If there was a worse way to greet the Christmas Eve than meeting a consignment of booze in the waters beyond Atlantic City, it must've been meeting a consignment of booze with Seamus O'Malley for company.

Just my rotten luck. Always getting the shittiest jobs.

Not that I had anything else to do this evening, if one thought about it. I had no sweetheart, and a single woman didn't prowl the streets of Atlantic City at night however tough-skinned she was; and at home... well. Let's just say no one waited for me at home was a plate of goose and a cup of steaming mulled wine.

'Daydreaming, Pixie?' Seamus asked acidly.

I glared, both at the insinuation and the nickname. A year ago, I would've given him a speech that I was apt for the jobs our boss threw at us no less than anyone else; a few months ago, I would've reminded him that my name was Mabel. As it was, I did neither. The night was dark, the waters icy-black, and the fogs that concealed us from the Coast Guard also hindered our own vision. I didn't need any more enemies than this.

But, God and all His saints, sometimes it was hard to resist.

Resist snapping at him, that is. Nothing more.

So, I just shook my head and concentrated on the horizon.

'You're always daydreaming', Seamus continued, 'I've noticed that. What're you thinking of? Some fella? What got him? The war? The flu? A bottle blonde?'

'I'm not mooning over fellas'.

'You're one of those who moon over other girls, then?'

'I don't moon over anyone at all. And, if you want to know, I was thinking of...'

'What?'

'The old country'.

'You reckon the weather is sweeter in Dublin now? It's raining there like nobody's business. Sleet, snow, and rain. The Holy Trinity of ours'.

A year ago, a few months ago, I would've told him not to blaspheme. Yes, I never forgot that I earned my living running rum and other booze for one of the crime lords of the East Coast... but I also never forgot that it never pays to anger those with power without need.

Now, I was used to his ways - which was not to say they didn't irritate me beyond belief - so I just said:

'Kilkenny. I'm from Kilkenny. Never knew you were from Dublin'.

'Derry'.

'Then why did you say Dublin?'

This was turning into one of the inane conversations I despised.

'You've got the way about you'.

'Is there a Dublin way?'

'A city way. You always dress very smartly'.

'I'm dressed like a sailor down on his luck'.

'Well, you'd have been a fool if you weren't, right now. But I mean when we're not on the job'.

'How on earth do you know how I dress when I'm not on the job?'

Seamus shrugged in the darkness. For a moment, all was silence, and the howl of the winter wind. It ruffled his fair hair as if these were a field of wheat.

Such foolish comparison. Fields of wheat are sunlight, and innocence, and a simple life. Not an easy life - I'd never call a country life easy, not by any stretch; there was a reason my family left the old country before the war - but a simple one.

His life was spent in the murk of the underworld.

So is yours, my inner voice told me ruthlessly. The realisation stung like a wound splashed with wine. You're no different from him, now.

'I've watched you', Seamus finally said. 'When you went out in the evening. When you tried to date one man or another... you always looked very dapper. Even though you were wearing trousers'.

'Many women wore trousers during the war. In the factories and the like'.

I felt combative, completely sure that I was going to receive the rebuke I've always received in response to this argument: the war is over now.

However, instead, Seamus merely shrugged:

'I suppose it's not different from a factory work, what you're doing now'.

'Except the pay is better', was all I managed to reply.

Even well-meaning men, those with manners far sweeter and souls far more honest than that of Seamus O'Malley, always blanched when they saw me in my beloved attire. Some were stern and direct in their rebuke, some tried to be sneaky in their coaxing. None accepted it with the same rough shrug as my resident pain in the ass did now.

And then I realised what was it that he said, what he meant, and the realisation robbed me of my breath.

'You've watched me? You mean you're followed me!'

'Mr. O'Shea had me do it. He wasn't sure you were to trust. You know the way he is'.

I did. I knew Kieran O'Shea to be one of the most distrustful bastards under the sun. I also knew he only hired me, a woman, for this dangerous job of a rum-runner because his own lady-love (some whispered she was also his brothers' lady-love, and I wasn't going to open that can of worms if you paid me) talked him into it upon seeing my stubbornness.

