Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It is not the first thing he learns about her; it is the third.

The first, of course, is the shock of her, the blonde of her hair, the feel of her breast in his palm.

The second is the color of her eyes, sky before storm, huge and hurt and deep as the ocean.

The third, though. The third is the smell of her, and this he cannot let go of, any more than he can let go of anything else. She is vanilla and velvet, rich and sweet and warm and welcoming; she is an Omega, and he does not know what to do with this.

Robin hates being an Omega, when she thinks about it. Which she tries not to do; she takes her blockers and dates sweet, safe Beta Matthew and does her very best to avoid being in close contact with Alphas.

Which is why, she thinks, this one hits her like a freight train, both literally and figuratively. First she nearly dies, then she is ensconced in his office, her breast sore and her nose full of him, of Alpha, and it takes every fibre of her being to push it away. She does not want to play sweet little Omega to his big bad Alpha, and is already plotting her escape from this office which is so clearly His with a capital H. It smells of cigarettes and musk, speaking of long nights and hours of stress. It is nearly overpowering just to be here next to him, both of their chests heaving, and Robin knows she is giving off fear-smell and hates it, hates being an Omega.

She doesn’t leave, though. She stays, and then she stays, and then she stays. She wants to be there, doing work she likes, and she ups her dosage of blockers and plans her wedding and pretends like she isn’t constantly surrounded by the smell of Cormoran Strike.

Cormoran has never spent so much time in close quarters with an Omega. Most of the people in his life have been Betas, of course, considering they’re more than 80% of the world’s population. But in SIB, there’s a higher-than-usual percentage of Alphas, like him, attracted to the work, the excitement, the power of it. He dislikes most of them, with their Alpha posturing and constant dick-measuring contests.

And Charlotte. Charlotte, with her sharp nails and sharp tongue and sharp scent, Charlotte who was an Alpha like him, Charlotte who had never learned how to be sweet or soft or pliant. He and Charlotte had orbited each other like two planets unable to decide if they should collide or not.

Alphas pairing off with each other wasn’t unheard of, but it was rare, and Cormoran knew why, from the 17 years he’d done it, on and off. Because two Alphas in a room was two Alphas too many, as the saying went. It was impossible, it was sweet agony, it was endless. Until it wasn’t.

And now there’s Robin, Robin who is the epitome of Omega-hood with her warm demeanor and soft lush curves and pretty face, Robin who sits at her desk and handles his mail and does credible enough voices on the phone to commit minor crimes for him. Robin is something else entirely. And he can’t have her— tells himself he doesn’t want her— knows he’s lying and lies anyway.

It’s just biology, he tells himself, when he catches her scent, her frustration or happiness or fatigue on his tongue. It’s the imperative to mate, to bond, to produce heirs of his bloodline. It’s that she’s the first Omega he’s been around for any length of time as an adult. It’s not his fault, because she’s beautiful and he’s been programmed to want her. And it’s not her fault either.

The ring on her finger, marking her as not-his, the one from her awful Beta fiance, it’s a safeguard. It reminds him that just because his hormones are activated doesn’t mean he gets to have. That’s never been how his life worked, anyway. Cormoran Strike doesn’t get to have things be easy. He rarely gets to have things at all.

“Do you want to come for a pint?” he asks her one evening, after they’ve wrapped up a case that will pay out handsomely. He is jubilant, already tallying up the bills he can pay off, the groceries he will be able to buy. “My treat.”

“I’d love to,” Robin says. “But I… oh, I can’t.”

“That’s too bad,” he says as he shrugs on his coat. “Why not?”

She blushes, and he can smell her embarrassment, an undertone to the velvet-rich scent of her that he tries to ignore.

“You’re…” She clears her throat, cheeks gone pink. “You’re very…”

Cormoran stills, takes stock of himself. He tucks his chin down and inhales, and oh, he thinks. Yeah. No wonder.

“Sorry,” he says, now sharing her embarrassment. He’s not used to people who will notice him presenting, or react to it. Other Alphas might be threatened, but it won’t do to them-

Robin’s flush seems different now that he knows what he smells like. He wonders, not for the first time, how much she can tell about him from his scent; he’s taken to smoking in his office, just to help cover up his emotions. He doesn’t like thinking that Robin knows so much about his mental state.

“Have a good night, then,” she tells him, and turns away, letting him go out into the crisp evening air. He goes to a bar that will be filled with Betas, because he knows he needs to find someone to go home with, but doesn’t like the thought of reeling in an Omega who might not have liked him but for the heavy odor of his rut-scent. And he find a nice Beta girl— well, she’s not nice, but she does a credible job at sating his rut for the night, and it’s fine. Everything’s fine.

Robin doesn’t know why she doesn’t tell Matthew about Cormoran being an Alpha.

Well, she does, a bit. Matthew has a odd streak about Alphas, one which she privately names an inferiority complex. He would like to be an Alpha, she knows, would like to have the genetic height and weight and power that Alphas so often have, would like to claim her totally as an Alpha would.

But she loves him partially because he is a Beta, because he is safe, because he is hers and she is his in ways that have nothing to do with impassioned biological drives and everything to do with mutual care and trust. That’s better, she thinks.

But she knows he wouldn’t like it that her boss is an Alpha, on top of all the other things he doesn’t like about Cormoran already. She tries to tell him that Cormoran is unattractive, older and a bit greying and running slightly to fat, but he doesn’t believe her; he seems convinced Cormoran is out to steal her away. And he can’t smell it on her, the way she’s picked up an undercurrent of Alpha, the way she might if she were Bonded. But it’s just because of the small office and long hours, she says, and ignores it, and hardly anyone can tell anyway, because most of the people in her life are Betas. It’s better that way, she knows, safer.

But her boss is an Alpha, an Unbonded Alpha no less, and it would be catastrophic for Matthew to know this. So she doesn’t tell him. Eventually, he will find out, but she hasn’t lied, not really. She just… hasn’t said.

This won’t save her from the fallout. But she likes her job, likes her boss, and likes her relationship. She doesn’t think it’s selfish to want to keep all three.

Being around an Unbonded Alpha is endless torture for her biology. Robin hates it, hates the voice in her head or her chest or her womb that whispers, this is a good Alpha, strong, he’ll protect you. Just go to him. Just be a good girl for your Alpha.

There is the voice she hates, and there is Robin, and she will win, every time, she tells herself. She grits her teeth and takes her blockers and buys a candle-warmer that she plugs in between her desk and Cormoran’s door, to help cover up the way their scents combine into something so delicious, so deeply correct that it sends her body into overdrive.

She likes her job. She wants to keep it. She has Matthew, and a ring, and a white dress waiting for her back in Masham, and that’s better than a Mate-mark on the sensitive gland between her shoulder blades. It’s so much better.

She buys candles that smell of clean, fresh things, linen and cotton and salty sea air, and it helps. It helps both of them, she can tell.

The day she receives a severed leg in the post, Cormoran is out his office door before Robin can make a sound. He could smell her fear-distress-horror on a level deeper than mere hearing, can smell it sharp and clear above the candles she always has going now.

He wraps her up in his arms, turns her face away from the open box. The feel of his hand against her face is electric, her body folding in against his in a way that makes his instincts croon. He wants to keep her there, safe in his arms, wants to touch her face and her neck and wants to- wants-

He sets her down on the couch and pulls himself away. There are things he can have, and Robin is most definitely not one of them. And there’s a severed leg in a box on her desk, and a wedding invitation on his.

Now is most certainly not the time, he tells his body. The time for that will be never.

Robin’s life is blown apart in slow motion. She watches the pieces fall through the air, glittering bright and sharp, and wonders at how fragile it all was to begin with.

“He said that he was under a lot of stress,” she tells Cormoran drunkenly across the scarred table-top. “And he said that he wanted to- to be with someone-”

He can cut himself off, but she had known what the next word off his tongue was going to be.

“Normal,” she finishes. As though being a Beta was any more normal than being an Omega, than being an Alpha like Matthew privately wished he could be. As though that excused what he’d done to her, to them, to their life together, to their future.

Cormoran’s face is a thundercloud, and she can smell his anger, like lightning before the storm. It’s soothing to the voice in her head/heart/womb, the anger of an Alpha, this Alpha, her Alpha-

He is not your Alpha, she tells the voice with horror. He’s not your anything. He’s your boss.

“You deserve-” Cormoran says, his hand flexing into a fist between them. She can taste the violence he wants to do, heavy on her tongue, and she wants- she wants-

Her life is in pieces. She can’t have anything she wants. Especially not that. Never that. Never.

“You deserve so much more than that,” Cormoran says, and she can’t look at him. She knows, or thinks she knows, or is afraid she knows, what she will find there, between them.

She can’t take that risk.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” she says after a moment. “I think you’re the only friend I have in London.”

“I know people,” Cormoran says. “I’ll call-”

He cuts himself off, and Robin can see him gentling his tone. He’d begun speaking like a leader— like an Alpha— he knows she’ll do whatever he asks, if he asks her like that, especially now when she is so vulnerable.

“Please,” he says softly, and it’s not better, not any less irresistible. “Let me call my friends. They have a guest room, they’ll take you in. They’re good people, married, both Betas— you’ll like them.”

Let me take care of you, his tone begs. And she wants him to, as any Omega wants their Alpha to take care of them. But he is not her Alpha, she doesn’t want him to be her Alpha, she doesn’t want any Alpha—

“Alright,” she says. “I trust you.”

And the look on his face at her words— it’s too much.

As it turns out, Nick and Ilsa are good people, and they take good care of Robin. She likes them, likes who they are around each other. They bring out the best in each other, and she likes the way that Nick watches Ilsa cook. She likes the way that Ilsa always says “love you,” to Nick on the phone, even when she’s just calling to ask him to buy more eggs.

Robin wants what they have. But she’s an Omega, and she can’t have what she wants.

Chapter Text

Eventually, of course, things turn out to be mostly fine. Nick and Ilsa put her in touch with one of their friends, who needs a flatmate to share his frankly massive flat, and she can just about make rent and he’s nice and Beta and gay and safe. He’s also as busy as she is, keeps similarly strange hours, and doesn’t mind that she’s an Unbonded Omega. So it’s fine.

And her work with Cormoran is good. Great, even. He gives her more responsibility, and she spends all her free time studying how to be better, how to be more capable. She takes up self-defense lessons again, because— well, because.

She doesn’t tell people what happened to her in uni. It’s none of their business, really. Because she’s fine now.

Her world was blown to pieces, but she’d building a new one, and she likes it. She feels…. free.

Of course it can’t last.

Robin chose her doctor specifically because she was an Omega. Medicine is not a field that was kind to Omegas, the same way it is unkind to women, to people of color, to anyone who isn’t a straight white male Alpha. So a female Omega doctor is someone special, just for being.

It was nice to have a doctor who understood being an Omega as more than a bulletpoint list off a slide in med school and the collection of stereotypes that masqueraded around as things that “everybody knows.”

Dr. Gallagher is kind and professional and takes Robin seriously, which is why this turns into such a terrible day.

“I can’t,” Robin says, trying to sound firm. She thinks her chin might be wobbling. “It’s not possible.”

“Robin, you have to be reasonable about this,” Dr. Gallagher says.

“Do you know what you’re asking me to do? I’m… alone, I don’t have anyone in London,” Robin says. “I can’t do this by myself.”

“You’re already at the limit of what’s safe to do on suppressants,” Dr. Gallagher says. “Past it, really. Best practices is two heats a year. One is possible, if handled carefully. One every two years is as far as we’ve been able to take it, and it can get ugly, Robin. Believe me.” She shakes her head.

“I’m just not in a place where that’s possible,” Robin says.

“As your doctor, I’m going to have to insist you at least strongly consider it,” Dr. Gallagher says. “Your last heat was just over a year ago. You need to be making arrangements for your next, or it could have a serious effect on your future health and fertility.”

Robin sighs, feeling trapped. There is no way on earth she’s going to be able to have a safe heat now. Not now.

“If you don’t have… anyone,” Dr. Gallagher says carefully. “I can write a script for the necessary tools so that you can do it alone. It will be extremely unpleasant, and I do recommend finding a trusted friend or partner to help you. But if you don’t have one, we can figure it out.”

Robin nods. She still feels all twisted up inside, ready to scream or to cry. But she has to handle this.

“Alright,” she says. “Tell me what I need to do so I can do this by myself.”

“I need to take a few days off,” Robin tells Cormoran the next day at the office.

“What for?” he asks, the way anyone would, but Robin feels herself tensing up. She does not want to tell him.

“It’s- I don’t- I’d rather not say,” she manages. Cormoran looks at her, evaluating her more closely. She hopes he can’t smell her stress, her fear.

“Alright,” he says. “I’ll shuffle the guys around, we can cover for you for a little while. When?”

“I don’t know,” Robin says, doing a mental tally. Days for the blockers to wear off, days for the— the thing itself— then a day or two to recover— “Two weeks from now? For maybe… four days?”

Cormoran nods. “Which days?”

“I don’t… know yet,” Robin says.

The look he gives her— he knows she thinks with horror.

“Robin,” he says, and the way he says her name is…

“Please,” she says. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

He nods again, to her retreating back. He can smell her fear in the air for an hour.

Robin doesn’t want to do it at her flat. Her flatmate is a good man, but he won’t understand— she can’t be around—

She googles a few things, looks at her bank accounts, and makes a reservation at a somewhat seedy hotel that specializes in certain things. It would be nice to do this in the comfort of her own home, but then, where is home?

The idea of trying to ride out a heat in her parent’s house, beneath the staring posters of her youth, makes her want to crawl out of her skin. She had always had— Matthew a different internal voice says, a harsher, colder one, think his name, you can’t give him power over you anymore—

Anyway. She has never done this alone. She has never done this with an Alpha, either, but that was better, wasn’t it? Safer. Never knowing meant never missing it.

Dr. Gallagher had mentioned to her that there were plenty of ways an unattached Omega might find an Alpha to ride out a heat with, ones would wouldn’t hurt her or try to Bond her, but Robin had shaken her head immediately. No to the apps, no to the matching services, no to anonymous message boards—

“It’s better this way,” she’d said to Dr. Gallagher, and her doctor had smiled faintly and not argued with her.

The promised “tools” arrive in a plain brown box to her flat on the second day she doesn’t take a blocker pill. She had been getting nervous, but Dr. Gallagher had said it would take 3 to 5 days without pills for her heat to come on; she had told Cormoran that she would need that time off “soon.”

The “tools” are familiar to Robin in an instinctive way; a vibrator, the nice kind with a removable silicone covering. A large dildo, with an inflatable “knot” that she can control with the attached remote control. A set of three different sizes of plug, if she preferred that. She is violently blushing as she packs them, wrapped carefully, into a duffle bag, along with some clothing, her laptop, toothbrush, and various other sundries. She’s never done this alone before. She’s always had someone to care for her.

It’s terrifying. She hates it. She hates being an Omega, having all of these urges and needs that throw her life into disarray; how simple it would be to be a Beta, like so many others. No heats, no scent glands, no worrying about Alphas—

She isn’t a Beta, though. This is her life.

Robin sighs, and brings the bag to the office with her. It’s soon, now.

Cormoran can smell her no matter where he goes. And it’s raining outside, so his plan to tail the client’s wife on her daily jog is ruined. He should get out, leave, stop torturing himself— but he doesn’t. He sits in his office, no cigarette between his lips.

Robin’s gone off her blockers. He can tell. Just from the way her scent has changed, gotten deeper, richer. He hadn’t thought it was possible, but it was.

He wants to go out into the office and devour her alive. He wants to inhale that smoky velvet sweetness and memorize it, wants to haul her upstairs to his flat and—

Well. He’s not doing anything to do with the security footage playing on his computer screen. With shaking hands he lights a cigarette and opens his window, inhaling the chilly rain-fresh air. He shakes his head to clear it.

She needs to go. Now.

He smokes the cigarette down to half before getting up, his fists clenching tight. He needs to have more control. He wishes he could afford better blockers, because being this close to an Omega about to go into heat is going to bring on a rut of his own, and they certainly can’t afford that right now.

“Robin!” he calls out in an only slightly choked-up voice once his self-control’s in place.

She comes to his door, and his self-control isn’t as strong as he thought. He inhales again, and he can smell his own scent layering with hers, his hormones going into overdrive, preparing to—

“I think you ought to go,” he says. Or, was what he meant to say. The words were ready on his tongue, but he opened his mouth and they were somehow replaced. What he actually says is:

“Are you doing this alone?”

She looks at him, her stormy eyes looking foggy today, and shocked. It’s not a done thing, to just ask about such things. But his mind’s foggy now, too.

“Why?” she asks in return, and he can see her posture relaxing as she’s hit by his scent, the overwhelming Alpha scent his body is now producing at a horrendous rate, trying to lure her in closer—

She takes a single step into the room, and every brain cell in his head is screaming, and there’s at least two schools of thought:

His rational mind, saying that she needs to go now, at once, right this second before they both do something they’ll regret.

His irrational mind, the one built of pure instinct and desire, which is telling him to go to her, take her, take her now, at once, right this second.

Somehow, the two halves of his brain unite to form some sort of truce, and he manages to reply to Robin’s question.

“If you don’t—” have some other Alpha some fucking Beta some other “—have anyone to get you through this,” he says.

“Yes?” she asks, and this is the edge of danger.

“I-” let me, let me, I’ll be your Alpha, I’ll do it, I’ll do whatever you need, I’ll fuck you until you scream my name, I’ll fuck you until you cry, I’ll do it please let me—

There is a crack of thunder, shockingly loud through the open window. Both of them shake their heads, minds cleared for a moment of the sweet cloud of their combined hormones. The wind picks up, sweeping the room clean and cold.

Robin stares at him, horrified. Cormoran wishes he could sink directly through the floor. He was about to tell her to— ask him, he wanted to her to ask him— let me do this for you, let me be the one, don’t let anyone else touch you, don’t, please, I’ll do everything, anything, just say the word—

“I need to go,” Robin says, and he can still smell her, and yes, she does. She needs to go.

“Robin,” he says. She pauses in the doorway, halfway fled. “If you— need—”

“Cormoran,” she whispers, and there is a roaring in his chest at the sound of his name on her lips, his name which no one calls him, his name which she says so sweetly, he wants to her to keep saying his name, please, just say it again—

“I can’t,” she says, and is gone.

He is left with half a cigarette, smouldering forgotten between his fingers, and a raging hard-on that’s more than halfway to a rut. He closes his window, stubs out the butt. Counts to ten, twenty, thirty.

Eventually he locks up the office, because nothing more will get done today, and goes upstairs. And he knows he will be ashamed of himself later, but now, after so many months, is the first time he thinks of Robin when he takes himself in hand.

He can still smell her, the heavy scent of her oncoming heat, clinging to him. He imagines her voice, saying his name, over and over, as he grips himself firmly, his knot half-forming, imagines the way the skin he has never seen would feel— her legs, her back, the sweet soft forbidden place between her legs where he knows she will taste so—

He finishes with a grunt, and when it is over he pours himself a glass of scotch. He will have to do this again at least twice more, and he has passed the point of no return.

Robin’s name is on his tongue when he finishes the next time, too, but he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t let himself say it. That much, at least, he can still do.

Robin doesn’t know how she gets herself from the office to the hotel she has booked. It’s all a blur to her now, the heat coming on faster than she expected, and she is grateful she packed her go-bag already.

The clerk at the check in desk nods, knowingly, and Robin is soothed to see that she too is an Omega, someone who will understand.

“Most of our staff here are Betas,” she tells Robin. “You can call for food and stuff and it won’t be a problem. Will anyone be joining you?”

Robin has to shake her head no. No, she’s alone here. The clerk looks at her sympathetically.

“Well if you were going to have someone join you I would need you to tell me the name now or call down so I can let them up. We take our guests safety very seriously.”

“Thank you,” Robin manages. It’s close, now, and her body is on fire, is crying out for the one thing it can’t have, and all she wants to do is turn around and go back, back to the office and the Alpha there—

She bites back Cormoran’s name and follows the clerk’s directions to her room, the bare space furnished with a large bed, a place for her bag, a basket of blankets. There’s a bathroom too, with a large tub and nicer showerhead than the one at her flat.

It’s not her full heat, yet, but it’s coming, and every instinct in her is clamoring for it, for an Alpha, any Alpha— that Alpha— no—

She feels too hot, empty inside, she needs a cock inside her, needs a knot, filling her up, holding her still, keeping her safe, and even as she rages against these urges inside she is stripping out of her office clothing and ripping open her bag.

She runs a bath, soothing cool water, and pours bath salts in, surrounding herself with familiar scents. The water laps against her overheated skin, and it’s here in the water that she finally gives in, touches herself, and her gentle fingers against her clit are all it takes to bring her to a long slow orgasm, rippling through her.

She feels calmer, for a moment. The clarity of her thoughts can’t last, though; she is empty, empty, she needs—

She knows that holding off will only prolong the agony, but she lays in the water, counting seconds. Pushing back against the urge to find a strong Alpha to mate her, knot her, fill her up—

She gets out of the tub and leaves as its draining to find the vibrator. Her heat is upon her, and she hates it, but she’s not a fool. Her next orgasm comes as she rocks the dildo between her legs, pretending it’s attached to someone who cares about her, will keep her safe, smells like cigarettes and musk— no—

It crests like a tsunami, the feeling of fullness, and she inflates the false knot on the toy to give her slick walls something to cling to, and it’s so good, so right, yes purrs the voice inside, yes, so good, so good for your Alpha—

Her Alpha isn’t here, she doesn’t have one, but even as the heat rises again inside her, she’s begging for him.

“Please,” she moans, to the empty room, “please, Alpha, I’ll be so good, I’ll be so good for you, please—”

She clenches down on the dildo, a mockery of the cock she craves between her slick-coating legs, and each orgasm is hollow.

She gives in, eventually, allows her mind to summon up the scent of him, imagines his big hairy hands clutching at her hips, her legs, the way he would thrust into her, so good, so full, so right—

She orgasms again, hearing his voice inside her head, yes, my good girl, good girl, good—

In the moments of clarity, as her body clutches the false knot that can only do so much, Robin hates it, hates this need, hates the way she craves him. But biology will not be denied, and she has no one else to crave. Certainly not Matthew, who had never been able to fill her up all the way, never made her skin sing with the rightness of his hands on it, who had not been enough, who had thrown her away—

Your Alpha will never throw you away, that terrible voice croons to her as she works the dildo between her legs, reaching for something she can’t have. Your Alpha will take care of you, your Alpha will be so good to you, just do what he says, just call him, just bring him here and let him fuck you, let him pump you so full—

She spends the first day of her heat with her hands between her legs and her boss’s name on her lips, and Robin has never felt quite so alone. She has never hated being an Omega so much.

And in her mind, the way he looks at her sends another gush of slick down her thighs, the knowledge that he would— he’d take care of her, would bring her food and fuck her for days, fuck her straight through her heat, would sink his teeth into the very marrow of her, he would, it would be so good—

Robin takes another bath and lets her heat take over. There’s nothing to be done. It’s just biology.

Robin is gone for four days, just as she’d said, and it’s some of the longest days of Cormoran’s life. He knows what’s happening, and his body is on an edge of its own; he knows what she smells like now, knows that she’s out there, alone, getting herself through her heat somehow, alone, and he should be there should be there with his Omega should be fucking her through this should be deep inside her—

He’s snappish and irritable. The few contractors he has are all working, picking up the slack Robin has left, and then some of his own. His suppressants can only do so much, and he knows that any Alpha with half a brain will be able to smell him from a mile away. And Omegas, too, who will know he is holding off a rut by taking extra blockers and only just by the skin of his teeth managing it at all.

