Page 15

Peregrine

A full moon hung over the moors as Peregrine walked along the road. He’d gone up to Lyd’s new hideout near her old family home to see how the band was getting on, but they’d been out riding, it seemed, because their new lair was empty. Strange, because it had been Lyd herself to invite him to visit, but Peregrine was made of time now, so what was one wasted day? It wasn’t as if he had anything to occupy him other than scratching out a garden in the tiny plots that had been left adjacent to the houses in his village when the fields had been enclosed. It hadn’t been enough for the hamlet or even for a family, but for a single person who had the money to buy his own grain rather than grow it, it was serviceable.

He couldn’t live like this forever, he knew. Rattling around like a ghost in his childhood home, eating beets and drinking wine while he brooded at the fire. But he also didn’t know what else to do. His career as a thief had been so bundled up in the idea of revenge that once he let the revenge go, the idea of stealing no longer held much appeal. He had more than enough to live on, and he’d given so much away to those who needed it most that it no longer felt necessary or interesting to punish the fine people in their fine coaches.

Maybe he was tired.

Or maybe some fights weren’t meant to be fought for entire lifetimes. One could only pass their fingers through a flame so many times before they got burned.

Truthfully, though, he knew why he stayed. Why he brooded alone with ghosts instead of finding a new place to live or seeking out some other occupation. The idea of leaving Far Hope’s demesne hurt more than he could describe. At least here, he could walk to Alexander’s house and watch it from the hills surrounding the valley. At least here, he could sometimes go to the now-empty priory and wander through its abandoned spaces, remembering how it felt that week to have Alexander as his very own.

Peregrine was thinking about all this as he walked through a little valley choked with trees, and that’s when he heard a suspicious rustling.

And then a shh , and then a horse sprang out in front of him.

“Stand and deliver!” a voice cried out, loud enough to send an owl flapping away in irritation. Peregrine’s heart stopped and then skidded back into action with several fast, hungry beats. But not from fear.

He knew that voice. He knew that voice from every dream he’d dreamed in the last six months.

And then the voice said, “Did I say that right? Is that how it goes?”

Lyd—of all fucking people—and Ned and the others stepped out of the shadows to the mounted figure.

“You could have been louder,” Lyd said dryly, and then turned to him. “Hello, Peregrine. This is a robbery.”

“I thought it was an abduction,” said Ned, and Lyd put her palm to her forehead.

“That’s right,” she said, “this is an abduction. You’re being abducted right now.”

Peregrine was ignoring them, already walking up to the horse where the mounted rider sat. The rider’s hair tumbled over his shoulder in gleaming waves, and his full lips were curled into a secretive little smile.

Just looking at him made Peregrine’s chest ache with longing.

“Are you my kidnapper?” asked Peregrine, his heart tumbling all over itself inside his chest, like a newborn foal that couldn’t find its legs. He’d tried to stay away from Alexander, tried to do the right thing after so many years of doing the wrong thing, but he couldn’t deny that he’d hoped—yearned—for something like this. A moment when he could see Alexander’s sparkling eyes again.

“I am your kidnapper,” agreed Alexander with great dignity. “I’m here to whisk you away.”

Peregrine was very close to Alexander now. He put a possessive hand on the man’s thigh, squeezing gently. The feeling of Alexander’s warm, lithe muscles under his grip made blood surge to his cock.

“How did you find me?” Peregrine asked.

“Unfortunately, Sandy and I are friends now,” Lyd said with a heavy sigh. “And then this week, he popped around my hideout with some sad story about missing you and wanting to see you again.”

Peregrine looked to Alexander. “You missed me.”

“Yes, you awful, criminal fool, I missed you,” replied Alexander impatiently. “I missed you so much that I got a pardon for you from the Crown so that you can come live with me without worrying that someone will inform the local magistrate about a highwayman in my bed.”

Peregrine’s heart thudded. “You did?”

“I did.” Alexander’s gaze softened. “You will be safe with me, Peregrine. I swear it.”

Peregrine forced himself to think rationally, to think unselfishly. He’d had plenty of time to mull over his decisions, after all, and as much as they hurt—and they really fucking hurt—he still couldn’t see that he’d chosen wrongly.

“You’ll need to marry,” he said softly, his hand lingering possessively on Alexander’s thigh. “Have children. I know some married couples are willing to?—”

“Ugh, stop ,” Alexander huffed. “I’m not getting married.”

“But the dukedom?—”

“There are plenty of little ones in line, don’t worry about the dukedom and heirs,” Alexander said. He reached out to touch Peregrine’s jaw with leather-gloved fingertips. “Can’t you see, Peregrine Hind?” he whispered. “I only want you. Let me kidnap you, and I swear that I’ll make the rest of your life worth it.”

“The rest of my life?” Peregrine asked. There was a buzz in his lips, on his tongue, inside his veins.

It felt like hope.

“That’s what people do with the ones they love, right?” asked Alexander. “They grow old with them?”

The ones they love.

Yes, somehow, despite everything, those words felt right. As right as a strong horse underneath him, as right as a bright moon on a clear night. As good having a rake tied to his bed.

“If that’s the case,” Peregrine said, the hope swallowing what was left of his doubts and worries, “then you must know that I want to grow old with you too.”

