Page 36 of The Last Crimes of Peregrine Hind
“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.”