She’s not your Omega, he tells the roaring thing in his chest that craves her body, her slick wet heat, her blood on his teeth. Not yours to have, old man.

He’s a decade older than she, and damaged. He can’t be the Alpha she needs, that she deserves. But the idea of anyone else, any other Alpha, any fucking Beta, laying a hand on her— he sees red. And he shouldn’t. And he fights it. But it’s deeper than bone, this urge, this drive, and he’s only human, after all.

He think about her, as he takes himself in hand again at night. The way she looks at him, her blue-grey eyes, her warm soft lips, the way she says his name—

It never takes long. His knot swells, useless and heavy, and he knows better than to find some nice-enough Beta girl to fuck through this. It wouldn’t work. She couldn’t take it, not like an Omega, not like Robin—

No. No, he tells himself. But his knot isn’t listening, and he wonders if she’s alright, wherever she is, where he should be, with her.

Chapter Text

By the end of the third day, when her heat is finally abating, Robin finds room for all of the emotions that had been ignored in favor of the all-encompassing heat. Emotions like shame and frustration and loneliness.

She has been taken care of by the heat hotel’s staff, which was nice; they don’t make a fuss about how much work they put in on her behalf, the way Matthew sometimes had. But of course, they are paid to bring her food and bring her more towels and eventually clean up the slick-soaked sheets after she leaves.

She doesn’t know how she was going to face Cormoran, now that she’s worked her way through her heat with thoughts of him, his hands, his cock, his voice in her ear— but she has to. She loves her job, the work that they did together. She isn’t going to let her biology take it away from her (again a little voice whispered, and she ignores it, as she ignores all the voices).

The fifth day after her heat is her usual day off, and she takes it without feeling the least bit bad about it. She read once that just after heats was supposed to be the best time, for Omegas. Refreshed and energized and alive is the stereotype. Robin didn’t feel the least bit refreshed; she feels like she’s recovering from the flu, achy and weak and tired.

Maybe if she had had an Alpha—

But she doesn’t, and she won’t, and that’s the end of that. So she drinks lots of fluids and curls up on her shared couch, finally able to think of things other than the endless burning need to be fucked and knotted and held and petted, and she answers emails and watches whatever’s on the telly and tries to think of what to text Cormoran back.

“You ok?” he’d texted on the morning of the fourth day. There had been no denying what she’d been gone for, and heats lasted three days, always.

“Yes, thanks.” she’d replied. Then, “Going to take tomorrow off as well if that’s ok.”

“Sure” had come the reply. “Let me know if you need anything.”

She hasn’t replied to that. The offer he’d made hung in her mind still, bright and enticing and out of reach. It was impossible. She can’t afford the risk.

When Robin walks into the office on Monday morning, Cormoran feels like he can breath again for the first time since she left.

This isn’t healthy, he thinks to himself. They shouldn’t be so caught in each other, he shouldn’t have said what he did. But there was no going back.

“Good morning,” she calls after a moment, and he is so grateful to hear her voice. He goes to the doorway of his office to see her hanging up her coat and scarf. She’s dressed in her customary button-down top, which does an decent job at covering the scent glands at the base of her neck. This top is blue, and makes her eyes look like the ocean.

“Hello,” he says, and his voice is pitched low in his chest. He doesn’t realize he’s searching her scent for information until he verifies that she doesn’t smell like anyone else, only herself, only Robin. He would know, if she had allowed someone else to bring her through her heat.

It’s not his business, at all. But it pleases him on some deep and primal level to know it anyway.

“Have a good week-end?” Robin asks, and he can see her tension, can feel it sour on his tongue, but he can appreciate that she’s trying to bring them back to normal. It’s a good effort. He should join her in it.

The answer to her question, though, is “I spent my week-end masturbating to the memory of you saying my name and the thought of fucking you through the mattress” and that’s a terrible answer.

“It was fine,” he says. He does not ask how hers was. He knows better than to ask questions he doesn’t want the answers to, and the questions he wants the answers to too much.

“I was going to brew some coffee,” he says instead. “Want some?”

“Yeah, thanks,” Robin says. He likes this, likes taking care of her—

No, this is normal, he tells himself. It’s not like that.

It might be, though. A little.

They chat a bit about what Robin’s missed, about the emails she handled, about nothing at all. And it’s fine. They’re fine.

They both pretend that Cormoran hadn’t offered to fuck her senseless less than a week ago. They both pretend they don’t want that.

Dr. Gallagher is pleased with how Robin handled things.

“I’ve put you on the list for the stronger suppressants,” she tells Robin at the follow-up appointment after work. “There’s a bit of a wait, but if you get them, it brings the heat down to a level that’s more easily manageable without a partner.”

Robin asks if they will affect her birth control.

“They shouldn’t, but I’ll look into it. Do you like the birth control you’re currently using?”

“I like that I don’t have a period on it,” Robin says. “And I have to take pills daily for my suppressants anyway, so it’s not much of a hassle.”

“I can switch you to a birth control shot that should do the same thing,” Dr. Gallagher offers. “It’s good for three months at a time, so you’d have to come in more often. But some patients find it more secure than the pill, because there’s no chance of missing a day and throwing off the hormonal balance.”

Robin nods. The idea of it is enticing.

“Could we do it today?” she asks.

“Yes. Let me call a nurse,” Dr. Gallagher says.

As she waits for the nurse, Robin thinks that it might be a waste of time, seeing as how her chances of becoming pregnant at the moment are less than zero. But, well. Why not.

“Do you think you’ll be able to have your next heat in six months?” Dr. Gallagher asks her at the end of the appointment. “If not, I’ll want to make some notes so we can prepare to take the best possible care of you for this year.”

Robin wants to say no. This heat was awful, in so many different ways.

“Yes,” she hears herself say. “I’ll do that.”

“Excellent,” Dr. Gallagher says. “This is the best thing for your body, Robin, I promise you.”

And what has my body done for me lately, Robin thinks bitterly as she walks to the Tube station, that I should care for it so well, at such an expense to myself?

Things go back to normal. Sort of. Things find a new balance, and they call that normal.

Robin works cases and goes to her self-defense classes and answers emails and learns to crochet and handles clients and tries not to dwell on how much it pleases some deep part of her that she starts to carry Cormoran’s scent again.

Cormoran works cases and eats too many takeaway curries and starts lifting weights again for the first time in years, just to take the edge off his endless energy and tone down his libido, and finds new excuses to be out of the office. He can’t be there all day, Robin so close and yet so far beyond his reach.

All his walking and his resumption of weight-training for the first time in nearly a decade means that Cormoran wakes up one day to find his shirt buttons easily over his stomach, not so tightly as he’s become accustomed to.

Oh, he thinks. This explains the renewed interest he’d noticed in women around him. There had always been women around him, due he assumed to his Alpha status and air of mystery. Women loved a puzzle.

But now he’s something resembling fit again, and no longer smelling strongly of Charlotte, of another Alpha. He pretends not to notice the women who let themselves fall into his path, mostly, just the same way he pretends not to notice how Robin dislikes each of them.

She’s jealous, and he likes that, or at least the part of him that wants to take her up to his flat and plunge his cock into her and bite her neck and make her his likes that. And admittedly, it’s a not-insignificant portion of him.

But in his life he’d wanted lots of things he couldn’t have. Like a permanent mailing address, or his leg back. Robin is just one more thing to add to the list.

It’s not like she spends all of her time thinking about sex, Robin tells herself. She does lots of work, and has started bringing in clients in her own right. Other Omegas like having someone to talk to that understands their circumstances, their experiences, who doesn’t discount them or think they’re weak. There’s word of mouth bringing in other Omegas who need private investigative services, and it’s Robin to thank for it.

So it’s not that her life revolves around what’s between her legs, she thinks viciously. It’s just that her body is pretty well convinced that everything would be better if she could just fuck her boss.

And the worst part is, even now when she’s not in heat, she finds that she doesn’t hate the idea. Cormoran, for all his faults, is a good man. She could do far worse.

But of course, if she gives in to the urges of her body, the rest of her life will go to hell. So she continues crocheting, tries to focus on whatever is playing on the telly, and works to forget the way he’d looked at her in his office that day before her heat.

Like she was beautiful. Like she was desirable. Like he was burning up on the inside for her.

But that was just biology, she tells herself as the yarn snarls between her fingers. She untangles it. It was just him reacting to the pheromones her body decided were necessary. It wasn’t him, not really, and she doesn’t want that. She doesn’t want the cliche, the unable to stop despite knowing better.

She wants care and mutual respect and a feeling of safety and security. Your Alpha will give you that, whispers her Omega voice inside. Your Alpha will give you everything you want, everything you need. Just go to him.

But Robin doesn’t think that’s in the least bit true. At the end of the day, any relationship she has with an Alpha will be built on biology.

Any sexual relationship, she amends mentally, the yarn once more taking shape in her hands. Their working relationship is good. She can’t change it. It’s not worth the risk.

But it is, it is worth the risk, croons the voice. Robin shakes her head and focuses on her crochet.

Their most recent Omega client leaves, and Robin can still smell the pheromones the woman had been giving off around Cormoran.

“Could you open a window?” she asks him when she comes into his office to give him the updates from their contractors. “It’s a bit musty in here.”

Cormoran looks at her, knowing that she’s not talking about his smoking. The scent of the client is hanging in the air, informing anyone with the ability to smell it that she was both interested and available.

“Sure,” he says to Robin, and opens his window. He doesn’t care about the client, beyond her ability to pay them for services rendered. He doesn’t mix business and pleasure, and besides— she’s not his Omega.

“Thanks,” Robin says as the warm breeze flutters into the room. “You really ought to stop smoking indoors, you know.”

He knows. But he likes the barrier it gives him from other people’s pheromones, and besides he’s a man of habit.

“What do you have for me?” he says instead. They talk about business matters, trying to focus on the things that are more important than the offer he’d once made her in this office.

Before she leaves, Robin says, “One more thing. I won’t be in next Wednesday, I have an appointment.”

Cormoran nods, wondering what it is and knowing better than to ask.

“That’s fine,” he says. “Just note it in the office diary for me.”

“Of course,” she replies, and is gone.

He leaves the window open. He can’t focus when Robin’s velvety sweetness is lingering in the air, on his tongue.

Robin is out in the field one day, tailing a client’s husband who she suspects of having an affair.

“I don’t care as long as he hasn’t Mated her,” the wife had said in the office while dabbing at her eyes. “I could survive anything but that.”

Robin’s opinion of the man is low, and she has to work to keep her scent from carrying as she walks. She’s distracted by her phone when someone collides into her, sending her stumbling sideways into a rough brick wall.

“I’m sorry, honey,” a man’s voice says. “Let me help you up.”

Robin can feel that she’s bleeding a bit from a gash on her face, and allows herself to be helped up. The man who’s helping her— Alpha, she identifies immediately— reaches out to touch her face, and she steps away from him.

“Thank you,” she says. “I had better go home.”

“I’ll walk you there,” the strange Alpha says, and while her useless Omega instincts like the sound of that, her mind is screaming, no! No, he can’t know where you live, he can’t—

“No thanks,” she says. “I’d better call my mate so he doesn’t freak out about this.”

There is a trickle of blood running down her cheek, and the Alpha can smell it, she can see it in the way his pupils dilate, his nostrils flare.

Robin turns and goes, as fast as she can, fumbling tissues from her bag to wipe her face, wincing at the pain. By the time she gets back to the office, her scrape has clotted, no longer quite so fresh.

“You’re back early,” Cormoran calls to her when he hears her come in. It feels like moments later he is at the door, summoned by the fear-panic-pain she must be giving off. She hates her scent glands, almost as much as she hates the one between her shoulder blades.

“What happened?” Cormoran all but growls, reaching out to touch her scraped cheek. “Who did this to you?”

“It’s nothing,” she says, unable to step away from him. His fingers against her skin burst like fireworks, and she could forget the pain entirely if he just never stopped touching her— “Someone stumbled into me and I didn’t catch myself in time, that’s all.”

“Is it?” His nostrils flare. “Who was with you?”

He can smell that strange Alpha on her still, the one who had wanted to follow her home. She hates this, loves it, hates that he is so attuned to her, loves that he cares so much, is so possessive— no, she hates that too, really she does.

“Nobody,” she says. “He just helped me up, that’s all.”

Their eye contact is strange and intense, and Robin couldn’t break it if she really wanted to. She can smell his anger, his worry, his care for her, and it’s a heady cocktail, one she wants to give herself over to—

But that’s just her biology speaking. She can’t.

“Let me clean you up,” Cormoran says after a moment. He says it in that gentled tone of voice that tells her he is trying not to command her, and she loves that about him, that he doesn’t try to control her.

Robin nods, and Cormoran steps away to get the first aid kit she keeps stocked in the kitchenette. She misses his touch the moment it is gone from her face.

He is gentle as he wipes away the smears of blood from her cheek.

“It’s not that bad,” he tells her, and she is so still beneath his hands. “It won’t leave a scar.”

“Good,” she manages to say. The way he is so focused on her, on caring for her, it’s intoxicating, she wants him to touch her forever, wants to always be the center of his attention—

“Done,” Cormoran says, smearing the last of the bactine onto her face. He does not step away.

“Thanks,” she whispers. She cannot have this, but she wants— she wants—

The look he gives her in one part desire and two parts anguish. He knows as well as she that this is impossible.

He steps back first. “Be careful out there,” he says, and his voice is gruff.

“Yes,” she says, biting back the words she wants to say, yes, Alpha, I’ll do whatever you say, whatever you want me to do— “I’ll be careful.”

He nods, and leaves, and Robin doesn’t think she is imagining that he is making a retreat.

His reaction to a scraped cheek is nothing compared to his reaction to a call from the hospital.

“She collapsed,” the voice on the other end of the phone is telling him in a disapproving manner. “She’s running a mild fever and was dehydrated.”

Cormoran’s barely listening, his body going through motions his mind’s not conscious of. He’s grateful he already had his prosthetic leg on, or he might have forgotten it in his rush to put on something resembling clothing and grab his wallet and keys and get out the door and go.

Your Omega is hurt! his mind is screaming. You should be there with her! You should have prevented this!

The journey to the hospital is a blur. Later, his leg will ache abominably from running so much, but in the moment he doesn’t care, he can’t care. His body is full of adrenaline and hormones that cancel out pain, that drive him to be with her, take care of her, protect her—

The man behind the desk seems to be somewhat accustomed to the appearance of wide-eyed Alphas clutching cell phones.

“You have to sign in,” he says in a faintly apologetic tone. “I’ll get you in as fast as I can. Name?”

“Strike,” Cormoran says. “To see Robin Ellacott.”

And her name is singing on his tone like a bell, Robin, Robin, he’s here to see Robin, he needs to see Robin—

“Yes,” the man says, “she’s put you down—”

Of course she has, she’s his something inside him snarls, but that’s not true, not really, except for all the ways that it is.

“Third floor, to the left,” the man says, and Cormoran is off again, taking the stairs despite his leg because the elevator will take too long.

The third floor is a wash of overwhelming scents, antiseptic and distress, but he can pinpoint Robin’s scent like a magnet following north. She’s upset, she’s hurt, he’s at the door and doesn’t remember getting there, he just sees Robin and it’s—

“Cormoran,” she says, muffled into his chest. He’s shaking a little, stroking her reddish gold hair beneath one hand, the other holding her tight against him. One of her hands has an IV drip attached to it, but the other is gripping his shoulder, and she’s safe now, with him, in his arms—

“You’ll be the Alpha, then,” the nurse says. She’s a Beta, and she shakes her head in the way that Betas do. They don’t understand. They can’t. The nurse shakes her head and leaves, because she’ll not get anything done until the Alpha calms down.

“What happened?” Cormoran asks, once he’s reassured himself that Robin’s going to be alright. He loosens his hold on her, but doesn’t step away, letting his proximity to Robin wash away his fear for her.

“I’m alright,” she says, not letting go of his sleeve. “I’m fine, Cormoran.”

“You’re not,” he says, looking at her closely, seeing a pallor beneath her lovely skin. One hand comes up to touch her cheek, where only the slightest bit of scar tissue remains of her scrape. “You collapsed, they called me.”

She turns her face into his palm, and this is dangerous, this touch. It’s like gulping brandy, a sweet burn that he’ll regret later.

“I’ve been under the weather,” Robin says. “I hadn’t eaten enough, I was nauseous, and my blood sugar was low, that’s all.”

“Robin, you fainted,” he says, an edge of anger in his words. “You can’t- you have to take better care of yourself, or I won’t— I won’t be able to send you out into the field.”

There’s a fire in her eyes now, all at odds with the way she’s basking beneath his touch.

“And I’m sure you’ve never pushed yourself a bit too hard, then,” she says and she’s even more beautiful when she’s angry. “You’ve never made a mistake.”

They both know he has. They both know it’s not for any work-related reason that he wouldn’t send her out anymore. It’s because he’s too wrapped up in her, the way her skin smells, the soft curves of her body that call to him—

“Jesus, Robin,” he says, and they haven’t been so close to each other in months, not since her heat, not since he made her half an offer that he can’t take back and wouldn’t even if he could, because— “Robin,” he says again—

And he doesn’t know who moved first, because he’s kissing her, she’s kissing him, and it’s transcendent, it’s everything he’s thought about in furtive private moments, it’s more than that, it’s everything—

Her mouth parts beneath his and she’s whimpering against him as he kisses her with every ounce of worry and passion and desire he’s had pent up for months, years maybe, since the day she came up his stairs probably, it doesn’t matter because his tongue’s in her mouth and she’s soft and warm beneath him, her hair between his fingers and her breath hot against his face.

She’s panting his name as he kisses her jaw, her cheek, wherever he can reach, everything, he wants to kiss her everywhere, wants to mark her as his— He’s kissing the soft place beneath the hinge of her jaw and she’s gasping, “Cormoran-”

There’s a rap at the door. Cormoran doesn’t jump back, but he does jerk away from Robin. She makes a soft sound of distress, and he’s helpless to go further.

“Hello,” the doctor says, striding into the room. He’s an Alpha, and Cormoran unconsciously turns to stand between him and Robin.

“You must be Ms Ellacott’s Mate,” the doctor says, extending a hand. “Glad you’re here.”

Cormoran both wants and doesn’t want to correct this man, this other Alpha who wants to lay a hand on his Robin, his Omega—

“He’s my partner,” Robin says, squeezing Cormoran’s arm as if to say, it’s alright.

That’s not a lie. They’re partners. Cormoran doesn’t clarify the statement, instead focuses on trying to breath normally, to force his body to behave. What a colossal mistake he’s made. He shouldn’t have done that, at all.

“Once your IV is done we’ll discharge you,” the doctor is telling Robin. “It’s just to re-hydrate you, though. You’ll need to eat and get plenty of rest before you go back to work. That won’t be a problem, will it?”

“No,” Cormoran says immediately. “No problem.”

“Alright. I’ll have the nurses bring you something to eat if you want it. Will you have someone at home to keep an eye on you for the next 24 hours or so?” The doctor doesn’t look at Cormoran when he asks this, keeping his eyes on his patient.

“I-” Robin hesitates. Cormoran wants to say, yes, of course she will, she’ll be with me, but that’s not true. It’s not safe at all for her to go home with him, because if she does he doesn’t know if he’ll be able to stop himself from—

“I’ll be fine,” she tell the doctor, who makes a note on her chart before leaving the tiny room. Once more they’re alone in the glare of the hospital lights. Robin looks at him, her cheeks now flushed, and he can almost see her pulse in her throat, her sweet-smelling throat where he wants to leave marks to tell the world that she’s his—

“I’ll— I’ll call your flatmate,” Cormoran says. “Unless you’d prefer to go to Nick and Ilsa’s? I think they’re in town, they’ll look after you.”

He does not say, come home with me. Let me look after you, let me touch you, come sleep in my bed and be mine, be mine—

“If Ilsa’s around,” she says, nodding, not making eye contact. “That would be great, thanks.”

He leaves the room. He has to. If he stays, he’ll kiss her again. And if he kisses her again, he’ll never, ever stop.

Robin spends two days with Nick and Ilsa, being cared for and laughing at their jokes. She does not think about Cormoran, how he’d kissed her, his tongue on her neck, his hands on her skin, she doesn’t think about how impossible it will be to be around him knowing what it’s like to be held securely in his arms. She eats takeaway Chinese and watches reruns of Monty Python and does her laundry and doesn’t think about any of it.

There’s only a month and a half to her next heat. It's going to be worse. She can already tell.

Chapter Text

Dr. Gallagher is apologetic. “You’re still on the waiting list, I promise, but it can take a long time.”

Robin had really been hoping she would be on better suppressants by the time her heat rolled back around. She sighs.

“I understand. Thank you for doing so much for me.”

Dr. Gallagher reaches out one cool hand to pat Robin’s. “Our strength lies in our solidarity,” she says. “I’ll do what I can to help you.”

Robin is embarrassed when her eyes fill with tears. She hadn’t realized how alone she had felt.

“Thank you,” she says, and accepts a tissue.

“That said, are you still planning to have your next heat on schedule? I understand if your plans have changed, but you should tell me now,” Dr. Gallagher says.

Robin has already told Cormoran she will need the time off; she feels committed, as awful as it will be.

“Yes,” she says with a sigh. “I’m going to do it.”

“And you don’t plan on having a partner?”

“No,” Robin says. “I’ll be alright.”

She hopes that it’s not a lie.

If the days leading up to her last heat had been bad, this was torture.

Now Cormoran knows what Robin’s mouth tastes like, knows how it feels to have her pressed up against him, knows… too much. It was mortifyingly awkward, now, and he and Robin move as though circling the same mid-point, afraid to get too close to each other.

He shouldn’t have kissed her. He shouldn’t have done many things, but especially that. He doesn’t think they will ever be able to find an equilibrium. He starts going for longer walks, his stump constantly aching from all the walking. He accepts more cases, just to give them both something to do, so that they aren’t trapped together in the office, too close together and still too far apart.

He starts to be afraid that she’s going to find another job, or perhaps go back to uni, because he knows this can’t last. But the idea of being without her, now that he’s had her, even so little of her… it doesn’t bear thinking about.

This is why he’d avoided Omegas until now. It’s too complex, too permanent, too easy to damage each other. Well, witness his parents. It had seemed safer to be with Charlotte, terrible passionate Alpha Charlotte, tearing each other to pieces. It had never been easy with her. He’d loved her, somehow, in a strange way that hadn’t felt the least bit like what he felt for Robin. But it had been safe, because Charlotte hadn’t kindled in him this raging inferno of need the way Robin has. She’d been many things, but it had never been like this.

The terrible thing is, he almost misses it, the constant push-and-pull for dominance, the way they’d bitten each other’s tender places in the never ending struggle that they’d called a relationship.

Because he didn’t know how much of this burning is for Robin, clever and caring and compassionate Robin, and how much is for the Omega that his body craves. He hates the way his body drives him to distraction, takes more blockers as though it will help; it does, a little, for a while. But he’s too big, runs too hot. They burn off faster than is safe to take more.

He starts going to the pub more often during the day again, just to get out of the office. He knows it’s nearly time for Robin’s next heat, and he can’t know that while knowing he can’t have her.

Omegas are more trouble than they’re worth, he tries to tell himself, as he had before. The whole sodding business should go right to hell.

But there’s no changing reality, no matter how many pints he drinks alone at the bar.

Robin dives into her work. She has never been so productive; she channels all her endless energy into helping clients, keeping the paperwork tidy, managing the bills. Finally, just days before her heat, she starts cleaning, just for something else to do.

Cormoran is out again, as he so often is these days, and there are no meetings scheduled. She’s at loose ends, so she rolls up her sleeves and puts on some music and starts scrubbing.

