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“Something like that. Too damned powerful.”
“So he’s not wrong.” The lilt in John’s voice summoned echoes: teasing, suddenly. “About us.”
“What do you want me to say?” Sam sat up; John’s hand fell away. “That I want you? That I love you? That I have, for, gods, years, ever since I knew—and I couldn’t, I wouldn’t, ask that of you—and then you were gone, and I hadn’t done enough, I only ever tried to help and I couldn’t even do that—you were getting kidnapped by bandits and being seduced by opera singers, and I couldn’t even pay a ransom or show up and steal you back—”
“You would have, too.” John’s grin was real, astonishingly so: blinding and glorious with realization. He looked like a force of nature, which he was: elemental, powerful, magical. Twenty-eight years old, to Sam’s forty; vibrant, vital, thrumming with life. “My hero. Charging in with your gifts and your fists and your determination. Taking on possessive opera singers. Or bandits. They didn’t exactly kidnap me, by the way. Well, they did, but they were planning to let me go. We got snowed in, up in the hills.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“Were you imagining me at the mercy of depraved and shameless bandits?” John’s eyes were positively alight. “Pleasuring them, as their captive? Or…perhaps wondering what it would feel like to be captured and pleasured?”
“No. I was terrified for you. If you’d been hurt—”
“Oh, Sam.” John folded those long legs, brought himself and Sam eye to eye, reached out. Cupped Sam’s face in both hands, holding him. “Of course you worried. I should’ve known. I can take care of myself. Listen—” The line he sang, half-speaking, half music, was in Italian, which Sam did not speak; but the room trembled in response, books rattling on shelves, shelves themselves stirring. Power moving, in reply. “I slept with precisely one bandit, because he was very piratically attractive and we both wanted to, and I could’ve walked out if I’d wanted to do that. The way I could now, if I wanted to. But I want to be here.”
Sam wanted to nod, or to speak, or to have the right answers, or even any answers. John’s hands held the authority that came with being exactly everything he wanted, incontrovertibly so.
“I think,” John said, “we should find your bedroom. And I should show you how much I want to be here.”
Chapter 3
They found Sam’s bedroom. It contained Sam’s bed, and Sam’s wardrobe, and a chest of drawers, and a writing-desk. All of those were several years old, durable and plain, chosen for unremarkable longevity. The woven carpet was also plain, English-made rather than imported, dark blue, and thick.
John said, “Do you not earn a salary, at all? Or do you genuinely enjoy living the life of a twelfth-century monk?” He had a hand around Sam’s wrist. He’d put it there, and left it, on the walk to the bedroom. Sam’s heart was thumping.
He said, “And you’re a thief. And a seducer of bandits, apparently. I don’t need much.” John’s thumb was tracing the inside of his wrist, his veins, the beating of his pulse.
“You need me.” John looked him up and down. “You do, don’t you? You want this so badly. Me. Someone you think you shouldn’t have, shouldn’t touch…your thief, your seducer. Your stepbrother—former, yes, I know. But that’s not what you’re thinking.” A flutter of windsong slid into his voice, not a demand but a promise. “You’re thinking about how wicked, how improper, how wonderful it’ll be. Everything you want. Getting it, from me.”
Sam did not know how he hadn’t ended up on his knees. His prick, despite the earlier pleasuring, was up and full and hungry, the kind of raw aching need he hadn’t felt in years. “John—oh, no, wait, you said not to—”
“No, go on.” John did a small lip-lick, considering. His mouth could’ve started wars. “Say my name.”
“John,” Sam whispered.
“I’ll make you feel it. Is that what you want?” John’s fingers moved, lifted Sam’s chin, held him there. “Tell me yes or no. Be honest.”
Yes, yes, it was always yes, it had always and inevitably been yes. From the day Sam had realized his own feelings, and shoved them away; to the day he’d first heard that John Thynne was back in London, and hadn’t told him, hadn’t come to him first.
From the moment he’d known, known, what John was here to do, because Torie’s other two paintings had vanished from the homes of their wealthy purchasers, to the moment he’d seen John at his cousin’s Midwinter party, older now but still himself, still beautiful as a winter ballet, chatting with new acquaintances as easily as water.
Always, yes. Sam answered, “Yes. Please.”
John met his eyes a moment longer. Then nodded.
“What—what do you want me to do?” He couldn’t not ask. “You didn’t want me, earlier…”
“You think I don’t want you?” John’s voice held laughter, but it was the kind of laughter that layered lace over a stab-wound. “I’ve been in love with you since the day we met. Since you looked at me, and told me you’d make sure I was safe, and I realized that you meant it. That you were that kind of person. Someone who’d protect people, even when you’d just met them.”
Sam couldn’t speak. He wanted to be that person. He wanted to be that hero. He wished so badly that he had been.
“And I knew,” John said, casually, assured and comfortable even as the words took red-hot shape, “not right then, obviously, but later, once I knew what I wanted—I knew I wanted to fuck you. Oh, I had dreams about you. So solid, so firm, so responsible. So good. I thought you’d’ve been horrified by the idea, of course. Everything I desired, everything I pictured. In bed, at night. In my bath. In the library, once. I touched the book you’d been reading earlier. And I couldn’t wait. Couldn’t help touching myself.”
“Oh gods,” Sam breathed, or thought he did. Lightheaded. Shaken all through, filled up with gold. “You—you wanted…”
“I thought of you.” John hummed a quick line, a trill, a sapphire of song; Sam’s waistcoat buttons began to open, one by one, slowly. His trousers opened as well, loosened. “In Italy. With other lovers. Men, women, both. Sometimes I’d picture you. If that was you on your knees, or bound to the bed, or stuffed full of lovely dildoes and moaning while I did everything I’d ever wanted, to you…”
Sam’s hips jerked, unbidden. He heard his own breathing, like thunder. The music under John’s voice pulled his clothing away, left him naked and exposed, wrapped around his straining prick and tugged. It was not like a hand, more like a ribbon, a whip, a coil; it flicked and looped around and fondled him.