Alexander gave him a big grin—one of those spoiled but bewitching ones Peregrine loved so much—and gestured to an empty cart waiting farther down the road. “Then you must allow to me to get on with my abduction,” he said, and Peregrine smiled.

He looked to Lyd, who gave him a mock-salute back. “Thank you for assisting in my kidnapping,” he told her as Alexander dismounted with an easy grace and took Peregrine’s hand.

“Wouldn’t have missed it for all the gold in the kingdom,” she said, and then, with a whistle, she and the band moved back toward the trees, where they’d presumably tethered their horses. They waved goodbye, and Peregrine and his captor went to the cart, hitched the horse to the front, and climbed inside.

Alexander at first sat so that he and Peregrine were side by side, but Peregrine had no patience for this, instead pulling Alexander onto his lap and wrapping his arms firmly around Alexander’s waist.

Giving a quiet cluck, Alexander took the reins and urged the horse forward to start off for Far Hope.

“I’m nervous your friends in the Second Kingdom won’t like me,” Peregrine said, his hands beginning to wander all over Alexander’s body. It had been so long, so painfully long, and Peregrine’s body responded ferociously to the supple duke pressed against him. He also couldn’t drag in enough of Alexander’s spicy, citrus scent, burying his face in Alexander’s hair and breathing it in over and over again.

“You are pardoned now, and you are mine, so they can fuck right off,” Alexander said pleasantly. “Besides, they’ll eventually see it as a grand story. Anything rare or unusual is like a shiny object to them, I promise you.”

“Mm,” Peregrine said. He was relieved to hear it, although he knew it might take time for Alexander’s world to accept him. Luckily, time was something he was not short on.

“And what role will I be expected to play in this kingdom?” Peregrine asked, still nosing all that soft, wonderful hair. “I have to warn you that I don’t want to be with anyone else.”

“There’s no rule in the kingdom about having to fuck every person you meet.” Alexander laughed. “You can be as devoted to me as you like.”

“And you?” Peregrine asked, suddenly confronted with the reality that he might have to share his rake. “Will you be...partaking in your kingdom?”

Alexander turned, seeming amused. “Why, Peregrine, is that possessiveness I hear in your voice?”

Peregrine growled. Yes, dammit, he was possessive. But he would also give Alexander the world and everything in it, and if Alexander wanted to share his body with people other than Peregrine, then Peregrine would endure—so long it was him Alexander came back to at the end of the night.

Alexander gave Peregrine a soft kiss, then turned and settled against Peregrine’s chest. “No,” the rake said after a minute, “I don’t think I’ll be partaking anymore. I may change my mind, of course, I’m flighty like that, but right now all I want is this grim thief I’ve fallen in love with.”

“Truly?”

“I’ve had the affairs and the games and the pleasures, Peregrine; I’ve drank fully from every cup I ever found, either at the Kingdom or at court. I want something different now. You.”

“I don’t want to make you a captive again,” Peregrine said. “Please know that. So if you change your mind...”

“You’ll be the first to know,” Alexander promised. “In the meantime, I plan on quenching my insatiate lusts with a certain former solider.”

Peregrine growled again, this time in satisfaction, pulling Alexander closer and dropping his hands to Alexander’s lap.

“Now, about your captivity,” Alexander said, giving a long shudder as Peregrine’s fingers began picking open the buttons of his breeches, brushing over the swell of Alexander’s erection as they did. “I have some rather—oh, that feels good?—”

Peregrine had found Alexander’s prick and drawn it out of his clothes, and while the cart pulled them up the road, Peregrine slowly shuttled his grip up and down the stiff flesh. “You were saying?” he murmured into the duke’s ear.

“I was saying that I have some rather unusual requests,” Alexander said breathlessly, wriggling on Peregrine’s lap as Peregrine stroked Alexander’s rigidity. It was hot velvet against his palm.

“And what are those?”

“Well, I may b-be the captor this time, but I think you should tie me up. A lot.”

Peregrine laughed a little. “I think we can manage that. Anything else?”

“Yes. I know you’re no longer filling your nights with crimes on the road. But I won’t mind in the least if you’re fill your nights being a criminal with me .”

“And what does a criminal do with you?” Peregrine murmured, loving the feel of Alexander shivering against his chest, the way he rocked against Peregrine’s ferocious cockstand.

“Well, I mentioned the tying up,” Alexander said, gasping a little. “You could tease me mercilessly. You could deny me until I’m begging for it. You could use me like you did in the farmhouse.”

Peregrine’s cock jerked against the duke, ready to get started on all those things, but it was his heart which swelled and throbbed the most as he buried his face in Alexander’s neck again and inhaled the Christmas scent of his rake-turned-duke-turned-captor. He didn’t deserve this—not after the war, not after stalking the roads and raining hellfire upon the travelers he’d found. Not after what he did to Sandy when they first met. But perhaps he could earn it. Earn it like he’d earned peace from his grief over the last six months, earn it like he’d earned the tender, emerald shoots in his new garden behind his family farmhouse. With care and love.

And he knew exactly who he’d care for first.

“In that case, Your Grace,” Peregrine said, coaxing Alexander to into a jerking, quivering spend all over his fist, “I shall save all my crimes for you.”

“Truly?”

“Every last one.”

“Thank God.”

And with kisses to his duke’s neck, Peregrine took the reins and guided them over the purple moors to Far Hope, and to home.

The end.