by Willa Okati
The crowd for concessions seemed almost as thick and congested as the horde packing the stadium stands. Robbie wondered if they’d double-sold the seats, counting on having as many people up and about checking out the coliseum and attached luxury lodges as were watching the game.
He’d rented a room for the night, himself. Just a precaution. If Cade and Nathaniel hadn’t calmed down by the time the winning touchdown was scored, they’d never manage to drive home safely. He’d had a look at the rooms in the brochure and his aching back had begged for a chance at a bed as soft as those promised to be. Even if he had to share the room with overexcited brothers, it’d be worth the indulgence.
Sleep might not be in the cards, but Robbie played the hand he was dealt.
He took his time ambling down the stairs and toward the snaking concession lines. Honestly, he wasn’t missing much outside the stadium. Coliseum management had made sure there were so many big screens mounted every few feet that it was almost as good as standing on the fifty-yard-line. Robbie rarely had the time to people-watch, and every now and then he took a notion to entertain himself. Plenty to look at here, he thought, just barely dodging a pair of youngsters racing pell-mell and hand-in-hand for the stadium mouth. He caught a passing glance at the soulmarks visible under the vees of their mostly-unbuttoned shirts as they galloped by him, the lines of the identical designs as stark and boldly black as new tattoos.
A rueful smile tugged at Robbie’s mouth. Young lovers. All the same, all the world over. Plenty of those to look at, if he chose.
Plenty of older couples, too. Everywhere Robbie turned his gaze, he seemed to pick the matched pairs every time. More than there should be, actually, for the size of an average crowd. Older couples with the silver ear cuffs marking twenty-five years together, younger ones with silly smiles and pink blushes, the shine not yet worn off their concealing wristbands or fingerless gloves if their marks weren’t in places easily kept private. Tall pairs and small ones, mismatches and odd couples.
And beyond those? The ones who were still looking, men and women of all ages who hadn’t given up hope yet and never would, their sleeves rolled back to display bare wrists and smooth hands. So many of them, all waiting for the day when they’d feel the red string of fate tugging them toward the other half of their soul. Once the soulmark developed, its owner could never rest easy or take a free breath until they’d satisfied the hunger for their true mate.
For better, or for worse. Mostly. For every rule, there was always an exception.
Robbie’s smile bent away into a faint frown. He thumbed at the spot on his chest that still nagged at him, demanding to be soothed, and scratched it with his short-cut fingernails. Taken together, the stuffiness of the area and the throng of people made him half-choke for want of a breath of fresh air.
Maybe he’d take a walk around the lodge’s gardens. If the brochure hadn’t lied, those were meant to be as spectacular as the rest of the accommodations. There had to be fewer people outside. He’d nearly started sweating, but his skin seemed too hot and dry for sweat to break through.
He caught himself against a wall before he fell, the world spinning dizzily in front of him.
Something’s wrong, he realized, determined to shoulder himself upright despite the tilting whirl of his vision. He took a deep breath even though the smell of new things and too many people wasn’t the most appealing perfume, and lifted his head.
Better? Robbie tested his balance. Yes, better. Still, what the hell…? He shook his head in an effort to clear it and pushed his hair back, away from his face. Time for another cut. He’d look even more like a Hells Angel if he didn’t. Tomorrow, maybe, or the day after—
Robbie stopped. He’d seen, in the mirror, just a passing glance of— But that couldn’t be right. Wouldn’t be.
He turned to scan the crowd, sifting through people as fast as he could identify one then another as a stranger. His heartbeat bumped in a too-fast, too-offbeat jig, and battered his ribs. He pressed his palm over his heart and hissed between his teeth.
Calm down, Robbie ordered himself. It’s nothing. You’re not used to crowds anymore, or this much adrenaline in the air. You’re imagining things. He’s not here.
But he was.
Robbie saw him again as he turned around by the concession stand. Tall, with a tousled head of autumn-colored hair falling in flyaway tumbles. A practical, sensible white shirt with the tie half-undone and at least four buttons open at the top. His hand pressed to the center of his chest, his lips parted, his eyebrows drawn together in a frown of confusion as he searched the crowd and—
And saw Robbie. Even ten feet away or more, Robbie saw the recognition kindle in his eyes.
