London at Midwinter. Magical art theft. And it’s personal.
Sam Rookwood, chief magistrate of Bow Street’s Preternatural Division, doesn’t feel like celebrating the holiday. Someone’s magically stealing paintings -- all of which have a connection to Sam’s family. His ex-stepbrother is back in Town, after years on the Continent -- and John’s as beautiful and charming and scandalous as ever. And if John knows something about the thefts, it’s Sam’s duty to find out ... and not to give in to temptation.
John Thynne doesn’t use the Rookwood name. After all, he was never a blood relation, and he loathed his stepfather the viscount, even before his mother fled the marriage in a scandalous divorce. But John does care about his family, and about past wrongs. He’s come home to try to make amends -- even if that means technically committing a crime or two.
And he might not mind being caught by Sam, respectable and proper chief magistrate ... and the one person John’s always wanted.
Sam slumped forward and buried his head in his arms, on his desk. “You should go.”
“I don’t want to go.”
“You should be anywhere else. Someplace free. Colorful. With violins.”
John’s hand rested atop Sam’s head, a small tender weight. “Why violins?”
“First instrument I thought of.”
“I think I should be here.” John’s fingers slid through Sam’s hair, repetitive, a rhythm. “I think I should’ve come home years ago, maybe.”
“You never needed to.”
“I did, though.” John’s hand touched the back of Sam’s neck, settled there, almost a command. From someone else, in another world, in the world in which that was possible, it might’ve been. “Your ... Harry? Viscount Sommersby? The tall adorable one, not the one who looks like a medieval illustrator got instructed to draw an angry panther.”
Sam smothered a disloyal laugh in the fortress of his forearms. “The short one’s Kit, you’re not wrong, and don’t let Harry hear you say so.”
“It was a compliment. I like dangerous cats. Anyway, your viscount said something. We both heard him.”
Sam knew where this was going. Could’ve protested. Like himself up against the door, earlier, he let it happen. Let it change the world, here in his study, at his desk.
John said, “He said you love me. You’re in love with me. And I love you.”
“Harry,” Sam grumbled, not looking up, body and heart equally weary and confused and overflowing with the sensation of John’s hand on him, “should mind his own damned business. Especially if he wants to work for the Division as a special consultant.”
“He’s not already?”
“He is now. We’ll make it official. He and Kit are inseparable, anyway.”
“He’s some sort of empath, right?”
“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 crouched down, brought them 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.”
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