Free Jackdaw by Kj Charles

sorry.”
    “You’re sorry,” Ben repeated. “You’re sorry .”
    “I am. I didn’t mean… Ben, you have to let me go.”
    “What?” Ben stared at him, incredulous.
    Jonah’s absurdly blue gaze was melting him with its intensity. “You have to. I can’t go to gaol now.”
    “Perhaps you should have thought of that before you became a bloody thief!”
    “I know. I know, I’m sorry, but—” He hesitated, before rushing on. “They’ll hobble me, Ben. They’ll cut my tendons so I can’t windwalk. They’ll cripple me and take away my flight and put me in a tiny cell and I’ll go mad, I will.”
    “I’ll get a lawyer.” Ben cursed himself for his weakness as he spoke. “Someone. Somehow. They’ll argue your case—”
    “Lawyer,” Jonah said with scorn. “I won’t even get a trial. I’ll just disappear, and they’ll hobble me and…I can’t be locked up. Please, Ben. Don’t let them do that to me. Don’t let them take me.”
    “Christ,” Ben said thickly. “Stop.”
    “I’m so sorry and I shouldn’t ask this but I have to. Please just undo the cuffs. Give me a chance.”
    “You had a chance. We had a chance and you—you just—Jesus, Jonah. I loved you.”
    “Don’t.” Jonah sounded as defeated as he looked. “Don’t say that. Don’t stop loving me.”
    “You’ve ruined me,” Ben rasped. “You lied, and you cheated, and you made a fool of me and if I let you go— Go to the devil. I won’t be your dupe any longer.”
    “I didn’t lie about us,” Jonah said. “I promise. I love you.”
    Ben clenched his fists. “I don’t care!”
    “I do.” Jonah moved forward, and his lips were on Ben’s, warm and bloody and gritty with sawdust. Ben tried to push him away, got a grip on his shoulders to do just that, and Jonah whispered, “Ben, listen to me, love me,” and somehow Ben’s hands wouldn’t let go. Then he was kissing Jonah back, as desperately as that first time when they’d stumbled out of the pub and into the alley, sloppy and wild. Jonah leaned heavily against him, unbalanced by his restraints. He twisted around, and half fell sideways, and Ben went with him, and over him, sprawling on the hard benches of the police carriage. He kissed Jonah with a reckless madness, feeling the lust springing through him as they rolled together on the cramped space of the floor, legs bent and limbs tangled. Jonah squirmed round and hauled him upwards, onto the bench, hands cupping his face, warm and close on Ben’s skin. He stared into his eyes, his own cobalt gaze bright with tears.
    “I’m so sorry, Ben.”
    And, as the carriage door opened, just as Ben realised that Jonah’s hands were no longer cuffed, his lover leapt out and backwards and up through the air, darting to freedom.
    He left behind the police-issue cuffs on his wrists and ankles, both sets opened with the key he’d taken from Ben’s pocket as they’d embraced, and he left Ben, mouth red with kisses, clothes dishevelled, face tearstained, helplessly taken in the act.
    After that, there was nothing but shame.
    He was arrested, inevitably, and interrogated, and it took no time for his living arrangements to be revealed, or for them to become widely known through the station. They kept him in the cells for days, catcalled and spat at by the other prisoners and officers alike. Twice, in the night, the door opened and his fellows came in, shadowy figures as if he wouldn’t recognise them. The first beating left him bruised and bloody; the second time he fought back savagely until Marshall kicked him hard enough to crack a rib.
    He was absolved of having deliberately freed Jonah. Whether the police believed his protestations that he had not handed over the key, or whether nobody wanted the additional scandal, he didn’t know. The justiciars, while cursing him up hill and down dale, admitted that Jonah was known to be extraordinarily talented at picking both pockets and locks, and had escaped on plenty of