It settles some restless part of her, some deep Omega urge to nest. She wants to make the office nice for her Alpha, so that he’ll be pleased to be there with her—

She pauses as she’s dusting the corners of the ceiling. He’s not your Alpha, she tells herself again, sternly. You don’t have one, and you don’t want one.

But she does, as she was programmed to; she craves him, his presence and his scent and his approval and his hands and his cock—

She turns back to cleaning, her mouth pinned in a thin line. She allows her anger give her the energy to scrub at the windows, even. Why not? Why not let these urges do something nice for her, for once. She’ll enjoy the clean windows, when this heat is over.

They do most of their communication by text, now. It’s safer, to not be alone together. Robin hates that their biology dictates even this, denying her the simple pleasure of his company. One day, the first day she’s scheduled to stop taking her suppressants in fact, Cormoran texts her, “Finished early. Want to join me for a pint?”

They haven’t done that in… ages, really. Robin misses having a relationship with him that doesn’t revolve around their pheromones.

“Sure,” she texts him back. “Where?”

Less and an hour later, she’s sliding into a seat across from him at a small pub that has a pleasant rumble of clientele, mostly Betas she thinks. There is safety in this, the crowd and the chatter, in the table between them.

“Hello,” she says, setting her bag beside her. “How was it?”

He shrugs. He’s got a restless look to him, like he’s unsettled, unmoored. “About the same as usual. Client should be pleased, I got some pictures of him violating the parameters of the agreement and no denying it.”

Robin smiles at him. It’s nice, to be together. “That’s good. Well, not good that he’s done the thing, obviously.”

Cormoran smiles at that, and it lights a glow in her. You’ve pleased your Alpha, it croons. See, look at him smile, look at him looking at you…

Robin re-crosses her legs. Cormoran glances at the bar.

“I’ll get you a drink,” he says. “White wine?”

And this, too, makes her glow. He knows her. “Yes,” she says, and, “please.”

While he waits to be served, Robin sits alone, hands fidgeting with the ends of her hair, pulling it over one shoulder, then the other. Waiting, just waiting. A man comes over to her table, leans one hand on its wooden surface to look down on her.

“Hullo, love,” he says, and Robin’s hackles are up. “Pity to see a pretty thing like you sitting alone. Need some company?”

Cormoran’s hand comes down on the man’s shoulder, and Robin can smell him, a cocktail of possessiveness-beware-mine that sends shivers down her spine. Yes, her inner Omega is whispering, your Alpha will protect you, yes, his, yes…

Robin gives the man, who has gone a shade paler, a cool smile. “I’m quite alright, thanks,” she says, calmer than she feels.

“Fucking Alphas,” the man mutters as he ducks away. “Omega bitch.”

“Cormoran!” Robin says immediately. The absolutely idiotic man seems to realize the scope of the mistake he has made; he only escapes Cormoran’s tight-fisted wrath because of Robin’s exclamation.

“Sit down,” Robin says to Cormoran, reaching out a hand to him. “It’s alright, it’s fine. He’s nothing. Let it go.”

Cormoran sits, sets her wine on the table, his brow heavy. She wishes for a moment that things could be different, that she could have… but she can’t. She takes a sip of her wine, instead.

“Sorry,” Cormoran says after a moment. “Sorry. I didn’t… like him.”

“That’s alright,” Robin says over the rim of her glass. “Neither did I.”

He manages a deep breath, then another, and Robin wonders if he can smell her approval of his actions, how much she had liked feeling protected.

“So how was your day?” Cormoran asks, and this she can do. This is familiar ground for them.

“It was fine,” she says. “I finished sending out those final notices on the late payments, and I did some cleaning.”

“Cleaning?” Cormoran raises his eyebrows, and it makes Robin smile again.

“Just the common area,” she says. “I started with my desk, then I got a bit carried away.” She does not mention that she is going to go into heat soon. They both know this. She’s taken the next few days off; part of why he had asked her for a drink, she suspects, is that he wants to see her before she is away.

“Well, thanks,” he says. “Don’t suppose I could bribe you to do my office, could I.”

The idea of spending a day surrounded by his scent, his things, is enough in her state to cause a shiver of want, a tiny rush of slick between her legs. She hopes to god that he can’t tell.

“I don’t think we have enough coming in to pay me to do that, no,” Robin says, teasing, smiling, normal. She just wants this to be normal, dammit.

“Pity,” he says. “It’s getting a bit grimy in there.”

“And whose fault is that?” Robin asks, just to watch him laugh, the flash of his teeth from between stubbled cheeks.

“Fair enough,” he says. They can do this, he thinks. They can have a drink, like colleagues do. He can think about things other than the curve of her smile, the curl of her scent tantalizing him.

They chat, about nothing, the weather, their clients, Robin’s flatmate and his weird bathing habits. She tells a story about finding three mostly-empty bottles of the exact same product that has him wiping his eyes; she is funny, and she likes making him laugh.

The crowd around them is changing now, fewer Betas, more Alphas and Omegas, their scents mingling to create an almost oppressive fug of pheromones. Robin’s looking more tense, her fingernails tapping against the nearly-empty wine glass.

“Everything okay, then?” Cormoran asks, attuned to her moods, her body language. She manages a smile, but it’s dim.

“Yeah,” she says. “I’m fine.”

“I’m hungry,” he says, tossing back the dregs of his pint. “Want to get something to eat?”

“Sure,” Robin says, copying him and finishing her drink. “That sounds nice.”

He lets her lead the way out of the pub, glaring at any Alpha who turns at the scent of her, Unmated Omega going into heat soon. No, he tells them silently. Mine.

She’s not, of course. But she’s his more than she’ll ever be any of theirs.

Robin nearly moans as she bites into her kebab. Her body is going into overdrive, calorie-loading to offset the lack she’ll go through during heat. Cormoran buys her three kebabs and smiles as he watches her smear sauce on her cheek.

“Good?” he asks, taking a bite of one of his own.

“Delicious,” she says, wiping her face with a napkin, fastidious to the last. “Thank you. I’ve never been here before.”

“It’s out of the way,” he says with a shrug. He wants to live in this space forever, wants to bottle up Robin’s happy-safe-sated scent to revisit when she’s moved on with her life. It’s inevitable, he knows. He’ll take as much as he can until then, and be grateful for it.

“It’s amazing,” she says, licking her fingers. Cormoran can’t stop staring, and takes another distracted bite of his kebab.

“I’m glad you like it,” he tells her. “Are you feeling better?”

She glances at him sideways, trying to figure out what he’s really asking.

“At the pub,” he says. “You seemed… uncomfortable.”

She bites her lips, nods. “I don’t… like being around Alphas,” she says, and it hits him like a hammer to the ribs.

“I’m sorry,” he says, and she means you, she means you, races around his mind, your Omega doesn’t like being around you, you’ve failed her—

“Not you,” she says, and the voice in his head is abruptly silent. “You’ve always been… good to me. But just. I…” She trails off, and Cormoran finds that he needs to know how that sentence ends.

“What happened?” he asks, his voice hard, bruising. He needs to know, so he can prevent it from happening again, so he can punish whoever hurt her, his Omega, his Robin—

She is silent and wide-eyed, her breath fluttering in her throat like a caged bird. He is immediately remorseful.

“I’m sorry,” he says, trying to be gentle, trying not to be the Alpha he cannot help being. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have— it’s not my business.”

She shakes her head. “No, it’s not,” she says. Her voice is thin, and he wants to kill whoever hurt her, made her this way, he wants to tear them to shreds, and this is not helping either, this urge towards violence, she will move away from him when she smells it on him, she will want him to leave—

She leans in, for a split second. Her eyelashes flutter. She— likes it?

“I’ll tell you,” she says, eyes still closed. “I should tell you.”

Cormoran swallows, his voice deserting him. Nods.

“Please don’t— don’t let it change how you see me,” she says quietly.

“Nothing could change how I see you,” he rasps out, and she shudders, just slightly. Her eyes are still closed when she begins speaking.

“I was— it was when I was at uni,” she starts, and he can see the tension in her shoulders, in her fingers. He wants to reach out, soothe it away, but doesn’t. Clenches his own hands into fists to resist it. He cannot interrupt her.

“There was a… man,” she says, and oh, oh, he wants to do damage again. Cormoran sits very still. He knows this story. He knows how it goes.

“He was an Alpha,” she says, quietly, meditatively. There is still a smudge of sauce on her cheek, by her mouth. “But he’d had some sort of an illness as a child. He wasn’t very big or strong. In court they said it was a... “ she pauses, dredging the words up from the midst of her hazy memories of the time. This she remembered, though. “A result of thwarted instincts and a lifetime of repressed, unfulfilled needs.”

Cormoran wants to punch something, someone, this man, who hurt Robin, who dared to—

“He was wearing a mask, but he had a patch of skin, on his neck,” she says, gesturing at her own. “It was discolored. It affected his scent glands, too, I remembered that. After. It helped them put him away.”

“Robin—”

She ignores Cormoran, needing to get it all out at once. “I pretended to be dead, you see. That’s what he wanted. He was going after Omegas, said he wanted what was owed him, everything he’d been denied. He held me down—”

She stops here, the memories rising up like a scream in her throat. She shakes her head. “Anyway. I don’t— I don’t like Alphas being too close to me, not knowing them. It can be…”

“Robin,” he says again, and at last she opens her eyes again, looks at him. Her eyes like storm-clouds, like the ocean on a rainy day.

“Don’t, please,” she whispers. “Don’t look at me like that. It wasn’t— it doesn’t change who I am. It was twenty minutes of my life. It doesn’t define me.”

Cormoran shakes his head. He wants to kill. “Of course it doesn’t,” he manages to say. “No one could change you if you didn’t want them to.”

This is not at all what Robin has braced herself for him to say. “Thank you,” she says, startled, grateful.

“Did they— you said you helped put him away,” he says. She nods, but her eyes close again, pain whispering across her face.

“Yeah,” she says, and the matter is closed.

“Christ, Robin,” he says, reaching out a hand to set gently over hers. “I’m—” he bites back a sorry, the most useless word in the English language. “What an awful fucking thing to have happen to you.”

She coughs on a laugh. “It is, isn’t it. An awful thing.”

“Very,” he says. Her hand beneath his turns upward, to accept his grasp; the touch runs through him like he’s touched a live wire.

“Cormoran,” she says, trying very hard to keep her voice steady, normal, “will you buy me an ice cream?”

I would do anything for you, anything, set the stars on fire, kill anyone who dared to lay a hand on you, bring you the moon—

“Yeah, I’ll buy you an ice cream,” he says, just to see her smile again.

They’re walking through a park in the last vestige of twilight when Cormoran takes a deep breath and realizes how deeply their scents have become mingled. Now any Alpha who dares to come near her will know about you, the voice in his chest whispers, pleased. Yours, your Omega, your Robin.

Only she’s not, not really. And after what she’s told him tonight, she’s unlikely to ever want an Alpha. Even him, despite what she’d said about not minding him. Especially him, really.

But she is about to take off for five days, and he would know what was happening from that alone. The deepening of her scent, the additional layers of her, the sweet vanilla velvet warmth of her, that’s just the universe trying to kill him, that’s all.

He’s already made her an offer, and it was a mistake. He’s kissed her once, and it was a mistake too— and it was a mistake to think about it, now when they’ve had such a good night, because now he’s thinking about how she tastes, how she sighs into his mouth so prettily, how she tilts her neck to allow him closer— how she might let him between her legs, let him wraps his hands around her hips, plunge into the smooth hot center of her, stay there—

“Cormoran?” Robin can smell the spike in him, the way his body coils up, preparing for something.

“I should— go,” he says, his hands jammed into his pockets.

She finishes her ice cream, throwing away the wrapper in a nearby bin.

“Thank you,” she says. “This was… a good night.”

Cormoran gives her half a smile. “I’m glad you had a good time.”

It feels like… the end of a date. It’s been so long, but Robin remembers it, like the steps to a dance she learned as a child. Now is when he takes her hand, leans in close—

No. That’s not what happens next, not in their story.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says, taking a step backward, not taking his eyes off her.

“No,” she says. “You won’t. Tomorrow, I—”

“Right,” he says, blowing out a breath. “Right.”

The knowledge of what she will be doing in the following days hangs between them, delicate, sharp.

Ask him, whispers the terrible little voice inside of her. It would be so easy. Just ask him, just open your arms, open your legs to him, let this Alpha take care of you, let him into your bed and into your body, let him do to you what you were meant to do. He’ll be so good to you, he’ll take such good care of you, he’ll fuck you so good, fuck you for days, he’ll give you his cock and his knot and his heart—

Six months ago, he made her half an offer, and now Cormoran finds it once again ready to fall off his tongue. Here, in the misty evening shadows on a public sidewalk, he wants to pull her in close, wants to do everything—

“Call me,” he says, before he can stop himself. “If you need anything.”

She’s looking at him, and he can catch her scent on his tongue, could eat her alive. She swallows, and he is staring at her neck.

“You know that I can’t,” she whispers, going contrary to every nerve of her body, which is clamoring for her to say yes, say yes, be a good girl, do what your Alpha says, let him take care of you, let him, say yes—

He does know, but the roaring thing in his chest does not care at all.

“Just say it,” he says, “please.”

She is looking at him, and he is drowning in her eyes, in her scent, in this endless need he has for her.

“Say that if you need something-” someone “-you’ll call me first.”

There are two feet between them, perhaps three. It might as well be an ocean. It feels like no space at all.

“Yes,” she says, a promise, a death sentence. “I’ll call you first.”

Chapter Text

Cormoran is restless in his flat, unable to focus on his book or the telly. He’s overheating more than usual, his skin feeling too tight, his blood rushing about uselessly. He is primed, to fuck or to fight, and he can do neither; he opens a bottle of beer and emails his contractors, arranging for them to take on more of his planned duties for the next few days.

He knows he is in no shape to be working, as much as he could use the distraction. And they’ve taken on enough work recently that he can afford to have their workload covered for a day or two, so he can— what, spend them tugging himself off in a cold shower, Robin’s name on his lips?

He smiles wryly to himself. Better that than be noticed by any passing Alpha or Omega. His body’s trying valiantly to go into a full rut, from his proximity to Robin’s intoxicating scent. He’s a beacon of I-want-to-fuck-now and it’s not going to assist him with his work one bit.

Just as he’s about to give up and masturbate so that he can try sleeping, his mobile rings. Cormoran didn’t realize until he hears it that he’s been waiting for it, hoping for it. Robin, he thinks immediately, then, no, of course not.

But somehow, it is.

“Cormoran?” she says, and her tone is verging on panic. “Are you at the office?”

“Yes,” he says, because he is only a flight of stairs away and his Omega is upset, she needs him, he’ll do whatever she needs—

“I think I left my bag at the office,” she’s saying. “If it’s not there, I’ve lost it, and I can’t— please, can you check for me, I need it—”

“Of course,” he’s saying, already stumbling out the door. “Hang on, Robin, breathe, please. I’m going to look now. It’s going to be alright.”

Her breath is fast and anxious in his ear, and his cock twitches hopefully in his pants. He can’t think about that right now, though, because Robin needs him to check the office, and he fumbles the door open, flicks on the lights.

“There’s a blue duffle bag,” he says, finding it immediately, saturated with the smell of her, and she nearly sobs with relief.

“Yes, that’s it, I can’t believe I left it there, I’m so foolish—”

“No, Robin, you’re one of the cleverest people I know,” he says, a truth as much as an attempt to sooth. “It’s alright, I have it, what do you need, I can bring it to you—”

“No, it’s alright, I’ll come pick it up tomorrow,” she says, and he’s hard now at the thought of her, as she had been last time, the heavy scent of her heat, the way she’d made his body ache—

“I can bring it to you,” he says, firm, commanding, Alpha. “I’ll be out and about anyway—” a lie, but she doesn’t know that “—it’s no trouble at all. Should I bring it by your flat?”

“No,” she says, and he can hear her hesitation. “No, I’ll be… I have a room.”

A room. It echoes in his mind. He knows the kind of room she means, the type of hotel it will be in. He’s never been in one, because he’s never been with an Omega in heat before, but he’s not ignorant of how these things are done. He’s staked them out enough times, certainly, to know what happens there.

“That’s fine,” he says, trying to say firm, businesslike. This isn’t the call he’d been hoping for, but he had told her to call if she needed anything, and she had. “What’s the address?”

She tells him, and he writes it down. “I’ll tell them you’re going to come by,” she says. “Just bring it to the front desk.”

She’ll already be there. Checked in, soaking wet, ready, waiting—

“What time?” he asks.

“Any time after noon? That’s when I— when I can check in,” she says, and her voice is tight, breathy. “Thank you, Cormoran.”

Jesus, he loves the way she says his name. “It’s nothing,” he tells her. “I told you to call me if you needed anything, I’m hardly about to be upset you took me at my word.”

It’s easier to talk to her over the phone, when he can’t see her, can’t smell her. But his body yearns for her, aches for her, he’s hard as a rock just thinking about her with her voice in his ear— he resists the urge to touch himself, as though she were some cheap phone-sex line.

“I really appreciate it, though,” she’s saying, soft and grateful, and fuck, he wants to ask her—

“You’re welcome,” he manages to say. “Really, don’t worry about it. I’ll bring it to you. Don’t worry.”

“You’re so good to me,” she sighs, and Cormoran’s knuckles tighten on his phone; I could be so good to you, he thinks, I could take such good care of you, my good girl, sweet Omega, beautiful girl, I could fuck you for hours and pump you full of me, could take such good care of you, just let me, just ask—

“Tomorrow, then” he says roughly, and hangs up. It’s too dangerous by half. He’s still standing in the office, and it smells like her, because she’s been here all day, cleaning; his knot is swelling, her voice in his ear, you’re so good to me, so good to me—

He ends the night fucking up into his fist, his eyes half-closed, moaning her name, brain full of the filthy things he’d like to do to her, with her, in her— his knot pulses, and he cums for what feels like hours, Robin’s scent a siren-song despite her absence.

Robin had been frantic when she realized her go-bag was nowhere to be found, but once Cormoran has reassured her of its location, she relaxes, all at once. Even his abrupt ending of their phone call isn’t enough to disrupt her relief.

She can’t do this without its contents, and her heat is nearly on her, she can feel it. She’s still hungry when she finally gets back to her flat, so she eats the leftovers from the previous day’s takeaway and tries not to think about the coiling tension in her body, a precursor of the burning need that will engulf her soon.

She’d thought she would have more time, but her body is ready, ready now, and Robin knows that it’s the wrong thing to do even as she lays in bed, sliding her fingers into herself, whimpering at the stimulation. This will only bring on her heat faster but she needs, she burns, and she brings herself off with a muffled cry, an orgasm washing through her that does nothing to satisfy her body.

Cormoran spends his morning wishing he hadn’t given away all his work for the day, while knowing at the same time that he would be spectacularly bad at it if he had tried to do it. He resists masturbating again, knowing that it will only pull him deeper into the rut his body is longing for. It leaves him tense and prickly.

At quarter-of noon he grabs Robin’s bag, which still smells of her, and tries not to think about it too hard. He knows where the hotel is, and moves briskly, trying to burn off some of his excess energy.

The crowds part around him, and his leg barely hurts at all; his body is too full of other feelings, other hormones to register the ever-present ache. He is an Alpha on a mission, and nothing can stop him, not when his Omega needs him.

Not yours, he reminds himself, and his thumping feet drum out the words with every step— not yours, not yours not yours.

He arrives at the hotel at 12:30, and strides right up to the front desk.

“Can I help you, sir?” the Omega clerk asks him, her tone cool. She is not here to do what he says, she is here to serve the Omegas who use the hotel. Alphas can’t book rooms, only Omegas can; Alphas can pay, of course, but there are strict regulations to prevent Omega abuse. He appreciates them, normally.

Right now, she is between him and Robin. He bares his teeth a little. “I have something for Robin Ellacott? She told me— she said she’d tell you about it.”

He thinks she’d said something of the type last night, and anyway she’s more than smart enough to have done so. He’s waiting for one of the Beta staff to come take the bag from him, take it to Robin, who needs it, needs him, needs his hands, his cock, his knot—

The clerk nods, taps at her keyboard. “Your name, sir?”

“Cormoran Strike.” He produces ID, because he knows how these places operate, and the clerk squints at it for a moment, up at him, back to the ID. She nods.

“Yes, of course. Ms Ellacott is in room 152. The elevator is right over there, next to the stairs.”

Cormoran freezes; he had thought— “I’ll bring it to her?”

The clerk looks at him, appraises him. “That’s what the note says. I can call her room, if you’d like.”

The ravenous thing in his chest is urging him to just go, go to her, run to her side—

“152. Second floor?”

“Yes, sir. There are signs.” The clerk watches him as he skips the elevator, going right up the stairs. No hesitation.

Robin is restless. Her body is aching, ready, and she has brought herself off with her hand already twice, and it’s only getting worse. She needs her bag, the toys that make it bearable if not enjoyable; she craves the feeling of a body against her, inside her, soothing her, filling her up, telling her she’s good, so good, sweet girl—

It’s half-past noon and she is a mess of slick and sweat. She hates this, hates the way her body loses control, all sense of time and niceties. But she is helpless against it.

She’s reading a newspaper article on her phone to try to distract herself when there’s at last a knock on her door. “Yes,” she’s calling before she’s even up all the way. “Is my bag here?”

“Yes,” comes the voice from the other side of the door, and she is frozen, she is melting; Cormoran is there, right there, so close—

“You’re here,” she says. She can smell him now, the waves of pheromones that speak to her of comfort and safe and Alpha, Alpha, her Alpha—

“I’m sorry,” he says and she doesn’t know why, she’s about to open the door, “this was a mistake, don’t open the door, I’ll just, I’m going to leave the bag here for you, don’t open the door—”

Her hand is on the knob but she does as her Alpha says, she’s so good— “Why not?”

“Because Robin,” he says, and he sounds choked, breathless. “You don’t— this isn’t what you want, it’s just hormones, it’s not—”

She whimpers a little. “Isn’t it?”

She can hear him, smell him, nearly taste him— she wants him here, with her, in her—

“Robin,” he sighs, heavy, wanting. She knows he wants her— doesn’t he?

“Don’t you want me?” she asks, knowing he’s still there, knowing he won’t leave her. Her Alpha wouldn’t leave her.

“Fuck, Robin,” he says at once. “What kind of question—”

“Don’t you?” she asks, the scent of him is driving her past want into need, sending a river of slick down her thighs, she is aching, burning, she is hollow and empty and needs him to fill her—

“I can’t,” he says. “I can’t— I’m your boss, we’re— it would be—”

She leans against the door, clutching the knob now, feeling heady and lost in a haze. “I thought,” she whines, deep in her throat, “I thought we were partners.”

“We are,” he says, and his voice is low now, rich and gravelly. “But Robin— I shouldn’t— I can’t.”

“Cormoran,” she says, a gasp, a sob. “Cormoran.”

“Fuck,” he says, then again, “fuck.” Robin is choking on her breath, overwhelmed by her body, its need—

“I have to go,” he says, strained. “I can’t— I have to go.”

“No,” she whines again, “Cormoran.”

“You don’t want me,” he says to her, desperately. “You don’t want me, you just need an Alpha, it doesn't have to be me, it shouldn’t be—”

“It does, Cormoran,” she whimpers, reduced now to pleading. “Please.”

The shift in the energy is palpable; she gasps, closes her eyes. Says it again.

“Please, Cormoran.”

Silence. Robin’s legs shift together, she needs stimulation, she needs, she needs—

“Ask me,” he says, low and harsh and commanding. “Ask me.”

“Cormoran, please,” she whimpers, “please, I need you—”

“Open the door,” he says, and she does, so fast she nearly hits herself with it, stumbling, and he is there.

