Page 7 of Fortress
Jake was about to sidle around toward Roger’s study—to give him some space, and also buy himself some time—when Toby looked up and offered him a small smile. Suddenly (and not just because his knees had gone weak in relief that Toby waslookingat him), Jake couldn’t go anywhere but toward the couch seat beside him. “Hey, Toby.”
Toby closed the book but kept a couple fingers in the pages to mark his spot. “How are you feeling?”
“Oh, awesome, y’know.” Jake sat gingerly on the couch, leaving a few inches of buffer between them. “How’s your arm?”
Toby shrugged. “Hardly feel it.”
“Well, that’s good.” Jake rubbed his knees and glanced toward the study, where Roger could be heard muttering intothe phone about alternate entrances into a museum. He was probably talking to another hunter, but who knew what hobbies Roger might’ve picked up?
Jake made himself focus. “Look, Toby... I’m not gonna deny that I want to talk about this about as much as I want my molars pulled, but I have to—I’m sorry. I’m damn sorry about what happened last night, and... it got out of hand. Iletit get out of hand and that’s my fault, it was stupid even to start when I was high as the Hindenburg, and I’m just... yeah. I’ll... watch out for that, next time. And you can always zip my ass into a sleeping bag if I start weirding you out again.”
Toby was staring at him in a way that forcibly reminded Jake of the painful early days, when Toby had looked at him most of the time like he was speaking gibberish. Unnerved, Jake ran a hand through his hair and resisted the urge to ask if he had jam on his nose.
“Jake...” Toby’s gaze dropped, fixing on some vague spot midway between their knees. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Uh.” Jake wondered if Toby had had the same night he had or if this whole fucked-up mess was something he had hallucinated from too much oxy. Because Jake remembered their kiss leaving the PG rule in the dust, and he had no idea how that would have triggered Toby andnotbeen Jake’s fault. It wasn’t like Toby could have triggeredhimself. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was.”
“No,” Toby said, even quieter. “It wasn’t.”
Tobyarguingwith him was still novel enough to be surreal. Jake wasn’t sure yet what to do with it, especially about something like this. He opened his mouth, shut it, opened it again.
But Toby continued low and rapid, eyes still fixed away: “You d-don’t have to watch out.In-need to. But not for you, it’s... not b-because of you, b-b-bec-c-c—”
“Toby . . . I’m not following, man.”
Toby tightened his grip on his own hands in his lap, never lifting his eyes. Fuck, he had gotten so much better in the last few months about eye contact. “I need to be... in control, Jake.”
If this wasn’t Tobias he was talking to, Jake would suspect he was hearing a roundabout declaration of a dominance fetish. Which he could totally, totally get behind—but this was Toby, right, so yeah, not likely. That left the thorny problem of what the hell Toby meant.He leaned in closer, pitching his voice as low as Toby’s. “What do you want to be in control of? You gotta spell it out for me.”
“Myself.” Toby’s fingers skittered a tight rhythm over his knuckles. “I have to . . . I can’t l-let . . . w-won’t let my own b-body . . .”
“What?” That was not where Jake had expected (or okay, wanted) this conversation to go. A fucking awful, train wreck suspicion was shredding his fantasy like salt through a spirit. “Toby, d’you—”
Roger’s timing was almost magic, the floorboards creaking under his familiar tread before the man himself appeared in the doorway. Jake wasn’t sure if he was pathetically grateful or frustrated enough to shred some bandages just to give himself something to do with his hands. “Hey, Tobias, I think I found a hit on that feathered snake you two scuffled with the other night. Would you take a gander at it, tell me if it’s the one? I’m trying to get an updated territory map.”
“Oh—” Toby looked up at Roger, then shot a questioning glance at Jake.
Jake forced a reassuring smile and jerked his head toward the doorway. “Go for it. Not like I got that great a look at it.”
Toby got up to follow Roger into the study, and Jake leaned slowly into the couch, easing out a breath. They’d talk later. Really talk. Probably sometime after they left Roger’s. Therewasn’t much reason to rush (they weren’t chasing a hunt, no one expected them anywhere), and this was one conversation that Jake wanted to have right, because whatever was going on in Toby’s brilliant, twisted-up brain, Jake sure as hell didn’t understand.
Hoped he didn’t, anyway.
Roger and Tobias made chili together that afternoon, each chopping half the ingredients. Tobias’s hands had been shaking at the start—not only because of theknifein his hand, in a hunter’s house, but also because of theconversation—but Roger hadn’t criticized or even mentioned his slow, careful speed, for which he was grateful. If he’d cut himself, no power on earth could have kept Jake safely on the couch in the living room, and Tobias just needed a little time when Jake wasn’t hurting himself, or being hurt, because ofTobias.
Roger talked about what he called his “early bachelor days,” times he’d succeeded and failed at cooking for himself. Tobias grew interested despite all the anxieties nagging at him, and he even managed to ask a few halting questions. Roger listened patiently and answered as though Tobias were areal, which amazed and terrified him.
And when Tobias went to check on Jake and let him know how long until dinner, he found Jake’s face suffused in one of the warmest, happiest smiles Tobias had ever seen on him. He’d seen it last, he thought, the day at the ocean.
Completely shot down from what he’d been planning to say, he was just about to ask Jake exactly how high he was when Jake raised his hands, beckoning Tobias downward.
Tobias sat on the edge of the couch, and Jake slipped one hand through Tobias’s hair, coming to rest on the back of his neck. Tobias dropped his head forward, his breath hitching.
He knew that look on Jake’s face, the look in his heavy-lidded eyes. It meant that Jake wanted to kiss him. Other days, Jake would have pulled Tobias down to him, laughing, his hands loose enough that Tobias could pull away if he wanted, but now, even with that blissed-out smile on his face, Jake was holding back. Because of what had happened last night.
Even though Tobias wanted to kiss him, to show Jake he didn’t have to worry, Tobias was still afraid of it happening again, his freak body rearing up to betray him. But the idea of disappointing Jake now, denying him something that brought that sweet smile to his face, was too much. And Roger was just in the other room—he couldn’t get carried away, surely.
So he leaned down, slowly and carefully, and rested his forehead against Jake’s, until their gaze crisscrossed. Jake’s hand squeezed the back of his neck tight, and Tobias sucked in a shuddering breath before bringing his mouth to Jake’s.