Recognition and familiarity. He knew those eyes. He’d watched the lights change in them from so close that their eyelashes tangled. He’d grown older, as Robbie had, broader in the shoulders and even longer in the legs, and boasted a glimmer of paler color at his temples.
Ivan. Oh, God. Ivan.
Robbie brushed his fingertips across the slightly raised edges of his soulmark, and found it burning as hot as a brand. Fuck. He was an idiot not to have realized— But he’d kept that mark so hidden, so deliberately forgotten for so long, for as many years as he and Ivan had kept their distance, neither knowing where the other had gotten to or what they were doing with their lives.
He saw the shape of his name form on Ivan’s lips. Not only seen but recognized, too, even with the beard and the gray in his hair. He’d been barely twenty-one the last time he’d been in the same room as Ivan, and Ivan only just twenty-two. His soulmark had faded from stark black to barely-sepia since then, and months sometimes passed without him thinking about his mate.
Or so he’d liked to tell himself, even if it was a lie.
Ivan had seen him. He started toward Robbie, pushing people out of his way.
Robbie didn’t think before he reacted. Couldn’t. He turned his back, put his head down and half-tunneled, half-forced a path through the crowd that closed behind him like the Red Sea, throwing elbows all the way.
Ivan stopped, catching his balance more easily than he might at any other time. He couldn’t hear anything over the rush of blood pressure and vertigo in his ears, and if he didn’t know better, he’d swear the half-formed soulmark under his palm was hot enough to burn his hand.
Robbie always had been good at clearing a path. And hiding.
Robbie. God Almighty. He had to lean heavily against a barricade to catch his breath. Robbie.
He’d thought he’d never see Robbie again.
And if Robbie had had his way, Ivan wouldn’t have seen him tonight, would he?
Ivan’s lips firmed as he pressed them together. Robbie might be good at blazing a trail, but Ivan had taught him everything he knew. He could smell Robbie like no one else would be able to, the musky rawness of mate flooding his senses. More than that, he knew Robbie. Better than anyone ever had, at one point. He didn’t know where Robbie would go, or what he’d do once he got there, but he’d be damned if he could let the man walk away without so much as a hello.
Maybe more than that. Maybe.
Head down, stride long, Ivan plunged forward with the scent of his mate strong on the tip of his tongue.
Chapter Two
Or at least that’d been the idea. A strong hand on his arm drew Ivan to a halt. Nick had followed him to the concessions counter. Of course he had.
“What’s going on?” Nick asked.
Ivan didn’t recognize the sound that came out of his mouth. Less than a snarl, more than a growl. Something animal and feral.
Nick let go of him as if the touch of his skin burned and held both hands up, palms out. “Whoa!”
“Everything all right?” Abram’s height and bulk loomed behind Ivan. He didn’t touch Ivan. Kept his hands to himself. Smart man.
“God knows,” Nick said. His eyebrows were furrowed in a frown. “He nearly took my head off just now.”
Abra
m’s body went taut. Ivan could feel it, even with the inches of distance between them. “Ah,” he said. “Ivan? Turn around and look at me.”
Ivan couldn’t refuse. He wanted to, boy howdy, but he had too much cop in his DNA to refuse a direct order from someone the other parts of him recognized as dominant and elder. He struck a compromise right down the middle and craned his neck to shoot Abram a dark look over his shoulder. Abram’s lips tightened into a narrow line. He knew.
Nick didn’t. He wouldn’t, would he? Lucky bastard had grown a soulmark for a friend. He’d never had to chase Barrett because Barrett had been right there and happy to be taken. “What’s going on?” Nick demanded, frustration plain to see.
For God’s sake… Ivan fumbled the buttons of his shirt as he tugged them open. The cool night air on his soulmark made him shudder with something that wasn’t exactly relief. It’d faded from embossed jet to a milky tea stain over the years of separation from his mate, but no one could mistake a soulmark for anything else in the world. He heard Nick hiss in a breath.