She’s standing in front of him in nothing but a blue cotton camisole and grey panties, and Cormoran can feel his every hesitation flee his mind as he is swamped by the scent of her, the look of her, eyes wide and pupils blown, looking like all his desires personified—

“Christ, Robin,” he says, stepping forward, dropping her bag at to the floor, and she is colliding with him, she’s in his arms, and he’s kissing her, plunging his tongue into her mouth, his hands on her arms, her hips, her legs— “Jesus Christ” he mumbles into her mouth, his rut suddenly hitting him like a ton of bricks, undeniable.

If their first kiss had lit a match inside him, this is a conflagration; Robin’s like fire in his arms, twining up him like a vine, her fingers in his hair and her tongue sweeping along his. He staggers forward, pinning her against the wall, and she’s tall enough that he doesn’t have to bend down too far to get his mouth on her neck, finding the place below her jaw that had made her shudder; now she is keening, panting in his ear, “please, Cormoran, please, please, please—”

She is tugging at his jacket, now, his shirt, and he thinks buttons are falling to the floor but he doesn’t care, there’s no room for caring about his clothing when he needs to have Robin against his skin— she’s tugging at his belt buckle, needy, wanting, and Cormoran understands now what all the songs were about, all the movies, all the things his mother had said.

This is undeniable, this is earth-shaking. He would move mountains, rewrite the stars, to have this. He would burn the world to the ground if it meant he could have Robin against him, saying his name like that—

“Cormoran, please, I need you,” she says, “please, I need you so much,” and he shushes her with his mouth on hers, reaching down to touch her and she is so wet, slick soaking her panties, she smells like sex and heaven and glory and he doesn’t know why he was denying himself this pain-pleasure-perfection.

“You’ve got me, darling,” he says, pulling her against him, away from the wall. Even in his state he knows he doesn’t have what it takes to fuck her against the wall, but there is a dresser about two feet to their left. That will do, more than do— he hauls her along, and she goes willingly, gasping. “Come on, baby, come here, get up,” he says as he yanks at his slacks, his pants, not bothering to take them off all the way.

She backs into the dresser, reaching behind herself to boost atop it, and it’s only a little too low, it’s fine, it’s perfect— Cormoran bares himself, his cock engorged now, red and throbbing and already glistening with pre-cum. Robin’s gasp at the sight of him strokes his ego, but he doesn’t linger, because she is tossing her panties to the floor, reaching for him with grasping hands and he is caught entirely in her gravity, their collision inevitable.

“Cormoran,” she is gasping as he steps into the space between her legs, “Cormoran, please,” over and over, and he would die for this, he would kill for this—

“Yes, Robin, shh, I’ve got you,” he’s saying, nonsense-words, anything, she’s grasping at his shoulders and he doesn’t even bother trying to line himself up with her, just pulls her close and kisses her again, endlessly, grasping at the sweet curve of her hips, and it’s as easy and natural as the beginning of the universe to slide into her, perfectly, and he is home, home, home, there inside of Robin’s sweet cunt, between her legs, inside her arms, home is right here wherever we are—

Chapter Text

Robin had dreamed of having an Alpha, in another life. She’d thought about what it would be like to have someone take care of her, want her so totally, so all-consumingly; she’d laid awake in her uni dorm room and wondered with a hot blush what it would be like to be knotted, to be so filled and content and cared for.

Not that she meant to ever be unfaithful to Matthew, of course, but— an Omega wondered, that was all; it was just biology, she’d decided, after she brought herself off with a muffled cry.

This, though, this blew all of her tentative fumblings away, totally and completely; she was never going to be able to go back to surviving her heats alone, not after this. Not after the way Cormoran’s fingers bite into the flesh of her hips, the way he grunts in her ear, calls her beautiful and perfect and so good, so good for me—

He is so deep inside her, his cock huge and perfect, telling her she’s good, giving her everything she’s ever dreamed of— this is how it should feel she thinks with whatever higher brain function remains to her, this is what it should always be like—

“Yes,” she pants, grasping whatever she can reach of him; she digs her fingernails into his back and his hips piston just that much harder as if he liked it, and she can feel the nudge and catch of his knot beginning to grow, so she does it again. “Yes, Cormoran, yes, please,” she’s saying, telling him how good he feels, how much she wants him.

“Yeah?” he asks, his hand fumbling for her breast, and the pinch of his fingertips around her nipple sends sparks flying; she whimpers, nodding.

“Cormoran,” she says, just to say his name again— he snaps into her again, a wet and messy and wonderful sound— “Alpha, please I need to— please—”

“You need to cum, baby?” he asks, and his thrusts are quick and even now, a steady drumbeat that makes her feel like she’s going to explode. “Tell me what you need, Robin, darling, perfect girl, say it, please, tell me.”

“Please, Cormoran,” she says, all her inhibitions forgotten in the rush of her heat, this driving inexorable need. “Please, I need your knot— please make me cum—”

“Yes,” he is saying into her ear, and she shudders, she is surrounded by his scent— she leans forward and licks the scent gland closest to her, wanting to taste what he’s feeling, wanting to have him on her tongue. His pheromones burst into her mouth, heady and thrilling— His whole body trembles, and his grip on her hips tightens to the point of bruise, and he thrusts deep into her, his knot swelling and he is moaning her name.

Robin thought she was full before, but she has never taken a knot and it redefines full for her, she is stretching around him and it’s too big, it’s too much—

“Darling, sweet girl, take it, you can take it,” he’s saying, and she’s sobbing her pleasure, and she takes it, takes all of him, and he’s gasping for air and fumbling a hand between them to rub a tight circle near her clit and she is—

She is a firework, a volcano, a shooting star; she is lost in the endless waves of pleasure that roll through her, on and on and on; she is barely conscious of him swearing and finishing, buried there in the sweet heat of her. She is conscious only of the way she feels, heavy and warm and safe and well-fucked.

After some time which could have been seconds or minutes or hours, Robin regathers herself into her skin. The window of clear-headedness that being knotted grants her is a blessed relief, she thinks, but it is Cormoran there, in her arms, in her cunt; this is the thing they had been so careful never to speak of. She had not meant to end up here, like this.

But even as his cock is still pulsing within her, filling her with his seed, she cannot find a way to wish this had never happened; she has never felt like this. Not once in her life.

She untangles her hand from his hair, leaning back slightly, and cups his cheek, running her fingers over his stubble. What have they done? Why doesn’t she regret it?

Cormoran braces himself on the dresser beneath Robin, remembering in the shuddering wake of his life-changing orgasm that he is still wearing his pants and prosthetic; knotted inside of Robin as he is, he won’t be able to remove either for at least 20 minutes.

She is touching his face, gentle and light. He tilts his cheek into her hand, his eyes closed, afraid to look at her now, in this transient moment of quiet.

“Cormoran,” she says at last, and he can’t read her tone at all. She doesn’t sound angry, a least; this is as good a place to start as any, and they are trapped face-to-face. He opens his eyes slowly.

She is— luminous. Sitting atop this dresser in this cheap hotel, the glow of her orgasm still bright in her cheeks and in her eyes, his cock buried deep in her silky heat, she is the most perfect thing he has ever seen.

He can’t keep her, of course. But right now, in this moment, he can pretend, he can tell himself lies, he can tell her the truth—

“Christ almighty,” he says, reaching out with a shaking hand to tuck her hair behind her ear. “You are so beautiful.”

Her eyelashes flutter, and he wonders if he’s imagining the way she looks pleased.

“What are you— I wasn’t expecting you,” she says, finally. His knot hasn’t even started to subside, and it’s only the first day of her heat; this clarity will fade soon enough, back to the burning need. He savors this, the way she is clear-headed and still allows him this gift of her body.

“The girl at the desk,” he manages to say. “She said I should bring the bag up.”

Robin’s brow furrows, and he wants to reach out and stroke her forehead smooth again, take away all her fears.

“I don’t—” she sounds far-off. “I don’t remember what I told her. I gave her your name? And said I needed the bag—”

Her fingers stroke down his cheek to his neck, distractedly. He wonders why she isn’t angry, or upset, or asking him what possessed him to come up to her hotel room and fuck her breathless. Her fingers slip down to trace his scent glands, and his normally restless mind goes quiet. There is only them, in the whole universe.

“I’m sorry,” she says, and that’s supposed to be his line. He blinks at her, slowly, unable to understand what she means.

“For what?”

“For…” she gestures at them, locked together, and Cormoran would not give up his place here between her legs for a queen’s ransom. He presses forward, laying his head on her shoulder, nuzzling against her smooth perfect skin. Her arms slide around him, clutching him closer. “I’ve ruined everything,” she says, softly, and he can smell her turn from sated to stressed, her tension a sour note.

“Robin, no,” he says, because his Omega is upset and he can’t have that, he can’t. “No, it’s not— we’ll figure it out, alright? After? Don’t— don’t say that, it’s going to fine, sweet girl, shh—”

She doesn’t say anything, and he kisses her shoulder, her neck, takes a page from her book and licks her scent gland, following it down to the delicate curve of her clavicle, murmuring into her skin. She allows it, lets him soothe her, tell her how beautiful she is. how good, good girl, so sweet for me—

Cormoran can feel himself begin to soften, his knot finished with its job for the moment. He considers backing away, slipping out of her, but Robin makes a mewling sound of displeasure when he rocks back on his heels, as though she can read his thoughts. Maybe she can.

“Do you want to—” he starts to ask, grasping at a thought that is slipping by even as he thinks it. He loses it completely as Robin sighs, her head falling backwards, her hips canting forwards, seeking—

“Oh,” she sighs, and there is a flush climbing her chest, and her scent is suffused with the heavy-sweet overlay that tastes like wanting and needing, and he doesn’t care anymore, what she was going to say or how his knees are in pain from the angle or about a single blessed thing but driving back into her, making her gasp his name.

“Does that feel good?” he asks, panting into her neck. “Do I make you feel good, baby?”

“Yes,” she moans and nothing but this matters, nothing but his name on her lips. “Cormoran, please, yes…”

He fucks up into her endlessly, driving everything out of her useless brain, until she is nothing but a mess of slick and sex and want. She cums again on his knot, and it’s everything that all the novels says and more, this feeling of too-much-just-right, the all-encompassing feeling of security of being wrapped up in an Alpha, her Alpha.

“Cum for me,” she whispers in his ear as his knot swells, “please, Alpha, cum for me,” and he does, long and hot, filling her up deliciously. “Thank you,” she whispers, floating on a haze of heat and home.

He licks her neck in response, and she wonders what he tastes there, if he can tell how much she likes this— loves this— how happy she is, how safe.

Eventually, of course, the haze dissipates for the sort time she gets, and she must again face how she has destroyed all the things she has been trying so hard to protect. She knows Cormoran can tell that she is upset, tense. He doesn’t say anything about it, just touches her gently with his big hands.

“Robin,” he says eventually, into the tender skin of her neck. “Don’t think I’m complaining, but I can’t keep doing this here, my knees…”

“Oh no,” she says, her inner Omega immediately horrified at the way she has inconvenienced her Alpha. “I’m sorry, I should have—”

“No, shh, no, it’s ok, I told you to, I’m not mad,” he says, rubbing the curl of her lower back soothingly. “Shh, Omega, sweet girl, it’s alright. I just want to move to the bed, ok?”

She nods, content if he is, because her brain is fuzzing away into nothing again, a collection of impulses and biological urges. “Stay in me,” she asks, and he clutches at her hips, nudging just that little bit deeper into her, still knotted securely in her slick-soaked cunt.

“Always,” he says, “always, I’ll stay in you forever, beautiful girl, my good Omega, my Robin…”

He’s leaning forward, capturing her lips in a kiss that feel likes he’s inhaling her, like he’s going to eat her alive. She’s whimpering against his mouth, inhaling one breath with him, and it’s perfect, it’s everything. She can feel the return of the combination of her heat and his rut, the two most primal things in the universe, but she pushes back against them for a moment, her brain snagging on one solid thing.

“Wait, Alpha, your knee— the bed—” she gasps, “we should move.”

“Can’t,” he says, his mouth wet against her shoulder. “Knot.”

“When we can— oh, yes—”

His hand is on her breast, and she’s lost again, and they are sliding together, unable to wait for his knot to subside to wring every feverish ounce of pleasure from this time together.

Cormoran has a vague memory of sliding out of Robin and staggering onto the bed, but the details are lost in the haze of sex and sweetness that pervades the hours in that hotel room; caught in the throes of his rut, there’s only Robin, her skin, her scent, her cunt and her voice crying out his name, over and over, and he has never known a sound so perfect.

He thinks he must be talking, because in the times of clarity that come after he’s knotted her again, his throat is sore, but he couldn’t have told anyone what he was saying. He only knows that when she’s clear-headed, Robin won’t look him in the eye, ducks her head and allows him to press kisses to her cheek, her neck, her shoulder.

This is the definition of crossing boundaries, but buried deep in Robin, knotted so tightly he couldn’t have said where she ended and he begins, Cormoran doesn’t care. They’ll figure it out, after; they’ve weathered worse, he thinks, than this, glorious this, all-consuming this.

He fucks her over and over, for hours, as his rut demands, as Robin demands in her sobbing broken voice. He lays on his back and lets her ride him, watches as she flies apart crying out how good he makes her feel as his knot swells inside her again, collapses against his chest and buries her face in his chest hair.

“Robin, sweet girl,” he whispers to her, stroking her neck. “Look at me, please. Please, baby, come here,” and she lifts her head, looks at him with her storm-cloud eyes, her face a picture of heartbreak.

“What’s wrong?” he asks, touching her perfect face with his hands which do not deserve her. He is still cumming, still filling her with his seed, even as he asks. “Come here, please, tell me what’s wrong.”

She lays her head back down, tucking her nose into the crook of his neck net to his scent gland. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“For this?” he asks, laughing suddenly, hard enough that he jostles her perch atop him. They both wince at the unpleasant tugging, and Robin resettles against him. “Why are you sorry for this? This is— it’s—”

He exhales, closes his eyes. He can feel the flutter of her eyelashes against his neck, feels everything, the rub of the soaked sheets beneath them, the twitch of her calf against his side, the clutch of her fingers against his collarbone.

“This is so much more than I deserve of you,” he says, quiet. “I’m not— you should have more than I can give you. You shouldn’t be the one who’s sorry.”

She shudders against him, and he’s horrified to find her shaking, a single tear slipping down her nose to drip onto his skin. He’s made his Omega cry during her heat— he’s the worst Alpha— he’s not worthy to be here—

“No, Jesus, please, Robin, darling, no, don’t cry,” he says, unable to form a single coherent thought past badAlphabadAlphabadAlpha. “Shh, shh, don’t cry, tell me what I can do, I’ll do anything, shh, sweet girl, no, please—”

“You’re so good to me and I don’t know why,” she says into his neck, her lips brushing against his scent gland, and his hips jerk, one more spurt of cum wrung out of him.

“Don’t know why— no, don’t say that, you’re so good, so smart— clever— beautiful— so good for me, sweet girl, my Robin—”

Cormoran is kissing her, her face, her neck, telling her all sorts of lovely things that she does not deserve because she has ruined everything, their careful partnership she has fought so hard for, all the hours and days and weeks and years of earned trust and camaraderie blown apart by her awful biological need to be knotted and claimed.

Would it be so bad to be claimed by this Alpha? her useless Omega voice whispers in her ear as he kisses her clavicle again, tells her how clever she is. This Alpha is good and strong and cares for you, he’ll put big healthy babies in you and hold you in his strong arms—

She lets him soothe her with his words and his mouth, his hands and his cock, lets him fuck up into her until they’re both reaching for orgasm again, one more of the countless that they’ve already shared, turning the bed into an ocean of slick and cum and cotton. If she wasn’t in heat she’d find it disgusting, but she just wants to roll around in it, luxuriate in the way it smells like sex and the two of them, smells like safety and home in a senseless way.

It doesn’t matter that you’ve ruined things, her Omega voice whispers to her, enticing lies she wants to believe. This is better than anything you could’ve had, this is what you were built for, he loves this, loves you, you’re his good girl, good Omega, taking him over and over. He’s going to give you babies and security and a place to call home and he’s going to love you forever, you’re his, he’s yours, just let him fuck you and everything is going to be fine, it’s going to be perfect….

Chapter Text

Time is liquid around them, meaningless; there is only the heat and the rut, the press and the push and the pull. Cormoran only knows that time is passing because the light around them changes, because he knots her and then fucks her again when it has passed.

There is nothing like this, he thinks, when he is capable of thinking. This is what drives people to the edge of sanity. This is what causes the downfall of empires. This grasp and groan and kiss and crush.

Robin is above him, around him, Robin is the center of his universe, which extends to the edge of the bed and no farther.

No wonder Charlotte hated the idea of this, Cormoran thinks in one of the rare moments of quiet, as Robin dozes, draped across his chest, his knot still tight in her slick perfect cunt. There’s no way for this to be polished and clean and dignified. This is messy and disgusting and primal and perfect, just as it is. Charlotte could never have given herself up like this. She couldn’t have lost control like this.

And they had lost control, entirely. When Robin was awake he could think of nothing but her, of putting his hands and mouth on her, of putting his cock in her so that he could knot her, pumping her full of his cum and laving his tongue across any inch of skin he could reach. There’s something about Robin that sets him on fire, that urges him on at the deepest possible level, far lower than common sense or decency.

She hadn’t wanted this, he reminds himself as she sleeps, secure in his arms. She hadn’t asked him to be her Alpha, to press bruises into the soft flesh of her hips with his clutching hands, to tell her how good for him she is being. She hadn’t wanted this.

He knows he is not a good man, in his moments of clarity. He has taken a relationship that he values more than almost any other and he has lost it to pheromones and biological urges, to the siren-song of Robin’s heat.

When Robin wakes up, licks his scent gland soft as a kitten, sighs into his ear— he doesn’t care at all. He’s already hard, already inside her, and he would burn the world down to stay there, right there, fucking up into her, feeling the flutter of her walls around him, hearing her breath out his name.

He would do anything, he thinks as his knot swells again, one more countless time, to make Robin keep saying his name just like that, broken and wanting. Her nails bite down into his shoulder and he hisses, thrusting harder, hitting some sweet secret spot inside her that he hasn’t found until now; he wants to know all her secrets, wants to know her body like he knows London, a map of places he wants to visit again and again.

She is perfect, he thinks as her body milks him, as she lays back down against him, sweaty and sated for the moment. She doesn’t look him in the eye. He kisses her shoulder.

She is perfect, and he doesn’t deserve her. He has no business being the Alpha to Robin’s Omega.

As her hips rock against his lazily, her fingers brushing absently against the hair on his chest, he finds there is no room inside of him left to care at all.

At some point, Robin gets tired of caring so much. She doesn’t want to think about the ramifications of what they’re doing, the perfect disaster they’ve made of things. She leans down to Cormoran’s ear, running her fingers across his shoulders.

“Alpha,” she says softly, and then, “Cormoran.” She can feel how his hands grasp her when she says his name, knows what it does to him. “Will you do something for me?”

“Anything,” he says, panting, out of breath. He is so deep inside her, so tightly knotted, that she thinks it must be impossible to find a way to part them fully again. “Anything for you.”

“Make me forget,” she says. “I don’t want to think about what comes after this. Please.”

“Yes,” he says immediately. “I can— yes—”

His hands slide to her hips, bringing her down against him more firmly, as he rocks up against her. They have spent the last day doing nothing but have sex, round after round, not leaving the bed, and yet somehow this feels like the beginning of something else again.

Cormoran turns his brain off. There’s only Robin, and the bed, and the water he thinks to drink at some point, that he insists she drink as well. There’s only the twist of her hair, the pant of her breath, the clutch of her hands.

“So pretty,” he tells her as he rocks into her from behind, her back pressed flush against his chest, his hands finding all the places on her body that make her shake. “So good for me, my good girl.”

She nods, not looking at him. One of her hands arches over her head, reaches back to tangle in the sweat-soaked matting of his hair. She smells like sex, and him- so much like him, all over her body. He is pleased by this, on a primal level; mine, a greedy voice whispers to him from the animal depths of his brain. Mine, mine, mine—

His pumps into her to the rhythm of his internal chant, giving Robin whatever he has left to give. It’s all hers, hers as she is his, and mine mine mine he is thinking as she goes boneless against him, her thighs sticky with their combined juices, the spend of their hours together.

“Alpha,” she says, a little brokenly. He can feel his orgasm so close, just there, beyond his reach; he digs his fingers into the swell of her hips and loses himself in the wet sound of their joining.

“I’ve got you,” he pants into her ear. “Come on, sweet girl. Come for me.”

“Alpha,” she says again, her voice taut, her hand pulling at his hair almost too tight. “Please— Please—”

“Yes, I’m here, come on, baby, I’ve got you,” he says, his hips moving at just the angle he knows now that she needs to find the pleasure he so wants to give her, that he needs to give her, that is his sole purpose on this earth—

“Please, Cormoran— please—” she says, and it’s that, his name on her lips, that brings him to the edge he can fall off of. He can feel his knot expanding, her slick walls tight around him, and her head tilts back against his collarbone as her orgasm crests through her.

He turns his head, dizzy from the rush of his own orgasm, his cock pulsing into her again and again. He nuzzles against her sweaty temple, pressing gentle kisses to whatever part of her body is there for him to kiss.

Robin curls up in the cradle of Cormoran’s body, his bulk wrapped around hers like two nesting commas, still knotted together. She wonders what she smells like; she can only smell the room, the heavy sweet-rich-musky scent of sex, their fluids, their bodies. It’s perfect, to her heat-soaked brain; it’s her and her Alpha and the ancient dance of their bodies, that will fill her up with love and cum and a baby; her body wants it, wants to curve and grow and give this man a child.

In her right mind, Robin knows she does not want this; she can see that knowledge in this small space of clarity that being knotted has granted her. But it’s a far-off thing, as though it’s locked behind glass, sealed away by the all-encompassing truth of her heat.

This body was made to be filled, her useless Omega brain tells her. You were born to be fucked like this, loved like this, to grow and nurture and bear.

“No,” she whispers aloud, to this internal voice. She doesn’t want that, not really. She wants to be—

His, the voice whispers enticingly. His Omega, so pretty, so good, he’ll take care of you, give you strong children to love, just be his—

She wants to be his partner, she thinks despairingly. Not his plaything.

But his cock is hot inside her, and his arms are strong around her, and there is no escaping the truth of their biology.

Robin closes her eyes, and lets sleep take her away from this moment.

Cormoran hears Robin whisper no and his heart— a patched and tattered thing, cobbled together from a hundred different pieces, none of them matching— it breaks, a little more.

Robin drinks water when Cormoran makes her, her body’s needs all pushed aside by her heat. The idea of eating is disgusting, though she knows she will be ravenous again after this is over. She sleeps only when the comforting certainty of his knot is inside her, the knowledge that her Alpha is protecting her allowing her body to rest.

So when Robin awakes from her doze to rock against Cormoran’s hips and finds herself thinking about food again, that’s when she knows her heat is going to end at some point. Maybe not right away, but her body is going to process all the hormones that control it during her heat, and she’s going to be in charge of herself again.

This thought brings her little comfort, though, as she rides Cormoran to completion again, bracing her hands against the dark hair that grows in such abundance all over his body. After this, there will be a reckoning.

She closes her eyes and lets the knowledge, and her hunger, be washed away but the surge of hormones in her bloodstream as her orgasm starts to build. She focuses on Cormoran’s hand at her clit, his voice telling her how good she is, how perfect.

Once this is over, then she will deal with it. Until then she is slick with her heat, covered in bodily fluids from the soaked sheets, nothing but a hot and aching void that she lets Cormoran fill.

