Chapter 8
Vaughn
Something's wrong with Robin.
Or something's right with Robin. I can't tell. He's been at the bar for an hour and he hasn't flirted with a single person.
Not Jason, who's serving drinks tonight while Ezra does inventory. Not Silas, who complimented the cupcakes Robin brought — seventy of them, vanilla bean with brown butter frosting, which is a suspicious quantity for "recipe testing."
Robin is sitting ramrod straight on a barstool, clutching his beer like it's the only thing keeping him tethered to the earth, and he keeps looking at me.
Quick glances. Darting, nervous things, completely unlike the long, deliberate eye contact he usually deploys like a weapon. Every time I catch him, he looks away so fast it's almost violent. Then thirty seconds later, he does it again.
"What's wrong with Robin?" Silas appears at my elbow, quiet as always.
"No idea."
"He's being weird." Silas tilts his head, studying Robin the way he studies his books — carefully, completely. "He's not sitting on anyone."
True. Usually by this point in the evening, Robin would be draped across someone's lap, playing with someone's hair, leaning against the nearest warm body. It's his default state — tactile, casual, designed to look like he's comfortable with everyone and therefore committed to no one.
Tonight he's maintaining a careful foot of distance from every person in the room. His hands are in his lap. He hasn't touched anyone. The performance is running on fumes.
"He brought seventy cupcakes," Silas adds.
"I noticed."
"All the same flavor. Your favorite flavor."
"Silas."
"I'm just observing." He drifts back to his corner with the smallest ghost of a smile.
I can't take it anymore. I cross the room and lean against the bar next to Robin. Close, but not touching. Leaving him an out.
"You okay?"
He jumps like I tased him. "Fine! Great. Good. Why? I'm fine."
"You're being weird."
"I'm not being weird. This is me. Being normal. Normally."
"Robin, you haven't hit on anyone in an hour."
"Maybe I'm evolving." He takes a gulp of beer, won't meet my eyes. "I should go. Early morning. Gordon's got a thing."
"Toby drove you."
His eyes dart around the room. "Toby! Can you—"
But Toby's already vanished upstairs with Knox, and even Robin isn't dense enough to go bang on that door.
"I'll take you," I say.
"No, I can — I'll call an Uber."
"Robin." I touch his arm. Barely — just my fingertips against his forearm, the lightest contact I can manage. He shivers. Full-body, visible, like I pressed ice to the back of his neck. "Let me take you home."
He closes his eyes. Something crosses his face that looks like surrender. "Okay."
The bike ride is torture.
He climbs on behind me and wraps his arms around my waist and presses his entire body against my back, and his heart is hammering so hard I can feel it through his jacket and my jacket and every layer between us.
His hands are laced tight against my stomach.
His face is tucked against my shoulder. He's holding me like I'm the last solid thing in a world that's tipping sideways.
I drive carefully. Slowly. Taking the long way to Ash's house, not because I need to but because Robin is warm and pressed against me and I can smell him — vanilla and brown butter from the baking, and underneath that his real scent, the one my lion has been cataloguing for months.
We pull up to Ash's house. Porch light on. All the windows dark.
He climbs off the bike but doesn't step back. Just stands there, holding my helmet, staring at me.
"Thanks for the ride," he says, and his voice is doing something strange. Thin. Stripped.
"Robin, wait." I swing off the bike. "What's going on? Is this about Saturday?"
"No."
"Then what—"
He kisses me.
No warning. No preamble. No flirty setup, no playful escalation, none of the performance that Robin wraps around everything like armor. He just drops my helmet on the lawn and grabs my jacket with both fists and crashes his mouth into mine.
His lips are shaking. His whole body is shaking. He kisses me the way someone grabs a lifeline — desperate, graceless, terrified, like if he stops to think about what he's doing he'll lose his nerve.
I freeze for half a second. Not because I don't want this — I've wanted this for months, I've wanted this since the day he walked into the bar.
I freeze because this is real. This is Robin without the mask, Robin choosing me, and I need one heartbeat to understand that before I ruin it by moving too fast.
One heartbeat. That's all I take.
Then my hands are on his face, tilting his head, and I'm kissing him back.
Deep and slow and thorough, the opposite of his frantic pace.
He whimpers against my mouth — this broken, startled sound, like he expected me to push him away and doesn't know what to do with the fact that I'm pulling him closer.
