by Helena Maeve
“Protecting people like me. People who get an order they can’t obey.”
“Doesn’t that make you a traitor?”
Cole’s parting volley rang in Ulysses’ ears, months after the fact. I hope you know who you’re involved with. Ulysses had shaken his hand, assured him he did.
What he should have said was, I’m not sure I care. And that frightens me.
“People change their colors in every war,” Robin argued. “Rebellious start-ups get swallowed by big, established multinationals. Idealistic activists become part of the government machine—”
“Prime ministers become secret agents?” Ulysses quipped, though he didn’t feel like joking.
Robin’s smile seemed equally tight. “Other way around, I think.”
“Didn’t realize we were at war…”
“What do you think’s happening in Ukraine?”
“I meant—”
“I know.” Robin curled a hand around his ankle. “But like most people, you think wars call for armies. We’re at war because we never stopped.”
“And you’re fighting for peace by covering up murder?”
Absently, Robin rubbed the jut of bone in his foot. “I’m saving what lives I can.”
“Doesn’t make you a hero.”
“I’m a spy, Ulysses. We’re not heroes. We’re necessary.”
Ulysses caught his hand. “Tell me.”
It might have been an hour or three before Robin finished unraveling his skein. His voice was even as he spoke, detailing secrets Ulysses suspected he was better off not knowing.
“You must’ve been a kid when they recruited you,” was all he found to say as silence fell over them.
Robin nodded. “I was a misfit. Easily persuaded by anyone willing to give me a little attention. Broken people make the best spies, don’t you know? I was a magnet for talent spotters.”
The note of bitterness in his voice didn’t leave Ulysses unmoved. Tentatively, he placed a hand on Robin’s shoulder. When that wasn’t shaken off, he slipped his fingers beneath the thin fabric of Robin’s undershirt. His skin was warm to the touch, the ridges of a scar catching under Ulysses’ palm.
“I didn’t ask how long you’re staying,” Robin recalled, furrowing his brow.
“I noticed.”
Robin shot him a wary glance. “What does that mean?”
I want to be here. It scares me how much.
Words were cheap, so Ulysses set about showing him instead. He pressed Robin down to the wooden deck and covered him with his body.
The towel fell away somewhere between Robin hitching up his knees and Ulysses kissing a zigzagging path down his chest. It wasn’t a matter of staking claim, but of rediscovering familiar territory. The speed bump ridges of Robin’s ribs stood out beneath his tongue. His stomach hollowed, muscles fluttering when Ulysses set his teeth into soft, fragile skin.
At length, Robin curled a hand into his hair and guided his mouth lower, to where he needed Ulysses to stroke and bite at his flesh. All pretense of skill fell by the wayside when Ulysses pulled away to divest him of his board shorts.
“We’re doing it out here, huh?” Robin rasped, looking up at him through his lashes. Anticipation was a good look on him.
“Al fresco sex is sort of our thing,” Ulysses pointed out. He dipped his head to Robin’s cunt before he could give into second-thoughts.
Robin made a thin and reedy sound, and tightened his fingers in Ulysses’ hair. He wasn’t shy about rolling his hips or telling Ulysses what to do, but neither did he hurry him along.
The pitch of his sighs would’ve been a guide without the urging of pleas. Ulysses didn’t mind. He lapped up the litany of keening moans. He reveled in the intoxicating flavor of Robin’s arousal gushing onto his lips as he redoubled his efforts.
Orgasm found Robin swiftly, clit throbbing beneath Ulysses’ tongue and his hips juddering of their own accord.
He nudged Ulysses away when pleasure became too much.
“You’re… You’re pretty fucking good. At that.”
Ulysses sucked a bruise into the inside of his thigh for the needless qualifier.
Everything was soft and hazy as he stretched over Robin’s naked body, their legs entwined. It didn’t feel quite real.
Robin chuckled when he told him as much. “Whatever you do, stay away from poetry.” His breath caught with an audible hitch when Ulysses rolled his hips forward and back, grinding his erection into the soft of his belly.
“You were saying?”
