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John’s assailant began to struggle immediately, but Brom reached for the knife, wresting it from his grasp before he did anything else. Then he drove his knee into the man’s back, pinning him to the ground with relative ease – something that wasn’t difficult for him to do, considering that he was easily a head taller and significantly heavier than him. Gripping the knife’s handle, he pressed the flat of the blade against the stranger’s throat, letting the edge of it dig into his skin just a little, threatening to draw blood. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The man gasped and panted, his small eyes going as wide as they could with fear. “Unhand me!” he demanded, his words muffled by a mouthful of dirt.

“No.” Brom drove his knee a little harder into the man’s spine and increased the pressure of the blade against his throat. “Answer my question.” He spared a quick glance for John, who was watching the proceedings with narrowed eyes, though his lips were cracked in surprise. He forced himself to focus again on the man he was holding captive against the earth. “What did you mean by threatening Mr. Crane?”

The man drew a ragged breath, spitting out a clump of wet dirt and leaves. “Teaching him a lesson about what happens to sodomites.”

Brom resisted the urge to let the knife slip into the man’s clammy throat, cutting through it like butter as he remembered the way the man had threatened and assaulted John. “Seems to me that the term applies to you as well.” He pulled the blade just a little tighter, cutting off the man’s attempt to respond. “Fortunately for you, I don’t consider sodomite to be a shameful term. Rapist, however…” He tightened his grip on the knife’s wooden handle, letting just a little blood seep over the blade. “I can hardly think of a more disgusting sort of human being.”

The man whimpered, and Brom eased the pressure just a little, careful not to actually give in to his baser urges and kill him. He would have liked to, after what he’d seen him try to force John into, but how would he explain the situation?
 

“Do you have any idea who I am?” the man choked out, his voice strangled and his face red with rage-induced blotches.

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Brom assured him. Brom knew the face of every man in Sleepy Hollow, and this stranger did not belong. He was dressed like a country gentleman – though he hardly deserved that title – which pointed to the likely possibility that he’d ridden in from a nearby village.

“A family friend of Mr. Van Tassel’s, invited here tonight by the man himself.” He spit out another mouthful of dirt. “He and my father have known each other for years. Just wait until he hears of this. Why, you’ll be—”

“It just so happens that I myself am a close acquaintance of Mr. Van Tassel’s. He’s never bothered to mention you to me before.” A man of Mr. Van Tassel’s wealth was bound to attract attention, and Brom doubted that this stranger meant anything to him. Mr. Van Tassel was deeply protective of his daughter, and would never have invited this lavicious man to the gathering if he’d known anything of his character.

If possible, the man’s face grew even redder with indignation, and it was clear that he was torn between anger and fear. “You’ll learn my name, you lout, as I intend to marry his daughter.”

The knife slipped, drawing a little more blood, and even Brom wasn’t sure whether the move had been intentional. What Mrs. Smit had said must have been true – Mr. Van Tassel must have decided to allow his daughter to see suitors. To think that this man had been drawn to Sleepy Hollow like a fly to honey for the purpose of preying upon Katrina and terrorizing others along the way… Blood roared in his ears, and it was all he could do to keep his hand still. “What is your name?”

“Nathaniel Abbey,” he spat, grimacing. “Now get
off
of me.”

“Brom, perhaps you should let him up. You’re crushing him. He may die of suffocation.”

Brom let his gaze flicker toward John, who was observing the happenings with an apprehensive expression. But Brom still saw the sparks of anger in his eyes. “I’ll let him up as soon as he swears to leave Sleepy Hollow immediately afterward and to never lay a hand on you or Katrina.” Katrina’s pretty face and sweet smile flashed before his mind’s eye, and a fresh wave of anger assailed him. He couldn’t stand to think that this vermin might try to touch her, to manipulate her as he had attempted to do with John.
 

“I’ll swear no such thing,” Nathaniel protested.

