Chapter Nineteen #2
“Hell no.” Robin shook his head. Pressed his temple to one of those horns. “Talia will take me over, but, you want to take me to Banyan? We can have a big slumber party study session of ‘the hell is going on’ until our eyes cross and pieces at least fit a little.”
“I would like that, yes.” Zyr’s tension eased, though not entirely. “There’s also the matter of the lidérc. She’s likely to respond to my message either soon or never. She’s not known for hesitations.”
“More visitors. Figures.”
“I blame you, Treasure. I usually have fewer than a handful in a decade.” Zyr’s sigh was soft. Unsteady in the best way. “While we await our next interruption, can we simply … be here? Please? This is the safest place I have. I need to know that you are safe. That we both are.”
“As long as you need, beithir.” Robin kissed the beithir’s horns. What else could he do, when the man asked like that? “We don’t need to be anywhere, yet.”
All the fae Robin had met before had legs.
Some had hooves. Raptor claws a couple of times. But they all had legs (or, in the case of a kitsune recently sworn to Banyan, usually had them, but had been born without).
Saiath, Nahem’s lamia messenger, had a snake tail. From her head to her navel, she looked humanoid. Scaly, flat chested, with a hood instead of hair, and her nose little more than slits, but she had two arms and a very pretty blouse.
Navel down was a big ass snake tail, brown and beige and red, with a two-pronged rattle at the tip. She shook it when met with Zyr’s terse questions.
Wild.
Being a lamia gave her about as many badass points as Robin was willing to dole out. She was all hissing primness when Zyr asked bluntly whether Nahem would meet with them.
“That depends on you,” she answered, holding out a crimson bag. “If you wish to speak with her, both of you are to drink this, with me as a witness.”
“She wants us to drink the magic potion?” Robin frowned, just barely keeping the fuck that from his voice. “I don’t know what lidércs are or what their magic does.”
“Depends who you ask, summer prince,” came from the lamia. She studied him in turn, unmoving. “A chicken of miracles. A pestilence bringing lover of demons. Something in between. A beloved, lost. She is what she is.”
“As beithir are a type of dragon, lidérc are a type of lust spirit,” Zyr explained, his tail curling around Robin’s ankle. “Though their aspect touches as much on death as desire. Longing for the lost. I prefer trade to games, lamia. I have some texts that may be to her liking.”
“If Nahem wanted a text, I would have asked for one.”
“What does it do?” Robin asked, studying the bag.
“I don’t know.” Slit eyes looked weird as hell, staring intently at you. Robin stared back. “Nahem’s not one for explanations.”
“There’s no death in it,” Zyr said, between clenched teeth. “Nor magic strong enough for transformation or lasting effects. That’s all I can be sure of.”
“...right.” Robin leaned against Zyr, looking up at him again. “We need to talk to her. I’m good to drink if you are.”
Zyr’s tail lashed, skin sparking. It was good to see him acting out again, looking and sounding more like himself than the middle-distance staring emptiness of the day before.
“You must stay,” Zyr said at last, hard gaze on the lamia. “Within the bounds of my allotment and outside my home, until we’ve finished playing your mistress’s little game. If no harm comes to either of us, then no harm will come to you.”
“My definition of ‘harm’ doesn’t include minor aches and pains, non-grievous bodily damage you may inflict on the other, or emotional distress.
” Saiath clicked her long tongue disapprovingly.
At what, Robin couldn’t say. “Nor anything done to one another in order to obtain leave to harm me in turn. Agree to those terms, and yes. I’ll stay within your allotment, outside of your house, until you’ve completed playing Nahem’s game and the magic has run its course. ”
It took further negotiation to come to solid terms of what harm meant. Murder, cannibalism, near fatal damage, among other things. Once that was settled, Saiath lingered in the entry as Zyr tested each vial with a single drop on his tongue.
“You’ve always purported interest in the Winter Court, beithir. I find experience to be the best teacher. Nahem.” Robin read the note aloud before taking one of the vials, finding himself doubly glad for Zyr’s detail-oriented haggling.
The glittering, silver drink tasted the way Zyr’s pleasure made Robin feel, a swift current of heady satisfaction, a storm under his skin made of blood and trailing fingers and sharp humor. Like salt lapped from the source. Warm and content.
How anything could taste like warmth and contentment, Robin didn’t know. That was alright, though.
“... Huh.”
Saiath smiled the polite, perfunctory smile of salespeople everywhere once the bottles were emptied. No villain monologue, just a smile, and a … backward slither toward the hut she had created. Backward.
Fae were fucking weird.