Robin pinched his hip. “Let me up.”
It took a few more slurred pleas, followed by a sharp reversal and Robin’s hand curled around his cock, before Ulysses conceded.
He spared a thought for locked doors as they made their way into the bedroom. Then Robin was pressing him back into the mattress and kissing him, and all considerations that weren’t intimately tied to the arch of his body against Ulysses’ fled with the tide.
“Do you ever…do it…the other way?” Robin meted out between kisses, his lips never more than an inch away from Ulysses’.
It was during one such interruption that Ulysses bit out, “Yes.”
“Yeah?” Robin tipped back, his eyes searching Ulysses’. “Do you want to?”
Ulysses didn’t put much thought into it. Most of the blood in his body had already flowed to his erection, robbing him of sense and doubt both. He would’ve agreed to just about anything as long as it meant Robin in his arms, in whatever capacity. He didn’t bother biting back his groan when Robin slipped free.
The shadows of the room were compact, but not so compact that Ulysses couldn’t see him rummage through the driftwood dresser squeezed against the far wall. The air in his lungs turned to soup as soon as he noticed the strap-on.
It wasn’t too thick, or too realistic. No faux testicles dangled from the harness as Robin slid it on and cinched the straps tight. Their eyes met.
“Backing out?” Robin wondered, a note of diffidence in his voice.
In response, Ulysses flipped over and bent his knees close to his chest. “It’s been a while, though, so…”
“I’ll go easy.”
The necessary business of fetching lube and condom reached Ulysses as though from far away. He jolted when Robin brushed a slick fingertip to his hole. “Sorry.”
Robin didn’t respond. The gentling stroke of his hand on Ulysses’ hip, holding him still as he worked him open, was as good as any whisper of reassurance.
He didn’t hurry the prep. Ulysses wondered if this was how he preferred it, if he liked to be in control rather than the reverse. Then he remembered the bliss on Robin’s face when Ulysses got him off in the back seat.
Spy or not, that didn’t look like faking. And Ulysses knew faking.
“Think you can take two?” Robin breathed, still spearing into him with a crooked digit.
Ulysses mumbled “yes” into the bedding and braced himself for the burn. It didn’t hurt that much. Robin was generous with the lube and patient in stroking him open.
“Done this before, huh?” Ulysses wheezed.
“Once or twice.”
“Liar,” Ulysses accused, voice fading on a moan when Robin curved his fingers just so and zeroed in on his prostate. The first glancing thrust had Ulysses choking on his breath. The second stiffened the upper third of his body. He grabbed at the sheets, seeking purchase he didn’t expect to find. “Fuck. Fuck… Oh, God, do that again.”
Robin laughed, but he obliged without further prompting. He used his long, talented fingers to probe, dart and twist, slicking and scissoring with practiced finesse.
Ulysses buried his face in the bed linen to keep his startled moans from ringing out. It wasn’t the most effective gag. He whined out loud on the far side of what might have been half an hour but was, according to the alarm clock, closer to two hours, as Robin slid his fingers free and knelt behind him. Ulysses had started to turn, an objection forming slowly on the tip of his tong
ue.
There it remained, perilously perched, because Robin had a hand in his hair and the other around the base of the dildo. Ulysses went down willingly, cheeks flaring hot.
“Relax for me,” Robin bid and pressed in.
It was a tight fit, but nowhere near as tight as some of Ulysses’ previous one-night entanglements with men he hadn’t really known. At least Robin cared enough to pepper kisses along the rigid shelf of his shoulders and stroke his hair.
“Easy,” he murmured, though whether he was talking to himself or Ulysses, it was impossible to tell. “Easy now, that’s it…”
Like calming a restless horse. Ulysses smothered a burst of laughter, eyes stinging.
Their fingers interlocked, slid apart and joined again of their own accord, a constant scrabble of hands over skin and tangled navy sheets, until Ulysses found purchase on Robin’s thigh. The flex of muscle was a flash of lightning before the clap of thunder, telegraphing each slow roll of hips before Robin nudged the flared tip of the strap-on against his prostate.
