Page 27

“After you left! We”—he moved their clasped hands between them, Atlas’s knuckles first tapping his chest, then Robin’s tapping Atlas’s—“are a team.”

Atlas straightened his back and lifted his chin, pushing back at the glaring coyote. “I already told you, I don’t dowe.”

“Then why’d you text at all?”

“In case they were holding Lucy hostage, like they did Simon, and I needed backup.”

Robin erased the last inch of space between them. “Is that the only reason?”

The answer to that question was too complicated and too simple all at once...Mine. Atlas pressed his lips together to keep the truth from spilling out.

Robin growled. “You need to fucking convince me not to kill you right now.”

Again, the bare minimum. “I know Evan better than any of you.”

“And yet you haven’t stopped him in how many years?”

“He knows me better than anyone too.”

It didn’t have to be that way; the man holding him pinned could change that, if Atlas let him.

If Robin even wanted that, and at the present juncture, he seemed far keener on violence, on the revenge he’d been seeking all these years. “You and your brothers are playing a game, using my friends and family—innocents—as pieces, and we keep getting killed.”

“Andshedoesn’t do the same thing?”

“Sheisn’t my concern right now. You are the one who went off alone. To the meet in LP and to the one this morning.” He clenched his fingers around his. “And fucking hell, Atlas, I think you get it.” Desperation overtook the danger in his tone and words. “You understand that neither of them, Nature or Chaos, are the endgame, that it’s a balancing act, and if you fucking die, this whole thing falls apart.”

The same was true for him, whether he realized it yet or not.

Mine.

Robin dipped his chin and nuzzled behind Atlas’s ear. “You let me smell you.” A growled purr laced with agony sent a full body shiver rippling through Atlas. “You cannot risk yourself anymore.”

“Why?” he asked on a stuttered breath, wanting to hear that word again in Robin’s broken timbre, wanting it to drown out the cackle of fate in his head.

Releasing the hand pinning his to the bar, Robin grasped his face and held them nose to nose, his golden gaze boring into Atlas’s. “Because you’re mine.”

He may have been angry, but Robin still wanted, as much as Atlas. Maybe more. Heat raced down Atlas’s spine, from the tips of Robin’s fingers digging into his cheek to his stiff cock wedged between them.

Fuck it.

Atlas had sealed their fate the second he’d cast his scent into the wind for Robin to track. To lock onto. He could keep fighting this, keep trying to balance it all himself, keep putting them both in jeopardy by keeping Robin on the outside. Or he could let Robin in and protect him from the inside.

They could both get what they wanted, fools diving headfirst into foolishness.

With his free hand, he covered Robin’s on his face and increased the pressure of his hold, just on the edge of painful, just the way Atlas liked it. “Are you going to keep barking at me, or are you going to fucking kiss me like you’ve always wanted? Like we were always meant to.”

Robin’s answering growl shook the walls.

His kiss shook Atlas to his core.

Twenty

Chapped lips, rough stubble, a demanding tongue that forced open Atlas’s mouth.

Taking, claiming, devouring.

Using the grip on his face to adjust the angle then diving in for more.