Page 19

Nineteen

Atlas stood in the alley behind the seemingly shuttered tasting room, admiring Robin’s bare ass, his firm round cheeks dusted with fine blond hairs that were afire with the midday sun.

Atlas looked his fill while Robin unlocked the door, gawking far easier than dealing with what had just happened, what Robin had just said to Lucy’s husband.

Mine.

Robin’s muscles bunched as he pushed open the metal door and stepped inside. Then let the heavy thing swing right back in Atlas’s face. “Hey!” Atlas protested, using both hands to stop the steel weight. Barely.

“Watch the door,” Robin called back. “It’s heavy.”

“No fucking shit.” Heaving the door open enough to slip inside, he cringed as the metal scraped across the floor again on its way to closed.

Keeping their presence quiet from anyone in the building’s other units would be impossible, though from the outside, those other units had looked as deserted as this one.

When he turned around, Robin was gone, but his steps and heartbeats echoed from the front of the boarded-up shop.

Orb lighting his way, Atlas followed the sounds, distracting himself by peeking into rooms—an office, a bathroom—and taking stock of the crates—weapons, first aid supplies, electronics—and barrels—whiskey, as far as he could smell—that crowded the narrow hall.

Before he reached the end, he nearly collided with Robin who, with jeans and a flannel in hand, careened around the corner without so much as an excuse me .

“Since when are you not just gonna prance around naked?” Atlas called after his fleeing backside.

And got no reply, Robin ducking into the bathroom and slamming the door shut behind him.

When running water started a moment later, Atlas let the angry coyote be and ambled into the main tasting room instead.

There was enough light sneaking in around the edges of the boarded-up windows that he didn’t need his magic to get a good look at the place.

There was a bar off to the right, nothing on the backbar shelves, only a smattering of bottles and glasses on the bar itself.

Several square tables were pushed together along another wall, a tangle of cords beneath them, a tech setup for whomever needed it.

There were several other chairs around the room, another table he tossed his suit jacket onto, and on the far wall, in the shadows, a chaise.

On the floor beside it, denim and flannel spilled out of an open duffel.

Had Robin been staying here at some point? Was this a pit stop on the way to Monte Corvo so he could pick up his things?

Atlas was tempted to go poking through the bag, but as the bathroom toilet flushed, he abandoned that one-way ticket to an even angrier coyote and diverted to the bar instead.

Turning over two clean glasses, he filled them with the vodka he found in the underbar fridge and held out a glass to Robin when he returned.

“Why didn’t we just go to Monte Corvo?” he asked. A direct question he wanted the answer to and an indirect one to extract a possible explanation for his other observations.

Robin threw back the shot, slammed the glass on the bar, then stepped closer, trapping Atlas between the bar and the barstool behind him. “We didn’t go to the mountain yet because I haven’t decided whether I need to kill you and dump your body in the Canyon Lands.”

Atlas raised a hand, but Robin beat him to the snap, threading his thick fingers between his and pining his hand to the bar.

Atlas dropped the glass in his other one, but Robin didn’t take the shattering bait.

Grabbing that hand too, he twisted it up between them, fingers shoved between his, and splaying their joined hands over his chest. “Eh, eh, eh,” Robin chided.

“See, I can’t decide if you’re more dangerous to the cause or the whole fucking key to it, and that’s the fucking rub. ”

He’d known Robin was pissed after The Corners. He’d torn that van apart, torn Duncan apart, and would have done the same to Lucy’s husband if Atlas hadn’t stopped him. Maybe he shouldn’t have, given where the convo had gone.

Mine .

Atlas had one distraction left. He rolled his hips, his own cock half hard from the proximity, Robin’s semi likewise poking Atlas’s hip. “Is that the only rub?”

“We’re not doing that right now,” Robin gritted out.

“Oh, so now this is only on your terms?”

“Be fucking serious.” Robin squeezed his fingers. “Why did you leave?” The danger and desperation in his tone warranted an answer.

Atlas gave him the bare minimum. “I got a tip.”

“But you didn’t tell me?”

“I sent you a text!”

“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 do we .”

“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.”

“And she doesn’t do the same thing?”

“ She isn’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.