He had good aim. Within seconds, Ulysses found himself gulping down breaths, dancing on the piano wire thin suggestion of self-control.
Confined between his chest and his bent knees, the tip of his cock pearled with pre-cum, length twitching almost painfully at the top of every sweet thrust.
It wasn’t enough to bring Ulysses off, but it was damn close.
“Christ, you’re shaking with it,” Robin marveled. “You’re close, aren’t you?”
Robin carded fingers through his hair, at times pulling and stroking, constantly reminding Ulysses of the gamble he’d taken by coming here in the first place. In looking for him. In being so desperate to see Robin again that he hadn’t given more than passing through to the fallout.
He hurried to blink away the hot tears that stung his eyes, because Robin was still inside him but he was spilling them to the mattress and spooning Ulysses with stuttered, glancing thrusts as he murmured quietly in his ear. Ulysses had already figured out that he was talkative in bed. He didn’t mind it, as long as Robin didn’t stop touching him. Didn’t stop fucking him.
A kiss to his nape turned into a shallow bite, just enough tingle to it to make Ulysses arch away from Robin, the gap between them widening for the space of a heartbeat. Then Robin yanked him down again, one arm curled around his chest, the push-pull between them intensifying, pleasure ratcheting up another few notches.
“Christ, I—” Ulysses started, just as Robin curled a hand around his dick.
It was embarrassing how fast he came after that, hips jerking into Robin’s fist and back down onto Robin’s cock. It wasn’t so embarrassing to do it with Robin whispering soft, unearned praise into the crook of his neck.
Robin coaxed him through the aftershocks, then slowly eased his fingers free.
Ulysses could feel each individual, damp point of contact between them as he sunk into the mattress, spent. His throat worked with no sound coming out. He did manage to tip his head back against Robin’s shoulder, though, which counted as a victory when his whole body wouldn’t stop quaking.
“That was good, wasn’t it?” Robin mumbled.
“Fishin’ for compliments?” Ulysses panted, hoarse.
He made himself open his eyes no matter how much he might have wanted to lie there and fall asleep. Robin was awkwardly propped between him and the wall, his head at an angle that couldn’t be comfortable but which he wasn’t protesting.
If the kiss he planted at the corner of Ulysses’ lips was any indication, he had enjoyed himself, too.
He seemed in no hurry to pull out and Ulysses didn’t urge him one way or the other. As their kisses deepened, the strap-on slid free on its own. Ulysses hissed against Robin’s cheek and pressed his thighs together.
“Did I hurt you?” Robin asked, combing a hand through his sweat-damp hair.
“No more than I asked.”
Robin thinned his lips and nuzzled into the side of his neck. “I’ll make it up to you. Later.”
“You better have Viagra in your medicine cabinet.”
“I can be persuasive.”
“I’m fifty years old,” Ulysses drawled sleepily. “Takes more than…persuasion to get me to pull doubles.” The spirit was certainly willing, the body less so. He squirmed so he could drape an arm across Robin’s waist, leaching off his body heat. “Guess that’s not a problem for you…”
“I’m a lucky, lucky bastard,” Robin confirmed lightly.
He was quiet for a beat, his breaths easing until Ulysses thought he might have fallen asleep.
“How’re you still single?”
As enquiries went, the disbelief registered as an ego stroke. Sure, it was born of ignorance, but Ulysses would take what he could get. “Divorced,” he corrected.
“Fine, divorced… You should be nailing all the pussy in London, you loser. Not…” Here. With me.
Joints creaking, Ulysses hoisted himself up onto an elbow. The room had stopped spinning around him by the time he replied, so he saw the frown that creased Robin’s brow when he said, “I prefer men.”
“Oh. Even—”
“And I prefer you to most blokes,” Ulysses said, before Robin could ask.
“Yeah?”
Ulysses made an acquiescing noise. “I mean, for one thing, you do have a huge cock,” he pointed out, stroking a hand down the stiff silicone length. “Yeah, definitely developing a little fixation over here…”
He reveled in the snort of laughter that shook Robin’s frame and fell back to the mattress gratefully when Robin shoved him away.
