Free Whiskey Dreams by Ranae Rose Page B

sodomite, would it?”
    “Don’t touch me.” John’s voice cut through the night, edged with anger.
    “I saw the kiss in the stable and heard your pathetic exchange with that great oaf of a man. You can cling to women’s skirts and keep them from the real men all evening, but I know what you are. On your knees, boy, and you’ll do exactly as I say, or the entire village will know of your true nature within minutes.”
    Brom crept quietly past a towering elm, blood pounding in his ears as he entered the forest. There, mere yards away, John stood, facing the man from the stable, the one who had spent the evening leering at them and Katrina. He looked more repulsive than ever as he grinned at John, his eyes alight with malicious excitement. With one hard motion, he shoved John, knocking him back against a tree and pressing himself against him, shoving one hand between their bodies and reaching for either his or John’s groin – in the darkness and the confusion, Brom couldn’t tell which. Either way, he wasn’t going to let it happen.
    Just as Brom lunged forward, John reacted, swinging his fist with vicious force. With a grunt, he landed the punch on his attacker’s cheek, and the man’s excited panting turned to a groan of pain. He stumbled backward, trying to cling to John, who shoved him down onto the ground.
    John straightened, stepping away from the tree as the other man floundered on the forest floor, struggling to stand again. As he began to rise, something bright flashed in his hand – a blade, gleaming in the moonlight.
    Brom leapt forward just as the man swung his knife at John, the blade flying dangerously close to John’s gut. The sharp tip of it was mere inches from John’s body when Brom collided with the other man, knocking him to the ground.
    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