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Peregrine grunted in pleasure, and Alexander’s gaze grew flirtatious.

“Would you like me like this?” Alexander murmured coyly, spreading his thighs even wider under Peregrine and putting his hands against Peregrine’s chest. “Like a virgin? Like I don’t know how good it will feel? Like I can only tremble underneath you while you show me?”

Peregrine’s cock surged against Alexander’s stomach, answering for him.

“Or...,” Alexander said, seeming to have an idea. His eyes moved past Peregrine to the closed door, and there was an icy stab of fear that his prisoner would bolt for the door while Peregrine was hazed over with lust. But then he realized that even Alexander wasn’t reckless enough to plunge into the chilly moors completely naked, and also that Alexander was looking at the edge of the table instead, where Peregrine had set a small bottle of oil.

With surprising strength, Alexander flipped Peregrine onto his back. He tossed his hair over his shoulder and gave him a triumphant grin before sliding off the bed, sauntering over to the table, and getting the bottle.

Peregrine’s blood was already hot enough to simmer, but watching the Dartham heir move around utterly naked with that fluid grace of his made Peregrine feel like his very skin was about to catch fire. Alexander’s mussed hair waved over his shoulders, his nipples were pulled into tight points, and the small nip in his waist was so very visible like this, just waiting for Peregrine’s hands. And Alexander’s cock—pointed to by a narrow, elegant trail of dark hair—was beyond tempting. Straight and veined and as lovely as something carved from marble by a deeply skilled hand.

Peregrine wanted to put it in his mouth.

“Or you could be the virgin,” Alexander said as he came back to the bed and climbed gracefully onto the mattress. “Would you like that? If you trembled beneath me instead?”

“What would you like?”

Alexander’s expression shuttered and he looked away for a moment, ostensibly down to the bottle to open it. When he looked back up, his expression was the same blithe one as earlier. “I like whatever will seduce you the best, of course,” he said smoothly. “Now give me your hand, please.”

Peregrine hesitated. He wanted to know what Alexander had been thinking—what Alexander wanted —but even wondering felt ridiculous because what else would Alexander want? To be free of Peregrine and safely back to his life, of course.

Peregrine nearly opened his mouth to reassure Alexander that he wasn’t planning to hurt him any longer...but then he couldn’t bring himself to utter anything at all. Not because he didn’t want Alexander to know that he was safe, but because he didn’t want to bring up the subject in the first place. He was ashamed, maybe, of having ever wanted to kill Alexander at all.

Ashamed that he still didn’t plan on setting Alexander free.

In any case, Alexander distracted Peregrine beyond all thought. He took Peregrine’s hand in his own and then gently, carefully, drizzled oil over the first two fingers, giving Peregrine a smoldering look as he did. Peregrine’s pulse kicked.

“Work me open,” Alexander said, his own racing pulse obvious in the thrumming at the side of his throat. In the erratic bob and swell of the pretty cock between his thighs. “Make me ready.”

And then he turned and presented himself to Peregrine.

Peregrine couldn’t stop the groan that tore out of his chest at the sight. Alexander was beautiful everywhere, even in the secret places where his body opened to take a lover, and the sight of that beauty nearly undid Peregrine. His hand shaking, he reached up and grazed a single fingertip over the sensitive flesh on offer.

Alexander let out a puff of air that was almost a sigh, as if he were both relieved and excited by the touch.

Peregrine knew neither of them were virgins or seducers; he could push them to any pace, and Alexander would be right there with him. But he didn’t want to push. He didn’t want this to be fast, mechanical.

Forgettable.

He suddenly wanted to be all over Alexander in the same way Alexander was all over him—to touch Alexander’s thoughts and his heart and his soul. Peregrine didn’t know if he could do that merely from making love—he’d never tried and no one had ever tried with him—but that was what he wanted, and so that was what he would do.

He grazed over the pleated skin again as his other hand slid up Alexander’s lean thigh and caressed the smooth cheek of his backside. He kept stroking that firm curve as he swirled his fingertip against Alexander’s entrance and made everything sweet and slick in the process. It wasn’t long before there were goose bumps all over the rake’s skin, along his back and thighs and arse.

