Tobias raised his hand, then stopped. Jennings didn’t notice him. Didn’t see him. Would never know he was going to die. He wouldn’t have that sense of panic, that moment of knowing that was the end for him.
That was unacceptable.
Without thinking, Tobias closed the distance between them, wrapping his gloved hand around the man’s throat, arm sweeping down instead of up so that the knife plunged into the man’s lower back, through his spinal cord.
He made a sharp sound of surprise that Tobias muffled with his hand, and when his legs gave out, Tobias gently eased him onto his back on the dirty carpet. He straddled Jennings, leaning over him. “Remember me? Hmm?”
Jennings looked confused at first, squinting, his brain clearly trying to connect the dots between the man on top of him and his suddenly useless legs. Tobias saw the moment of recognition as it flared to life behind watery eyes. “Doc?” he rasped.
Tobias smiled, nodding. “For two years, I listened to you go on and on about every attack, every victim. How does it feel? How does it feel knowing you’re going to die and there’s nothing you can do about it? How does it feel to be helpless?”
“I—”
Tobias didn’t let him finish. He slipped the blade between the man’s fourth and fifth intercostal space like it was butter. There was a slight gurgle and a single drop of blood dripped from Jennings’s mouth, but Tobias was only looking at his eyes, watching as the life in them flickered out.
After, he sat back on his haunches and sucked in huge gulps of air. He cleaned the knife blade off on the man’s pants.
Tobias had done it. He’d done that.
He grinned like a crazy person, but he couldn’t help it. His blood hummed in his veins, his whole body a live wire as his brain shot endorphins and dopamine through his system like he’d just had his first hit of heroin.
“Check for a pulse,” Soren said from the shadows.
The door across the room creaked open and Soren stepped out, the look on his face something between frazzled mentor and disappointed dad, but Tobias wasn’t having it. Not tonight. Not on a night he’d managed to kill a bad man who did bad things and he’d done it all by himself.
“I thought we’d agreed, no improvis—”
Tobias crashed his lips into Soren’s.
Soren stiffened beneath Tobias’s touch just long enough for him to second-guess the move, but when he was about to step back, Soren seemed to come to some kind of decision and melted against Tobias, his hands gripping his black t-shirt and bunching it as his tongue plunged into his mouth.
Tobias hadn’t kissed another person in a decade, had only ever done it in the first place just to see what the hype was about. He’d found it lacking. But this kiss wasn’t lacking, this kiss had him breathless. Kissing, it turned out, was a lot like riding a bike, if that bike had a five o’clock shadow and hands that cupped his ass.
He had no idea what to do next, but, luckily, Soren seemed to have it all figured out. He pivoted, slamming Tobias against the wall, his thigh pressing against Tobias’s obvious hard-on. “Oh, Doc,” he rumbled. “What am I gonna do with you?”
10
Soren
One second, Soren was shooting glances between the dead man bleeding out on the floor and the ecstasy beaming from Tobias’s eyes. The next, he was smothered in the other man’s heat, moving his lips against a pair that were decidedlyunmannequin-like. Not stiff and marble cold, but pliant and yielding. It caught Soren so off guard that he stiffened simply because he hadn’t been surprised like that in ages.
But then Tobias had flicked his tongue over Soren’s lower lip in a way that was somehow both a request and a demand, and Soren’s wariness evaporated, giving way to the fiery lust that had been building since he’d met the strangely arousing doctor.
Tobias’s ass was firm in his grip and Soren used it to cushion the blow as he spun him around and into the wall.
“What am I gonna do with you, Doc?” It was half tease and half legit question. Soren had anticipated having to work a little harder to get in the man’s pants, after all.
“Fuck me.” Tobias’s voice was wry. “That’s what I believe usually happens in these situations, isn’t it?”
Tobias’s cock was stiff against his thigh, and when Soren pushed harder against him, he made a muffled noise and tilted his head back, exposing the slim column of his neck.
Soren licked the salty length of it before murmuring in his ear, “That what you want then? Me to fuck you?”
Despite the shaky breath Tobias exhaled, his answer was unwavering and confident. “Yes. And suck my cock.”
His head thumped against the wall as Soren dipped his thumb in the hollow of his throat and then followed his Adam’s apple up to a pressure point, the movement of skin and tendons as Tobias swallowed enticing and hard to resist. Soren was rewarded with another quiet groan as he caught skin between his teeth and sucked.
“You don’t have to be quiet around me, Glasses. In fact, I think I’d kinda like you loud.” Reaching out, he took Tobias’s hand and dragged it to his throbbing cock. Just the heat of his palm pressed against Soren’s jeans made his cock twitch.
