Robin held Edwin in the cradle of his fingers like a spell that would snap into nothing unless handled with care. Edwin heard the first breath of sound, a musical whine, try to escape with his own breath. He made the mistake of trying to crush it by letting the kiss get looser, more urgent, closer to the roar of desire that he was refusing to give in to in any other way.
Robin muttered a curse against Edwin’s lips and released him. Edwin stared at him, rendered mute by hunger. If he turned to the mirror he was almost certain he’d see Robin’s handprints there, white as Flora Sutton’s had been, marking him.
“Later tonight,” Robin said, a low promise. “Now, as you said, dinner.”
Maud’s assigned bedroom in Penhallick House really was covered in strawberries. The wallpaper was a Morris design that Robin had once seen on a cushion, all greens and blues and curious birds, with eye-catching blobs of red. The four-poster bed and dresser were made of glowing walnut. Maud looked oddly at home there, taking pins from her hair and dropping them one by one into a jar with tinkling sounds like the overture of rain.
Robin, remembering that the strangeness of magic had given him whiplash long after he’d thought himself accustomed to it, lingered in the room.
“Are you sure you’re all right, Maudie?” he asked when she raised her eyebrows in clear invitation for him to leave her alone.
“You’re waiting for me to declare that I’m dying to be a magician,” she said. “You needn’t worry. Mrs. Walcott—Belinda—explained the lay of the land. And I don’t need magic. University, remember?”
“I’m taking you back to London,” Robin said. “As soon as . . .” He raised his cursed arm. Maud’s eyes softened.
“I’m sorry I barged up here,” she said. An unusual offering.
“I’m sorry it looked like—I’m sorry I was running away.”
Robin felt more lighthearted than he had in a while, as he left Maud’s room with his own guidelight bobbing above his shoulder. The things were convenient, you had to admit. Anticipation tingled within him. He undressed down to socks and shirt and trousers in the fire-warmed willow room, then knocked at Edwin’s door.
A longish pause met him before Edwin said, “Yes?”
Edwin looked over his shoulder when Robin entered. He was seated on the edge of the bed; his shirt was all the way off, and Robin had a good view of his pale back and the nearly elegant thinness of his arms. His face was a curtain rapidly drawing over an expression of wan misery, and it furrowed into apology at whatever he saw in Robin’s. He stood.
“What is it?” Robin asked.
He watched Edwin’s mouth try to form the word nothing, and fail. “I think it just hit me all at once,” Edwin said. “That I’m never going to see him again. Reggie.”
“You really . . .” Robin tried to adjust course, tried to remember the conversation about Gatling they’d had in the car. “Had feelings for him?”
A neutral twitch of Edwin’s head.
“Wanted him?”
Edwin swallowed. “He was . . . safe.”
When Robin had first been coming to terms with who he was and who he wanted, there’d been an older boy at school he’d thought of like that. A glorious, impossible, untouchable fantasy. And when Robin thought about something more than physical release, someone to be with—
But he’d never in his life let it get past the thought. For men like them, only the impossible was absolutely safe.
“I understand how that goes,” Robin said.
“Yes,” said Edwin. He was holding his own elbows. The look on his face struck Robin like the withdrawal of a knife so sharp that the entry had gone unnoticed. “I believe you actually do.”
“I’m sorry,” Robin said, feeling a heel. “I’ll go.”
“Don’t,” Edwin said quickly.
“I don’t want to intrude.”
“You’re not. You can’t. It’s extremely irritating.” Edwin stepped close, very close indeed.
“What’s irritating?”
Edwin said, “Every time you touch me it’s exactly what I want.”
Robin’s heart pounded as the anticipation took hold of him again, redoubled and delighted. He laid his thumb in the hollow of Edwin’s throat, beneath the scratched lines, his fingers light at the side of Edwin’s neck. Edwin closed his eyes and tipped back his chin. Robin could feel the movement of Edwin’s breath, the almost-shudder of his body.