The men, Mr. O'Shea said, won't accept it, even if he might. He wasn't all that wrong, and it took me a lot of successful missions and evenings spent drinking them under the table to even approach something resembling acceptance.

But that all didn't mean I was going to let Seamus O'Malley off the hook.

'Did you watch me through my windows, too?'

'I wish I could, but you live on the third floor'.

'Oh, forgive me for depriving you of the show!'

'What show? Do you think it's your pretty legs I wanted to see? Your tits under those blouses of yours? Your hips? It was treason I was sniffing out, and that just because Mr. O'Shea told me to. What I was supposed to do, tell him no?'

Rationally, I understood him. No one was going to say no to Mr. O'Shea - to none of the three Mr. O'Shea, but especially not to the elder one, with his soft voice and icy blue eyes. Even his brothers, or so I've heard, only did that on the gravest of occasions.

But I still couldn't help but shiver with disgust at the thought of Seamus O'Malley watching me from the shadows, his dark gaze trained on my figure as I danced the night away without knowing.

I thought of the one date when I have caved in and wore a gown - a cheap, off-the-rack gown, for I couldn't afford anything better, but a gown nonetheless. It was a shorter one than I was used to (I strongly suspected the lack of material used was the primary reason fro its cheapness) - it barely covered my knees. Was Seamus O'Malley on duty that night, too? Did he see the dress lift and spin around me, my stockings rolled down, most of my legs bared?

Without any warning, a giant ship grew in front of us, as though coalescing together from the mist and the night. I drew a breath of relief. Part of it was because the vessel was here, the cargo presumably was here, too, and we weren't spending the Christmas night here out in the icy Atlantic cold for nothing.

Part of it was because the rendezvous interrupted my thoughts, and I no longer could indulge in the disturbing imaginings that set my skin crawling and made it feel strangely tight.

The next hour passed almost in silence. We greeted the captain, nodded to each other, had his men haul the cash aboard, and set ourselves to bringing the endless bottles of rum and whiskey onto our own boat. It was a sweaty, honest, monotonous work, and, if I closed my eyes, its rhythm reminded me somewhat of the labour in the fields of Ireland where I used to help my family from a young age.

I still had a big family in those days. So strange it seemed to think about, much like thinking of the green hills surrounding our village felt strange in this lonely, monochrome world I lived in now.

Seamus O'Malley watched me throughout the unloading, of course. His eyes never leaving my face and body, his stare never seeming to miss a single twitch of my muscle, he was, no doubt, waiting for me to make a mistake.

Tough chance. I knew my job.

'You're not half-bad', he muttered when out much-weighted-down boat set onto its journey back, and the ship dissolved in the winter fog as though it had never existed. 'You've got muscles'.

'What, did you think I'm one of those ladies whose greatest exertion is Charleston?'

'You sure speak like one sometimes'.

'I used to...' Just like that, in a a petty fight, I almost blurted out one of the innermost secrets of my heart.

I used to have ambitions.

When we first arrived in the new country, when my father was still alive and getting good wages at his construction job, when I still went to school.

When the tragedy hadn't struct yet.

The first five minutes of a movie, the first act in a theatre, the first three chapters in a novel.

They never last, and the hero - rarely the heroine - spends the rest of the plot trying to sort out the ruins of paradise.

'Yes?'

There was the usual caustic tone in his voice, but Seamus' eyes were strangely avid. He couldn't let go of the oars, he couldn't move much in any direction, but he still leaned forward with all his body, eager to hear more, and I realised that, beneath the shirt and the waistcoat and the warm winter jacket he had quite a muscle.

A silly thing to realise about a man who had just spent an hour grimly engaged in precisely the kind of task this sort of muscle is needed for.

But I was no fool. I knew that, in the world we both moved through, any confession, any admission of weakness, could be turned against you.

'I used to read a lot of books', I simply said, and looked away, as though to make him understand that the conversation was over.

I looked away, and saw a few lights on the coast.

My heart leapt up into my throat.

Were I an honest ship in the night, I would have been glad to see a light in the fog, even if it is a lantern. But I was not - I was its antipodes, its shadow, a smuggler. There were supposed to be no lights here. If there were, it meant that we had been discovered.

