Tobias couldn’t even muster up a superior look. Every time he glanced at Soren, he was certain his emotions were all over his face. “What else would this be?”
Soren prowled closer. “Well, a week ago, somebody was threatening your life. We still don’t know who that was.”
Tobias rolled his eyes, but there was no malice behind it. “Has it ever occurred to you that perhaps it wasyourintel that was incorrect? Which we only know because of my direct approach,” he added. “You would have had me fleeing the country all due to a misunderstanding.”
Soren still didn’t look convinced. “We still don’t know that it was a misunderstanding. Rafferty’s guys are parked across the street in a sedan. I doubt that’s a coincidence.”
“They’re not going to do anything to me. They’re just flexing their muscles, letting me know that they still have the biggest dicks in the room after we crashed their party. You know I’m right.” Soren gave a discontented sigh. Tobias closed the small distance, placing a kiss on his frowning mouth. “You can check the snow globe for wires if you like. Make sure it’s not a dirty bomb. Will that make you feel better?”
That wasn’t a lie either. It had been a bomb of sorts. A calling card from a person he’d long assumed dead. One the world would be better off without. The snow globes had arrived on this date for years, a gruesome reminder of the one time Tobias had attempted to stop a client’s depraved proclivities.
Each snow globe represented a body somewhere in the state named. A body which would likely never be found. Nevada. Minnesota. California. Utah. Each year, another present. Another reminder. Then, four years ago, they’d finally stopped. Tobias had finally stopped him.
Tobias
had assumed he’d died in prison but had taken no steps to confirm it—hadn’t let himself stop to think about it enough to confirm if his assumptions were correct. Even if the snow globe was from him, he was no longer a threat. This was just one more way for him to fuck with Tobias, to rattle him.
Tobias shook the thoughts away before Soren saw how shaken he truly was. Soren would never leave him if he thought Tobias was upset and there truly wasn’t anything to be upset about. The man was harmless…to Tobias anyway. He was locked up a thousand miles away.
Soren’s hand threaded in Tobias’s hair, tugging his head back just hard enough to make his cock take notice. “Are you making fun of me, Glasses?”
Tobias dragged his thoughts back to the present. Soren’s voice just did things to him. It didn’t matter what he was saying or how he was saying it. The man’s voice seemed to be hardwired to his dick.
“Does it feel like I’m making fun of you?” Tobias asked in what Soren called his head-shrinker voice, raising a brow, a small smirk forming on his lips. “Is there an inferiority complex we need to deal with? Should I schedule you for a little couch time?”
Soren backed him up against the table, his mouth finding his once more. “Yeah, maybe. I definitely felt much more relaxed after our last couch session,” he murmured. “You did, too, if I remember correctly.”
Tobias yielded to his kiss before saying, “I don’t know what you mean.”
Soren picked him up and deposited him on the table. No easy task, considering Tobias was the heavier of the two. When Soren stepped between his spread thighs, he wrapped his arms around his neck, letting Soren do whatever he wanted with him. He didn’t mind Soren’s manhandling. In fact, he rather liked it. It made it easy for Tobias to turn off his brain, to just stop thinking and obsessing over every word or gesture and just give in to the sensation.
Tobias didn’t know how or when but, somewhere along the way, Soren had cracked his code. He instinctively seemed to know when Tobias was too in his own head, when he was too overwhelmed with a new task. He seemed to understand Tobias’s stranglehold on his life, his schedule, his insane need to control what he could. He had noticed that Tobias didn’t like subtext, didn’t like head games, and made sure he was very direct with what he wanted or needed from him.
While Soren looked like the kind of guy who’d never settle down, he had slotted himself into Tobias’s life seamlessly. When he’d said he was thinking about putting down some roots in Boston, Tobias found he was relieved, like he’d released a breath he’d been holding since Soren appeared in his life. Tobias didn’t want him to go anywhere. Not for more than a few days, anyway.
Soren bit at Tobias’s bottom lip. “No? It must have been somebody else riding me yesterday, whispering some very dirty things in my ear. Weird. He sure did look like you.”
“Yeah?” Tobias said, his hands already working their way under Soren’s ratty shirt.
Soren bit along his jaw. “Mm, felt like you, too. Hot. Tight.”
Tobias flushed. “A coincidence, I’m sure. I have no recollection of that.”
Soren chuckled against his ear. “Want me to refresh your memory?”
Soren was going to be gone for two days. That was two whole days without being able to eat dinner with him, take Mantis on walks with him, without blowing each other in the shower. It suddenly seemed like a lifetime. Tobias wanted Soren as many times as he could get him before he left him behind. He nodded, tilting his head, sighing when Soren bit at his earlobe.
“They say recreating an event can trigger repressed memories,” he said casually.
“The couch is way over there,” Soren said, unbuttoning Tobias’s shirt and shoving it off his shoulders before dipping his head to lick over one nipple, his thumb nail teasing the other.
Tobias groaned. “It doesn’t have to be an exact recreation. I’m sure we can improvise.”
“You’re the expert, Glasses. I just work here.”
“Then I suggest you take your clothes off and get back on the clock.”
* * *
