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Twenty-One

Atlas kicked the shredded stolen suit aside as he returned from the bathroom. “You know, I have nothing to wear out of here now.”

“You can borrow some jeans and a flannel,” Robin said from where he stood by the bar.

Atlas made a retching sound, then promptly erased the horrific thought with the shot of vodka Robin offered him.

The coyote eyed him over the rim of his own glass, gaze heated even after round-Atlas-had-lost count. “Tie the flannel around your waist, like a kilt.”

An admittedly less horrific idea, but the implications... “If I walk into Monte Corvo with your flannel around my hips, they’ll know we fucked.”

Robin shrugged, tossed back the rest of his vodka, then wound an arm around his middle. He pulled him closer, nose nuzzling behind his ear, semi nudging his hip, ramping up to go again. “Speaking of fucking...”

They’d get there—impossible not to with the both of them still naked—but Robin’s comment had piqued Atlas’s earlier curiosity again. “Have you been staying here?”

He promptly unplastered himself from Atlas’s side and poured another shot.

“Between Icarus’s shit and Paris’s.” He rotated to rest back against the bar, gaze toward the boarded-up windows as if he could somehow see outside.

“We needed eyes on the city.” Atlas didn’t think that was all there was to it, given the tightness of his shoulders and the lines that deepened around the corners of his eyes. “And I like it better here.”

“Aren’t you supposed to love the wide-open range? Roaming the hills and valleys and shit?”

Robin chuckled, his shoulders loosening, and Atlas was glad for it. “It makes me antsy.”

“Same,” Atlas said, hiding his smile in his glass. “I loathed working for Vincent, but I enjoyed living in YB.”

Robin cut him a side-eye and returned a version of his earlier question. “Aren’t you supposed to love nature? You bought a vineyard, for fuck’s sake.”

His turn to laugh. “I do, when I just want to be. No mission, no to-do list, no crisis to avert. But when I need to work, I like the challenge of the city. What’s more impressive than a weed fighting to grow through a crack in the concrete?”

“You mean Paris,” the shifter astutely surmised. Atlas shrugged and finished his shot. “I feel the same,” Robin continued. “Running comes naturally, but hunting here in the city, any city for that matter, takes more than speed and strength.”

“Strategy.”

“Exactly.” Robin finished his drink, then angled again toward Atlas. “It’s what we need to do if we’re going to survive the next nine days.”

He’d walked right into that one, tricky bastard. “I don’t do?—”

Robin’s mouth stole the rest of his protest, drowned it with another of those toe-curling kisses that tangled his insides.

“You lost the right to that excuse five fucks ago.” Arm around his shoulders, Robin brought them front to front again and buried his nose in the divot behind his ear.

“And when you let me smell the real you. Fuck, it’s addictive. ”

He arched his neck, wanting more, Robin’s rough lips and teasing touch ramping him up again too. “What do you smell?”

“Spring, in the dead of winter.”

Atlas shivered for a different reason; Robin had him dead to rights.

“We have to stop running,” Robin said as he withdrew his face from the crook of his neck. “We stop chasing you, you stop chasing Evan, and we work together to catch him and stop Chaos.”

“Robin—”

The coyote lifted a hand to his face, palm cupping his cheek, the touch so gentle, so earnest, so unlike the rough touches of earlier, that Atlas nearly whimpered.

He didn’t know what to do with this Robin nor what to do with his own twisted insides.

“Stop fucking running, Atlas. For the sake of all of us and for the sake of your soul.”

“You can’t run from yours either.”

Robin shifted them so Atlas’s back was against the bar, to argue more or bend him backward over it, Atlas guessed, but the shifter surprised him, making him gasp when he hoisted him onto the bar top and stood between his spread legs, hands splayed on his inner thighs.

“What do you think I’m doing here?” he said, golden eyes smirking up at him.

“Now, about that bet you’ve lost six times over.

Make it seven.” He didn’t wait for a reply before he lowered his head and took Atlas’s cock to the back of his throat, stealing Atlas’s next breath and silencing any further arguments over we .