“You’re so perfect, Robin,” he says to her in his rough voice, and she shivers and dissolves above him. “My sweet girl, yes, like that— yes, good girl, such a good Omega—”

She can feel him swell within her, and that’s enough for this moment. This moment is all there is.

But the moment passes, as all moments must.

Chapter Text

Robin wakes up from another orgasm-heavy catnap to find that her brain no longer feels cushioned by fog, and knows that her heat is almost at an end. She mourns it, for a moment or two, not the mindlessness of it so much as the way it had allowed her to slip away from the ramifications of her actions.

She had had every intention of spending this rut alone, as she had her last; she had the tools and the willpower, she thought, to do it. But Cormoran had come to her door and everything had— imploded.

She rubs her eyes, feeling the hot length of Cormoran’s body still pressed fully against her back, his leg tangled with hers. One of his arms is tucked up beneath the pillow, the other wrapped around her, pulling her up against his chest, his large palm covering one of her breasts. She feels— secure, there in the shelter of him.

She exhales quietly, hoping she hasn’t woken him up. The room is heavy with the scent of them, all the sex they’d been having; she can feel a layer of dried fluids that coats far too much of her body. But somehow, though she knows she would find this disgusting any other day of her life, Robin doesn’t care. It’s soothing to her innermost Omega instincts, to be so cared for and covered in her Alpha’s scent. He’s not hers, of course. Of course.

She closes her eyes again and relaxes back into the furnace of Cormoran’s chest. She will give herself the gift of these last minutes of peace. She sighs, and Cormoran’s arm flexes, pressing her impossibly closer to him. The wiry hair on his chest brushes against her mating gland, sending a frisson of pleasure racing through her; even in the midst of everything, he had been careful not to touch it. There on the edge of slumber, Robin wishes he had.

She wishes— but she is asleep.

Cormoran awakes and knows somehow, immediately, that their strange, impossible time together has come to an end. Even now it fades, like a dream wisping away between his fingers in the morning light.

He closes his eyes, his breath heavy in his lungs. He does not want to do this. He wants to be anywhere but where he is, while at the same time the Alpha in him never wants to be anywhere but here, arms around his Omega, warm and soft and his. But she’s not his, and he must face the music, and live with himself. It is all he has ever known.

Robin is curled against him, relaxed in sleep, her mouth reddened and open. He cannot see her face, with her back to him as it is, but he can see her body, and he knows it is a liberty that he should not take even as he takes it; he memorises her, tucking this moment into a corner of his mind. The curve of her hip, the rich happy-content-safe of her scent, the silk of her skin beneath his hand. The way she shifts and sighs, curling forward around his arm across her chest, the way his name sounds as she whispers it—

“Cormoran,” she says, impossibly soft, impossibly sweet. “Are you awake?”

He knows he shouldn’t, he knows— “No,” he says, his voice a hoarse burr tangling into her hair.

“Good,” she says. “Neither am I.”

And it is with that agreement that he allows himself to press his lips to her head, slide his hand so carefully across her skin to cup the fullness of her breast. “Oh,” she says, tilting her head back against his chest, opening herself up to him.

“Is this a dream?” Cormoran asks her, entranced by the flutter of her eyelashes, the way her hand reaches back to clutch at his hip.

“What else could it be?” Robin asks, as his thumb strokes across one tender nipple, bringing it to a peak.

It could be real, Cormoran thinks as his free hand continues to fondle the soft flesh that Robin has continued to grant him access to. We could just— we could have this.

But there are other factors to consider than biology, than his foolish heart.

“Just a dream,” he agrees.

Robin keeps her eyes closed, giving herself that tiny ounce of plausible deniability even as she tenses and hums with the gentle pleasure Cormoran gives her.

“Oh,” she says, and her body is aching and sore but in the very best way, the way that gives each movement of his hand the edge of pleasure-pain that comes from being well-used. “Yes, like that.”

Cormoran’s hand is familiar to her now as it plucks and rolls at her flesh, sending a gentle ripple through her. The rush and burn of her heat has abated, leaving her not wrung-out and weary as in the past but simmering, a banked fire, brought to coals.

Cormoran tugs his arm out from beneath the pillow, and Robin lifts her head to allow him to flex it forward. His arm is firm and warm beneath her face, and she turns her face against his hot skin as his other hand trails down from her breast to brush at the thatch of golden-brown hair between her legs.

“May I?” he all but breathes, asking permission, wanting to hear from her own lips that she—

“Mmm,” Robin hums, turning into the crook of his elbow. “Don’t, I’m disgusting, I can feel it.”

Cormoran knows what she means— he is also covered in the evidence of their activities of the past few days, slick and semen and sweat. He’s hungry and desperately in need of a cigarette. But—

“You’re perfect,” he says into her hair, the words slipping out easy and familiar. “Let me, beautiful girl, please—”

Robin doesn’t know how to feel as she nods. She had thought his endearments were born from his rut, but that has passed and he is still—

His fingers slip into the slick mess of her and she can’t think anymore, the roughness of his blunt fingers unfamiliar against the smooth folds of her cunt. He is so gentle with her, tentative almost, as though this is their first time. And in a way, it is.

He strokes her folds, learning her, fingers finding her clit with a minimum of fumbling. She hisses, a tiny inhalation, and he passes it by, returning to her opening, where she thinks she must still be leaking his seed.

“So good,” he murmurs, one fingertip dipping into her, “so perfect, still wet from me, so good—”

Robin wonders as she shudders if he knows he is speaking aloud, if these words are meant for her to hear. She soaks them up regardless, telling herself this is a dream, it’s just a dream, they’re still asleep—

He slides his finger in deeper, and the slick-wet stretch of it, though nothing compared to his cock, is enough to send a roll of pleasure through her. This must be what everyone meant when they said that post-heat is a good time for Omegas, Robin thinks a bit wildly, it shouldn’t be possible to still want to—

But she does, or her body does, even after all the sex of the past few days; she is wet and filled with a bubbling sort of arousal that she knows Cormoran must be able to smell, because she can smell his, knows that he still wants her, as he has always wanted her—

“Robin,” he says, a gasp, a plea, “baby, can I kiss you, please let me kiss you—”

She wants to keep her eyes closed, wants to pretend like it doesn’t mean anything.

She twists her upper body around, her arm wrapping back around his head to pull him to her, their lips slotting together easily.

If this is a dream, Cormoran has decided he will never wake up. He has no reason to, not when Robin is here, allowing him to kiss her, touch her, have her.

Her mouth tastes like him, faintly, cigarettes and a musty sweetness, and he chases the taste, using the arm beneath her head to keep Robin close even as he carefully adds another finger inside her slick channel. She shudders and moans into his mouth, and he can smell her approval, can feel it in the way she begins to rock her hips against his hand. It’s familiar to him, now, the way her body acts and reacts, and he will use this knowledge only to give her further pleasure, to repay her for what he has done.

She is panting against his mouth, and he looks at her face to see her eyes are still closed, her fingers digging into his scalp. He likes the way she tugs at his hair, and he kisses her cheek as she turns her head, as she bites her lip and chases the pleasure he is only too happy to give her.

“Is that good?” he asks, even as he knows she likes the way he’s stroking her walls, finding the place inside her that makes her twist and shake. He’s as gentle as he knows how to be, knowing that she must be sore. “Like that?”

“Yes,” she says, a hitch in her breath, rocking into him. He is hard again, somehow, from the way she looks and smells and writhes against him. He doesn’t care at the moment, watching Robin’s face, the way she blushes and gasps. “Yes, like that— please—”

“Anything,” he says, knowing it’s true, knowing it’s hopeless, knowing he’s well and truly lost.

He had thought that they had crossed a point of no return when she opened the door to him, but this, he thinks, scraping his teeth gently along the slope of her neck, working his fingers inside of her, this is his Rubicon.

Cormoran is pressing his lips to the tendon of her neck and Robin is fraying at her tattered edges. There is an orgasm building in her, one more in the parade of many she’s had over the past days; and yet this one feels the most immediate, because it is only Robin now, no heat, no pheromones to blame. This is only the way Cormoran is touching her, so deliberate, so careful.

She is kindling on embers, the inevitable rush of pleasure building like a bonfire in her bones. It shouldn’t feel this good, Robin thinks, just before Cormoran slides out to add a third finger into her and grinds the heel of his hand against her clit and she is an inferno.

Robin cries out wordlessly, her fingers a deathgrip on his skin, and Cormoran thinks he has never been given a gift quite like the way her mouth hangs open, gasping his name.

“Fuck— Cormoran— fuck, oh my god—”

His wrist is cramping and he couldn’t care less, his cock nearly forgotten as he strokes Robin higher, higher, wanting to hear her, smell her, see her—

“Yeah?” he pants against her damp skin, wanting her to respond, to tell him what she likes, what she needs. “Yeah, baby? Like that?”

“Cormoran,” she says, twisting against him like a banner in a gale, chasing her release. “Cormoran— fuck, please—”

He leans down, pressing his closed lips to her scent gland, her pheromones telling him how close she is, how good she is feeling.

“I’m— fuck, I’m so— please—”

Her voice is breathy, broken, and Cormoran wants to give her this, one last orgasm before they wake up.

“Cum for me, baby,” he says against her neck, “come on, Robin, let me see you—”

And he curls his fingers just so as he sets his teeth to her scent gland, her pleasure sparkling on his tongue, and she is arching against him, muscles tensing and loosening, an endless pulsing of pleasure filling the room.

Cormoran knows that she’s cum for him before, many times, in this very bed. But this one is a gift, he thinks as Robin tries to catch her breath. This one is just them, dreaming together.

“Fuck,” Robin manages to say. “Fuck. Cormoran...”

His fingers slip from her, and she feels empty then, without him inside her. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hand, dripping wet from her cunt, so she reaches out and sets his hand on her hip. His fingers splay and flex against her skin, and she leaves her hand atop his, her own slick on her fingers.

She doesn’t know what to say to him, this man who is so important to her, this Alpha who she wants to wake up to every morning. Her partner, who has just turned her into a supernova, who knows her better than anyone else, who knows every last awful part of her and still wants her, wants this—

Cormoran, who is pressing a kiss to her temple that feels like an ending, like a goodbye.

“You’re so beautiful,” he says softly in his rough voice, his cock hard and insistent against her hip. She wants to reach back and take him in hand, wants to stay in this space that they have agreed is a dream.

She is loose-limbed and buoyant from her orgasm, her Omega instincts absolutely at peace for the first time in a long time.

“I wish,” she says, soft like a secret, “that we didn’t have to wake up.”

Cormoran doesn’t reply, only kissing her temple again, taking a deep breath of her. She stretches, toes curling, hips popping a little. Again she can feel the nudge of his cock as she shifts against him. His stomach rumbles then, loud enough to be clearly heard.

Cormoran could eat possibly an entire cow if given the chance, and he desperately needs a nicotine fix; all the biological processes that his rut had been suppressing are making themselves known to him. Nevertheless, he wants to draw out this time in this bed with this woman.

He hardens his heart, shoring up the defenses which have been blown to infinitesimal smithereens by the things that have happened in this room. He wants to stay more than anything, but Cormoran Strike is a man accustomed to not getting the things he wants.

Just because he’s already had it doesn’t mean he gets to keep it. Just because Robin seems to be offering herself up to him doesn’t mean she wants to be his; she’s an Omega, he’s an Alpha, he’s just fucked her through her heat. He’s just given her another orgasm, he’s giving off pheromones that couldn’t more clearly convey mine-mine-mine than if he were saying it aloud. Of course she thinks she wants him now.

He does not want to be here— cannot bear to be here— when she realizes that he’s not really what she wants after all. So he pulls all the soft, exposed pieces of himself back inside his shell, where he will be safe, and allows himself to kiss her cheek.

“Stay asleep, beautiful girl,” he says to her, softly. “I had better go.”

Her hand, still resting atop his, spasms. She inhales sharply.

Cormoran wonders, for a moment, if she will ask him to stay.

Robin does not want him to leave.

But he seems to be ready to leave, and he was always going to leave. This was inevitable, from the moment she begged him to come into this room; he was always going to leave her in it.

So she steels herself for this, ignoring her every useless Omega urge to beg him to stay, please, Alpha, stay with me, I’ll be good, I’ll do whatever you need, please—

“I should shower,” she says in reply. And she should; there is a layer of bodily fluids over the both of them. It is, in fact, disgusting, not that the clouds of her heat have cleared from her eyes.

She does not want to wash away his scent; she wants every person who smells her to know that she belongs to Cormoran Strike, and he belongs to her in turn. But that would be a lie, because she doesn’t, and she never will.

“Yeah,” Cormoran says. “Alright. I’ll, uh. Do you happen to know where my— my leg ended up?”

Robin has a vague memory of helping him to unstrap his prosthetic while he was knotted inside her. She flushes.

“I’ll find it for you,” she says, forcing herself to pull away from Cormoran’s hot bulk, tugging at the awful nest of her hair to pull it forward over one shoulder. She sits up, her back to him, and waits for the moment of light-headedness to pass. She needs to eat; she hasn’t eaten in three days, and there’s only so far that calorie-loading will take you.

She is self-conscious as she swings her legs over the edge of the bed, pulls herself upright, standing on her two legs, naked as the day she was born. She looks for her clothing as she goes, needing to feel less vulnerable, needing to feel like someone other than Cormoran’s Robin.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Cormoran knows that Robin keeping her back to him is not an accident; she does not want to look at him now, and he can hardly blame her. But it also affords him a clear view of her body, the pale warm skin and few freckles, and the mating gland sitting delicately at the nape of her neck.

He had managed, somehow, to avoid her gland, because if he had paid any attention to it during her heat the temptation might have ruined him. It’s small, perhaps the size of a one-euro coin, roughly circular, raised and slightly pink. He wonders, as he has never wondered before, what it would be like to mate, to sink his teeth into the skin of another person and be bound together forever.

He watches Robin go to her bag, pulling out a pair of cotton panties and pulling them up her legs without any evidence of self-consciousness. He wonders who could possibly be the right person to mar that pink circle on Robin’s back, who could ever be good enough and strong enough to be a fitting mate for her.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Robin dresses herself in the bare minimum of comfortable clothing, disliking how the fabric feels against her unwashed skin but needing not be naked anymore, because the temptation to turn around and reach for Cormoran is almost more than she can bear. She knows he is hard, that he wants her; it’s undeniable, heavy in the air, on her own skin.

Once she is covered by panties and camisole she can find his prosthetic, sitting on the floor between the dresser and the bed; the dresser, where he had— where they had—

“Here it is,” Robin says, lifting it up, an unfamiliar heft in her hands. She turns, and now she must look him square in the eye for the first time.

It is unbearable; she bears it.

Cormoran glances away first, down to the prosthetic, and she proffers it to him, held out in such a way that she can stay as far away as possible. She tries as hard as she can to not glance at him, at the marks she has left littered across his skin, at the way the thick hair on his chest tapers towards— the sheet, which he has blessedly drawn over himself.

“Thanks,” he rasps out.

“You’re welcome,” she says, polite out of habit. She casts about for a way to escape this, this room that feels too small, that is filled with the intoxicating scent of their shared pleasure. “I should— I’m going to shower now.”

There is only one bathroom.

“Mind if I—” he coughs. “Mind if I use it first?”

“No, not at all,” Robin says, averting her eyes as Cormoran begins the process of strapping his leg back on. She goes to the blue duffel bag, abandoned by the door where it had been dropped two and a half days earlier. In it are her toiletries, along with all the tools she had not needed this time. She lifts it, carries it over to the dresser where—

She bites her lip, doesn’t allow her mind to dwell. She can hear Cormoran moving about behind her, his grunts as he rises, his shuffling footsteps as he goes into the small bathroom and closes the door.

Once he is safely where she cannot see him, Robin turns to the room at large, making quick work of gathering up their belongings. His wallet and cigarette carton had fallen out of his pockets by the dresser, his keys and lighter by the door; they had been scattered by the hasty, haphazard removal of clothing. Robin piles it all into Cormoran’s single shoe. She attempts to neaten Cormoran’s clothing, because unlike her he does not have anything to change into; she winces at the mess she made of his shirt, which is missing two buttons.

Thankfully, they are both near the top; he can simply leave it unbuttoned to where they are missing. She makes a mental note to offer to repair it; she has enough skill to replace buttons, at least.

She folds the clothing into a pile and sets it outside the bathroom door. She can hear water running, and wonders if Cormoran’s taking a proper shower or just giving himself covering noise to wank off. (She knows what boys do in bathrooms. She shared one bathroom with three brothers. She’s wise to their ways.)

She knocks. “I’ve left your clothing for you outside the door,” she says, loud enough to be heard over the running water.

“Thank you,” comes the muffled reply, and he sounds— tired, upset, strained— Robin can feel her Omega instincts stirring, responding to the perceived need of her Alpha—

Your Alpha needs you, needs help, you are not providing for your Alpha’s needs, go to him—

Robin pulls herself away from the door and looks for something to occupy her thoughts other than Cormoran. She settles on her cellphone, rummaging for a charger and checking her emails.

It’s like a bucket of icy water to her brain, and she forces herself to focus on things other than physical needs. She sorts the inbox, flagging the more urgent emails and ignoring the sounds coming from the bathroom as best she can. She sits on one of the the uncomfortable plastic chairs and doesn’t look up when the bathroom door opens and closes again.

Pull yourself together, she tells herself as she deletes a set of spam emails. You’ve done this, and you can’t undo it.

She does not acknowledge, even to herself, how unhappy the thought of undoing this makes her feel. She does not want to take this back, wants this to be—

But it isn’t, and it can’t be.

You have to move forward, she tells herself.

Cormoran takes care of his erection with the shower running behind him, unable to get under the running water because of his prosthetic. It doesn’t take long, anyway; he allows himself to think about the way Robin had felt around him, under him, above him, and it’s over very quickly.

Robin knocks on the door and merely the sound of her voice has his libido twitching hopefully; he does not know how his no-longer-young body is managing this, and hopes it won’t be a lasting effect, because it’s exhausting.

He takes one of the scratchy hand towels and soaks it in the icy water he has running, wiping himself down with grim efficiency. He has to take the Tube back to his flat for a proper washup, and he sees no reason to be more obvious about what he’s been doing for the past few days than necessary.

He wipes the scent of Robin, their mingled fluids, from his skin with something that tastes like regret in his mouth. He doesn’t want to erase her, he wants to absorb her, wants their scents to blend so totally that no one would ever be able to untangle them fully.

Instead he scrubs the washcloth against his skin, letting its rough texture serve as a sort of self-flagellation, before grabbing his wrinkled clothing and tugging it on.

His shirt no longer buttons all the way up, and his sock is unpleasantly stiff, but he wrestles it on. He cannot stay here, cannot watch Robin move around avoiding eye contact, listen to her wash herself clean and leave their time together nothing more than a memory. He knows that she will not stay with him, and his only defense now is to be the one who leaves first.

Once he is presentable enough to be allowed out in public, Cormoran turns off the shower and stares at himself in the mirror for a moment. He is rumpled and sallow, in need for food and nicotine, and his hair is a snarled mess; his scent glands, left uncovered by his open collar, are reddened and tender from the attention Robin has paid them. He looks tired and well-fucked.

The bathroom door opens again, and Cormoran steps out looking far more pulled-together than Robin feels. She rises from her chair instinctively, her body wanting to return to his.

“I’ll— I’d better— go,” Cormoran says, looking not-quite-at-her.

“Yes,” Robin says, knowing that he was always going to leave.

Neither of them speak for a long moment, and Robin allows herself to look at him for a moment, this version of Cormoran which is the closest there will ever be of a Cormoran that belongs to her.

“I’ll see you,” he says finally, looking her in the eye once more.

“Of course,” Robin replies. Of course he will see her. Of course life must go on.

“Tomorrow?” he asks. “In the office?”

Tomorrow is… she has no idea what day of the week tomorrow is. Does it matter? He wants her to come back, back to the office which they share, where they are partners and co-workers.

He is offering her an olive branch. He is telling her that everything is not ruined forever.

“Tomorrow,” she agrees. “At the office.”

He nods, his gaze flickering over her, standing there in her camisole and panties, her cellphone in hand. She wonders what he sees.

He does not say goodbye. He simply turns away and walks out the door. The lock re-engages when it closes, and Robin hears it as loud as a slam.

She leaves her phone on the table when she goes to take her shower, and if there are tears on her cheeks as she scrubs Cormoran off her skin, there is no one there to see.

Chapter Text

Cormoran manages to get himself back to his flat through sheer willpower, chain-smoking a series of cigarettes as he goes, as much to cover his scent as to satisfy his cravings. He buys and eats an enormous platter of curry from a food truck before finally making his way back to his flat, sitting alone in the Alpha car. He closes his eyes and leans his head back on the seat, Robin the only thing he can see behind his eyelids.

Robin asleep in his arms. Robin astride him, head thrown back in ecstasy. Robin with her fingers tangled in his hair, Robin with his name on her lips, Robin Robin Robin....

He should check in with his contractors, he knows. He should check his inbox, check his text messages, check to make sure his sister hasn’t called the police to report him missing. But he does not, cannot, stop thinking about Robin, and all the ways they had fit together so neatly.

He had always known that they were well suited. They didn’t always get along perfectly, no, and they had certainly had their fair share of miscommunications and mishaps. But they had jagged edges that seemed to mesh. And he had told himself, for months, years perhaps, that their partnership was enough, was more than enough.

But now, having had her, Cormoran knows it will be perhaps one of the greatest efforts of his life to give her up. Nothing, nothing could have prepared him for the way he had felt when he left that hotel room and the door closed behind him.

He had wanted to turn around and bang on that door, ask Robin to let him back in. “Please,” he had wanted to say, “I’ve made a mistake, let me back in, Robin, please—”

But of course he had not done any such thing, because Robin deserved better than the sort of man who would take advantage of her Heat to satisfy his own desires. The fact that she had asked him to come in, had begged him to, could hardly factor in; when in the throes of Heat, Omegas would turn to the closest available Alpha, especially a compatible one, especially one that they trusted.

He had taken advantage of Robin’s trust, and her biology, and had nearly ruined one of the few good things he had going for him. If things went sour between them, Cormoran couldn’t bear to think about what would happen to the business they had constructed between them.

He had started the business without her, and it might survive her departure. But Cormoran, sitting on the Tube with his eyes closed, is aware that without Robin he would be in a very different place, both personally and professionally. He does not want to imagine his life without her in it.

Just tell her this, a little voice inside him whispers. Tell her you can’t imagine your life without her, that she makes you better in every way, that you need her, that you never want to be without her…

He shakes his head, as if to rid himself of the thought. He does not know who in the world might be worthy of Robin, worthy to share her life, but he knows that it is not him.

He gets off at his stop and lights another cigarette the moment he is free of the station, and smokes all the way back to his flat.

Robin stays in the shower for a very long time. She cannot bear to leave its warm embrace; she knows that the moment the cool air hits her skin, she will have lost the last vestige of the life she has lived for the past three days in this room, and it is too much to bear.

Eventually, of course, her alarm goes off, her phone sitting on the counter-top out of reach from the shower. She set it days ago, a reminder to herself that she must check out in an hour. Plenty of time, and yet she does not want to. Still, she rarely can have the things she wants; if she has learned anything by now, surely she had learned this.

She turns off the water and towels herself off roughly, uncaring of the way the over-washed cotton scrapes at her tender skin. She has a littering of hickeys down her neck and across her shoulders, evidence that will take days to fade; Robin stares at them in the mirror for a moment, unable to look at her own face. She knows she must look a fright, but all she can focus on are the bruises that prove that Cormoran had wanted her, had wanted to mark her as his own. The mating instinct is what draws people to leave such marks, she knows, the desire to sink teeth into delicate flesh and form a bond that cannot be severed except by deepest betrayal or death itself.

