Whiskey always walked in dust, a pistol on his hip and the red sand from outside still on his boots when he came to her. In through the swinging doors, brown eyes sliding slow and smooth across the bar until they found Lace. His hands were always rough, calluses scraping her skin when he curled his fingers around hers, the leather and canvas on his body somehow fitting against her silk and lace.

No names.

That was what the madam always said, rolling off the tongue in a voice that had seen seven lifetimes, No names, always when the grit-streaked dollars found her palm and the narrow rooms upstairs beckoned.

He was a gunfighter, she knew, some adventurer or bounty man, someone from the North, from the way he spoke and the letters on his frayed bandoleer. But when the door rattled shut, when the click of the lock sounded, Lace saw his features melt, eyes caressing her before his hands.

He was a poet, she knew, the way her hands traced stanzas on her thighs and the fluttering scrawl of tongued sonnets between them. The roar of laughter from the saloon below and the swirl of silks as they fell away swere nothing, not in Whiskey's arms. And when Whiskey entered Lace, his hands firm on her hips, it was something in his eyes, his smile, that made her wonder what it would be like to feel the wind outside again, to light out for the frontier at his side.

Lace never knew if he felt the same- his kisses, his grin, that rumbling grunt as he spilled himself inside her, all enough to steal the wondering from the her thoughts. And keep it at bay, through the night, his arms around her and legs drawn up beside her, all those dollars whispering into others' palms just to let him hold her through the dark, whispering to her that she was his angel in faded lace.

Always the third Friday of the month, he came- and came, and came, she thought, until one day he didn't come at all, not even through the doors. Some other girl, in some other town, a cheaper one, perhaps. Dark clouds sank around her until Saturday slipped silently into life, the rattle at her window drawing her from dreams.

A wooden box, and Whiskey's gun, a note and a name.

Come in moonlight, with steel beside,

It's time to run, and death to hide.

Come to the shadows where the church-bell rings,

And there, my angel, you'll find your wings.