Chapter Thirty
Robin
Blindfolded and bound, every breath became weighted. Every shift of the mattress beneath them. Every echo of need through their bond, the rich burn of too-hot coffee after a bitterly cold night.
Like calling like. Desire answering desire.
A request for cruelty met with a pedantic, exacting answer.
Zyr would have kissed him for it, if Robin were the sort of man you kissed on an impulse, rather than begging for the privilege.
If he weren’t bound as much by Robin’s will as his ropes, unable to take more than the human chose to give him.
Zyr had always needed this.
Someone whose love burnt his tongue. Whose desire put him on his knees.
Relentless. Unpredictable. Obsessed.
The pieces of himself he’d refused to surrender. The parts that made him too much. He’d never cared. He’d locked himself away with his treasures rather than change for anyone. Robin loved him. Loved his counterargument of a heart. Gave him a center, a ground, but didn’t try to stop the storm.
He was permitted to ask for what he wanted. Required to. Robin liked it when he asked.
“Please, Raven-Robin,” he said. “Will you be cruel? Break me? I want to forget everything that isn’t you. My sacred dark.”
Robin answered him with teeth, left his lips kiss-bruised and wet, and Zyr panting, mouth open, begging more. Robin, by his own admission, wasn’t a merciful man. Zyr knew better than to assume he’d be permitted to taste him again.
“Well done, Dhanra,” Robin murmured. “You asked the way I enjoy, the way only you can. I’m so glad that you did. I would’ve hated to deny myself something I want so much.”
Robin shifted. Blindfolded, Zyr couldn’t say exactly how. Only that he no longer felt the man’s breath on his lips. He wouldn’t go far, Zyr knew. He had promised.
Something, there on the outside of Zyr’s knee. A pillow? It didn’t matter. What mattered were Robin’s hands sliding up the inside of his thighs, first over fabric, then, as that fell away at Faerie’s whim, over Zyr’s bare skin.
Warm hands, for all that Robin’s emotions ran more to the extremes. Steaming coffee. Cold sea wind. Not a warm person. So much better than warm.
“I’ll break you down, beithir. Not break you. I want you to be yourself.” A kiss, at Zyr’s knee. Then a bite, a little higher up his thigh. Then higher still. “Getting broken down, brought through the dark, and built back is about finding more of you. Tell me if I’m making sense.”
Zyr groaned, thighs tense, arms straining again against their bonds. To reach. To touch.
(To feel again that he could not. To be assured of it.)
“Yes, Raven-Robin. Always. From the first. When you–” He cut himself off with a hiss. “I come back–” Words. Explanations. He whimpered. “You help me find what I had lost.”
“That makes you all the more impressive, beithir.” Robin said, kissing higher on Zyr’s thigh. “I thought you were the most unabashedly yourself fae I had ever met from the start.”
Clever hands pressed into Zyr’s thighs, spreading them further. Blunt teeth found purchase above the ropes and bit.
He knew he should speak. His voice was the only luxury Robin permitted him.
Instead, he snarled, head tossed back. Squirmed, with the heat of Robin’s mouth so close to his untouched cock. He tightened his tail around Robin’s wrist, the only place he was permitted to touch, tugging without fully meaning to. Begging him closer.
More. Please. Break me open.
But the words he so relied on slipped from his grasp, turned to rough pants and helpless whines before he could voice them.
“You’re doing so well, Dhanra. I love how you’re trying to touch me, and the way you shake just a little harder when you can’t.
Make those pretty keens.” Did Robin smile that sharp smile as he said it?
Had his eyes gone dark with lust? “I wonder if your tail is pulling for my hand or mouth. Or if you even know. I don’t mind. Not with you coming apart like this.”
Quiet, controlled approval. Words as deliberate as his touch. Encouraging and merciless. His lips found Zyr’s hip. His stomach. Teased, while the bond between them fed Zyr Robin’s pleasure, bound him in his desire. Drew him deeper into the dark.
If he could only speak. But speech required thought, and Zyr’s only thoughts were need and yes and Robin.
“Please,” he managed, the word hitched in the middle, breaking on his tongue. Do it right. With a question mark at the end. “Please, Raven-Robin?”
“I don’t know what you’re asking for, Dhanra.
” Robin’s lips were everywhere but where Zyr needed them most. His words held the sharpness of the smile Zyr couldn’t see.
“Specifics, please. It was good, how you still used a question mark at the end. You’re doing so well.
You don’t need to explain if it’s too difficult. I’m so pleased with you.”
Specifics.
Wonderfully cruel bird, weaving praise with denial, making a rope of his words. One more binding, to draw Zyr down. Pull him deeper.
