Page 25

Twenty-Five

Near the end of the half-mile gravel drive, Robin reached for the hem of his shirt to undress before shifting when Atlas stepped out of the woods. “That should do the trick.”

“You were there?”

“Close enough to hear the good bits.”

Robin’s answering laugh sounded as cold as his insides felt.

“Come this way,” Atlas said with a tip of his head toward the woods he’d just appeared out of.

A few minutes later, once the replays in Robin’s head quieted enough to appreciate reality’s comfortable silence, he realized where they were headed.

Following Atlas, he didn’t bother to hide his smile, grateful for it to chase away the chill.

“I used to come here as a kid,” he said, as they emerged from the trees beside a small reservoir pond.

Surrounded by tall pines, the little lake had always felt like an oasis amid the vastness.

“Damn.” Atlas clicked his tongue against the back of his teeth. “I was hoping to surprise you.” His rolling eyes belied his words. “Maybe this will do?” he added, as he pulled out a joint.

“That’ll do,” Robin said. “Could use a smoke.”

Atlas lit the joint with a flick of fire from his fingertip and handed it to Robin.

A few puffs to get it going, then he inhaled a lungful of earthy peace before passing the joint back.

He wandered out onto the short wooden dock where he and Deborah used to spend countless hours as kids, daydreaming about all the places they were going to visit one day.

She’d done it as a soldier, then a federal agent; he’d done it as a tracker.

Hunting was always hardest when it was someone close to you. He shucked out of his flannel, wrapped his mother’s letters in the fabric, then lowered himself onto the dock beside Atlas. “You think someone in the pack is a traitor.”

“Statistically speaking, yes.” He handed the joint back, then reclined on the dock, his eyes closed, the setting sun painting his blond hair and pale skin in shades of orange and violet.

Everyone always talked about how pretty Paris was, and the Cirillo heir admittedly had runway model good looks.

By contrast, Atlas, in suits or kilts, had an untouchable ethereal quality to his appearance that was hilariously at odds with every other acerbic side of him. “I’m sorry.”

Not acerbic, and not the sentiment out of Atlas’s mouth that Robin needed. The last thing he wanted was Atlas’s pity. “Don’t,” he told him. “This is already weird as fuck.”

Atlas’s sexy, smart-ass laugh was more like it, and Robin caught on to the trap he’d walked into. “You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”

Atlas rotated on his side toward him, dancing green eyes glancing up at him. “Worked, didn’t it?” Then down to the mound of flannel and parchment between them. “What are those?”

“Letters from my mother, to me and Deborah.”

“What do you hope to find in them?”

“Answers. Things I thought were cryptic before are starting to connect now. I need to reread them. You need to read them. See if there’s something we can use.”

Atlas righted himself, and Robin anticipated an argument over we just to make him feel better. Instead, Atlas dug out his phone, tapped the screen a few times, then held the device out to him. “You need to read this first.”

He traded him the joint for the phone and read the posted contract. “This is the bounty you want to go after?”

“Not me, her. She thinks he’s hiding a phoenix.”

“Which is why Evan would want him too. But if I catch him, turn him over to the team, then all that”—he gestured back to the house—“was for naught.”

He shook his head. “She just wants a meet. An alliance for when the time comes.”

Robin continued reading. “This says he’ll be at Club Sutro tonight.”

Atlas finished the joint and snuffed it out on the dock. “We’ll need to leave enough time to swing by the condo and distillery.”

Leave enough , as in they didn’t have to leave right away.

They had time for something else. And by the blush that hit Atlas’s cheeks, the warlock was thinking about the same something else as Robin.

Something that would make them both feel better.

Robin laid Atlas’s phone atop the letters and pushed them well out of the way. “We have some time until then.”

Green eyes, the color of the forest around them, heated from more than just the sun reflecting off the water. “What do you have in mind?”

Closing the distance between them, Robin propped one hand behind Atlas’s back and snuck the other through the gap in his makeshift kilt, skirting his fingers over his inner thigh. “You remember what I said about the next time I fucked you?”

“Yes, but...” Atlas’s words stuttered on a moan when Robin nuzzled behind his ear, a full body shiver rippling through him.

Robin’s own cock hardened, Atlas’s reaction, plus the waft of his scent that tickled Robin’s nose, a potent combination.

Atlas found his words again, but they were breathy, uttered on a gasp as Robin trailed his hand higher. “That was ten—eleven?—fucks ago now.”

The backs of his knuckles brushed his cock, his lips the shell of Atlas’s ear. “Yes, but you weren’t wearing a kilt then.”

“I’m still not,” he snapped, haughty making a comeback. Always a last line of defense, their perfect foreplay. “I’m wearing your shirt.”

Robin grinned, this entire encounter, the push and pull where they both won, exactly what he needed. He adjusted his hand, fingers curling around Atlas’s length and giving him a long, slow tug, his thumb circling the damp tip when he reached it. “Might be even sexier.”

He was so distracted by the rising color on Atlas’s cheeks, by his darkening eyes, by the rock-hard cock in his hand, that Robin missed Atlas moving his own until he closed it over his erection, palming him through his jeans.

“When you fuck me with this fat cock like you promised, I want to enjoy it. I don’t want to be on the clock, and I don’t want to be in the fucking woods. ”

Robin rocked up to meet the rough handling, loving every aggressive second of it. Then rocked his entire body closer, withdrawing his hand from between Atlas’s thighs and dragging his thumb over Atlas’s bottom lip, smearing it with his own precome. “Sometimes the truth does come out of this mouth.”

“Too often lately.”

Like it had just then, but Robin was too turned on to call him on it, and the last thing he wanted to do was derail where this heated teasing was headed, the truth their bodies were seeking. “I know how to stop that, for now.”

“How’s that?” Atlas replied coyly, then proving he already knew the answer, sucked Robin’s thumb into his mouth, swirling his tongue around the tip like Robin’s finger had him, like he was making sure to lick up every drop of precome Robin had collected.

Too much, too good, not enough. “Stretch that pretty mouth around my cock.”

“Will that make you forget about it?”

Another slip, a truth offered in return. “For a little while.”

Their gazes locked, truths and sorrows acknowledged, commiseration accepted, before Atlas flipped open the shirt-kilt, took his cock in hand, and continued to jerk himself.

Robin wasted no time unfastening his jeans and getting his own cock out, the cool air barely grazing his overheated skin before it was enveloped in scorching heat, Atlas’s mouth closing around him while he continued to stroke himself.

Pleasuring them both.

Robin threaded his fingers through Atlas’s thick blond waves, held on tight, and forgot about everything but the heat flooding his senses, the whisper of spring chasing away the chill he hadn’t escaped in far too long.