences with young soldiers, and not wanting another dress ripped, danced away after a second, turning from John and asking flirtatiously, "Captain, can you help me with my dress?"

John clumsily unbuttoned the girl's dress, then she turned around to face him and tantalizingly lowered the bodice, revealing two perfectly-formed tan hillocks, sticking straight out from her chest, each topped with a small chocolate aureole and a tiny nipple just becoming erect.

As John's eyes widened appreciatively at the sight, Marie smiled with the assurance of a performer who has delivered a line and received the anticipated response. As he moved toward her, she said, "That isn't all, Captain," and smiled again as she lowered the dress past her hips and then dropped it to the floor.

"It's all yours, Captain -- all yours, all night, to do with as you please."

John came to her and took her in his arms, feeling her firm young breasts as she turned her open mouth up to receive his kiss. His mouth attacked hers eagerly, his tongue spearing between her lips. She sucked it into her mouth, while her hands were busily undressing him.

When his tunic was off, she dropped to her knees before him, pulling down his pants and taking his already hard cock into both her hands. She smiled up at him. "It's a big one," she said happily, telling him the lie every man loves to hear. "I'm going to have fun tonight."

She licked it up one side and down the other, smiling up at John, then put it in her mouth and began to bob her head up and down, taking it deep into her. She was, as the madam had said, skilled. She sucked hard, wrapping her tongue around his cock and swirling it caressingly, then bobbing her head, pulling his cock far into her, always looking up at him. Finally, she took both his hands in hers, and placed them at the back of her head, urging him with a motion to fuck her face.

He complied, pulling her head toward himself as his hips pushed his cock into her, then easing her head backward so he could do it again. Meanwhile she sucked as well as she could while his cock drove into her throat.

She had timed things well; he could last only a few strokes before he felt his time coming. He pushed his cock as far as he could into her, pulling her face hard into his belly as he shot his sperm into her throat.

Thorough professional that she was, Marie swallowed his sperm, choking only slightly on the invasion of her throat. As he stiffened, relaxed, and then stumbled backward against the bed, Marie held his cock in her mouth, licking it clean. Then as he lay back on the bed, momentarily quiet, she pulled his pants off the rest of the way, and cooed at him, "That's the way to do it, Captain. I like a man who knows how to really give it to a girl."

John relaxed for only a few seconds, as the girl began kissing his neck and chest, licking at his ears, kissing again down his neck, sucking his nipples, then kissing down his belly. Again she took his cock in her mouth, this time accompanying it with a finger in his ass.

John thought briefly of letting her just suck him off again and again through the night, but such passivity wasn't in keeping with his mood this evening. He lifted the girl off his cock and pushed her down on the bed, grabbing her breasts with both hands and squeezing, then putting one breast in his mouth and sucking as hard as he could on the small nipple.

"Ooh yes, Captain," the girl crooned. "You're hot for little Marie, aren't you?" He didn't pause to respond as he continued squeezing and sucking her breasts, then plunged a finger boldly into her vagina. She grunted at his roughness, but then began moving her hips in time with the sawing motion of his finger. "You want to fuck me hard, don't you?" He answered with another finger, then a third, driving them in and out as she thrust her hips back up at them. "Well, that's what I'm here for, Captain. I'm here for you to fuck -- as hard as you want."

With that invitation, John climbed between her legs and pushed his cock into the young whore's cunt. She adjusted her hips with a practiced motion to let him glide smoothly in. From the first moment he pounded into her with all his strength. She took the blow and then put her arms around him. "That's the way -- take me hard. Little Marie likes to be fucked hard."

As he drove into her again and again, she kept calling for more. The harder he slammed into her, the harder she wanted it. This bore no resemblance to lovemaking, it was simply rutting. He pounded his cock into her, heedless of her desires, uninterested in her pleasure, until his seed roiled up inside him and he spewed it into her.

But, though Marie was indeed beautiful, perhaps even more so than Marcy, and though she fucked skillfully and with every appearance of passion, and though he shot into her so often that she seemed finally to be leaking sperm from every orifice, and though she willingly spread open whatever hole he demanded -- still, when morning came and he left her, Marcy continued her hold on his mind.

And that hold was still there now as he dragged himself wearily up the steps to the front door of the big house,

Someone must have seen him coming, because the door opened suddenly, just as he stepped onto the wide veranda, and his sister Eliza rushed forward to throw herself onto him. Had the tiny girl been any larger, she probably would have knocked him down the steps.

His sister held him close, crying with joy, finally gasping out, "Omygod, they told us you were dead!"

He cried too, in the happiness of being home and seeing that his sister was safe. The two embraced tightly for a long time, mumbling incoherently their joy at seeing each other again.

Eventually, when their initial wonder was over, and the chilly evening forced them into the parlor, Eliza explained her first words to him.

Neighbors serving in the Fourth had passed through the county months before, she told him, and they had told her that John had been terribly wounded and that the last they had known of him he had been in a hospital in Atlanta as the city fell. The implication was obvious, though unstated -- he was either dead or in a Yankee prison, which might be worse.

John had dozens of questions he wanted to ask, but fatigue washed over him. It was wonderful just to sit in a comfortable chair; the questions could wait another day. Except one -- there was one question he had to ask immediately, though he didn't know how to phrase it. "Where is... everybody?" he asked haltingly.

A small, sardonic smile danced across Eliza's doll-like face. "Most of the slaves are gone," she answered. "It seems like one or two slip away every night lately." She shrugged. "But soon I guess the Yankees will be here and it won't matter anymore."

Then her composure broke down. "Oh, John, I've been so frightened," she cried. "The yankees scare me -- I've heard about the things they do." She rushed over to his chair and sat in his lap, holding him tight. "Thank god you're home."

He held her and comforted her as best he could. When her tears had subsided, she drew away from him, though still sitting on his lap. She tried to laugh and said lightly, "I'm sorry -- I'm so silly sometimes. I know everything will be okay." She looked up over her brother's shoulder.