"Inside," he gasps when we break apart. His eyes are wide and dark and completely unguarded. "Bedroom. Please, Vaughn—"
"Are you sure?"
"I have never been more sure of anything in my—yes. Yes. Please."
I kiss him again, walking him backward toward the door. He fumbles with his keys — drops them once, swears, I pick them up and unlock the door myself while he presses against my back, hands under my jacket, mouth on the nape of my neck.
We barely make it inside. The door closes and Robin is pulling at my jacket, shoving it off my shoulders, yanking at the henley underneath. His hands are everywhere — my chest, my arms, my stomach, my belt — and his mouth is on my throat, my jaw, the hollow behind my ear.
"Stairs," he manages between kisses. "My room. Up."
We stumble up the stairs. Robin trips on the top step and I catch him by the waist and pin him against the hallway wall, and the sound he makes — this high, sharp, wrecked thing — goes straight through me.
"Been thinking about this," he says, pulling at my shirt, getting it over my head. His hands land on my bare chest and he goes still, palms flat against my pectorals, feeling me breathe. "Since Saturday. Since you kept me warm. Since you told me you see me."
"I see you," I confirm, and his eyes go liquid.
His bedroom door. I don't register much about the room — it's dark, it smells like him, there's a bed. That's all I need.
I push him down onto it and he goes willingly, pulling me on top of him, wrapping his legs around my waist. He's hard against my thigh and I'm hard against his hip and the friction when he rolls up against me makes us both groan.
"Off," he demands, tugging at my jeans. "Everything off. Now."
I pull back to strip and he does the same, hands shaking, kicking off his shoes and yanking his sweater over his head.
His skin is pale in the dim light, lean and smooth, a faded burn scar on his left forearm.
He's beautiful. Not the way he is at the bar, all performance and polish — beautiful the way he is right now, flushed and frantic and real.
"Stop staring and get back here," he says, reaching for me.
I crawl over him. Settle my weight between his legs, and he gasps at the full skin-on-skin contact — my chest against his, my hips against his hips, nothing between us. His cock is hot and hard against mine and he rolls up instinctively, chasing friction, his nails digging into my shoulders.
"Vaughn, please—"
"What do you need?"
"You. In me." His voice cracks on it, raw with want. "I need you inside me. Please."
"Where—"
"Nightstand." He's already reaching for it, fumbling the drawer open, pressing a bottle of lube into my hand. "Please."
I take my time. Robin doesn't want me to take my time — he's arching against me, trying to pull me closer, making sounds of pure frustrated want every time I slow down — but I need this. I need to do this right.
I slick my fingers and press one into him, slow, watching his face. His eyes flutter shut. His mouth falls open. His body opens for me like it's been waiting.
"That's it," I tell him, working my finger deeper, curling it. "So good, Robin."
"More. I can take more."
I add a second finger and he moans — long and low and completely unselfconscious, his head thrown back against the pillow, his hips moving against my hand. He's tight and hot and responsive to every movement, and the sounds he's making are going to kill me.
"Look at you." I scissor my fingers, stretch him, find the spot that makes him cry out. "Taking it so well."
"Fuck — Vaughn — right there, right there—"
I press that spot again and his whole body bows off the bed, cock leaking against his stomach, a string of profanity spilling out of him that would be impressive if I could focus on anything other than how he looks right now. Wrecked. Desperate. Mine.
A third finger. He takes it with a groan, pushing back against my hand, fucking himself on my fingers like he can't get enough.
"Ready," he pants. "Vaughn, I'm ready, please — I need your cock, please—"
I pull my fingers out and he whines at the loss. I slick myself up, hands not entirely steady — the first time they've been unsteady since I started — and line up against him.
"Look at me," I say.
His eyes snap open. Dark and blown and wet at the edges, fixed on mine with an intensity that nearly breaks my composure entirely.
The sound he makes is not performance. It's not the breathy, exaggerated moan he'd use at the bar to make someone blush. It's a raw, punched-out thing — half gasp, half sob — and his hands fly to my arms, gripping hard enough to bruise.
I push in slow. So slow. Watching every shift of his expression, reading him the way I read an engine — every sound, every tension, every tell. He's tight around me, impossibly tight and hot and perfect, and it takes everything I have not to bury myself in one thrust.
"Oh god." His eyes are wide, locked on mine, and his lips are parted and his chest is heaving. "Vaughn, you're — fuck, you're big—"