The Crimson Outlaw

by Alex Beecroft

  Vali’s joy let him waste no time. He flung himself at Mihai and got his hands and his thinly nightshirted person all over that slick and slippery silk. “You are an honoured knight now. You could have just come through the door.”

  “Am I indeed? But then I shouldn’t be doing this.” Mihai got his hands under Vali’s arse and lifted him off the floor, just as he had that first time when they had fucked on the balcony while the village danced behind them. Vali wriggled to press himself closer and grinned with joy to find himself thrown on the bed, Mihai leaning over him, pinning him down, his weight supported easily on both arms.

  “Are you though?” Vali asked, before he could forget the question in the driving need of his body. “I didn’t mean to separate you from your friends. I’ll do what I can to make Tavian stay, but Andrei?”

  The mask of contentment that Mihai wore cracked a little to show doubt and anger beneath. It occurred to Vali with a burst of warm pleasure that Mihai had looked happy at the feast for his sake—to reassure him and to comfort. Vali liked that, but he liked this honesty more.

  “Do you think that worries me? Andrei betrayed me. He gave me his word and broke it. Even if you rejected me now as of no more use to you, he and I could not be friends again. And Doru died to give me this chance.”

  Mihai dipped his head, letting his fiery hair slide forward and curtain his face. “It’s you I’m not sure about.” His voice was tentative, reflective, as though he could only say these vulnerable things by pretending to be alone. “Was this your plan all along? Now that you’ve achieved everything, do you really need me still? Did you use me to get here, and will you now cast me aside? These . . . these are my only doubts.”

  Vali had been thinking himself powerless—all the choices in Mihai’s hands. It was a new and astonishing thought, a flood of relief and joy, to think that Mihai might be equally helpless against him.

  He leaned up and took Mihai’s mouth, deep and thorough, licking in, reliving the sweetness of the kiss that had changed both their lives on that balcony. “I’ve been yours since I danced for you in Bucin with the whole village as my witnesses. Never doubt it. Are you mine, too? Are you my knight? Will you stay with me? Please?”

  Mihai spread Vali’s legs with his knee, pressed between them with a hard thigh and watched him arch up to meet it, greedy for more. Vali could almost see the joking answers jostling behind his eyes as he instinctively shied away from all this painful openness—Did this outlaw steal your heart? The only plundering I’ll be doing tonight is . . .

  But the moment was too sacred for such things. Mihai laughed gently at himself, then leaned down to press his whole body over Vali’s—crushing the breath out of him quite deliciously. Honest and warm against his skin in the dark, he whispered, “Yes, I will be your man. I will stay. For as long as you want me, and then a little more. May God protect us all.”

  They almost broke the bed between them.

  Many thanks to my editor Sarah Frantz, who forced me to look at all the places in this that were too difficult, and who is therefore responsible for closing most of the plot holes. Also thanks to Bram Stoker, whose Dracula failed to get me interested in vampires, but did give me a fascination with Romania, a country that has a lot more going for it than a single famous bloodsucker.

  Novels

  Captain’s Surrender

  False Colors

  Shining in the Sun

  The Witch’s Boy

  Under the Hill: Bomber’s Moon

  Under the Hill: Dogfighters

  Too Many Fairy Princes

  The Reluctant Berserker

  Novellas

  Blessed Isle

  “The Wages of Sin,” in The Mysterious anthology

  By Honor Betrayed

  His Heart’s Obsession

  Alex was born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and grew up in the wild countryside of the English Peak District. She studied English and philosophy before accepting employment with the Crown Court, where she worked for a number of years. Now a stay-at-home mum and full-time author, Alex lives with her husband and two children in a little village near Cambridge and tries to avoid being mistaken for a tourist.

  Alex is only intermittently present in the real world. She has led a Saxon shield wall into battle, toiled as a Georgian kitchen maid, and recently taken up an 800-year-old form of English folk dance, but she still hasn’t learned to operate a mobile phone.

  She is represented by Louise Fury of the L. Perkins Literary Agency.

  You can find her in many places, but chiefly at her website, http://alexbeecroft.com.

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