Chapter 21
Tobias
I noticed when Cove began noticing me.
I had become fluent in the smallest details of him after half a year of studying him; the minute shifts of his posture, the direction of his attention, the places his eyes went when he did not intend them to.
It’d started, of course, back at his old workplace, before even our first conversation.
Slowly, through the process of getting closer to him, inviting him here, and then having him here, it’d become a second language to me.
Confining him may have caused a hiccup in our evolving relationship, but it provided me with a wealth of new reactions and new emotions to examine.
At first, his awareness of me had been entirely defensive as he watched my movements for any sign of impending attack, the distance between his body and mine, and searched my eyes for answers to his impossible questions.
Now, however, there were moments when his gaze changed.
I saw it when I uncuffed him, and his eyes flicked down to my fingers before he pulled his wrist back.
I saw it when I stood near him in the aquarium wing, and he leaned toward the warmth of my body before remembering to resent it.
I saw it most clearly after his showers, when he stepped out of his office bathroom, damp heat clinging to him, hair darkened, sounding slightly petulant when I kept my gaze from wandering.
He first noticed my restraint.
Then he noticed the reason for it.
The first time his breath changed, I thought I had imagined it. I replayed the moment later and determined I had not.
There were still arguments, silences, and stretches where Cove curled in on himself inside his unfortunate concrete prison and refused to speak to me except to ask for water, a bathroom break, or time with the tanks.
There were still mornings when he looked at me as though he wished his hatred were strong enough to make me disappear.
But there were other moments too.
Moments when he got lost in the water, and let me watch him unguarded.
Moments when he became so concentrated on the fish that he’d move closer without realizing it, and when he’d turn to get my response for whatever he was saying and realize just how close we’d gotten, his breath would stutter, and sometimes his eyes would even flick to my lips before he took a step back.
Moments when his anger thinned into exhaustion, and beneath it I could feel a question neither of us was ready to say aloud.
What happens now?
The answer, unfortunately, was not one I knew how to construct.
I had solved complex acquisition conflicts with less difficulty than this.
Cove’s captivity had required many practical decisions—physical containment, access restrictions, monitored movement, wound care, food and hydration, grooming, and controlled exposure to parts of the house that eased distress rather than increased it.
Those were variables. Unpleasant variables, in some cases, but variables nonetheless.
Desire was less obedient.
It refused sequence.
It did not remain where I placed it.
It emerged at incredibly inconvenient times, not merely during his showers or after them when Cove’s clothing clung obscenely to his frame, but during moments that should have had nothing to do with sex at all.
The way he frowned at Ben’s notes. The way his mouth parted with the prettiest sound when the puffer followed his finger along the glass.
The way his voice gentled around the cuttlefish, as if tenderness were an instinct he could not entirely suppress even while furious.
The way he still stared up at the box jellyfish like they were the most ethereal creatures he’d ever seen, even after he’d watched a body be pulled from their water.
I wanted to touch him when he was angry.
I wanted to touch him when he was calm.
I wanted to touch him most when he forgot himself and became vibrant again, animated by water and life and the peculiar, luminous intelligence that had first caught my attention.
I did not know what to do with any of that.
More inconveniently, I did not know what I wanted in practical terms.
That irritated me.
I understood wanting to keep Cove. I understood wanting to watch him, to protect him, to feed him, to build an environment where every frightened, defensive part of him eventually unfurled again and thrived under my ownership.
I understood wanting to place my hand on the back of his neck when he trembled, and to feel his breathing steady because of me, instead of in spite of me.
But the body complicated matters.
Specifically, mine.
Mine had begun reacting to him in ways I found undignified and difficult to predict, and no amount of discipline altered the fact that sometimes, when Cove looked at me with fury and heat tangled in his eyes, my blood filled my cock so fast it made me lightheaded.
So I researched.
Research had always been preferable to ignorance.
That was how Ben found me at half past eleven that night, seated behind my desk with three browser tabs open, a notebook beside my laptop, and an expression I suspect was more severe than the situation technically warranted.