“Oh, watch me put up with all the dirty tricks for your big dick—”
Robin straddled his leg and surged up, kissing him hard. It proved a most effective way to shut Ulysses up.
“Wait until you see the others,” he mumbled into the curve of Ulysses’ jaw.
Prosthetic and softening flesh brushed tantalizingly when Robin rolled his hips, as though to underscore the point.
“Oh God,” Ulysses snorted. “There’s more?”
Chapter Twelve
Robin laid out his collection almost shyly on the bed. He put no effort into building up momentum. He didn’t try to sell the panoply of sex aids as anything more than a passing interest. His gaze strayed periodically to Ulysses as he went over each model. There were strapless dildos with curved ends and harnesses with battery inserts. There were plugs that looked like flushed pink skin, and sleek silver toys not much thicker than Ulysses’ thumb.
Ulysses was too spent to suggest they tried any of them, but it was nice to know they had a choice.
“You use all of these?” he wondered, fiddling with a leather harness.
“Do you mean do I sleep around?”
“Don’t shoot the messenger.”
Robin rolled his eyes, but Ulysses could tell he was affecting nonchalance. “I’m not going to tell you my life story,” he said bluntly.
“Why not?” Ulysses found it difficult to conceal the note of hurt in his voice.
“Because who knows how long you’ll be here… Don’t get me wrong, I like you, but… This isn’t your life.”
The bedroom looked out onto the back porch. The only thing standing between them and the sea was the screen door. The sigh and crash of the waves on the beach provided the soundtrack. Ulysses thought of waking to a view of blue water and burnished sand every morning, and struggled to dig up the flaw in that fantasy.
A moth fluttered against the window, desperately struggling to escape.
Robin sighed and pushed himself upright. He caught the insect with cupped hands and gently closed one fist around it.
Ulysses propped himself up against the pillows. At first he thought Robin might have killed the insect, but when he opened his fist outside the screen door, the moth flew free, vanishing into the night.
“What other kinds of critters do you get around here?” Ulysses wondered. “Snakes?” Since he had adopted London for his home, he had be
come a city boy through and through.
Robin shook his head. “Spiders, sometimes. Snails congregate on the deck when it’s raining… Seagulls are the worst, though.”
“Why?”
“They shit everywhere.” The mattress dimpled beneath Robin’s knees. “And they massacre the tomatoes.”
“You grow your own food?”
“Oh yes,” Robin said, eyes wide. “I’m a self-sufficient hermit, what did you think?”
Ulysses picked up the nearest dildo. “I figured you lived off UPS deliveries.” Not that he objected.
When Robin didn’t reply, Ulysses brushed the sex toys off the mattress with a hand and crawled down the bed to burrow into his side. Post-coital clinginess came with the territory. He pressed a kiss to Robin’s sternum, right where his ribs met in a slight, adorable dip, but couldn’t get more than a half-smile out of him.
“What is it?” He was a journalist. Plowing for truth was part of his job description.
Robin shook his head. “You should get some sleep. When’s your return flight?”
It was a sobering notion, an unsubtle dismissal.
“Why, so you can leave the money on the bedside table?” Ulysses quipped. So much for post-coital bliss.
“I didn’t mean it like that.”
“You don’t want me here, you can be a man and come out and say it.”
Robin narrowed his eyes. “You saying I’m not a man?”
These were perilous waters, but Ulysses hadn’t flown out to Middle of Nowhere, South Carolina, just so he could roll over at the first provocation. “I’m saying you’re a coward,” he shot back. “Grow a pair.”
A hard shove and he found himself on his back, Robin pinning his hands into the mattress with one fist and locking the other around his throat. The knee-jerk reaction seemed to shock them both—Robin perhaps more so than Ulysses.
His face drained of color.
“I… Shit, I—I’m sorry.”
He’d started to pull back when Ulysses wrapped a leg around the back of his knee and arched up. Robin’s exhale gusted warm against his lips.