“How—how do you like it?” Robin asked. It was nearly a rasp. He was intent and shadowed with a smile still tugging at his mouth, almost unbearably handsome. He shoved the last fold of Edwin’s drawers out of the way, skin met skin, and they both inhaled as though in a race for the oxygen between them.
Edwin froze, his instinctual wariness momentarily winning the struggle it had been waging against the tidal force of his need. He could feel it, that dangerous temptation to open himself fully to sensation. He could barely think. He forced himself to think.
He’d let Robin come waltzing effortlessly across his boundaries, just as Sutton had. And like Sutton, Edwin could muster secondary wardings. He could fall back to other defences. If they both wanted this then surely, surely Edwin could have it without giving away too much of himself—but only if he was careful. If he kept himself in control, he could still scrape together a few ways to keep himself safe.
“Edwin?” Robin said, faltering.
“Fast,” Edwin said, breathless. He pushed up into Robin’s hand, making it a demand. “Fast and hard.”
“Oh, hell,” Robin whispered.
Robin took direction like the athlete that he was. Fast and hard was how he gave it, the small calluses of his fingers almost unbearably good against Edwin’s cock, his thumb circling the head and his pace ruthless. Edwin could do nothing but clutch at him, his nails dragging up Robin’s spine, and let the sensation thicken and simmer up through his body in waves until he was panting, gasping, frantic for it to be over and wanting it to stretch out forever.
Edwin opened his mouth against Robin’s bare shoulder as he came, turning a cry into a bite. He squeezed his eyes shut and even then felt something like the flash of a camera, white light painting itself onto the inner surface of his eyelids, before everything went dark.
When he surfaced from the trembling decrescendo of his pleasure, the room seemed smaller. Cosier. The flicker of the guidelight created shadows in every corner and, incidentally, allowed Edwin to see the red, saliva-wet mark left by his teeth on Robin’s shoulder. As though what Robin was in desperate need of was more wounds.
Edwin realised he was touching the mark, and snatched his finger back. “I’m—so sorry. Ah. Heat of the moment.”
Robin tried to curl his own shoulder forward to look at it. “That’s a first,” he said, buoyantly cheerful. “I’ve not had anyone do that to me since Maud was going through her savage phase, age approximately five.”
Edwin collapsed and buried his head in the pillow. “I’m sorry.”
A hand ruffled his hair, and he nearly swatted Robin for the sheer indignity of it, but he owed Robin whatever Robin thought was fair, for—for biting him. Dear God.
“You can tell me if this is against some kind of magician etiquette,” said Robin, “but what happened with the light?”
Edwin turned his head. “The light?”
“When you, er.” Robin made an unfortunate gesture. “The guidelight went very bright, and then went out like a candle. And then recovered itself. Does that happen every time?”
Edwin bit his tongue against admitting that he hadn’t noticed, or rather, that he’d thought he’d imagined it. That it was some new effect on his nerves of having been brought to a more satisfying and overwhelming completion than he’d experienced in years. He had enough energy to glare at the guidelight, but not nearly enough to launch into an explanation of his vast and ludicrous ignorance on the usual sequelae when one was having fantastic sex in a magical estate that one was wearing like an ill-fitting new suit. One thread of his mind managed to wonder if Sutton Cottage had ever done that for Flora and Gerald Sutton, before abandoning that line of thought in a recoil of horror.
“Not in my experience.”
“Ah,” said Robin. His cheerfulness had taken on a smug edge. Edwin’s first and uncharitable instinct was to shove back against it, to deflate it, somehow.
He rolled onto his back, the air of the room abruptly cool on the damp patches of his inner thighs. The glow of desire was ebbing and on its shoreline he felt uncertain, anxious; he’d forgotten what you did, in the aftermath, with someone that you liked. And who seemed, strange as the concept was, to like you in return.
Robin was grinning. Edwin tried to meet it with a smile of his own, and didn’t manage to look away from Robin’s mouth, and the thought struck him like the fall of an icicle into a snowbank: Lethe-mint. You’re helping him get free of the magical world, and then you’re going to help him forget it. Don’t get entangled. Pull the threads clear.