He knocked once on the study door and entered without waiting for a reply.
“You missed dinner,” he said. “Again. I know this will shock you, but you can’t survive on obsession alone.”
I did not look away from the screen. “I am occupied.”
“I gathered.” He took three steps into the study, then stopped so abruptly I heard the sole of his shoe catch against the floor. “Well, shit.”
I closed the laptop.
Not quickly, because there was no reason to be quick.
Quickness implied embarrassment, and embarrassment implied I had done something incorrect.
I was not embarrassed.
I was, however, aware that Ben had seen enough of the screen to understand the subject matter.
The silence became unpleasant.
Ben looked at the closed laptop, the notebook, then back at me as his mouth twitched.
“Please don’t,” I said.
That was a mistake.
His expression brightened with immediate and devastating interest. “Tobias.”
“No.”
“Were you watching porn?”
“I was conducting research.”
He pressed his lips together as though physically holding back laughter, which made me consider throwing the notebook at him.
“Sure,” he said. “Of course. Research.”
“It is research.”
“I’m not judging.”
“You are.”
“I am enjoying,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”
I leaned back in my chair and removed my glasses, partly because the bridge of my nose had begun to ache and partly because not looking directly at Ben seemed preferable.
His grin widened, making me dislike him intensely.
Then he came farther into the study and dropped into the chair opposite my desk with the easy entitlement of a man who had helped clean up several of my crime scenes.
“Okay,” he said, folding his hands. “What kind of research?”
“Sexual.”
“Yes, that part I picked up when I saw two men in positions I sincerely hope you did not think were instructional.”
I looked at him sharply. “They are not instructional?”
Ben stared at me, then his face did something complicated. “Wow,” he mouthed. “We’re starting from there.”
“I have never cared enough to investigate the subject thoroughly.”
“Somehow, I’m not that surprised,” he answered.
“The material is not persuasive.”
He blinked. “Persuasive?”
“It does not look like something worth trying.”
Ben’s amusement faltered into something closer to actual confusion. “You mean sex?”
“Yes.”
He studied me for a moment, and for once, the humor in his expression softened. Ben could be flippant about most things, but he was not cruel when confusion was genuine.
“You’ve never had sex?” he asked, eyebrow raised.
“No.”
“Okay… You’ve never wanted to? Because I know for a fact you have more than enough money for all the whores you could ever need.”
“No interest.”
“Until now..? With Cove?”
My hand tightened around my glasses.
Ben saw. “Right,” he said quietly. “Until Cove.”
I put the glasses back on because the clarity was preferable, even if what I saw was Ben looking at me with sympathy I had not requested.
“I find the representations unpleasant,” I said, returning to the research materials at hand and reopening my laptop. “Loud. Inefficient. Often visually absurd. The participants appear to be performing exaggerated discomfort or exaggerated enjoyment, neither of which I find pleasant to watch.”
“That’s because porn is not real life.”
“I am aware of that.”
“I’m not sure you are.”
“I understand performance.”
“You understand performance as a concept,” Ben said, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. “But sex is not just mechanics plus noise. Porn makes it look like that because porn is usually made to be consumed quickly by strangers who don’t care about the people in it.”
I considered that.
“It seems unpleasant for the people involved.”
“Sometimes it probably is. Sometimes it isn’t. Depends on what you’re watching.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“It wasn’t meant to be reassuring. It was meant to stop you from treating one random video like it represents all gay sex.”
I frowned. “I watched several.”
Ben closed his eyes. His shoulders began to shake.
“Are you laughing?”
“No, no,” he chuckled, pulling his lips in.
“You are.”
“I’m being incredibly supportive.”
“You are being the opposite.”
“I am not. Just getting to know what I’m working with.”
I exhaled through my nose and looked at the paused scene on my laptop’s screen before looking back at him.
“When I think about intimacy with Cove, I do not think about myself.”
Ben’s expression sobered again.