Page 21 of The Last Crimes of Peregrine Hind
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.