The idea of, well, biting another person sounded disgusting, of course, most of the time, and to nearly all Betas. They tended to lack the mating instinct. But when your brain was clouded through with pheromones and ancient urges, the idea became not only attractive but almost inevitable.

Robin runs a hand over her neck, all of this passing through her mind in a flash, before she returns to pulling herself back together. She puts on makeup by rote, her routine ingrained enough that she hardly has to think about it to apply foundation, a bit of blush, a touch of mascara. Enough to make her look more herself, she thinks. Enough to make her look less like Cormoran’s Robin and more like her own Robin.

When she is clean and dressed again, this time in soft leggings under a shift dress, Robin feels prepared to go out into the room again. When she opens the door, though, nothing could have prepared her for the way the room smells, the way it makes her feel— safe and right and like the best thing that she has ever had, like the books and movies and everything had said it would feel. It smells of Heat and sex and Cormoran and her, and she must leave this instant, or she will never leave at all.

Robin grabs her things, making the most cursory check for anything she might have left behind, and all but flees. She must leave it behind, she tells herself as she walks slowly down the stairs, her duffle bag thumping dully against her legs. It will be the end of everything, if she cannot let it go.

Cormoran does not want this, she reminds herself. He does not want her. He fled the room, could barely look at her. She had begged him to do what he had done, and her pheromones and his instincts had done the rest, but he regrets it now and wants to put it behind them both. It was obvious, and she resolves to respect that, no matter how much she wants to take his face between her hands and press kisses to his mouth.

Cormoran makes his way up the stairs to his flat, stopping at the landing to the office. He wants to go in and absorb the familiar space into his skin, let the cozy scent of Robin and cigarettes and tea and dry-erase marker set him right again.

But of course, the scent of Robin will do anything but help him let go. He knows this, and turns away from the door to take the last flight of stairs up to his flat, where Robin has hardly ever set foot.

It is the same perfectly dull space, smelling only of his own slightly spicy Alpha musk and his preferred brand of cigarettes. There is a four-day-old container of lo mein in the fridge, along with three bottles of beer and a few eggs and not much else. It is, in a word, home.

But it feels wrong, somehow, off, as if elves came and pushed all of his furniture two inches to the left. It is the same space he has always lived in, but there is something about it… and then he realizes.

It does not smell of Robin, of the two of them, Cormoran-and-Robin, Robin-and-Cormoran, and his brain has already labeled that smell home.

“Fuck,” he swears aloud. “Fuck me, fuck this, and bugger it all to hell.”

“I’m all set,” Robin says, placing her room key on the desk.

“Did you have a pleasant stay?” the clerk asks, perfunctorily.

Robin doesn’t know how to answer this question, her mind too muddled to come up with anything, before realizing that the clerk certainly doesn’t care about the tangled mess of her interpersonal relationships.

“Everything was fine, thanks,” she replies, and the nice Omega nods and types at the computer. Robins remembers then, how it had all happened.

“I was wondering— I left instructions about a bag? I was just wondering what the note said,” Robin says, as casually as she can.

“Of course,” the clerk says. “It says here that you called down on your first night to say that a Cormoran Strike was going to be bringing you a bag, and that he was on your safe list.”

Oh, Robin thinks. No wonder the clerk had sent him up, when he arrived. That certainly made it sound as though she had wanted him to be sent up with her bag; she could hardly fault the procedures that were supposed to protect Omegas in their Heats for letting Cormoran up that night.

“Thank you,” she says.

The clerk smiles perfunctorily. “Do you need anything else? Should we call you a ride?”

Robin shakes her head. “No, thank you. I appreciate your help.”

“It was my pleasure,” the clerk says. “Have a good day.”

Robin emerges from the hotel clutching the straps of her bag and her duffel and walks to the Tube, wanting to think of anything but how physically good she feels, and how awfully it contrasts with how twisted up she feels inside.

There’s an urge deep inside of her that tells her to just call him, be a good girl and call him, your Alpha will make you feel better…

Robin knows she cannot trust this voice even as she longs to do just as it says, longs to lay everything out on the line and just… Take the risk. Offer Cormoran anything he likes, if only he’ll keep touching her face the way he had the night before, call her a “good girl” in his rough voice, tell her how beautiful he thinks she is.

Robin catches the Tube back towards her flat, sitting in the Omega car though she normally dislikes feeling so singled out. She cannot bear to be looked at by anyone who might want her in a way that feels— feels wrong, somehow. She is not theirs to look at.

Clutching her bag on her lap, her duffel tucked beneath the seat, Robin acknowledges to herself that on some deep, instinctive level, she considers Cormoran her Alpha.

God, Robin, she thinks as London rushes by above her. What a teacup tragedy you’ve brewed for yourself.

Cormoran eventually brings himself to open his laptop, focus his mind on work as though it will somehow help him move on from the three days that have just blown his world apart.

He deals with his personal correspondence first, dredging up the details of the cases that had seemed so urgent at the time. They are still urgent, to many of the concerned parties, but Cormoran finds them dull now. He forces himself to concentrate, to be professional and as courteous as he usually is— not as courteous as Robin would prefer him to be, of course, but as close as he can manage— and now, of course, he’s thinking about Robin again.

He feels as though he is wrestling with an ancient beast that lives in his brain, the sort of beast that wants to scoop up Robin and carry her off and make her his in every way that could possibly matter. The rational part of him is aware that that would be not only wrong, but would go against everything he has ever believed about himself. The kind of man he has tried to be would never do such a thing.

And worse, he knows that Robin wouldn’t be happy if he were to even suggest such a thing; she doesn’t want a life with him, not on that level. They’re coworkers, partners, and being biologically compatible doesn’t mean they need to be together in that way.

He tells himself this over and over, trying to erase the memories of Robin reaching for him, his name on her lips— a plea, a moan, a cry of pleasure. He tries to forget the ways they have been looking at each other for weeks— months— the ways she turns toward him, the ways she trusts him. It’s not important, he tells himself. If she wanted this to be anything other than what it is, she would have given you an indication.

Not yours, he reminds himself again, that sorry old refrain, not yours not yours not yours. Despite what his instincts tell him, she is not his, not his Omega, not his girlfriend, not his anything but business partner and friend.

She has made herself vulnerable to him, and he has already taken such advantage of every door she has opened to him— most especially the hotel room door. He needs to pull himself together.

But he has had a taste of her, and he does not know how to live with the knowledge of how she looks above him, her face tight with pleasure he has given her. He does not know how they can go back to even the fragile balance they have struck over the past months. It was nothing but a house of cards, he knows, and with one wrong move he has sent it fluttering to the ground.

He eventually gives up on his email and retires to his chair with a beer, trying to focus on the footy game despite not caring for either team, trying to convince himself that he and Robin can survive this.

They have survived everything thus far, he thinks. Hopefully they will be able to survive each other.

Chapter Text

Robin awakens in her flat still in her clothing from the day before. She had arrived at her flat, waved at her flatmate as she passed him in the kitchen as she raided the fridge, texted her mother, and collapsed into bed, and there she had stayed.

She is tired and sore still, but in a good way, the sort of sore that follows a good workout, warm and well-used and strong. She resents how good her body feels as she showers again, anointing herself with her own familiar shampoo, body wash, lotion, seeking to remove Cormoran’s scent and smell like herself once more.

As good as her body feels, Robin’s mind is roiling, and she knows her scent will be conflicted in the extreme— a contented Omega with a mind full of nerves. Mixed signals, she thinks wryly as she dresses. She buttons up her shirt like armor, putting on her favorite slacks as though the familiar fabric will give her strength.

What Robin is seeking, more than anything, is stability; between the two of them, she and Cormoran have tested the boundaries of their relationship before, but this time they’ve simply blasted them to smithereens, and Robin doesn’t want to lose everything they have together.

If I can just dress like my old self, smell like my old self, feel like my old self, the undercurrent running through her says, then it can be like it was before.

She knows it’s a losing proposition, but she has to try. She looks herself in the eye as she applies her mascara. They’ve been dancing around this tension since the first day they met, and it was inevitable, this collision. But she will still fight for this. She has to try.

Her job, her work— it’s too important to lose like this, even if what she might gain is so sweet.

Cormoran awakens in his bed, having managed to haul himself into it at some point between the end of the footy and his exhausted swan dive into unconsciousness. He has the imprint of his rumpled pillowcase on his cheek and his hair is a horrific tangle, but he’s awake, and that counts for something.

At a glance at the clock, though, he startles; he’s slept in, and his alarm must not have gone off, and it’s half past the time Robin normally gets to the office. And they had agreed— tomorrow, in the office. They had agreed to return to the way things had been. And he owes it to her to make the effort, and he’s started off by sleeping late.

He scrambles through a morning routine of sorts— straps on his leg, scrubs his teeth, despairs at his hair, throws on whichever of his shirts is least wrinkled. He is half-awake and mostly decent when he descends the stairs to the office, where the smell of coffee tells him Robin is waiting for him.

He stands outside the door for a long moment, searching for some semblance of composure, before turning the knob and going in.

Even so, the sight and smell of Robin is nearly enough to knock him down. She stands in the kitchenette as she has on a hundred mornings, his Omega, so familiar— He wants to go over to her, pull her into his arms, and bury his face in the familiar curve of her neck. But somehow, he doesn’t.

“Morning,” he manages to say. Robin gives him a half-smile.

“Just morning? Not a good one?”

He scrapes up a grin at that. They can banter. They can be normal. He can ignore the way his body is screaming her name. They can do this.

“I’ll reconsider the status of the morning once I’ve had some coffee,” he replies.

Robin set the coffee to brew the moment she arrived to find Cormoran absent. She knew he must still be asleep; the office had none of the touches that would have indicated he’d been and gone.

She feels quite validated when she’s able to pour him a fresh coffee, using his favorite mug and doctoring it to the correct shade of creosote before going to proffer it to him. He stands leaning against the couch, watching her with tired eyes.

When Robin holds out the coffee gingerly, Cormoran accepts it just as carefully, and their fingers brush against each other’s. Robin looks at his face for a breathless moment before she takes a step backward, going back over to the coffee pot, as much to get out of Cormoran’s orbit as to pour herself a cup.

She cannot stand too close to him. She cannot think too hard about how her hand had felt against his, because she will start to remember how all his skin had felt against all of hers, and that is a road she cannot, cannot walk down.

“Christ, this is hot,” Cormoran says behind her as she scoops some sugar into her mug. She smiles down at the counter at his surprise before turning around.

“I don’t know if you know this,” she says in the most normal tone she can, “but when a beverage is steaming, it’s because it’s very hot.”

Cormoran gives her a flat look, but she can see his amusement in the way his lips twitch.

“Thank you,” he says gravely. “I hadn’t heard that before.”

Robin cradles her own mug carefully, letting the heat seep into her bones. It’s just this side of too-hot, and she uses the sensation to ground herself.

“I live to serve and educate,” she replies, and she can do this, they can do this, the give-and-take they have perfected. She can think about things other than the way he called her “my good girl” and the way she had agreed to call him first and the day he kissed her in the hospital room and—

She takes a sip of coffee, burning her tongue a little to break her train of thought.

They stand in the office for long moments, both holding coffee and neither able to hold the other’s eye. The past three days hang between them, spectral and immediate and unforgettable. Robin’s body longs for his, her hormones are going absolutely haywire at his presence, and her Omega instincts, so quiescent over the past days when they were sated, are back.

It would be so easy, they whisper to her. Just ask him. Just tell him that you want him, tell him you want to be his, he’ll take good care of you, you know he can. Your Alpha will take such good care of you—

Her knuckles turn white around the mug as she recalls with perfect clarity just how well he takes care of her. Not just in bed— though of course, in bed— but the way he’d looked when she’d told him about the— the attack, the way he’d run to her hospital room, the way he—

She looks up to meet Cormoran’s eyes, and he is already looking at her, and his expression is so open that she could drown in it.

The scent of the coffee is not nearly enough to cover up the sweet heady scent of Robin, standing there not ten feet from where he is anchored against the couch. If he moves he is afraid he will go directly to her and not let her go, and he cannot do that. So he remains in place, just looking at her.

He is allowed to look, he thinks, but he cannot touch. Even the slight brush of her fingers against his had awoken longing in his chest; he cannot allow that to go on.

He is looking at her when she looks up to meet his eye, and he is caught; there is nothing for him but her storm-grey gaze. He opens his mouth, intending to take a sip of his coffee to avoid saying things he cannot take back.

What he tastes instead is Robin’s scent, heavy in the air, and he knows she must be able to smell his just as clearly, but it is enough to knock him down. She smells like— longing, and desire, and sadness, and—

They are still looking at each other, and Cormoran knows that he should look away, find some excuse to leave, but he cannot do anything but look at her and remember the way her pleasure had tasted on his tongue, when he licked her scent gland and fucked up into her and—

Robin’s mouth is open too, and he thinks too late that he should focus on anything else, because now she knows that he is thinking about sex, she must know, his body is sending out every signal it can to lure in an Omega— his Omega, she is his, he wants her to be his and she cannot fail to miss that.

His heartbeat is thundering, the old pulse of not yours not yours not yours replaced by something else, something that sounds a lot like please please please please and he is helpless, a butterfly on a pin, held in place by Robin’s eyes.

She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at him, and looks at him, and looks at him. He cannot look away. He may have stopped breathing.

She had braced and armoured herself for this, she thinks, staring at Cormoran. She had wanted a return to— whatever it was they had had before. But then her Heat six months ago had shoved them off balance, and they had never quite recovered; and then three days ago. And now this.

Robin can smell him, rich and spicy, and he smells like— safety, and security, and belonging. She could belong to this man, in every way that matters, and it wouldn’t be a cage like she’s always believed a Mate bond would be. And she’s always thought that he wouldn’t want it either.

But he’s looking at her, and she thinks that maybe she’s been wrong. Maybe she’s made a mistake. She’s certainly made mistakes before.

Just offer yourself to him her traitorous instincts whisper. He wants you. You know he does. You can smell it. It’s obvious.

But just because he wants her body doesn’t mean he wants to be her Mate, does it? It doesn’t mean he wants to— tie himself to her, forever. He’s never once indicated that he wanted anything like permanence from anyone.

She shivers, and she can see the way Cormoran’s eyes focus on her hands, wrapped around her mug. She takes a sip of coffee, cool enough now to drink deeply of. She takes another, longer sip, letting the flavour of the coffee clear her mouth of the scent of Cormoran.

Pull yourself together, she instructs herself firmly, but her body is flushed and ready, the memory of him imprinted so deeply in her that she thinks it may never come out.

He needs to go. He needs to stop staring at her, stop trying to catch tastes of her emotions on his tongue, stop thinking about all the ways he wants to have and keep her. Cormoran knows that what he should do is walk past Robin and go into his office, close the door, and rebuild the walls he used to have.

But he knows that if he gets any closer to Robin, he will say or do something that will bring this whole charade of normalcy to the ground, and he cannot bear to do that either.

So Cormoran remains against the arm of the couch, drinking his coffee.

Robin is watching him, and he wonders if he is imagining the way she is tensing and relaxing by turns, as though she is caught up in some invisible argument with herself.

He opens his mouth to say something— anything— and can think of nothing at all to say, so he looks away and drinks his coffee instead.

One of them will eventually need to move, or say something, to break this detente. But right this moment, he cannot. He finishes his coffee and holds on to the empty mug. It’s his favorite, the slightly oversized one with the chipped glaze that he won’t let her get rid of.

Cormoran brushes one finger over the chipped spot and looks up at Robin once more. He can see that she is discomfited by something, and thinks it is probably him. The idea that she doesn’t want to be in the same space as him now is a pit in his stomach.

He can see the shadow of the marks he left on her neck; she’s mostly hidden them beneath a careful layer of makeup, but he knows where they are. It is the sight of these obscured bruises, made with his teeth, that digs into Cormoran’s ramshackle heart.

“I don’t know how to do this,” Robin says finally, desperately. She is finding it hard to focus on anything but the way Cormoran’s eyes are burning, the way her body yearns for his. She thought she was ready to face him.

How wrong she was.

“Don’t know how to do what,” Cormoran asks, not really looking at her face.

“I don’t— I can’t,” she says, and takes a breath, his scent again calling to her. “I don’t know how to make it like it was before.”

“I’m sorry,” Cormoran says, and he looks sorry, he does, and it hurts her to know that he regrets what they’d shared.

“I know we said we would— pretend it didn’t happen,” Robin says, and it’s as though the words are being torn from her mouth, but she can’t, she simply cannot pretend that she is not a quivering mess of longing for this man, this Alpha, who is not and never will be hers.

“We did,” he says, his voice low and rasping, familiar in a way that makes her shudder.

“I don’t know how to do that,” she whispers. “I don’t think I can.”

She hates this, hates her traitorous Omega instincts, the little voice telling her to just go to him— but she will not martyr herself, either. She cannot live like this. The past six months were bad enough, with the tension hanging between them.

Now that tension has been replaced by memories, rich and thrumming, and it’s too much. It’s too soon.

“I’m sorry,” he says again, and it cuts her to the quick. “I shouldn’t have— this is my fault. I shouldn’t have come into the room.”

Robin is offended at this; she certainly deserves some of the blame. The bulk of it, probably.

“I opened the door,” she counters. “This is just as much my fault as yours.”

“I shouldn’t have come up at all,” he replies, and it’s as though they’re both trying to shoulder the blame, and Robin knows that the majority of the blame is hers, and is angry that he’s trying to take this from her, too.

“In that case, I shouldn’t have left my bag here at the office,” she says. “And I certainly shouldn’t have called you.”

“I told you to,” Cormoran says, and the night he had extracted that promise from her is a shivery memory, the way his voice had dropped low. Call me first.

“I didn’t need to listen,” Robin counters, and now they are arguing, and this is familiar, this she knows how to do.

“You did, though,” Cormoran says, looking tired.

“I’m fully capable of doing what I want to do,” Robin snaps, ignoring the fact that her biology can make it harder for her than for so many others. She won’t let him take away her agency. She has made choices, and now she needs to live with them. Nothing that happened was coerced. Nothing between them has ever been like that.

“Are you?” he asks, eyes mournful.

“Fuck you,” she says, eyes flashing. “I’m an adult and I am in charge of my own self, and nothing you do or say, or, or are can take that away from me. I make my own choices, Cormoran, not anyone else.”

She is angry and bright and the most beautiful thing he has ever seen, and Cormoran wants nothing more than to kiss the snarl from her mouth.

“That doesn’t change what happened,” he says, and watches the way her lip curls back away from her teeth.

“It doesn’t,” she agrees, “but what happened was at least half my fault. You don’t get to pretend that it was something you did to me. I asked you to.”

She had all but begged him to come into that room. He had been trying to back away from the door, but the sound of Robin on the other side, the way she’d said his name— it’s a sharp, clear memory. It’ll be something he takes to his grave.

“Let’s not pretend we weren’t both involved in what happened,” she says, and Cormoran exhales a breath that feels like it comes from the center of the earth.

She doesn’t blame him. Or, well, she blames herself as much as him. It’s a weight off his conscious, that she doesn’t see what happened as him taking advantage of her Heat. He still blames himself, of course. It shouldn’t have happened. He shouldn’t have given in. But Robin isn’t angry at him — in fact, she seems to be blaming herself more.

“We’re both to blame,” he agrees, and watches as Robin settles, her feathers slowly unruffling. “I’m sorry, anyway. I shouldn’t have put you in a position—”

But he doesn’t know where to take that sentence, because they both seem to be thinking of all the positions he put her in, and the air is heavy with their scents, combining familiar and right.

She can’t do this. She can’t be this close to what she wants and cannot have. She is not a masochist, and she is only human; they will both give in again, and it will only be worse the second time. Better, and worse.

She cannot stop thinking about his hands on her skin, his tongue, his teeth—

“I can’t stay,” Robin says. She makes a gesture, between them, the seven or so feet that separate them that might as well be an ocean. “This— I can’t—”

“Are you going to leave?” he asks, suddenly alert. “We can sort something out, make arrangements, find a way—”

“A way to what?” she asks, halfway to hysterical laughter. “A way to avoid— avoid having sex again?”

Cormoran colors, his large hands flexing around his mug.

“We both know it’ll happen again,” she goes on, relentless, needing him to understand. “It’s— inevitable, don’t pretend you’re not thinking about it right now—”

The look he gives her could scorch her clothing right off. She doesn’t pause.

“And I can’t— I won’t be able to focus, or do any sort of useful work, we’ll both be driven to distraction, we’ll lose our minds, don’t you see? I can’t stay, not like this.”

Cormoran cannot lose her. If he watches Robin walk out the office door, out of his life, he might go completely round the bend.

“What can I do,” he asks, his voice low and very even. “To make it so that you’ll stay.”

Robin laughs, and it’s got the edge of hysteria to it. “I don’t think there’s anything you can do that would make this— bearable.”

She finds him unbearable. He is going to lose her, and he is going to lose his mind.

“Please don’t,” he asks her, still in the same low, even voice that he is controlling so tightly. “Please don’t leave me.”

“What else can I do?” she asks, and he can see the way she is coiled so tightly she might break. “I can’t— live like this, so close to what I—”

She stops, but Cormoran finds he has stopped breathing.

“So close to what you?” he prompts, so quiet now. He has to know how that sentence ends.

She has been looking off to the side of him, and now she closes her eyes, tilts her head back. Sighs, defeated.

“So close to what I want,” she says, voice breaking, “and cannot have.”

Cormoran cannot hear anything over the blood rushing in his ears.

She tells him, because what else is there to do? She might as well be honest, now that she has sworn to herself that she will leave. She has settled for less than she should have, once, and won’t do so again.

When Robin brings herself to look at Cormoran again, expecting censure, astonishment, disdain, she finds— he is looking at her with that bright heavy gaze, mouth open as he breathes.

“Why,” he asks, and she cannot look away from him now, as he sets down the coffee mug he has been toying with this whole time. “Why can’t you have it?”

“Because,” she says, and cannot think of a single reason as Cormoran takes a single step towards her.

“Why?” he asks again, so soft and tender, and she cannot think at all with the way he is looking at her. As though she is the most precious thing in the world. As though she is the exact center point of the universe.

“Because,” she says, taking a tiny breath. “Because you don’t—”

“Don’t want you back?” Cormoran asks, and he is about to enter her space, now, and she is frozen, caught between what she knows and what she wants, between Cormoran and the counter-top.

She nods, still watching him.

“At what point did I ever give you the impression,” he asks, and his voice rasps against her skin in an almost physical sensation, “that I don’t want you?”

She cannot move; she is fire, or perhaps ice, or a combination of the two.

Cormoran cannot believe it, and yet it is real; Robin is standing still, and he keeps moving towards her, drawn to her like a magnet. She is his true north.

He reaches out, taking the mug from her hands, and she gives it willinging. She is staring at him, and Cormoran wonders if either of them are breathing at all. He sets the mug on the counter behind her.

“Robin,” he says, and it’s as though something inside of him crumbles at the feeling of her name in his mouth; he says it again, “Christ, Robin—”

And then he takes into his arms, or she flings herself at him, it’s not entirely clear, but the result is the two of them with no space at all between them, and it is exactly as it should be.

“Cormoran,” she says in a gasping voice that sounds as though she is drowning. “I don’t—”

“I would choose you over anything,” he says into the familiar softness of her hair, his face burrowing into the sweet curve of her shoulder, where the bruises he left are just peeking out from beneath her makeup. “I would choose you— you are—”

He cannot find the words to articulate what she is, and ends up using all of them, all at once, syllables tumbling from his lips like a waterfall.

