“Fuck!”
Soren licked around the doctor’s plump crown and sucked him good and hard for a handful of seconds before resting back on his heels. Tobias let out a miffed growl.
“Anyone ever sucked your cock like that before, Doc?”
“No.” Tobias spoke through gritted teeth and exhaled a hiss as Soren sank slowly down onto his cock again.
Soren sucked Tobias slowly, then hard and fast, changing the tempo just for the pleasure of hearing all the different sounds the stoic psychologist made in response. Soren couldn’t get enough of it. He could feel his aching cock leaking all over the hardwoods, and when he could tell Tobias was getting close to orgasm, he reached a hand down and stroked himself in time with his mouth.
Tobias exploded in a ragged rush of breath, salty flavor filling Soren’s throat. Before he could swallow, Tobias reached down and tilted his chin. Guessing what Tobias wanted, Soren opened his mouth, and Tobias slid his fingers inside before bringing them out again, wet with his own cum.
Standing, Soren guided Tobias’s hand under his in rough strokes that streaked and burned through him like fire and pleasure intertwined. With his teeth pricking into Tobias’s neck and a bruising grip on his waist, Soren pumped into Tobias’s fist and came with a hoarse shout. The orgasm tore through him, a hard, relentless pleasure Soren hadn’t felt the likes of in a long time. The kind that left him shuddering with aftershocks that weren’t so easily forgettable the next day.
He fell back toward the bed, carrying Tobias with him, and they landed in a sprawl of tangled limbs and panting breaths.
Soren had all sorts of things he wanted to ask the doctor, thinking the man would be more open in a post-orgasmic haze of oxytocin, but, instead, he found himself lulled by the pattern of Tobias’s breath and the warmth of his skin.
The last thing he remembered were Tobias’s fingers drifting so lightly over his jaw and cheek that he might’ve easily dreamed the sensation.
11
Tobias
Tobias sucked in much-needed breaths, his blood humming—this time, not from murder but from his first orgasm with another person. Fingers shaking, he mapped out the landscape of Soren’s jaw, his throat, his collarbones. By the time he reached Soren’s chest, the cotton of his shirt soft and warm beneath his touch, Soren was sleeping. Deeply. In Tobias’s bed. Clothing askew, mouth slightly gaping as his chest rose and fell rhythmically beneath his palm.
It was fascinating and weirdly hypnotic, studying somebody up close at their most vulnerable. Soren’s lashes were blond at the tips, just like his hair, and much longer than Tobias had ever realized until they fanned out over his cheeks. He brushed the hair back off Soren’s forehead and frowned at the smudge of dirt hidden beneath. That apartment had truly been filthy. Tobias worked the smudge away with his thumb before going back to his examination. The wrinkles on Soren’s forehead and the tiny lines around his eyes—the ones so prominent when he was laughing, usually at Tobias—smoothed out in sleep, making him look younger, almost innocent.
Except, neither of them were innocent. They were both killers. Each for their own reasons, though, he imagined Soren’s were much different from his own. Was it strange that Tobias wasn’t sure he wanted to know why Soren was the way he was? He wasn’t a patient. Tobias didn’t know what he was, but he wasn’t that. He hated how much he wanted to keep touching him. It was like laying out a candy buffet in front of a child then asking them not to indulge. Tobias had always been so good at avoiding indulgences. Sugar. Alcohol. Murder. Anything that might loosen the hold he had on his life, anything that might unknot the rope tied taut around his restraint.
He stood, walking to the bathroom to relieve himself and splash cold water on his face. When he returned, he looked at Soren’s dirty clothes and shoes on his bed and made a decision. He was certain the other man would wake up while he removed his shoes and socks and wrestled him out of his shirt and pants but nothing. Just a soft snore. Once he was naked, Tobias maneuvered him under the comforter, marveling at the other man’s ability to sleep through all that without the help of drugs or alcohol. Had Tobias ever slept that deep? Was Soren faking it, or was he really that secure around Tobias? It seemed impossible. It unnerved him.
Intimacy.
That was the word he’d used while they’d stood in front of the mirror, Tobias exposed in every conceivable way. It was nothing, just a word. Another abstract concept for him to attempt to put into context as he probed the truly twisted minds of killer after killer. Men just like him. Men incapable of understanding a word they’d never experienced before. It was like somebody born blind trying to explain color to another blind person. The blind leading the blind.
He’d talked about intimacy a million times in session, asking other monsters about their parents, their childhoods, asking whether they’d ever experienced a true intimate connection with another person. And after interviewing hundreds of people, if Tobias could point to just one consistency, it was that. The lack of a true connection with another person. It was one Tobias related to most. The one that had always allowed him to keep his impulses in check. The only difference between him and them was Tobias’s force of will.
But now, all that was shattered.
It wasn’t like Tobias didn’t know how he’d become a monster. He was practically bred for it. An overbearing, unforgiving, unfeeling mother who pampered him with things because she’d never formed a bond with her child. A violent, narcissistic, abuser of women as a father. One so arrogant, he’d done unspeakable things in their upscale suburban home right under their noses and acted as if it never happened. As if they’d been in the wrong for being appalled when it all came to light.
Tobias was almost so textbook, people might think he was a character straight out of a made-for-tv drama. He’d thought himself incapable of intimacy of any kind. He’d tried to make friends, but his obsession with death and his insanely high IQ had made socializing with peers next to impossible. He’d tried sex once or twice and found it too hard to achieve the level of vulnerability necessary to enjoy being with another person in that way. Until now. There had been something almost…holy about standing naked in front of that mirror with Soren, and it was, for lack of a better term, freaking Tobias out.
He stared down at Soren, tucked away in his bed, his golden skin radiant against the stark white of the bedsheets. There was definitely an irony in that, or maybe even a metaphor, but he didn’t want to look at it too closely. What did that say about the situation? Tobias had spent his whole life examining humans down to their very core, but this man, this stranger, had him rattled.
What was he supposed to do about this? About Soren? This dirty, sexy, infuriating man who saw Tobias for the monster he was and didn’t run away? Who wanted to push all of his buttons and his boundaries? It was all too much. He felt like he was choking, like he couldn’t breathe in the same room as Soren without wanting to do something stupid like stare at him with stars in his eyes or, worse, climb on top of him and see if every part of Soren fit as snugly inside Tobias as the rest of him seemed to. The thought made him shiver.
He turned away, padding through his house and stopping in the kitchen to give Mantis a snack before heading to his rage room. He needed to beat the shit out of something. To feel the hits reverberate through his muscles until all he could feel was pain. So, he closed himself into his padded cell, clicked the button on his surround sound and did just that.
* * *
Tobias wasn’tsure how long he’d been in his room, the red lights overhead painting everything around him in blood. But when the door suddenly flew open, he lifted his arm, turning his head against the glaring lights of the master bedroom closet like he was a vampire caught in the sun’s rays. Soren stood in the door, silhouetted against the offending light, wearing only his black boxer briefs and a faint look of amusement.
Tobias snagged the remote, clicking the off button, filling the room with a silence so profound it left his ears ringing in the aftermath.“You’re awake.”
Soren looked him over. “You’re naked. And sweaty. And beating a heavy bag to death metal under a red light.”
Tobias grabbed a towel from the neat stack on the shelf, wiping the sweat from his eyes. “Is there a question there?”
