Chapter 26

“How does this work, then?” asked Rufus, intending for the question to be casual rather than interrogative, though nerves unfortunately brought it closer to the latter.

They had repaired to the cottage, which as Belle had told them was clean and comfortable, though not luxurious. Gil was kneeling by the grate, lighting a fire with surprising nonchalance for a man with menacing on his mind. “I would hope, however we want it to.”

“I may need something more specific. Remember I am new to this particular”—Rufus made a gesture he hoped was illustrative but was probably just vague—“particular dynamic.”

“Well.” Rising, Gil put his back to the newly kindled blaze, looking far less ridiculous in his highwayman cloak than Rufus remembered. “This is one of my hideaways that I’ve brought you to.”

“This cottage?”

“Indeed. Who would suspect?”

“Ingenious.”

“One does not evade the king’s justice through dullardry, lordling.”

“And, ah”—Rufus couldn’t quite tell if he was too self-conscious to be enjoying himself or if that was, in a strange way, part of the fun—“why have you brought me here?”

“I would not have had to, had you surrendered the kiss I asked for.”

Without quite meaning to, Rufus altered his stance, attempting hauteur. There was, in all honesty, a touch of Belle in it. Especially the lifted chin. “That was presumptuous of you, sir.”

“If you think presumption the worst of my misdeeds, you are sheltered indeed.”

Gil came a couple of steps closer, his bootheels striking hard upon the flagstone floor. It was a natural instinct to step back in return, but Rufus decided to hold his ground and found himself circled instead. It was ... disconcerting, though not unpleasant, especially when Gil murmured in approving accents, “Just look at you, lordling. So fine and so proud. Such a prize.”

“I am no man’s prize.”

“Tonight, you will be mine.”

It seemed correct under the circumstances, when Gil was facing him again, to attempt to slap him. Thankfully he had telegraphed the blow with sufficient theatre that Gil caught his wrist. Rufus could easily have broken free, of course. But he didn’t, just put up a facade of struggle. Let his breath grow harsh and his heart beat quicker with it.

“Spirited too,” said Gil, laughing.

What would Belle say? “Unhand me, you brute.”

Using his arm ostensibly for leverage, Gil bore him to the bed and fell upon him, where they tussled for a little before Rufus was—with his tacit consent—thoroughly pinned, Gil fully atop him, holding his arms stretched above his head. Gil looked different from this angle, wicked and glittering, his curls falling hither-thither in happy carnage. Stubbornly, Rufus turned his head away, fully expecting ... wanting ... to be kissed regardless.

Instead, Gil merely nuzzled at his throat. “I tire of these games.”

For a moment, Rufus thought Gil meant the other game and that he had proven himself an unsatisfactory subject for menacing—a discovery that would have troubled him not a jot less than a day or two ago and now felt rather crushing. “Whatever do you mean?”

“I do not intend to make this easy for you, my jewel. This is, after all, your doing as much as it is mine.”

“I am not the one who carried someone off,” Rufus pointed out, once again pleased by how well his friendship with Arabella Comewithers née Tarleton had prepared him for this whole undertaking.

“You did, however, try to have me captured. Did you truly think me so easily tricked?”

“Oh, because you would have settled for a mere kiss?”

“A mere kiss is it?” repeated Gil, half-mocking, half-not. “You undervalue your pretty mouth.”

That rang a little too true to suit the story, so Rufus pressed on: “And then you would have been on your way?”

“But of course. Even highwaymen have honour.”

“What could a rogue like you possibly know of honour?”

“More I’ll warrant than those of wealth and power who sequester their sons away from the world, deny them knowledge of themselves, and sell them to the highest bidder.”

Or leave them with a relative like an unwanted parcel. “How dare you. I am a gentleman, as I was raised to be. I had the finest education.”

“Did they teach you this?” Gil’s free hand pressed between Rufus’s legs, giving his cock—which had so far been gently intrigued by the proceedings—such a confident stroke that he went from partial to full hardness so fast it made him dizzy.

“Oh- ohhh .” His startled gasp was real. As was the way his spine arched. “I ... suppose they didn’t.” And that was not, from a certain perspective, incorrect.

“There we are.”

The satisfaction lay thick upon Gil’s tone like diamonds in a duchess’s tiara, and Rufus, still laid bare with arousal, found it strangely heady. He tried to remind himself that this was nothing more than the simple art of pleasing, but it felt good to please someone—and whether that was for him, or for who he was pretending to be, didn’t seem to matter.

“No, my jewel,” Gil went on, settling his palm upon Rufus’s chest. “I think this is what you wanted all along.”

“I wanted to be seized by a ruffian?”

“You wanted something real. Something not prescribed by society or morality, or even your own family.” Gil dragged his lips along the line of Rufus’s jaw. “Tell me I’m wrong, lordling, tell me you haven’t lain awake at night longing for a man like me, and everything I can give to you and share with you.”

It seemed an apposite time to ... well. Rufus didn’t want to think of it as a whimper. Issue a dignified noise of conflicted protest such as an unravelling young lord might in such a situation.

At which point Gil caught him firmly by the chin and forced their gazes to meet. “Tell me no, and I’ll take you back to the carriage. You can continue your journey—and your life—as if this never happened.”

