A Marvellous Light (The Last Binding, #1)

by Freya Marske

Something larger than laughter and emptier than pain lodged between Robin’s ribs, a feeling that was new but felt, in an indefinable way, mundane. Human. He looked again at the ball of light—magic, magic—then screwed his eyes shut, leaned his arm against the wall and his head on his arm, and breathed like he was learning how.

Robin’s first impression was still correct. Edwin was not handsome. But from this angle, with that smile like a secret caged in glass, he had … something. A delicate, turbulent, Turner-sketch attractiveness that hit Robin like a clean hook to the jaw.

Even when it was mutual, attraction didn’t conjure respect from nowhere. Where contempt existed, attraction could even deepen it.

I’d like to introduce my fists to whoever taught you to stop talking about the things that interest you. Those were not things one blurted out to a friend. They were their own cradles of magic, an expression of the desire to transform one thing into another. And what if the magic went awry?

It had been a long time since Edwin had done this for someone else. He experimented, gentle strokes alternating with firmer tugs, watching the way Robin’s throat moved as he swallowed, listening to the soft curses that emerged from his lips. Robin put a hand on the wall by Edwin’s shoulder and rested his weight there, giving Edwin just enough space to work his hand in between their bodies.

Colour touched Edwin’s cheeks. The smile that tugged at his mouth was the same one he’d worn when Robin had admitted to being fascinated with his hands: faintly incredulous, but mostly pleased. It wasn’t an expression of regret. It did make Robin want to drag him back to the bed, pin him down, and murmur praise into his skin until it inked itself there like the opposite of a curse.