“I’m locking the house wards against myself for a time,” Zyr said, as he closed the door behind her. “In case we’re inspired to sudden acts of friendship. They’re not unbreakable, but it should make it considerably more difficult to let ourselves out or anyone else in.”
Zyr was warm and cool at once, when Robin slid his fingers under the beithir’s untucked shirt. Heated skin. Textured, cool scales. Robin liked him so much.
“Uh-huh. If I’m suddenly sweet and buddy-buddy at work, someone’s in trouble.
Usually the person I’m talking to. It’s easier to get away from them that way, being all friendly, and get back to things that are less of a pain in the ass.
” Rambling. He was rambling, with Zyr solid and big and there, about a world Zyr might never see because Robin didn’t think taking him to the office while talking about a family emergency would be the move, and then the world might end.
“And I’m pretty sure your love language is quality time, gifts, and shit-giving. ”
“‘Want to see what I can do with my tail, sexy?’” Antonio had said, snickering. “He’d’ve been batting his eyelashes if he knew how.”
“Like the table and your shoes. And the quip about your tail. Just staring daggers. It was fun.”
Zyr blinked down at him, looking first puzzled, then fond. The storm of his eyes was muted, only the occasional, tiny flash of light. Glassy. His eyes looked glassy. Robin should probably think about that.
He didn’t want to.
“We’re in my territory now.” Zyr reached to tug at the lace of Robin’s shoe with the tip of his tail. “I can put my boots wherever I like.”
Robin liked being right. Zyr pushed, was a shit, showing affection through books and poking. Prodding. Tugging at his shoelace while he told Robin he could do what he liked with those boots.
There wasn’t a smile or tease in his voice. There didn’t have to be. Robin knew how he worked now. Teasing gave way to needing whimpers and kisses without teeth, parted lips and open throat and gasps that ached with want.
Irritable, abrasive beithir who had shuddered beneath him, mumbling words from the feelings wheel.
His shirt was soft under Robin’s hand when he tugged, and tugged again until Zyr turned to face him.
And that fantastically hard chest, solid under slender palms, there for Robin to have the pleasure of pushing him back against the door.
Only a little push. A nudge. More moving in closer than anything. Robin didn’t push. He was pushy.
But fuck, Zyr would look good, being dragged around, held, taken.
“Where do you plan on putting them?” Robin asked, with an edge of challenge. Tugging, just to see Zyr’s shirt strain over skin Robin couldn’t properly bite red, with the damn thing on, couldn’t feel. “On your books? Furniture? Even Faerie gets muddy.”
“The furniture can survive a bit of dirt,” Zyr answered, releasing Robin’s shoelace only to coil his tail around his ankle, seeking skin under his jeans. Cheeky shit lifted his boot to tap the side of it against Robin’s calf. “And I will place them where I please.”
Skin. Scales. Zyr’s eyes where sometimes lightning danced or the thunder clouds darkened. His tail brushing streaks of electricity over skin Robin rarely even thought about, now the only part of him that didn’t itch.
Zyr, tall and strong and stubborn, was perfect. An absolute tease, whose skin Robin had the vaguest memory of tasting, tapping Robin’s calf and touching Robin’s ankle and stating he could do whatever he liked, while his hard cock strained against his slacks.
“You don’t make the rules, beithir.”
Beithir, because the seelie had tried to take that from him. Tried to say it like a curse, to use it against him, and it wasn’t theirs. It was Zyr’s. It was Robin’s, like how Zyr was Robin’s. He had said so. Meant it, even if the fuckers did their best to make it mean something it didn’t.
Zyr didn’t make the rules because Robin did.
Robin pulled his leg away from the too-good stroke of Zyr’s tail. Robin tugged hard at his shirt, pushed him back harder, fingers tight at his buttons. Robin pressed his hand against the hard line of Zyr’s cock, fingers curling.
Robin bit at the solid muscle of one distressingly clothed pec, firm, in time with a tug. A squeeze. It burned.
The world blurred at the edges as Zyr sunk his claws into the wood of the door, a desperate sound in the back of his bared throat. Gray edges that bled red, lit Robin’s veins up and up and up with desire that fucking hurt.
Robin bit and kissed and sucked and Zyr rocked in, pressed his cock to Robin’s thigh. Asked, voice desperate, who made the rules. Asked to be told.
Robin did. Robin did.
That fucking shirt, fabric tearing to create a window for Robin’s kiss. His bite. His groan, lips to searing skin, the only place that didn’t start to hurt. Sucking kisses, fabric peeling apart in ribbons, as he squeezed the fae’s cock through his pants, other hand at his fly.