Worse. It meant that we were expected.

Seamus must have noted my expression - he had always been attuned to my movements, which was likely why Mr. O'Shea chose him as my follower in those first few weeks. A kind of determined steel came into his stare.

'Turn right', he commanded. 'I know where we should go'.

'And where is that?'

'I know the caves near the coast'.

'Do you think they don't? They're hunting rum-runners'. A genuine dislike for risk and a kind of perverse antipathy I felt for this man melded into one.

'Maybe they do. Maybe they don't'.

'They'll see our movements from the shore. They'll trail us there'.

'They won't. The fog is our best help. Besides, they'll be blinded by their own light a bit. When you pour the light on something, everything beyond the ray becomes a deeper black. Don't you know that?'

'We must've taken different poetry classes', I grumbled, but repositioned the oars.

The worst thing was that the line really was rather poetic, even if I was now in the worst position ever to enjoy it.

This time, we rowed without speaking; we rowed as though our lives depended on it - which they very much did. The Coast Guard didn't hold tea ceremonies with rum-runners. If we got a bullet in our heads, they could always say we tried to run.

My muscles ached, and my shoulders burned. I said nothing however. In this world, admitting a weakness could cost you your place, or worse; especially if you were stupid enough to admit it to someone who already disliked you and watched you like a hawk.

'Here', Seamus O'Malley signed with his head alone. 'You can rest now, Pixie'.

'I don't need rest'.

'Tell that to someone else'.

I didn't know why, but I did follow his direction, and let go of the oars while he manoeuvred us carefully into the black opening of the cave. As soon as I did, the aftershock of the effort was almost too painful to bear; however, the bliss that flooded my muscles like warm milk when they realised they could now indeed rest was great, too.

'Jesus, you must've worked yourself to the bone', Seamus taunted. It had to be a taunt, for what else could it have been? 'I wonder if you'll be able to take up the oars again when dawn comes'.

'Fuck off', I grumbled, getting out of the boat, my boots hitting the rocky floor of the cave. 'I'll row like a madwoman, if needs be'.

'Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of'.

'Why on earth would you be afraid of that?'

'Because if you do, you'll collapse. And if you collapse, you'll doom us both. So, it's in the interests of our mission that you warm up and get some good rest now'.

I saw his point. For a while, I looked around in search of something, anything, that could help us to start the fire. I found nothing, however; besides, here, in the dead of winter, that bone-chilling East Coast winter, the whole place was soaked through with the remains of rain and snow.

If we spend the night here... if the cops' bullets don't get us, the chill will.

It felt so strange, laughable even, to worry about the chills in our line of work. But people died for all kinds of reasons - strange and laughable included.

I knew it better than many.

I came back from my search within the depths of the cave to find Seamus standing with his cloak held out as though it were a towel, and I were a lady stepping naked out of her bath.

'You've got a face as if someone died while I wasn't watching', he said.

'You need this cloak'.

'It's not mine'.

'Took it off a dead man?'

'How did you guess?' He grinned. 'Now step closer, Pixie. There's enough room for both of us here, unless you squirm too much'.

'I don't squirm', I glared at him. I was not, however, in any position to refuse such an offering. I had little illusion as to why it was made in the first place - Seamus had made it clear. If you collapse, you'll doom us both. Better if we are both well-rested.

At these words, my colleague grinned as though I cracked a dirty joke.

He was right - I really had to refrain from squirming - or any other movement - to fit under that cloak. It was all the more difficult because, despite his lean and wiry frame, Seamus was, as I have already noticed, a man with muscles. I felt it all the more keenly as this enforced proximity led me to press against him beneath the heavy cloth.

I had no idea how did he manage to stay this warm on the winter night. His skin seemed to radiate heat.

'So', he asked, breaking the silence of the cave once more. 'Who was it that died?'

'What?'

'When you came from your little search mission with such expression as though the world has ended and you were standing on the ashes. Who died?'

'It doesn't matter. It was years ago'.

'Clearly matters'.

'Not to you'.

'To me, too'.