“I thought you didn’t have one,” he said. “Abram, you knew about this?”
“It isn’t my story to tell.” Abram took three deliberate steps backward. “Move to the side, Nick. Let him past you.”
Nick cursed under his breath. He’d taken four steps to Abram’s three when his eyes met Ivan’s. “Shit.”
“Shit indeed.” Abram took Nick by the shoulder. He didn’t block Ivan’s path, but he didn’t relinquish Ivan’s attention just yet. “You will come back to the room we’re sharing afterward and let us know you’re all right. Understood?”
You’re not an animal. Ivan made himself nod, then pressed his palms to his face, hiding his eyes for the space of a few breaths. In, out. Cold, clear, good. Helped, some. Enough to let him offer Nick an unsteady, lopsided grin. “I’ll be back. I promise.”
Nick didn’t look reassured. “You’d better. You want us to save your seat?”
Abram clipped Nick affectionately across the back of the head. “Don’t be an idiot. Take the beer the nice man bought you, then call your soulmate again and promise him a month’s worth of blowjobs for not being an obstreperous bastard.”
“Yeah,” Nick said, giving Ivan a wary look. “Might just do that.”
Ivan rolled his eyes. He would have shot back one smartass comment or another if—if he—
A rush of cold, clean air cut through the miasma of the crowd, some of which were staring openly. Not that he gave too much of a damn. Not when his ears pricked and his nose filled with the almost uncut scent of mate again.
The gardens. Of course. That’d be just where Robbie would retreat. Ivan managed to pat Abram’s arm once in thanks before he put his head down and his feet forward, following.
* * * *
Robbie took a hard left out the side entrance to the coliseum. There, the structure met grounds that were still too new to have settled into their roots, but plentiful enough to lose himself in. He didn’t run, but he lengthened his stride. Running would draw stares, and those he didn’t want. He kept his head down, let the unbound length of his hair conceal his face and wedged his hands in his hip pockets to keep them steady.
Steady, and away from his soulmark. He imagined he’d be able to see the mark if he looked down, blazoned over his breastbone. He could barely remember a time when he hadn’t borne that mark. He and Ivan had been young when they’d met. Legally of age, but still so young. Too young to know what they were doing. Too young to make a life together.
Robbie realized he’d freed one hand from its confines and had covered his mark. He could feel the embossed lines beneath the pads of his fingertips, a swirling design with odd breaks and spiny juts. When it had first come in, he’d wondered what the sharp lines meant. Some called the symbolism of mark-patterns a myth, but he’d beg to differ.
His skin burned and his chest ached. He couldn’t draw a deep breath no matter how he tried.
Tried. Yes. They’d tried, Ivan and him. If good intentions were guarantees of success, they’d have been cracking jokes about tenth anniversaries right around now. But. But. Ivan came from a family of police, of detectives and precinct captains. Robbie’s family line clung to the wrong side of the tracks as far back as anyone could trace. He’d had two brothers to take care of. Ivan had expectations of college. Even if they’d had all the good intentions two boys could muster…
Well. It hadn’t been enough to keep them from tearing each other apart. Not enough to keep them together.
Robbie scraped his hair back and tied it around itself in a rough knot. Likely he had some rubber bands squirreled away in one pocket or another, but he didn’t trust himself to fiddle with anything delicate just then.
He’d come far enough away from the coliseum that the roar of background chatter had faded into a hum of white noise. Almost soothing. Cade and Nathaniel would wonder where he was, in a minute. They’d wait for halftime to look for him, but look for him they would. Nathaniel would have been too young to recognize Ivan at a glance now, but Cade would know him right away. He’d go off like a grenade.
God, but he was on fire. Ready to explode. His cock, stiff and sturdy behind his fly, ached and throbbed with each step, but Robbie didn’t stop. He kept going. One foot after the other. Steady. Fast.
Knowing all the while Ivan was right behind him. Close enough to touch, now.
