Sullivan groaned.
* * *
Sullivan woke up the next morning to his phone buzzing with a text message. Tobias.
Are you alive?
Sullivan sent back: no leave me alone.
The reply was prompt: Are you home?
Sullivan ran the heel of one hand over his eyes and tried to clear the fog from his brain. He sent back: no.
A split second later, he got: Your car is here. I’m going into your backyard. Please come and let me in.
“I’m not boning you,” Sullivan muttered, and started the long, unpleasant process of dragging himself out of bed. Only once he’d staggered downstairs did he think to check the time, and then he let out a groan of disbelief.
Tobias knocked on the back door and Sullivan yelled, “It’s 9:45, you ass! On a Sunday!”
There was a long silence. Then a more respectful knock.
Sullivan decided to ignore him.
He made coffee and a bowl of cereal, chewing while standing over the sink, ignoring the knocks that came with increasing frequency and volume as the minutes passed. His phone buzzed several more times, but he ignored that, too. It wasn’t until he saw Tobias’s irritated face appear in one of the windows at the side of the house that he realized he was going to end up with a broken pane of glass if he didn’t let the guy in. He went outside and stuck his head around the corner of the house.
“I thought you had manners,” he said, watching Tobias struggle back out of the bushes.
“I do,” Tobias replied, sounding offended.
“You’re a peeping Tom who doesn’t respect the sanctity of sleeping in on Sundays.” Sullivan went back inside, leaving the door open behind him.
“I wasn’t peeping.” Tobias brushed dirt off his well-fitting khakis—which Sullivan was pointedly not noticing—before following. “I was making sure you hadn’t gone back to sleep.”
“You weren’t trying to catch me in my frilly nightie?”
Tobias’s eyes narrowed. “No.”
Despite himself, Sullivan laughed. “You sure? I think I look pretty good in it.” Which was sort of flirtatious, and probably not helpful to the whole not-boning plan, but it was worth it for the way Tobias’s cheeks went deeply red.
With stiff dignity, Tobias said, “What’s the plan for today?”
Sullivan shrugged. “I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
“Well, get started.” Tobias gave him an admonishing frown. “Every minute that we hesitate is a minute of progress we lose.”
“This isn’t charming,” Sullivan pointed out. “This bossy micromanaging thing? It’s not cute at all. Also, it’s ten a.m. on a Sunday. You’re lucky I’m forming complete sentences and not killing you. Why are you dressed up?”
“I was at Mass.”
“Oh.” Sullivan looked at him askance, then decided he didn’t care. “Better you than me.”
“Fine.” Tobias sat at the table and folded his hands together like a well-behaved fourth grader. “I can wait, but out of curiosity, do you think you’ll be much longer with whatever it is you’re doing?”
Sullivan rolled his eyes and opened his laptop. “Christ. All right. You want to help? Let’s see if you can track down a possible source at one of those trafficking sites. Someone based here in Denver who could talk to us about what the girls usually do after they get away.”
“You want to know where Mama would’ve gone after she left.”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Because she has Nathalie with her.”
Sullivan gave him a dirty look. “I’m going to take a shower. Don’t peep.”
Tobias’s blush went all the way to his ears this time.
Chapter Thirteen
Over the next eight hours, they migrated from the hard-backed dining room chairs to the living room. Sullivan sprawled on the sofa, his long arms and legs akimbo, laptop balanced on his thighs, and Tobias sat in the overstuffed chair and tried not to watch him.
It took more effort than he liked.
He kept thinking of the day before. Sullivan looming over him, eyes blown dark, his mouth half-open, his grip verging on painful as he guided Tobias’s mouth over his cock. He thought about them lying on the floor together, Tobias long past self-consciousness, his heart pounding like it could burst out of his chest, his face buried in Sullivan’s throat, the taste of salt on his lips where he couldn’t help nuzzling as Sullivan’s hand took him apart. And he thought of Sullivan’s voice somehow soft and firm at the same time as he said take what you need, sweetheart.
If Tobias had the nerve, he’d ask how Sullivan could act so normally after everything that’d happened yesterday. He seemed resigned to Tobias’s presence finally—or at least there hadn’t been a return to the obvious anger of the days before—but it’d been replaced by a conversational tone. Like he’d missed the way the whole world had turned on its side yesterday.
But then, for Sullivan it hadn’t been a big deal. Sullivan hadn’t needed to be held for half an hour on the couch afterward. He probably did this all the time. It was only Tobias who was affected, clearly.
“I’ve reached the limit of my skills on this.” Sullivan dumped his laptop on the steamer trunk coffee table with a thunk and stretched his arms over his head, revealing a strip of firm belly where his T-shirt rode up.
Tobias quickly looked at his own notes. The search for a contact had not gone well. Part of it was that it was Sunday and people weren’t at work, but part of it was that the folks most likely to have the kind of inside information they needed weren’t going to be promoting themselves on a website. He’d sent some emails, but he wasn’t holding his breath. The first task that Sullivan had given him, and he’d made zero progress.
“Okay.” Tobias pushed his notebook away with nervous fingers. “And, um. What do we do until then?”
He glanced up and found Sullivan watching him, his eyes shadowed in the late-afternoon light creeping through the dirty windows. “That depends,” Sullivan said slowly.
“On?” Tobias’s stomach filled with butterflies.
The air seemed to thicken during the long pause that followed. Tobias’s skin felt oversensitive and