“Very well,” Brom said, removing his knee from the man’s back and pulling the knife from his throat. “Then I’ll kill you.” He seized Nathaniel by the collar and yanked him to his feet before he could rise on his own, then slammed him against a tree, facing him and pressing the very tip of the blade to the side of his neck, just above his cravat, where his pulse hammered, making the tender skin there jump.

“Brom,” John said, stepping forward and laying a hand on Brom’s shoulder. Under any other circumstances, Brom would have savored the touch. Instead, he ignored it.

“Either he swears, or I’ll snuff out his miserable life,” Brom insisted, keeping his gaze locked with Nathaniel’s so that the man knew he meant it. Already, a ring of purple was rising around Nathaniel’s left eye, where John had hit him. He deserved the bruise, and so much more. But Brom would let him go with just his petty injuries, if only he’d swear to leave Katrina and John alone. He tightened his grip on the knife’s handle, preparing to keep his word should the man refuse.

“All right!” Nathaniel cried, lowering his gaze to stare down at the knife, going cross-eyed in his attempt to see the sharp blade. “All right, I swear it.”

Brom held the knife steady for just a moment longer. “So help you God, if I find that you’ve gone back on your word, I’ll hunt you down with this very blade.”

“I won’t,” Nathaniel said, his voice hollow with defeat, edged with desperation. He squeezed his eyes shut and panted for a few moments before opening them again. “God knows there are plenty of women who’d be glad to marry me,” he said, attempting to regain his bravado. “I don’t need the Van Tassel chit if it means troubling myself with a bastard like you.”

Brom let go of the man’s collar and lowered the knife. “Hurry to the stable now and saddle your horse. Leave.”

Nathaniel scrambled through the underbrush, hurrying out of the woods and striding across the field, pressing a hand to his throat. Brom stood by a tall pine and watched him fade to an indistinct figure crossing the moonlit field. As instructed, he entered the stable. Several minutes later, he emerged with his horse and took to the road. Brom didn’t take his eyes off the man until he’d ridden so far that he and his horse had disappeared. Then, at last, he tossed down the knife and turned to John.

“You didn’t have to nearly kill him on my behalf,” John said.

Brom frowned. It was bad enough that he himself had hurt John – he could never watch as someone else harmed him. And Katrina… His fist closed around a weapon that was no longer there. If Nathaniel Abbey ever dared to return to Sleepy Hollow, Brom would run him out of the village. “I did what was necessary. Besides, he’s too much of a coward to die for you, Katrina or anyone else. Men like him will give up anything to save their own skins.”

“And you knew that?”

“Rapists are not brave men.”

John’s eyes narrowed, and he tipped his head, tossing a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. “I would not have suffered him to rape me, or to force me to service him in any way.”

Nathaniel had had a knife. As far as Brom knew, John was unarmed. He didn’t know how the situation would have ended, but just thinking about it gave him a sick feeling in the pit of his stomach. Still, he wasn’t about to insult John’s dignity. “Regardless, his intentions were clear.”

John was silent for a moment, then he sighed, glancing toward the road beyond the sprawling field. “Do you think he’ll tell anyone? About you and me, I mean.”

Brom shook his head. “There are men who love men, and then there are men who abuse men when granted the opportunity because they’re too afraid to admit that they’d like to love men. The latter sort are even more fearful of being caught than the first. Either way, men who prefer other men – well, they tend to be discreet.”

“Yes, and we’ve done a fine job of that so far,” John said, a rough bark of a laugh escaping him.

“I shouldn’t have touched you in the stable,” Brom admitted. “I was…overeager to prove my sincerity.”

A glimmer passed through John’s eyes, but he didn’t drop his gaze. “It’s no matter. I’ve not been harmed.”

“Will you allow me to make things right, then?” Brom’s heartbeat echoed in his ears as he awaited John’s answer. After what had just occurred, it would be no surprise if John was feeling less than eager for another physical encounter.