“The smartest— best— most beautiful— most perfect— most competent— every time, I would choose you—”

Robin’s hands take tight fistfuls of his shirt, and she is shuddering against him, but Cormoran can smell everything she is feeling and it is everything he is feeling— fear and wonder and bewilderment and lust and hope, all at once, and more than that it is Robin, rich vanilla velvet and happy-safe-pleased Omega, and his entire body is suffused with contentment, all his instincts telling him that he’s done the right thing.

“You want me?” she is asking, but not, she is saying it, over again, as though it is unbelievable. “You want to be with me.”

“Of course I want you,” Cormoran says, and Robin is wrapped so tightly in him, in his Alpha scent and strong arms, that she’s not sure she’ll be able to think straight. Her body is relaxing into him, an Omega’s comfortable complacency at having pleased her Alpha— only he’s not her Alpha— but he is—

“I think I’ve wanted you since the moment I met you,” he is saying to her, and Robin focuses on the sound of his voice. “Since the day you walked through that door. If you ever leave I’ll lose my mind, I will, I swear it, I don’t know what I’d do without you—”

There is a part of Robin that wants nothing more than to bask in this, the touch and the words and the pheromones, but there is another part of her that is a step removed from this moment, that is saying it is nothing more than biology at work, that he doesn’t really love her, he just loves the way she’s made him feel.

“Cormoran,” she says into the fabric of his shirt, which is all she can do as her face is pressed to his familiar broad chest. “Cormoran, please.”

“What do you want,” he asks, loosening his grip immediately, pulling back to look down at her. “What do you need?”

You, she thinks, looking up at his handsome battered face, not a contradiction at all. Always you, nothing but you.

“I don’t know,” she says instead, not letting go of his shirt, not moving away. “I don’t— is this— biology?”

She cannot think straight, cannot focus, but knows that she needs to hear Cormoran say that it is more than what they shared in bed that is making him act this way.

He looks at her, face as open as she’s ever seen it. “You think this is just biology?”

At her nod, he starts to smile, and it makes Robin flush and turn away, closing her eyes. She doesn’t appreciate being made fun of.

“Beautiful girl,” he says in that tone of voice she knows so well, “I think I would feel this way about you if we were both Betas. It’s not about your—” he breaks off, shakes his head, still smiling. “Your everything, jesus. Body or scent or whatever. You’re also the best match I’ve ever had. You— you listen, and ask all the right questions, you’re quick and clever and you know what I need before I do half the time—”

Robin’s eyes are closed, but she knows she is giving off the scent of her embarrassment, and more than that, her shock and pleasure at this summation of how Cormoran sees her.

“You’re good with clients, you’re better with them than I am honestly, and you’re a quick study and— and you’re a faster typist than me, and you’re so— christ, listen to me.” He chuckles.

“I am,” Robin murmurs. Cormoran takes a deep breath, and Robin can feel his tension against her.

“Do you believe me?” he asks.

“I want to,” she says, and Cormoran exhales, relaxes a fraction.

“Alright,” he says. “I’ll take that. We can start there.”

Robin turns to look at him once more, as he runs one hand through the mop of curls, nervously. He wants her to believe him.

“I think we’ve already begun,” she says, and he looks at her and she smiles at him, a hint of mischief in her eyes. They can start here, she thinks, watching the way his eyes crinkle as he smiles back.

“Christ,” Cormoran says, his hand coming back around Robin, tugging her close. “I thought you really were going to walk out on me, for a bit there.”

She leans into his embrace, trying to relax. He wants her. Her Alpha wants her, wants to take care of her, all she has to do is give herself over to him and everything will be fine.

“I really was, “ she admits to him. “I couldn’t— I’ve settled before, you see, and I couldn’t stay if you didn’t want me the way I wanted you. I can’t live like that.”

He leans down, and he is pressing his face to her neck, where she is still tender and sore. The feel of his stubble against her skin makes Robin shiver.

“Then I have good news,” he murmurs. “Because you don’t have to.”

Robin untangles one hand from his shirt to run it through his hair, the gesture both new and achingly familiar. His hair is springy and coarse against her fingers, and Cormoran leans into the touch, making a rumbling noise in his chest.

“Are you purring?” Robin asks, and now he is smiling, and this is good. This is more than good.

This feels like the beginning of something, again, and of all the beginnings they have shared over the past week, this is Robin’s favorite, because they are both entirely themselves.

Cormoran isn’t unaware of the effect Robin has on him, but the way he reacts to her hand in his hair is embarrassing, and he doesn’t pull back from Robin’s neck to nod.

She laughs, and it is his favorite sound, second only to the way she sighs his name when she falls apart.

Cormoran tightens his arms around her, for a moment, as if to reassure himself that this is real, that it isn’t some sort of dream his unconscious has conjured. But she is really here, and she really wants him back, and they are really doing this.

“Are you alright?” Robin asks, sounds apprehensive, and Cormoran cannot stand the idea that his Omega could ever be unsure of him.

“I have never felt better in the entirety of my life,” he informs her. He presses a kiss to the side of her neck, directly atop a bruise he distinctly remembers giving her, and she sucks in a breath.

“That’s good,” she replies, and Cormoran hears how her voice has gone up, can smell her reaction, and is once more aglow with satisfaction.

“Robin,” he asks, his voice dropping a register, “beautiful girl, can I kiss you?”

“Please,” she says immediately, and he is kissing her before the word is finished leaving her lips.

It is as good as it was before, only better, because he is not guilty, not ashamed, not afraid— he is entirely confident that she wants to be kissing him as much as he wants to be kissing her, and it gives him new courage, new confidence.

Robin sighs into his mouth, and the feeling of her tongue against his is enough to bring his cock entirely alive. Her hand in his hair tightens, and his kisses her harder at the feeling, his tongue delving into her mouth, and he can taste her desire, a mirror of his own.

A very short time ago, Robin had been bracing herself to leave Cormoran forever, and now she is afire in his arms, kissing him as though if she ever stopped she would die. She’s not entirely sure how it happened, but she would be lying to say that she didn’t want everything that was happening.

“Cormoran,” she whispers as he pulls back to kiss down the line of her jaw, his heartbeat frantic beneath her hand. “Cormoran.”

“Yeah,” he asks, not stopping his onslaught, his lips and teeth and tongue making their determined way down her neck. Robin is dissolving into the moment, but she has enough presence of mind to take a breath.

“Should we— we’re still in the office,” she says, entirely distracted, her mind and body and instincts and senses and everything else telling her that this is exactly what should be happening, immediately.

“So?” Cormoran asks. He is very focused on her neck and the spot where it meets her shoulder, shoving aside her nice button-down to get access, and it’s making Robin light-headed.

“We shouldn’t— oh, my god, Cormoran—”

He pulls back a scant few inches, looking as satisfied as a cat with an entire gallon of cream.

Given a moment to breath, Robin manages to finish her thought: “we shouldn’t do this in the office, it’s a bad precedent and—”

Cormoran nods against her neck, the scrape of his stubble a familiar burn that is setting Robin alight.

“Cormoran!” she says, slapping at his shoulder. He pulls back far enough to look her in the eye, this time.

“Yes?” he asks, and the desire and focus in his eyes makes up her mind for her.

“Take me upstairs,” she says, and the grin that crosses his mouth is nearly feral, entirely Alpha.

“Anything for you,” he says, and to her own shock Cormoran scoops her up into his arms.

Somehow, around the rush of endorphins and hormones that this causes inside her, Robin manages to ask, “should you be doing this? I’m not—”

“I’ve been lifting weights,” he says as he shoves them through the door and starts up the stairs. “And right now, I’ve got so much adrenaline and serotonin in me, I think I could swim the English channel.”

Robin laughs, bewildered and happy and suddenly, very free.

“Don’t do that,” she says.

“I’m not leaving your side,” Cormoran says, very firmly. “For at least a week, probably.”

“That’s fine with me,” she replies, breathless, and as it turns out he needs to set her down in order to unlock the door to his flat. When her feet hit the step, Robin sees the office door, still open just a crack.

“Oh, we ought to lock up,” she says, “and put up the out of office sign—”

“That,” Cormoran says immediately, reaching for her once more, “is how I know you are the perfect woman for me, come here.”

“But we should—”

“Fuck it, Robin, get in here,” Cormoran says, and she gives over and follows him into his flat.

Chapter Text

He has Robin in his flat, and Cormoran doesn’t have the time to regret carrying her up the stairs, because as much as he probably shouldn’t have, he can hardly feel it at all. Just twelve hours ago he was in this same space, trying to think of anything but Robin, and now she is here, and more than that, she is his.

“Come here, beautiful girl,” he says to her, and she comes to him willingly, happily, and he is drunk on this. This, the way she turns her face up to his, her eyes clear and her scent as warm and bright as it has ever been.

“Do you know,” he asks her, touching her cheek with just his fingertips, “what you do to me? What you’ve always done to me?”

She closes her eyes, and he just looks at the way her lashes sweep against her face. He slides his hand down along her jaw, tilting her mouth to be kissed.

The way she sighs into his mouth will never get old. Never in a hundred years will he tire of the way she reaches for him and molds her body against his.

“Christ, Robin, the things you do to me,” he mutters as he runs his hands along the familiar curves of her, the swell and dip of her waist, following paths he never thought he would be allowed to revisit.

“Yes,” she whispers, and he is reeled in by her, everything about her. “Please, Cormoran.”

“Anything,” he swears as he starts to fumblingly unbutton her top. “Whatever you want, Robin, anything in the world—”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Robin thinks she might cry as she watches Cormoran free her from her clothing.

“You,” she says, letting all the tenderness she’s had bottled up leak through, finally. “Just you, please, Cormoran, that’s all I want.”

The way he looks at her— it’s as though she is the first sunrise a blind man has ever seen. She cannot stop the tremulous smile that he brings to her lips.

“Just you,” she says again, and he is kissing her once more, insistent and urgent, and she gives herself over to it, to everything they are together.

He is yanking at her top and Robin pulls away just long enough to shed it, and for good measure reaches for the button on her slacks. She dressed this morning for protection, but now it is all nothing more than a hindrance. Cormoran’s eyes are fixed on her hand at the closure of her slacks, even as he pulls off his own top layer.

“This is happening,” he says, almost as if to himself, but Robin nods. She knows what he means. It has been months: months of self-denial and pretending she didn’t know what he was thinking about, months of avoiding each other and text messages instead of meetings. And then three days of painful bliss, one night of painful ignorance, and now they are here; this moment is almost too good to be true.

“It’s real,” she replies, extending a hand to him, and Cormoran takes it and pulls her in to lay her head on his bared chest.

“You want this?” he asks, and she thinks that might be the moment she chooses to give herself over to him entirely; when they are stripping in his flat, both having admitted they want the other, and he still asks her. Still makes sure she wants to be there.

“More than anything,” she says, her voice catching in her throat, and Cormoran leans his face down to press into her hair.

“I didn’t— I never thought—”

“I know,” she replies. “I didn’t, either.”

She can feel how much he wants her, his cock hard and hot and firm in his pants where it presses into her bare stomach. She reaches down to stroke it, and she smiles as Cormoran nearly chokes on his next inhalation.

“This is real,” she says again. “I want you, Cormoran. Alpha. Please.”

Something inside him snaps at this; she can feel it, an almost physical sensation. He twists and presses his open mouth to her shoulder, next to her scent gland, atop her bra strap.

“Off,” he says, and his voice has gone low and commanding, pure Alpha. She blindly reaches for the clasp of her bra, needing to have all of her skin against his, needing to know what it’s like to be with him like this.

Both fully present. Both fully aware. Both fully honest about how they feel.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Cormoran has spent so much time trying to convince himself that what lay between himself and Robin was minor, meaningless, hopeless— it is dizzying to realize that it isn’t.

Robin takes a step back from him to kick off her shoes, and Cormoran can’t look away from the bruises his mouth has left on her. She pulls off her bra, baring her lovely breasts, and there are marks on them that he himself left only a day ago.

How long they waited, only for things to change so quickly.

“Cormoran?” Robin asks, halfway through sliding her slacks down her long legs. He realizes that he has been standing still, doing nothing but stare at her, absorbing this moment as fully as possible, as if it were about to dissolve.

“Yeah,” he says, still half-lost in the fog of possessive Alpha-brain, before fully rejoining her.

“You’re still dressed,” Robin says. “Unless I’m completely misunderstanding what we’re doing here…”

Before she is done speaking, Cormoran has yanked his own slacks open, because she has most certainly not misunderstood his intentions. Robin grins at him, relieved and excited and— her scent is rich and heady on his tongue.

“Get on the bed, beautiful girl,” he tells her, and she does as he says, nearly collapsing onto the low mattress that is nearly the only furniture in the room. She watches him with bright interest, laying back in only her panties now, and Cormoran is about to pinch himself.

This cannot be real. This is a dream.

He kicks off his slacks and is standing only in his boxers and shoes and socks, his cock standing out proudly to tent his boxers, feeling at once both incredibly turned out and ridiculous.

“Take your things off and come here,” Robin says, breathy and still commanding, and Cormoran rushes to obey. It seems to occur to him as he pulls off his shoe that there is nothing he needs more than to be back inside of Robin, and his fingers are fumbling now, unable to focus on anything but the woman laying so close to him.

“Honestly,” she says, laughing, and Cormoran loves her laugh, loves the way she is reaching for him as he wrestles the buckles and straps of his prosthetic to get himself free and lunges onto the bed to kiss her once more.

Her mouth beneath his tastes like coffee and desire, and Robin is already slipping her hand into his boxers to palm at him, and Cormoran is shuddering and gasping at just her touch on his cock.

“Robin, love, let me get inside of you,” he begs, “please stop, I won’t last—”

“Then hurry up,” she says, and pulls off her panties, and she is beautiful and bare beside him and Cormoran doesn’t fully recall all the steps between that sight and being inside her, because the next thing he knows he is atop her and her legs are wrapped around him and he is sinking into her perfect heat, home home home, he is home—

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

It is a shivery, perfect thing, to be fucked by Cormoran in his own bed, Robin thinks, taking a deep breath and memorizing everything about it. The feeling of Cormoran’s cock, familiar and still a tantalizing stretch and pull, the way his breath heaves, the way the room smells of him, musk and spice and Alpha. The way he sinks in just a bit deeper when she tilts her hips to his, the way he says her name- like a curse, or a prayer.

She is focusing on anything, everything, to avoid falling to pieces immediately. The way Cormoran leans on his elbows above her, placing her face at just the height to lick along his collarbone; he shakes and swears, and his thrusts come just that much harder.

“Yes,” she is saying, “yes, Cormoran— please—”

He is talking to her, the way he did before, and it is so much better when she knows he means every word.

“Perfect,” he is saying, voice strained, “so perfect, so good for me, jesus, so good—”

“Please,” she says back, wound so tight she might snap, “please, Cormoran, please—”

She leans up to his collarbone again, and sinks her teeth in, just hard enough to bruise. Cormoran stiffens and his voice breaks on her name, and Robin is filled with a sort of vicious pleasure as his hips snap against her once, twice, and he is coming.

She hadn’t expected his knot, now that he is no longer in rut, but it comes anyway, not as full as it was only the day before but most certainly present, and it is just what she needs to follow him off the cliff.

The orgasm bursts like a supernova from her cunt out to the tips of her fingers, and she has never felt quite so right.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Robin is shaking beneath him, and Cormoran cannot think about anything but the way she feels, the way she is touching his face, the way she is sighing his name. There is nothing in the world but the rushing of his pleasure, the sound of her voice.

“Fuck,” he says, leaning his head into the pillow beside her. “Jesus fuck.”

“Whew,” she agrees, lifting one hand heavily to dig it into his sweaty hair. “I wasn’t expecting…”

Cormoran is not— he’s not embarrassed about knotting her outside of rut, but he still wasn’t prepared for it.

“Me either,” he says, “but I’m not mad.”

She doesn’t reply, and Cormoran gets worried. “Unless— do you mind?”

“It’s not like you can help it,” she says, scratching at his scalp to reassure him. “It’s actually— it’s rather nice.”

His knots throbs, still pumping his seed into her. He laughs. “Rather nice? That’s your review?”

“I’m sorry,” she says, sweet and tart. “Would like prefer I break it down? Shall I write up a rubric?”

He props himself back up on one elbow, becoming aware of how they’re entwined in a way that might get uncomfortable if they’re stuck there for any length of time.

“What would a more comprehensive review of my performance sound like?” he asks, perhaps more interested than he should be. Of course he knows what he’s doing in bed— he certainly learned enough about Robin’s body during her heat to bring her off under any number of circumstances— but any man would like to know where he might be able to improve, right?

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Robin cannot stop the smile that grows on her face. Cormoran’s cock inside her is still hard, and her orgasm is still rippling through her, not quite dying down. She is sticky and sweaty and perfectly, totally content.

“I’d have to give you an exceeds expectations,” she says, “for the simultaneous orgasms, which were— quite good, yes.”

She luxuriates in the way he barks a laugh and kisses her shoulder. Her hips are starting to burn from the stretch of being wrapped around him still, but she cannot complain. It’s a good stretch. Perfect.

“Quite good, she says,” Cormoran replies. “Bloody perfect, I say.”

“Yes, dear,” she snips at him, and this, this is everything she has ever wanted from a relationship, the way he is still knotted into her and they are joking and laughing together.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Cormoran has had better sex— a few of the rounds they shared during her Heat would blow this morning out of the water— but it is more about what it represents that makes it sublime.

“Want me to roll over?” he asks, trying to shift into an easier position to remain in. Her hipbones are digging into him a bit, and he knows he’s not a lightweight person to have atop anyone.

“Please,” Robin replies, and clings to him as they flip over, never losing their connection. Her cunt is still fluttering around him, and Cormoran thinks his knot might never go down at this rate.

He reaches up to touch Robin’s cheek, where a piece of her hair has gotten stuck to her cheek. Brushing it away, he sighs as Robin turns her face into his hand.

“Do you know how perfect you are?” he asks, soft and sated, happy and hopeful.

“I’m not perfect,” Robin says, not opening her eyes, not pulling away. “I’m just a person, same as you.”

“Are you implying I have flaws?” Cormoran asks, fake-hurt, and Robin grins at him, eyes meeting his, dancing with laughter.

“Only, perhaps, one or two,” she says.

“That’s fine,” he says, as Robin goes on.

“Or was that ten or twenty, I might have dropped a digit somewhere, maths were never my strong suit—”

“You’re a menace,” he says, laughing, and Robin leans down, their laughter sweet on their lips as they kiss.

“But you’ve chosen me anyway, haven’t you,” she whispers to him.

“I have,” he says back, just as soft. “You’re a menace, but you’re my menace, Robin Ellacott.”

She sighs, and Cormoran breaks the kiss to press his lips to her cheek, her jaw.

“Mine,” he says, “my beautiful girl, perfect and lovely and clever and sweet, my Robin,” punctuating each word with a kiss, down her neck, along her shoulder. Robin tightens a hand in his hair, eliciting a hiss from him.

He wonders if she can feel the way his cock reacted to that, and is answered by the rock of her hips, pressing him just that much deeper into the heat of her cunt.

“I thought,” she says, “that you left because you didn’t want me.”

“I did want you,” Cormoran replies, his hands running along the familiar curve of her waist. “I wanted you— christ, I wanted you so much, and I couldn’t—”

She leans down to kiss him, cutting him off. He smiles against her lips.

“Let’s not talk about it now,” she says. “I’m sorry I brought it up. It doesn’t matter right now, does it.”

“Not at all,” Cormoran says, because it doesn’t. He’d been wrong, wrong about so much, and it doesn’t matter because it’s all right now.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Robin luxuriates in the way Cormoran is knotted inside her, the gentle burn of her hips and thighs as she stays straddled atop him. She had thought she would only have the one heat, to remember; this is a promise, one of many to come, and she is overcome by this future she never thought she could even wish for.

She shifts her hips against Cormoran’s, enjoying the way his knot catches and tugs at her, the pain-pleasure of it, and his hands come up to still her.

“If you keep doing that, we’ll be stuck like that forever,” he says, sounding a bit strangled. Robin grins.

“Would that be so terrible?” she asks, voice a contented purr.

“No,” he replies, “but I have other things I want to do to you, beautiful girl, that I won’t be able to do if my knot never goes down.”

Robin arches an eyebrow at him. “Like what?”

“I’d like to buy you dinner,” Cormoran says, catching Robin off guard; she had thought they were bantering, but he seems entirely serious.

“I like dinner,” she replies, trying to match his tone.

“I want to—” His brow furrows. “I want to do this right.”

Robin is struck by how very much she cares for this man.

“I want to take you out for dinner, and talk about— fuck, I don’t know, whatever people talk about. Your day, or your family, or your— anything, I want to know everything about you,” Cormoran goes on, looking off to the side, as though he’s embarrassed by this proclamation. “I want to buy you ice cream again, and— flowers, I’ll buy you flowers—”

Robin is smiling and somehow about to cry; she’ll blame it on the ricochet of her hormones, that this confession is bringing her to tears. But it means more to her than she can begin to say, that Cormoran wants to do these things, that he wants this to be more than their biology.

Robin’s always hated her biology, has thought that giving in to it would be giving over who she is. And being with Cormoran— it’s not like that at all. It’s being all of who she is, for the first time.

“You don’t have to buy me flowers,” she says, one hand coming up to cover her mouth, cover her tremulous smile.

“I want to,” Cormoran says stubbornly. “I want to— fuck, I want to give you everything—”

And now she is laughing and crying, and Cormoran looks bewildered.

“Did I say something— jesus, please don’t cry, what did I say—”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

It is a very bad sign when the woman who still has your cock buried inside her starts crying, at least in Cormoran’s experience. Not that this has happened before. But he’s not enjoying the experience.

“No, it’s alright,” Robin reassures him, “these are happy tears, I promise.”

Cormoran reaches up to wipe Robin’s cheeks, and gives her a baffled smile. “If you say so,” he says. “I don’t want to make you sad—”

“You couldn’t,” she replies, tangling her fingers with his. “I’m only— I’m so happy, and I can’t believe it, it doesn’t seem real.”

Cormoran flexes his abdominal muscles, a tiny thrust, and Robin giggles a bit damply.

“It’s real,” Cormoran says, reassuring himself as much as Robin. “This is real.”

“I just wasn’t expecting— you wanting to—”

Cormoran looks at her, searching, hoping she can see how he’s feeling written across his face. “You didn’t think I’d want to do it properly?”

“No— well, yes, but—”

“Robin,” he says, enjoying the way he can say her name now, with all the meaning it has for him. “I want— I have always wanted— more of you than what we’ve shared in the office. And if you—”

He cannot say it, cannot say if you are willing to share this life with me, because that is too much, despite it being what he wants.

“If you are— mine, then I want everything, every part of you, I want to know what you like and what you hate and what you eat for breakfast—”

He is talking now just to make her smile, because Robin is smiling and it is going to break his heart, the hope on her face, the trust. The love, even if he isn’t ready to think that word now. Not yet.

“I like my eggs a bit runny,” she says, still smiling, “and I hate it when the Tube is running late, and I like you.”

Cormoran touches her face again, a smile catching at the corner of his mouth.

“That’s the whole list?” he asks, wanting to hear her say it again without actually asking her to say it again.

“Well, I like other things too,” Robin says, leaning her hands down on his chest, scratching at the dark hair that grows there. “I like good iced coffee, and— driving, and dogs—”

Cormoran knows his knot is going to go down eventually, and when he’s not in rut his refractory period is as long as any other healthy-ish man in his mid-thirties. So not great. He’s enjoying it as long as he can, rolling his hips up against Robin’s so that she rides him gently. Causing her to lose her train of thought is a bonus.