'Why on earth?'

'We're likely stuck here until the cops go away, which means well into tomorrow. I don't want to die of boredom'.

His words sent me into a blaze of fury, strange kindness in the form of a cloak or no.

'So, you want me to provide you with some entertainment? Shame I can't dance a can-can'.

'Real shame. I know these legs of yours are very shapely. Your trousers don't hide much in that respect'.

Again, I have experienced that strange sensation of my skin being too small for me, taut too tightly over my flesh and bones. Again, my cheeks burned as though I were a callow adolescent who heard her first innuendo.

What the hell was wrong with me?

Just to ward the feeling - and the topic - off, I started talking. Talking very fast.

'It was my family. They died in the Spanish flu pandemic'.

'Hell', Seamus breathed out. 'I'm sorry, Mabel'.

Mabel. Not Pixie.

'You're sorry? You aren't going to taunt me for that?'

'Do I look like a complete bastard?'

'Sometimes, yes'.

'Good point. Maybe I'm a real bastard - in all senses of the word, at that - but not a complete one. Did you have a big family?'

'Three brothers and two sisters'. I wasn't looking at him. I was staring into the darkness of the cave, as though it was a safe, velvety cloth that could envelop me.

'What were their names?'

'I'm not going to tell you'.

'Do you think I'm going to sell that information on the black market or something?'

'No. That I don't think'. It wasn't a lack of trust, I realised. At least, not a lack of trust towards him in particular, towards Seamus O'Malley - which was saying something, given that we were talking about the man who admitted to stalking me (and to paying an inordinate amount of attention to my legs). It was... I wasn't sure how to put a finger on that feeling, what name to give it. Protection, I supposed. Or fear. It was as though as long as I was keeping my siblings' names buried beneath the eternal ice, nothing could harm either them or me. It is sunlight and warmth that makes old wounds bleed with living blood again.

'Actually', I raised my voice, 'Why don't you tell me something, then? An exchange?'

'Of course you'd be a stickler', Seamus chuckled. 'When my parents first came here, they came to the Big Apple. My father, he worked at a factory that made... buttons, I think. Something prim and pretty. But they worked in sweat and grime. One day, they downed their tools and marched out on the streets. They wanted better lives. And the factory owner loosed the Pinkertons upon them'.

He didn't describe the violence unleashed. He didn't say that was how my father died. He didn't need to. I've heard of the Homestead Strike and what the Pinkertons did to the steel workers there. I had a good imagination.

'I'm sorry', I said with as much softness as I could manage, which was not much.

'Don't be. My father was a fool'. There was a kind of forced vehemence in his voice.

'What, do you think he deserved it?'

'Of course not. But the only way you can get a better life it by taking it, not pleading for it'.

Except this is exactly what you're doing now, I thought. Just with a different kind of boss. And, I think, you understand it. Which it why you're bitter as sawdust.

'That was why I resented you so', Seamus suddenly said quietly. 'Nothing seemed to get you down'.

'Me? I'm not some little Miss Sunshine'.

'No. But you've always had this... spirit in you. Like one of those pioneer women in the movies'.

'That must be the first time ever someone compared me to a woman from the movies'.

'You could've made it there, I think. You have such hair. Mary Pickford has nothing on you'. With these words, Seamus leaned closer to me, and buried his face in my curls.

It was a brief moment, taking no more time than it usually took to draw a breath. But it turned something upside down in me, as though the earth itself had moved under my feet.

I turned my head to face Seamus O'Malley.

He looked - if anything, he looked dazed. His dark eyes were wide with shock at what they must've glimpsed in my own expression.

Then he leaned closer, and kissed me on the mouth.

Our lips were cold, and we were huddled close together, afraid to move for the danger of unsettling the careful equilibrium of the cloak, but what did it matter? His mouth tasted of bitterness and whiskey and frost, and it was insistent, hungry. Seamus didn't press his lips to mine in a careful, probing exploration, the way other men I knew did. No - he plunged his tongue into my mouth in what felt like a long-simmering, bottomless hunger.