Peregrine loved feeling those goose bumps, this proof that he, who’d done nothing but the briskest and most transactional kinds of lovemaking, had the power to affect a seasoned libertine like Lord Alexander Dartham. He sanded his free hand over Alexander’s skin and whispered, “Breathe.”

Alexander breathed. Peregrine pushed.

There was enough oil to make passage easy, if something as searing and squeezing as this could be called easy . Peregrine’s mind filled with images of him surging to his knees behind Alexander and taking him in one rough thrust—pushing Alexander to his stomach and mounting him—yanking him off the bed and bending him over and?—

But Peregrine wanted this instead. This slow, stroking invasion that made Alexander shiver and shiver and shiver until he seemed to be nothing but panting and goose bumps, until Peregrine could see between his legs the wet spot Alexander’s cock was leaving on the coverlet as clear seed leaked from the tip.

“Stroke yourself,” Peregrine said, gently working his finger until he could find that swollen spot inside. Alexander let out a gasp, and then his hand flew to his organ, which he rubbed furiously, almost clumsily, his libertine’s grace leaving him as Peregrine continued to caress the gland inside his body.

Peregrine found the bottle propped against a nearby pillow and added more oil, and then slid a second finger inside Alexander, which earned him a noise so guttural and yet so heavenly that Peregrine couldn’t wait to hear it again. He stroked inside with two fingers now, until Alexander began moving against him, shamelessly fucking himself against the highwayman’s touch.

And then Peregrine knew what he wanted, how he wanted to be seduced.

He wanted to be seduced purely by watching Alexander like this, with Alexander urgent and near helpless with how good he felt.

Peregrine slid his hand free and then pulled at Alexander’s hips until the rake turned to blink at him. His cheeks and chest were flushed; his cock stuck straight out like a blunt sword. His lips were parted, and his brows were pulled together in an expression of utter bewilderment, as if he couldn’t imagine why Peregrine would do something so awful as to stop.

“I want you on top,” Peregrine murmured, already pulling Alexander over him. “I want you to make yourself come on me.”

Alexander gave a little shudder, his ribs jerking with fast, tattered breaths. “Are you sure—I’m not the one being—seduced?”

Peregrine’s only answer was a smile; he relished how Alexander’s usual coquettish demeanor was falling apart right now—the way his eyes roved hungrily over Peregrine’s body as he positioned himself to fuck—the way his tongue darted out to his lower lip in concentration as he guided Peregrine past that first slick barrier into the searing forge beyond. The way he unselfconsciously shook his hair out of his face and then gave a soft whine as he impaled himself.

Peregrine gentled his hands up and down Alexander’s thighs, making soothing noises as Alexander pushed down, even as he himself had to lock every muscle in his stomach and thighs to keep from surging up into the snug velvet of Alexander’s body.

His patience was rewarded, however, as Alexander fully seated himself and then gave a tentative rock forward. Another one of those heavenly noises left him, and he gave Peregrine a look of dazed helplessness.

“Good?” Peregrine asked. His voice was rough, hoarse, and his entire body was shaking with the restraint it took to let Alexander squirm and writhe on top of him, to let the Dartham lord find the right angle, the right movements.

“Yes,” Alexander breathed, his eyelids fluttering. “More than good. I’ve never—it’s never been like this before.”

“You on top?” Peregrine asked.

“No,” Alexander said, his mouth hooking ruefully to the side. “Never with someone patient on the bottom. One moment—oh. Oh. ” He seemed to have found just the right way to move, and he did it again, his erection dragging along Peregrine’s abdomen and making him release another puff of air. Another oh.

Peregrine tried to focus on one thing, any one thing, to keep his building climax at bay, but it was impossible. Even aside from Alexander’s body gripping him like a hot glove, from the sweet sensation of Alexander’s cock rubbing against Peregrine’s stomach, there was the sight of him. The slender hips, the dark hair tumbling everywhere, his face in an expression of surprised ecstasy, as if he hadn’t expected it to feel as good as it did.

It made Peregrine wonder how selfish Alexander’s past lovers had been, that it was a revelation for him to be able to take his time, to put his own pleasure first.

“Spend for me,” Peregrine said, sliding his hands up to Alexander’s hips and then up to his waist. “I want to see you.”