Rufus blinked up at him, ardour undiminished, though he was shocked afresh by that careful commanding touch. How did nervy, mild-mannered Gil, with apparently no experience and an exhaustive collection of fantasies, have this in him? And how easy he made it to ... trust, play along, succumb as Rufus as well as in performance.

“If you don’t say no,” Gil promise/warned, “I’m going to kiss you. Because you do need kissing, my jewel. You need kissing thoroughly.”

“Please ...” Deliberately avoiding anything that could be construed as a no without sacrificing the ambiguity of someone caught in a slow spiral of desire, Rufus attempted a fretful flicker of the eyelashes. “I ...”

“Say no. Or I’ll make you mine.”

Needless to say, Rufus did not say no. And Gil kissed him in exactly the manner he had indicated he would. Not just thoroughly, but relentlessly, mercilessly even, treating Rufus’s mouth as if it was indeed a prize to be claimed. He was unaccustomed to having quite so much control taken from him quite so peremptorily, but he had also never been kissed with that kind of all-consuming passion. Which was not to say there had not been passion, even if, as a general rule, an act as tame as kissing had not been the focus of it. This, though, was a gothic kiss, perhaps even a baroque kiss: extravagant, absurd, and unabashed, lips sealed tightly to his, and a tongue penetrating him with undeniable intent. It was breath-stealing, heart-fluttering, a kiss for skies streaked with lightning, and rain lashing upon the darkened moors. A kiss for howling wolves and highwaymen, for torn shirts and rearing stallions, for every improper, impossible fancy anyone had ever dared to dream.

It left Rufus hot and flustered, needy and wrecked, only lightly sure of his own name. And Gil appeared to be just getting started.

“You are over-dressed for the occasion,” he purred, clearly having the time of his life.

“Um,” said Rufus. “Yes.”

For he did, in fact, feel over-dressed, languid and feverish at the same time. It was almost a relief to be stripped, which Gil did for him, resolutely resisting any attempt to offer aid. That became self-consciousness-inducing again, Rufus having long lost any expectation of or interest in having his body lingered over. But Gil wanted to linger, and Rufus must have been temporarily enthralled because he allowed it. There was very little play to it, in the end, Rufus trembling with a kind of raw, re-discovered modesty, and Gil touching him with a wonder that felt neither staged, nor to Rufus’s whirling mind, deserved.

“You know”—Gil pushed him back upon the bed—“that there’s no shame in this, my jewel.”

Oh, but there could be. Taking refuge in his part, Rufus cast an arm across his face and the genuine flush upon his cheeks. “I’ve never been naked with another person before. Let alone another man.”

Gil, who had shed his cloak but otherwise remained mostly dressed, climbed up next to Rufus, running his hands freely across his body—long, sweeping strokes, from his throat to the base of his cock, down his flanks and up his thighs, a strange pattern of heat followed by electric awareness, until he felt bright within his own skin, illuminated inside and out.

“You are exquisite,” Gil whispered. “I named you jewel , for so you are.”

It took everything Rufus possessed not to leap off the bed and out of the nearest window. You flatter me, sir sounded like his line. But all that came out of his mouth was a croaked “I ... I’m not.”

Gil only laughed. “I did not take you for a liar, m’lord. Look, here’s ivory and opals ...” His fingers—which were as neat and precise as the rest of him—traced the interior of Rufus’s thighs. The bend of his elbow. The side of his neck. “Carnelian aplenty.” Here, he combed back Rufus’s hair where it had fallen, sweat-heavy, across his brow and played a little amongst the silky red-brown strands that lavishly covered his chest and abdomen. “Malachite, of course.” Kisses now, one upon each eyelid. “And let us not forget these tempting rubies.”

It was predictable but also exactly right. Gil took his mouth again, and Rufus lost himself again in the pulling heat and fearlessness of it, more than willing at this point to be overwhelmed and possessed, cherished and spoiled. For desire to crest within him, unhindered by concerns like dignity, pride, and self-protection, and flow out of him in yielded lips and parted legs, and urgent moans that breached the confines of their kiss like spilled wine, as inevitable as floodwater.

“I’ll have to take your word for it,” he managed, dazed once more, and breathless, when at last they broke apart. “Given your choice of profession, I’m sure you must be a connoisseur of precious things.”

“I am,” said Gil, sounding briefly more like Gil. Before he distracted Rufus by straddling him and bringing their faces close together. “So tell me, my jewel, with what yearnings have you tormented yourself when you imagined this?”

It was a question Rufus wasn’t prepared for and would not have been prepared for in any case, since his experiences were governed by acts and opportunities, rather than invitation and exploration. But it was even more disconcerting at that precise moment because he had just about reconciled himself to giving the lead over to Gil. With further consideration, however—and it was a minor miracle he was capable of thought at all—he understood what Gil was doing. It was one thing to pretend at powerlessness, or to choose it, another to have it imposed upon you. More than that, Gil was not seeking to be merely indulged in his own desires. He wanted a partner, an equal participant. To ensure the fantasy that had begun as his could become theirs .

Gil had returned to stroking the hair upon Rufus’s chest. He seemed to have taken rather a fancy to it. “Your secrets are safe with me. I promise.”