Page 18 of Fear
He realized immediately what he’d been missing.
The brunette at the bar perched on her stool like she knew she was the damn sexiest thing in the room and everyone else better know it too. She had a slim waist and long legs and wore her little black spaghetti-strap dress like its sole purpose was to highlight everything it wasn’t covering.
Jake let out a soft whistle. When Tobias looked up, Jake nodded in her direction. “You see her?”
Tobias glanced once at the woman and immediately dropped his eyes. “W-what?”
“The hot chick in the minidress. Sitting alone, like some crazy bastard left her.” She had two drinks near her on the bar and the utterly pissed expression he was familiar with from picking up more than one guy’s dissatisfied girlfriend. “I mean, that is either one damn impressive push-up or supernaturally levitated, and either way I would definitely—”
Then Jake realized how Tobias had stilled next to him. If he thought that the shivering earlier had been bad, this was worse, and he didn’t know how long Tobias had been frozen. Maybe he should work harder to fucking notice what was going on right next to him and catch on when he was doing things Tobias didn’t like.
That was when he realized that from the second they’d stepped out of Freak Camp’s gates, he’d maybe been way more handsy than he should have with anyone who’d grown up inside a prison. Even if he hadn’t meant anything by it—fuck, that had to be why Tobias had had such fucked-up expectations from that very first night. Jake had been crossing lines left and right and never paying attention to clues like this that said Tobias really didn’t want Jake touching him.
Jake felt more than a little sick. “Shit, Tobias. I shouldn’t have—” He broke off and drummed his fingers on the table, too aware of how Tobias’s hand in his had gone slack, dead. Skin crawling, he pulled his hand free, then took a breath and tried to backtrack to where he’d first screwed up, but the wrong question came out. “I just meant—I dunno if you’ve ever thought about a girl like that, or if you’d ever want to —”
“No.” Tobias didn’t raise his head, didn’t move in any way, but the word had a forcefulness—and deeper than that, a horror, like Tobias was completely appalled Jake even asked—that Jake hadn’t heard from Tobias before. “No,” he said again, and there was no hesitation in it.
WHEN FIRST JAKE POINTED out the woman, Tobias thought he wanted to show him something about reals that he should be aware of, or maybe a lesson. Then he worried there was some kind of threat. But as Jake kept talking, two possibilities swelled in his mind, and both had bile rising in his throat, horror and panic mingling into a potent, toxic combination.
First, this could be a test. A nasty, dirty, unpassable test. Because Jake seemed to be asking if he wanted to have sexual contact with—to rape—that woman. The question could mean that Jake really did think he was the kind of depraved monster that would want to do that to a human being. But Tobias didn’t. The very idea made him sick, shaky, devastated that Jake would ask because that had to mean Tobias had given some sign or had done something so wrong that Jake would think he wanted to hurt people. The Director had almost never asked a question without knowing how he would respond to it.
That was one possibility. But Jake’s rough grin a moment ago indicated worse worse worse. It suggested that Jake wanted to do that.
This was nothing like Tobias’s expectation of Jake fucking him. That wasn’t about enjoying the act—though Tobias hoped Jake would enjoy it enough to keep him. It was about being Jake’s, serving Jake, and giving Jake everything he had, including his blood and pain if that was what he wanted. And besides, Tobias was a monster. This woman was a real.
But maybe she wasn’t. Maybe Jake had been speaking literally when he made that supernatural comment. And that meant any second now, Jake would get up and . . .
Tobias knew what hunters did to monsters. He had been forced to watch. He had been the one at the interrogation table, though never nailed down, never fucked. But in none of Jake’s stories had he made even one comment indicating that he did anything but kill freaks as efficiently as possible.
Tobias didn’t understand how he could have so horribly misunderstood Jake’s interests.
Or—far worse—how a mere four days in contact with a freak could warp him so badly.
Jake was still talking, though Tobias could barely focus enough to process his words. “I know I grabbed you out of there kinda fast and then maybe—I swear I wasn’t trying to make any moves. I’ve always been cool swinging both ways, but you might prefer chicks or not like guys or something . . . Whatever you want is cool with me. Not now, I get that, but whenever you do—”
Was Jake suggesting that Tobias might want that woman? Or that he’d want Tobias to join in?
Tobias had thought he was done watching. He had thought—and still clung to the hope—that it would only be him, that he wouldn’t ever have to listen to someone else scream again.
“You can tell me, Tobias, just lay it on me and I’ll understand—”
“I don’t want to hurt her!”
The words tore out of Tobias with more force than he had intended—more force than he wanted to use against Jake, ever—but he couldn’t just keep quiet, couldn’t say nothing. Even if that was wrong. Even if, because he had said that, because he had spoken out against something Jake wanted to do, Jake would do all of it to him, would hurt him the way Crusher hurt the freaks he fucked, or how the Director hurt monsters that didn’t obey or understand their place.
Tobias had never thought Jake was like them. He had never believed that Jake was even capable of doing what other hunters and guards had done to monsters at Freak Camp. But time after time, the Director had shown him that he was just a stupid freak that didn’t understand anything, and he was fucking stupid if he thought he could even imagine what a real wanted.
Jake was staring at him, and Tobias couldn’t stop himself from hunching lower, from digging his fingernails into his arms through the new shirt that Jake had bought for him. He didn’t know what would be worse: if Jake hit him now in front of all those reals and announced what Tobias was and why Jake was justified in kicking him to the floor, or if Jake dragged Tobias out to the car. If he waited until they were back in the apartment to take out the whip, the knife, the Director’s other tools Tobias hadn’t seen Jake carry but certainly all hunters kept just in case they had to use them.
And now Tobias had given Jake a reason.
“Tobias,” Jake said. “I . . . I didn’t think you did.”
That was it, then. Tobias was wrong and too fucking stupid to know what Jake had meant. In only a few words, Jake had made it clear just how twisted Tobias was, how much of a nasty, perverse freak he was that he had thought those things in the first place. Tobias tightened the grip on his arms, using the pain to ground himself, to hold back the sobbing, the begging, the panic that clogged his throat and threatened to choke him.
“I’m sorry,” Tobias forced out, through the nausea, the panic, the terror, the hard truth that in this new world, he had no idea what was going on, and that was going to cost him everything. He didn’t understand, he never understood, and one day Jake would teach him that. Jake would be forced to teach him that the way monsters were always taught, the way the Director taught him. Even if Jake didn’t want that, wasn’t like that now, then it would be Tobias’s fault that he changed, that he started to like hurting freaks, because Tobias was so damn stupid, too damn stupid to know what was happening, too damn, fucking, cursed stupid to . . .
Jake was still staring at Tobias like Jake had been punched in the gut. “Tobias, what—”