He wouldn’t speak first? Robbie would do it for him. He braced his forearm against the bole of a sturdy young tree and spoke without turning his head. “I should have known you’d be here,” he said, breaking the silence with a crack like the ice on a pond with the first breath of spring. “I should have remembered you’d come.”
Ivan stopped, the scuff of his footsteps along the gravel path noticeable only for having gone quiet. “I’d forgotten too,” he said. His voice was as rich as molasses and bourbon. Robbie wanted to drink it down. “It should have been finished a long time ago. What happened?”
“Really? You want to talk about the coliseum now?”
“You’d rather I talk about something else? Because there are a dozen things I could say, and you wouldn’t like any of them.”
“No more than you would.” Robbie didn’t dare look back at Ivan, no matter how he might want to. Bad enough to feel him, the length and weight of his body a sharp sensory image, even though they hadn’t touched again. Yet. “You shouldn’t be here. We agreed, a long time ago, to keep our distance. That it was better this way.”
“We did.” Ivan moved closer, close enough for Robbie to feel the radiant heat of his body. Too hot, as if he were running a fever—which he would be. Robbie was. A dry heat that baked the skin from the inside, his soulmark hot as a brand. If he closed his eyes, he could see the design against the back of his lids. “We did. A long time ago, we did.”
Robbie kept his eyes closed. It took all the effort he didn’t spend otherwise to hold still. His body knew damned well what it wanted, and it didn’t care about arrangements or agreements or the common sense that warned him they were outdoors, and who knew who might be watching. “Then why are you here?”
“I’d forgotten,” Ivan said. “That we made a promise to come here for the first game. I wasn’t thinking about that when I bought the tickets, I swear.”
“You shouldn’t have followed me out here,” Robbie said. He meant it as a warning, but it didn’t sound like one, even to him.
“I know.” Ivan’s hand made firmer contact, fiery as an ember even through Robbie’s sweater. “I do know, I just… You smell like a brewery.”
The comment startled a laugh out of Robbie. “You haven’t changed.”
“You have.” Ivan’s body blanketed Robbie now. Cloaked him. Not heavily. Holding back, still, though Robbie could feel the iron-tight tension in the stiffness of his limbs. He sifted fingers through Robbie’s hair, drawing it away from his shoulder on the left side. “Gray. When did you start to go gray?”
“Don’t know. Can’t rememb
er.”
“Doubtful,” Ivan said. His nose bumped the side of Robbie’s neck. His left arm hovered in the air as if he meant to put it around Robbie and pin them together. He breathed deep, tickling the spot just beneath Robbie’s ear, and set his lips barely over the lobe. “But you smell the same, even with the spilled beer. Smoke, leather, maple… You smell like my mate. That hasn’t changed.”
Robbie pressed his head to the coolness of the bark on the young tree. Didn’t much help, and in leaning forward he canted his ass back against Ivan. A sharp “ Oh —” escaped him, matched by Ivan’s groan.
Hard. So hard. So hot, sending sparks up his spine. He would ache, already desperate for release. And yet…
“You should go,” Robbie said, his lips dry. “Go now. Or I should.”
“Say no, and I’ll be gone.” Ivan’s hands weren’t hesitant now. They held Robbie’s hips in an unforgiving grasp, pulling Robbie tight against him. “God. Please say no. I can’t. You’re the tough one.”
Robbie drew in a breath, or tried to. Ivan had touched his mouth to the back of Robbie’s neck, the barest hint of teeth in his kiss. He hadn’t been kissed in so long. Ivan held him too tightly. He didn’t bruise easily, but he’d have marks.
He’d—
He pressed his clenched fist to his soulmark. Ivan’s hand covered his.
Robbie knew better, he did, but he couldn’t stop himself. Nor could he say no.
His strength gave out, and he bowed his head.
This. This was why they’d promised to steer clear. Because they’d known—even at the end, they still hadn’t been able to keep their hands off each other—what would happen if they ever dared to meet again, even once.
Just once. Once more. Just this once more. Robbie’s arms flexed against the length of the tree, its sturdiness the only thing that held him upright. The tree—and Ivan.