“Mostly,” she says, leaning down so that her hair falls around their faces. Her voice has gone low and rich and soft. “Mostly, I like you, Cormoran Blue Strike.”

The shiver that goes through him at her words is unmissable.

They haven’t used any words that would constitute a bond, not really. He hasn’t asked her to be his Mate, hasn’t offered to be her Alpha. But Robin knows that what they have between them is a promise that will almost certainly lead them there, and it is more than enough for her. And if she is honest, in her heart, he is already her Alpha.

It wouldn’t make sense for him to proclaim his love, would be suspicious and out of character. The idea of it is— stressful, to Robin.

But the way he looks at her when she tells him she likes him, uses his full name, it is as good as a declaration of intent.

“I like you too, Robin Venetia Ellacott,” he rasps, before pulling her down to be kissed. And he kisses like he does everything else— with single-minded intensity, with focus and intent, and Robin meets him with her own passion until she cannot think at all.

Their hips rock together, setting a pace to match the intensity with which they are devouring each other. Cormoran licks into Robin’s mouth, tracing her tongue with his, and she giggles and returns the favor, both lost in the glory of discovery.

Cormoran breaks the kiss to slide his mouth down the side of Robin’s neck, wiping away the makeup there to reveal the scattering of hickeys which he left so recently, and yet somehow in a different lifetime.

“No more of those,” Robin tells him, nudging him away from her neck. “It was such a pain to cover them up, you can’t leave them where anyone will see.”

“But I can leave them elsewhere?” he asks, distracted by the scent gland nestled at the base of Robin’s neck. “To be clear.”

She sighs as he presses his mouth just beside the swollen gland. “Yeah, alright,” she murmurs. “Where I can hide them.”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Cormoran hears her, but is focused on his self-appointed task for bringing her as much pleasure as he can before his knot goes down and they really do need to rejoin the rest of the world. He licks Robin’s scent gland, gently, letting the flavor of her emotions play across his tongue. It sends a rush of blood directly to his cock, which throbs inside her, and he hopes Robin can feel his reaction. He wants her to know what she does to him.

“Fuck,” she whispers, losing her balance and falling down against him, and Cormoran agrees wholeheartedly. It’s not the haze of rut, but he cannot think past the things they are doing here in his bed, his endless mind caught up entirely by Robin.

“You’re perfect,” he says into her skin. “Lovely girl, so good—”

Robin is holding on to his shoulders as he works along her collarbone, leaving little blooms of red that will fade quickly. He’s not upset; he will just have to give her more.

“Cormoran,” she gasps into his ear. “I don’t think I can—”

“Yes, you can,” he tells her, his knot still hard. He wants to make her come again. He’s going to, if he has his way.

“It’s too much,” she says, voice taut as he pinches one of her lovely nipples, and Cormoran takes that as a sign he is doing it correctly.

“You can, beautiful girl,” he says, his free hand moving down to the roundness of her ass to pull her tight against him. “Perfect girl, you can, let me do this for you—”

She is moaning, one hand pressed to her face, as Cormoran grinds up into her and thumbs at her nipple. His knot, against all odds, seems to get bigger, his whole body beginning to tremble with effort.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Cormoran swells inside of her, his cock rubbing against her tender walls and sparking pleasure, and that combined with the way his hands are working her over is turning Robin into a sweaty, incoherent mess.

“I can’t—” she gasps, as her body tenses, telling her that in fact, she can.

“Cum for me, darling, sweet girl, cum for me please,” Cormoran is saying to her in his cigarette-smoke voice, pleading and heavy.

“I— oh, Cormoran— I—”

She cannot articulate a single word but his name, the world narrowing to the swivel of their hips, the perfect hardness of his cock and knot, and his slips one hand from her ass between their bodies to rub at her clit, and between one wave of pleasure and the next she is lost.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Robin atop him, tense and shivering, tastes of absolute pleasure, total surrender, and Cormoran is suffused with satisfaction. He did this, he gave her that pleasure, and she is his, in the only way that matters, in every way that matters.

She chose him, free and clear, and has chosen him in every moment thereafter.

“All right, love?” he asks her, after Robin’s breathing has settled. He can feel the way her cunt is still tight and fluttering, the aftershocks of orgasm, but she is able to prop herself up on one arm and flick his nose.

“That was— jesus,” she says.

“That good?” he asks.

She scrunches up her face adorably, trying for a frown. “I think I nearly passed out.”

“I’ll take that as a positive review, then,” he says, and she collapses back down against his chest.

“If you ever do that again, I’ll— I’ll only give you second-brewing tea. For a week. I think you’ve ruined me for the day.”

Cormoran kisses the top of Robin’s head, reaching up to run his fingers through her hair.

“I’m perfectly content to say here with you for the next week,” he says. “I thought I was clear on that.”

“That’s lovely, and would be nice, but we do still have a business to run,” Robin says, as her leg twitches against his.

Cormoran snorts. “I think you’re the perfect woman,” he says, dry with an undertone of wonderment. “I don’t know a single other person in the world who would react to being given an orgasm like that with ‘how could you, now how will I get any work done.’ You’re singular, you are.”

She pulls a hand free to pinch his side, not hard enough to hurt but enough to make her feelings known.

“Don’t be mean,” she mumbles.

“Mean? Never. I’m in awe.” Cormoran nudges her to turn her face to his, so he can see her expression. She’s blushing. He adores it. “Come here, beautiful girl.”

He kisses her, gently but firmly, and it is only a moment before she relents and returns the kiss with equal fervor.

She pulls back, though, before the kiss can take off again.

“We have to stop doing that,” she says, breath unsteady. “At this rate, we’ll starve to death in this bed. Didn’t you say something about buying me food?”

Cormoran nods, and at the reminder of food, his stomach grumbles loud enough to be entirely audible. He winces.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

If she stays in this bed with Cormoran much longer, Robin is either going to beg him to Mate her, or she’s going to murder him. The sound of his stomach growling only makes her laugh.

“I think that’s an answer,” she whispers, and he looks at her with hot bright eyes and kisses her again, insatiably.

“Yes,” he says, after a long, passionate kiss which spins Robin’s head around again. “I think we ought to get something to eat. I haven’t eaten anything yet today.”

Robin is horrified. “Nothing? At all? Good lord, now I’m afraid you’re going to pass out on the stairs!”

He gives her a look. “I’m not going to pass out, love, calm down.”

She narrows her eyes at him right back. “You haven’t eaten since yesterday, and I know you can’t have eaten much, and how many calories have you burnt today already? Forgive me for being concerned for your well-being.”

He pulls her close, hands stroking the smooth expanse of her back. “I’ll be fine, beautiful girl. And if I pass out, you’ll catch me, won’t you?”

She swats at him, laughing as she’s sure she’s meant to.

“If you want to kill us both, sure, I’ll try to catch you when you pitch down the stairs,” she replies. He snorts.

His knot inside her is starting, just slightly, to subside. Robin can feel it in the way that her body is tensing against a welcome intrusion that’s no longer quite there; it won’t be long before they’ll be unlocked and can part.

“Come on, you promised to take me out for dinner,” she says. “Don’t be cross that I’m cashing that in a bit early. You can buy me lunch.”

“I’ll buy you any meal you like, at any time of day,” Cormoran says. “But do be kind to the bank account.”

Robin rolls her eyes and swats him again.

“Are you accusing me of being a— a gold digger?” She cannot help the giggle that idea causes. “Am I only in it for the free food?”

“You’d be surprised at how many women think I’m flush with cash,” Cormoran deadpans.

“Well, I hardly think they matter anymore,” Robin says, bristling unconsciously at the idea of Cormoran with someone else. “And I think I’m well-enough acquainted with your finances to know what sort of budget I’m dealing with. You can take me to the pub, thanks.”

“Robin Ellacott,” he says, kissing her cheek, “you really are the perfect woman.”

She grins at him. “Can I get that in writing? For the next time you misplace one of my reports and accuse me of being late with them?”

He gives her another smacking kiss. “The cheek of you! I never misplace anything.”

She rolls her eyes. “Of course not, how could I ever accuse you of doing something you do twice or thrice a week. The temerity.”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Cormoran enjoys the way that Robin can go from a mess in his arms to sassing him about his work habits, all while still having his knot inside her lovely, lovely cunt. He’s going to savor the last few minutes of being locked together, then he is going to buy them an enormous lunch, then he—

Well, he really ought to get some actual work done. He needs to go over the contractor’s work, and respond to his emails, and—

“Now who’s thinking about work, hm?” Robin asks. Cormoran comes back to the very pleasant moment and see her smirking down at him, and he barks a laugh.

“As a point of fact,” he lies, “I was just wondering if I’d be able to tempt you back up here after lunch.”

“Are you asking me to skiv work to have sex with the boss?” Robin asks, mock-affronted. “I don’t think that’s very professional.”

He shifts beneath her, his knot going down now for true. “Maybe after work,” he concedes. She shifts up and off of him, and he misses her the moment she is gone.

Robin rolls to the side of the bed and stretches, the curve of her back illuminated by the rich sunlight coming through the window. Cormoran props himself up on one elbow to admire her as she twists and bends.

“I can feel you ogling me,” she informs him, her back still to him. His eyes are caught by her mating gland, that euro-sized circle of raised flesh like a siren song.

Not now, he thinks. Not yet. But someday. Maybe.

“You’re very beautiful,” he replies, open honesty in his tone. “Can’t blame me for admiring.”

She smiles at him over her shoulder, and Cormoran is filled with a momentary desire to be a painter, or a photographer— he wants the ability to capture the way she looks, just then.

“Come buy me lunch, and tell me I’m beautiful over chips,” she says.

“I think this is what love feels like,” Cormoran informs her. “At the risk of repeating myself, you’re perfect.”

“Tell me that again after I’ve eaten all your chips,” she replies, snagging some of her clothing with one foot and dragging it over. “Christ, we smell obvious.”

“We smell incredible,” Cormoran says.

Robin wrinkles her nose. “We reek of sex,” she says. “Even a Beta couldn’t miss what we’ve been up to.”

Cormoran reaches out to snag Robin’s waist, pulling her back towards him. His is still naked and totally shameless; she knows what he looks like, and has chosen him anyway.

“Let them know,” he says, voice dropping husky and low. “Everyone will know that I’m yours, and you’re mine.”

Robin looks at him, and there is tenderness in her eyes. She touches his face, cupping his cheek in one palm.

“I am,” she says, and kisses him, light and sweet. “And I’m thinking we ought to order delivery.”

“Does that mean you won’t put your clothes back on?” Cormoran asks, brows raising suggestively.

Robin laughs. “You can’t be ready to go again, you’re hungry and must be exhausted.”

He makes a face that says what he thinks of that. “There are about a hundred things I can think of that I’d like to do to you that don’t involve my cock at all,” he says, voice now reduced to gravel. “We probably have time for two or three.”

There is a blush suffusing Robin’s face, and Cormoran grins. His world has spun 180 degrees in the past few days, and he is not going to question the luck that has given him the gift of this woman.

“Stop that,” she chides him. “We need to do something productive today.” Robin pulls away from him again, this time manages to grab her panties and pull them on. Cormoran watches her move raptly.

“I feel I’ve been very productive today, myself,” Cormoran says as Robin tugs her bra back on, adjusting her breasts to sit comfortably in the cups. It is a plain bra, smooth and sand-colored; she clearly didn’t wear it with the expectation that it would be seen, which is somehow more sexy than something built entirely of lace would have been.

Well, Cormoran thinks, biting his lip as Robin puts on her shirt, covering herself from his gaze. If Robin chose to wear something made entirely of lace, you wouldn’t catch me complaining.

“Are you going to get dressed?” Robin asks.

“If I must,” he says dolefully, and Robin rolls her eyes and smiles as she stands.

“You want your clothes first, or your leg?” she asks, gathering his things off the floor. He makes a gesture, just chuck it all over here, and she tosses it onto the space on the bed which she has just vacated. Cormoran is not paying much attention to his things, though, because Robin is wearing just her panties and shirt as she walks across his flat to get her slacks, and he refuses to miss a moment of it.

He’s always thought she had a good derriere, but seeing it clad thusly, in his own flat, is something akin to a religious experience for Cormoran. Round, with just the right amount of jiggle. He can see the shadow of finger-shaped bruises where her ass meets her legs, and is possessively pleased by this mark of his claim.

He sighs when she bends over, but it is to pull on her slacks, hiding her lower body from his greedy eyes.

When Robin turns back to him, Cormoran is just how she left him, unmoving and still totally nude.

“Cormoran!” she exclaims. “Are you going to get dressed or not?”

“I suppose, if you are, I must too,” he sighs.

“I’m going to go downstairs and place a delivery order,” she informs him. “Maybe if I’m not here to distract you, you’ll be able to manage a few buttons.”

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

The last thing Robin wants to do is leave this place where they have— consummated, is the word. But she needs to eat, and so does he, and there’s an inexorable urge in her to take care of her Alpha and that involves making sure he eats.

So she will pull herself away, and walk down the stairs, and wait for him to come buy her lunch.

“Hurry up,” she says from the doorway to Cormoran, who is slowly getting his prosthetic back on. “If you’re quick, we might have time for one of those things on your list before the delivery gets here.”

His head snaps up, and Robin can smell the way his body reacts to her suggestion before his expression has time to change. She lets her lips curl into a grin before turning and going down the stairs, her shoes held in one hand.

The office door is slightly open, still, and Robin cannot believe they didn’t even close the office up before racing upstairs.

She closes her eyes and inhales, and can believe it, actually.

Inside, her coffee mug sits cold on the counter, and Robin goes over to rinse it out.

When she’d brewed the coffee, she had thought she was facing an insurmountable obstacle. How strange life was, that she should be pouring out the same pot of coffee, Cormoran’s scent still fresh on her skin. She smiles down at the sink, a warmth curling through her.

He is hers, and she is his. What a perfectly lovely thing.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Cormoran yanks on his clothing, haphazard and creased, but needs to stop when he attempts to get up. The rush of blood to his head is dizzying, and he frowns a bit to realize that Robin is in fact completely correct. He needs to eat sooner rather than later, now that his rut is no longer suppressing all his bodily functions.

Thinking of bodily functions….

In the washroom, Cormoran splashes water on his face, not wanting to wash Robin away but needing to pull himself together. He takes a deep breath, looking at himself in the mirror.

The glint of happiness in his eye is unfamiliar. It feels... good.

Of all the things he had thought today would bring him, this sense of contentment, of belonging, hadn’t been on the list.

Running his wet hands over his hair, making at least a cursory attempt to look less post-coital, Cormoran begins to whistle.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Robin can hear Cormoran, still up in his flat; she hadn’t closed the door behind herself, and the sound carries. He’s whistling, and it makes all of her Omega instincts happy that he sounds so happy.

She goes to her computer, pulling up the menu for the delivery place that’s fastest, and places an order of both of their favorites, plus extra chips. She has just confirmed the delivery time when Cormoran’s tread tells her he is coming down the stairs.

“Hello, beautiful girl,” he says when he comes to the doorway, looking at her with the sort of transparently soft gaze she associates with romantic films.

“Hello,” she says back, unable to keep from smiling back at him, just as openly. “I’ve just placed an order for lunch. I put it on the company card.”

He walks towards her— well, perhaps “stalks” is a better descriptor. He is an Alpha, focused entirely on his prey.

“How long do we have before it gets here?” he asks.

Robin’s breath is caught in her throat. “Twenty— twenty minutes or so,” she says. “But we ought to—”

“You don’t get to tempt me downstairs then tell me what I ought to do,” Cormoran says.

Robin narrows her eyes at him. “What if I’ve changed my mind?” she asks.

“Then I’ll respect that,” Cormoran says immediately. “But I don’t think you have.”

“But if I say not to—”

Cormoran stops, a few feet away, and looks at Robin. “I will never touch you without your permission,” he says, fervently. “Not ever, Robin, my hand to God.”

Robin swallows, not looking away from her Alpha. She needs to be clear and calm in this moment. This is important.

“Some Alphas— say that they get carried away,” she says, and her voice only trembles a little. “That it’s easy to get lost in, in instincts, or hormones, or whatever—”

“Those are lies,” Cormoran says, “and I would never— not even once, Robin. If I ever do anything you don’t want, you say so, or— hit me, christ, I’d deserve it, if I ever hurt you or made you feel like— like you—”

He trails off, bewildered and unable to finish his sentence, and Robin believes him, in her marrow. She doesn’t think it’s wishful thinking, or her instincts overrunning her common sense.

Cormoran would rather she hit him than let him do anything she didn’t want.

She knows she loves him, in this moment.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Cormoran cannot think of the words that will convey how much he would hate himself if he ever made Robin feel powerless, or scared, or— anything negative, really. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if she ever felt an ounce of fear because of him.

“Come here,” she says, reaching out to him. He moves to her, wrapping her into his arms, taking a deep breath when she returns the embrace.

“Not ever,” he says again, into Robin’s hair. It smells of her, of sweat and sex and of him too, and it’s the most soothing thing he can think of.

“I believe you,” she says, her hands fisting into the fabric of his shirt. “I believe, you, Cormoran.”

“Thank you,” he says. He knows how much it must take her to believe him. She, who has been betrayed in— nearly every meaningful way a woman can be betrayed, has chosen to place her trust in him.

It’s a staggering responsibility. He swears to himself, standing there in the office, Robin in his arms, that he will be worthy of it. He will be worthy of her.

She has chosen him.

She chose him.

Cormoran doesn’t think a man like him gets more than one gift like this. He won’t take this one for granted.

Robin breathes a laugh. Her head is laying against his upper chest.

“I can hear your heartbeat,” she says softly. “Calm down, love.”

Cormoran realizes that his heartbeat is, indeed, careening along at about a hundred miles an hour; he smiles wryly.

“It’s just what happens when I’m around you,” he says, not acknowledging that they both know he was panicked by the idea of hurting her.

“You old flatterer,” she replies, back, just dry enough that he knows that she knows. She doesn’t try to pull away, just lays against him, easy in his arms.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Robin doesn’t know how long she stands there, comfortable, Cormoran’s heartbeat in her ear. She can feel him relax against her as the seconds tick by, his heart rate slowing, his breathing becoming more even. She can smell how content he is, and she knows she must smell the same.

It’s soothing to her Omega core, to be held like this, with no expectation or pressure. She feels safe, protected.

Eventually, of course, they must move apart; it is Robin who hears the door at the bottom of the stairs creak open.

“Maybe that’s our lunch,” she says, lifting her head off of Cormoran’s shoulder, and he takes her cue at once, letting her step away. She wants to return to him immediately, but pushes that urge aside as unhelpful. They’ll have plenty of time for that later— that, and other things.

“I’ll see if there’s anything to drink in the fridge,” Cormoran says, clearly also reluctant to move away, but making the effort. Robin beams at him, pleased that he is trying, too.

He smiles back, soft at the edges, before turning away to go over to the kitchenette. There’s a knock at the door, and Robin quickly moves behind her desk and sits in her chair.

“It’s open!” she calls. The door opens to reveal, indeed, the college-age Beta who does the deliveries for the shop she ordered from.

“Gotchure order,” he says in his mumbly voice.

“I’ll take it,” Cormoran says, coming over to the younger man to take the heavy paper sack from him. The Beta looks up at him and just nods.

“Cormoran, don’t forget to tip the boy,” Robin says, and Cormoran pats his pocket and looks at her, stricken.

“Oh, for goodness sake,” she says, smiling and exasperated. “Hang on, let me get it. You go put the food down.”

She rummages through her top drawer, finding a pound she must have shoved in at some point.

“Here you are,” she says, standing and extending the pound note over her desk. The young man comes over to take the tip, nodding at her.

“Thanks, mum,” he says, and heads out the door, closing it conscientiously behind him. She can hear him clattering down the stairs, much faster now that he’s been relieved of his burden.

•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••

Cormoran sets the food down on the tiny kitchenette counter. He usually eats while sitting on the terrible couch, while Robin sits at her desk, but he doesn’t want to be so far apart today.

“You had better sit where you usually do,” Robin says, coming up beside him and touching his shoulder to ask him to step to the side. He does, watching Robin lift out the styrofoam containers that hold their lunch. His stomach rumbles again, very audibly.

“But I want to be with you,” he says, reaching out to tuck Robin’s hair back behind her ear. She looks over at him, her smile warming her storm-blue eyes.

“I know, love,” she says. “But if we’re going to make this work, and god knows I want to make this work, we need to have boundaries during the work day.”

He sighs. He knows she’s right, as she often is. But that doesn’t mean he has to like it.

“You have a point,” he concedes aloud. “I’ll just be over here, on the couch. By myself.” He picks up the containers that have his hamburgers and chips and the can of cola that he found in the fridge and walks over to sit down. The couch makes one of its hideous noises when he lands on it.

Robin laughs at the look on his face. “And that’s another reason not to do anything down here,” she says, opening the box that holds her sandwich. “It would be very obvious and very uncomfortable for the both of us, on that thing.”

Cormoran shifts, grimacing. Once more, Robin makes an excellent point. He shoves a few chips in his mouth as he nods, and his attention shifts fully to the food once it penetrates to his brain that this is sustenance.

Robin couldn’t say why she finds Cormoran’s chagrin as he eats so endearing, but it is. She’s grateful to the flatulent couch, really; if it weren’t what it is, she might be much more tempted to… christen it. But the idea of laying against that fake black leather with any amount of her skin bared isn’t something she has any inclination to do.

She eats some of her chips before devouring half of the chicken sandwich in about four bites. She looks up to find Cormoran watching her, even as he eats his own food.

She finishes chewing. “Something I can help you with?”

“No,” Cormoran says around a mouthful of burger. He swallows. “I just like watching you eat.”

She raises her eyebrows at him. “Is this something we should discuss?” she asks, archly.

He snorts. “Not like that, you minx. It’s just—” His ears turn pink, Robin notices, fascinated.

“Just what?” she prods, when it doesn’t seem like Cormoran intends to finish his sentence.

“When you were dieting,” he says, looking off to her left. “I kept thinking what a shame it was, because you— you’re— you have a figure that ought to have a few more pounds on it,” he finishes, awkwardly.

Robin could kiss him, if she weren’t also blushing.

“You never said anything,” she says, instead.

“It wasn’t my place to say anything,” Cormoran says, looking back at her now. “It wasn’t my place to even notice anything.”

“You can say things now,” Robin says. “If you want. With the understanding that I may ignore them.”

“Of course you can ignore them, it’s your body,” Cormoran says, surprised. “I thought it wasn’t right of you to try to make— make Him happy, at your own expense. You don’t actually like miso soup that much, no one does.”

Robin can hear the capital h on Him, knows that Cormoran will probably never say Matthew’s name without a grimace. Well, neither will she, probably, so they’re a matched set, all right.

“I think my days of pleasing anyone else before myself are behind me,” she says, looking Cormoran levelly in the eyes. She wants him to hear her. She’s worked hard enough to get to this point; no matter how she feels about Cormoran, no matter what their biology dictates, she won’t be subsumed into him, his life, his wants, his personality.

“That’s what I want to hear,” Cormoran says, looking satisfied and gesturing with a chip. “If you’re happy, I’m happy, and if I’m not, I’ll say so and we’ll figure it out, yeah?”

Robin picks up the other half of her sandwich, and smiles at Cormoran.

“Yeah,” she says. “We’ll figure it out.” She takes a bite, watching Cormoran watching her. There’s warmth, and a touch of possessiveness, and something more in his gaze; she doesn’t think the word love. Not now. Not yet.

They’ll figure it out.

Robin nods. That seems like a good place to start. Or, well. They’ve more than started, now.

A good place to continue on from, then.