I wasn't about to swoon like a helpless waif. I matched him hunger for hunger, touch for touch. As I parted my lips for him, I pressed my fingernails into his back. A low moan was my reward.

Not content with it, I allowed my hands to roam his chest, shivering in a way that had nothing to do with the damp cold of the cave as I felt the taut muscles beneath.

Then, a ravenous sensation of my own rising from my core, I pushed him onto his back, and he must have been so startled he didn't even resist.

Or maybe he simply didn't want to.

The cloak was on the ground, beneath his back. I was straddling him, bare of that warm protection, but felt no cold. There was a golden fire running through my veins.

'Oh, yes, Pixie', Seamus breathed, his deft fingers lifting the simple shirt over my head, not bothering with the buttons. 'Just like that. God, but I've wanted this'.

The thought of it - the thought of him thinking of me, of imagining me naked as the day I was born, squirming in his bed - made me let out a most undignified whimper.

I hated the notion of breaking the contact with him even for a moment, but I had to in order to get out of my trousers. I did that through the sickly, pulsating pain of a thwarted arousal, my body screaming for him. Then I was on top of Seamus again, squeezing his hips with my legs, undoing the buttons of his own clothes.

All the while, he was distracting me by removing my brassiere and, this task done, playing with my breasts. I whimpered again as his thumb skimmed over one nipple, and a new wave of electrifying desire rolled down my body. At this, my - lover? - smiled with such devilish triumph it made me want to both smack him and wrap my legs around his waist.

I panted as I lowered myself onto him. I started moving immediately, fast and frantic. His hands settled on my hips, but they didn't rein me in - not for a moment.

'Oh, good girl', Seamus whispered. 'So good. Nice and wet for me, aren't you? Nice and hungry? Just as I wanted you to be, always - oh, God - always imagined you to be. Yes, I've imagined you like this, and many times at that. Does it disgust you, that I used to take myself in hand and think of you?'

The right answer, the dignified answer, would have been yes, of course. But, whatever dignity truly meant, I was long since past it.

Therefore, I shook my head, and closed my eyes.

Darkness enveloped my vision, but I was still hearing his voice, disembodied and ragged with pleasure:

'Wild thing. I knew you had this fire in you. Always knew it. Liked to image how it might feel. Imagined you on your knees - of course - what man with red blood in his veins wouldn't? But also, like this. Or having me kneel, letting me pleasure you with my tongue and make you all weak and mewling for me as you came'.

I increased the pace at that, aching with want even as that want was being fulfilled, and opened my eyes.

'So beautiful', Seamus whispered, looking up at me, his right hand sliding upwards to caress my breast again.

That brief, simple touch pushed me over the edge - my journey to the apex of pleasure was lightning-fast, I must have been hungry for a lover as he was for me.

But who was I lying to? It was not any lover that I've been hungry for; it was the man now gripping my hips and looking up at me as though I were the crown of all creation.

He followed suit as I squeezed around him, transfixed in my climax. Then I fell forward, my head landing on his chest, my hair spilling out of their pragmatic bun and rolling across it like waves.

Seamus didn't make me wait before he ran his fingers through my hair. They were still trembling with the aftermath, and, so it seemed to me at least, were warm from the touch of my skin.

For a while, we lay there in silence. Somewhere beyond the cave, the cops were searching the now-empty beaches, waiting for the prey to walk into their clumsy trap. Somewhere further beyond still, candles were burning in the windows of family homes, and underground celebrations raged in nightclubs.

All of that might as well have been happening in a different galaxy, in the darkness beyond the stars.

'Cormac', I whispered, finally, as something ripened in my mind - a decision of sorts. 'My little brother's name was Cormac'.

'And the others?' Seamus never stopped stroking my hair.

'You'll have to stay with me far longer to find that out'.

At this, he chuckled:

'If you want to drive a hard bargain, Mabel, that's not how it's done'. He kissed my temple. 'I'd stay with you until the sun burns out and the moon falls into the sea, if you like. And I'll pry every single secret from your tongue'. 

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Would you like to find out more about the O'Shea family and their peculiar relationship with the fair Rose? Read Shared by the Sinners either here on Wattpad (before March 2023) or on Amazon (after)!