 
Brom’s heart still pumped fierceness through his veins, and his fingers tingled with remembered violence, curling as if around a knife he no longer held. Much like the day before, he felt like a wild beast, unfit for civilized human company. The delicious pie he’d consumed seemed to turn sour in his stomach as he considered the fact that he might have destroyed his chance to fix things between himself and John.

“I will.”

As soon as the words left John’s lips, Brom had to have his hands on him, had to banish the shivers of violence with the heat of John’s body. Reaching out, he drew John to him, so close that their lips nearly brushed. “No pain this time, only pleasure – I swear it.” He wasn’t an animal. He was a man, a lover – wanted to be a good lover – and he’d prove it if it killed him.

John exhaled, the warmth of his breath teasing Brom’s lips. Irresistibly drawn to it, Brom pressed his mouth against John’s, slipping his tongue inside.

“You taste good,” John said when they broke apart. “Better than the food I had at the party, in fact. What have you been eating?”

“Make sure you speak with Katrina Van Tassel again sometime. Win her friendship, and you’ll see for yourself.” With that promise, he pulled John to the ground.

He kissed John a while longer, until he could feel the edge of hunger to his responses and practically taste his desire. Beneath his breeches, John was hard. Brom undid the front fall, reaching beneath John’s shirt to wrap a hand around his erection, running a thumb over the rounded tip. He was going to give John more pleasure than he’d ever felt in his life, or he’d be damned. Already, John was trembling faintly; Brom could only hope it was a sign of arousal, not nerves or fear. “Tell me truly – did I injure you yesterday?”

“It hurt,” John said, “but not more than I could stand. I could have handled the roughness, even the pain, if I’d thought that I was the one who’d driven you to lose control. In fact, I savored the rawness of your affection, until you cried out another man’s name.”

Brom froze, his heart quickening. In the blur that had been the end of their tryst the day before, he hadn’t realized that he’d said any of the things he’d heard himself screaming in his mind aloud.

“I admit,” John said, “I felt sorely used.”

“No,” Brom said. “It’s not… It wasn’t as it seemed, I swear to you.”

John arched one brow, his eyes challenging.
 

“Henry was a lover,” he admitted, “but he’s gone now. It was never my intention to let his memory encroach upon our time together, but I’m afraid I couldn’t stop it. By the time I knew what was happening, it was over.”

“I see,” John said, though his expression said that he didn’t.

CHAPTER 7

Sensing the barrier mounting between them, Brom knew he’d have to explain further. “Did you fight at all? In the war, I mean.” John was younger than he was, but plenty old enough to have fought during the war. There had been times when Brom had fought alongside boys little more than half John’s age.

John nodded slowly. “Years ago, when war first broke out in the north. I marched in a few skirmishes and battles with my local militia.”

John’s words freed some part of Brom, and it was as if a weight had been lifted off his shoulders, leaving him feeling grateful and relieved in its wake. John hadn’t left his home behind to fight the Continental Army’s battles for years as Brom had, but he’d fought, and that put them on common ground – dead men were dead men, no matter how big or small the battle that killed them. “Then I don’t have to explain what it’s like to watch a man you know die violently.” That was fortunate, for he had no idea how he’d begin to describe it.

John nodded again.

“That happened to Henry. There was an ambush, a short-lived battle. I was there beside him, and that’s what I thought of yesterday when we were together. It wasn’t lust I felt when I said his name – it was horror.”

“I see.” The edge of mistrust was gone from John’s voice. “I wish I’d known at the time; I wouldn’t have been angry.”

“I didn’t realize that I’d said his name aloud.”

John nodded, and the night stretched silent and dark between them. Brom’s fingers were still wrapped around John’s cock, and it was firm against his palm, much warmer than the air. Sensing there was no more to be said, Brom began to stroke him, forcing thoughts of Henry from his mind as his fingers slid over John’s smooth shaft and the thick ridge that marked the beginning of its head, that round, slightly-damp bit of perfection. He’d maintain control this time, and wouldn’t let his time with John be haunted by the memories of events he couldn’t change.