The response should have been easy. Robin’s searing kisses, there on his inner thigh, were so close to Zyr’s needy cock that each one left him shuddering, unable even to cant his hips.
He wanted to beg for Robin’s mouth, his hand, his cock. Anything to relieve the building pressure, storm clouds on a summer day, but no rain falling.
And still…
This was important. He needed the words.
“I want your mouth on me. On my cock. I need you to break me open. If I ask–”
What he asked, Robin might grant, providing a ground for all that built within him.
“I’m glad you explained. That was good, Dhanra. My storm.” And Robin was pleased. Zyr could feel his approval. His affection. Love. “Ask me for what you want, beithir. Trust me to give you what you need.”
Trust Robin. Yes.
“I want your mouth wrapped around my cock, Raven-Robin. Grant me that?”
“Thank you for asking. Question mark and all. For trusting me.” Robin’s cheek on his thigh, so Zyr could feel the breath of each word against his cock.
“You asked me to take you further than I have before. Asked me to break you down until you cry for me, Dhanra. If I suck your cock, and I won’t be able to keep my promise. ”
For once, Zyr didn’t growl. His tail didn’t flick or tug as Robin denied him. He only shivered, knee pressing back as Robin kissed it, though the motion was slight.
“Merciless bird,” he breathed.
And a hiss, after, drawn in between clenched teeth, at the brush of Robin’s fingers up his cock. He jerked hard against the ropes then, an instinctive straining toward that touch. Were it not for the Hollow charm–
But he wore it, and the ropes held.
“Grant me something? Fuck me? Or take my mouth? So long as I feel you, Raven-Robin.”
The words came rushed and urgent, suggestions tripping over each other. Willing to plead now, to beg. Made safe by Robin’s promise. No matter what he asked, he would be granted what he needed.
“Oh, I’m definitely going to fuck you, beithir.
Unless I hear your safe words, you will be coming apart with me inside of you.
” A promise made with another trail of his fingers, along and down Zyr’s cock.
Then all five, and his palm against the head of Zyr’s cock, ruthlessly gentle.
“I’ve fantasized about this. You, tied just like you are, deep in your dark and sobbing for me.
Me, fucking into you slow until I can’t keep that pace.
Watching you. Telling you how I never wanted to call anyone ‘mine’ before, that the idea of claiming someone made me feel trapped. ”
A tease of pressure, against Zyr’s ass. A slick finger, pressing without pressing in. Gentle. Cruel. And Zyr’s broken groans did nothing to sway him.
“We’re like this now because you gave me room to feel that way, and showed me you wouldn’t ever seek to trap me.
Listened when I spoke. ‘You can’t unslit a throat,’ fuck, that got me.
” And there, at last. Yes. More than a tease; Robin’s touch within him.
Forcing him open. “You’re my storm because of who you are, and like hell am I going to not fuck you until you’re broken down and open for me the way you deserve. ”
“More,” he begged, struggling to reach, to touch, to rock back and take Robin deeper. Failing at all of it. Tail tip lashing, tugging, begging as well. “Please, Raven-Robin. More.”
“You’ll have more in good time, Dhanra.” The affection that poured through the bond was just as molten as the desire, all spiced chocolate and espresso on Zyr’s tongue. “I have a promise to keep. A pretty beithir to open up.”
Zyr didn’t lose time, as Robin took him deeper. He found it. Knew the meaning of every desperate, needing second.
Time was sweet agony, marked in whimpers and growls. Robin was moved by neither. Not by begging or asking (with a question mark at the end). Not by hitched breaths or tense muscles.
Robin kissed and reassured and murmured his approval, and denied and denied and denied. This is what now feels like, his thumb said, with each leisurely stroke down his cock. This is what urgency means, his fingers explained, with each slick press, each stretch and curl.
And then they explained it again. And again. Made him recite the lesson in desperate keens and helpless mouthing of Robin’s name.
Raven-Robin. Cruel bird. Please please please.
Did the words make it past his lips? He didn’t know. But he spoke them in his soul. And Robin could hear that too.
“Think I’ve got you ready enough, Dhanra.” Robin said, fingers spreading and flexing, making Zyr achingly aware of the hollow, unfilled spaces within himself. “Fuck. Yeah. More than. Fuck.”
The slow, inexorable rhythm of Robin’s touch, of being stroked and stretched and opened further, had been torture. Losing it, near devastating, eased only by Robin’s continued nearness, his murmured reassurances that Zyr was doing well.
He should stop whimpering. Recognize Robin’s intentions and calm. But all his world was Robin, and the sense of less, of hollow emptiness, was–