“I think that’s—normally—the seducer’s line—” Alexander panted, but he braced his hands and Peregrine’s chest and began riding Peregrine for all he was worth, choosing the speed and the angle and the depth. Each rock of his hips tightened the grip his body had on Peregrine’s cock; each rock meant that his secret place stroked Peregrine with a slippery, viselike heat. It drew his orgasm closer; it pulled his bollocks tight to his body; it had his hips restless underneath Alexander’s.

“Oh, Peregrine,” Alexander said, his breaths all sounding like gasps now, all of them desperate. “I’m—it’s?—”

He didn’t have to announce it. His prick swelled even more on top of Peregrine’s stomach, and with a low cry, his hips gave a series of quick, arrhythmic thrusts. Peregrine was entranced by the sight of that beautiful organ swelling and then throbbing out jet after jet of white seed, loving the visible proof of the rake’s satisfaction spilled all over his skin.

Alexander’s hips stilled and his head dropped between his shoulders as he panted and quivered his way through the aftershocks. Peregrine somehow managed to hold on, to fight back the tide of his own need to spend, until Alexander was finished.

After he’d settled, the younger man peeped up through a glossy lock of hair that had tumbled over one eye and said, “Some highwayman you are. Aren’t you supposed to be all about plunder and theft? What have you taken for yourself right now? Nothing. You’re more rector than robber, I think.”

Peregrine laughed. “I can plunder more, if you’d like.”

Alexander gave him a coy look from behind his hair. “Will you show me how the soldiers do it?”

“Maybe another time,” Peregrine said. “The soldier’s way is hardly a seduction.”

“I’ll confess a secret to you, Peregrine Hind. You don’t have to seduce me. If you’d like to take me like a soldier would...” Alexander shivered again, his sated cock stirring against Peregrine’s stomach. “I have no objections.”

Neither did Peregrine. If he somehow managed to steal more time with this man, he would want all kinds of lovemaking. Slow and fast, rough and whatever this had been too—not gentle maybe, and certainly not sweet, but the kind of sex where selfishness was transformed into something fantastic. Where one lover’s pleasure spun a silken web around them both, where taking was also giving.

“For now,” Peregrine said, “I’ll take you like a highwayman.” He was already pulling out, moving. Pushing the rake onto his back, and then onto his stomach, which meant his firm backside was there for Peregrine to spread and penetrate once more.

He came into Alexander with a deliberate but inexorable thrust, and then once he’d fully mounted his captive, he started fucking in earnest, with quick, rough strokes that had them both groaning together. As he rutted, he watched Alexander’s slender fingers twisting in the covers; he watched as Alexander reached underneath himself and desperately handled his cock.

The orgasm wasn’t only in Peregrine’s prick, but in his stomach and chest and thighs too, and it thudded through his blood like the drums of war. With a ragged grunt and a surge of his hips, Peregrine’s climax roiled its way up his shaft and then released torrent after torrent into Alexander’s pliant, waiting heat.

Peregrine kept riding his wonderful flirt of prisoner through it all, determined to pump everything into the man in front of him. Sinuous shudders racked Alexander’s body as he came for a second time, and Peregrine caught the quick movements of the rake’s hand as he finished milking his orgasm free.

There was no bliss like this, no satisfaction that matched pulling out and seeing his seed dripping free of this beautiful man’s body, and then rolling his lover over to see the slick mess he’d made while he’d been receiving Peregrine’s pleasure.

Peregrine suddenly wanted never to leave the priory again. He only wanted this, day after day. Alexander Dartham, frolicsome and spoiled and safe.

With him.

It would be worth giving up the road for, it could even be worth giving up revenge for, but for the first time in years, Peregrine didn’t want to think about revenge at all.

Stunned by that realization, and a little panicked by it too, he tidied up the mess they made and then pulled the rake tightly into his arms, trying to breathe past the sudden swell of emotion.

How could it be that this libertine, this Dartham , had become more important to him than the need for vengeance and justice for innocent lives? How could the mere thought of Alexander being hurt by him make Peregrine feel like he’d been torn open by cannon fire?

After only a few short days?

Peregrine didn’t know the answer. He’d walked into this room so certain of his future, so confident in his solution, but perversely, he felt like he knew himself less after losing himself inside Alexander. Like he was slowly dissolving, and the only thing keeping him whole was the warm lover lying dozily in his arms.