With Everything I Have by R. Cooper

still reeling.
Sebastian thought they both were. Peter was quiet again, except for
the occasional hum and glance in Sebastian’s direction. Sebastian
himself was tired from his exertions yet buzzing in his skin
whenever he remembered Peter’s hands on him.
    Peter had not only touched him. Peter had
clung to him and asked for what he wanted. That alone was
significant. If Peter had done that, facing possible rejection, he
had thought about it first. It meant something but Sebastian was
damned if he knew what it was.
    They’d sat in comfortable, only slightly
strained silence, through a late lunch at a village pub, and driven
back into the city well after dark. Sebastian would have excused
himself but Smythe and then Bess herself had insisted he stay for
supper. Peter had disappeared to wash off the grime, and dried
spunk, from a day’s driving in an open auto, and after eating had
insisted that Sebastian do the same. Sebastian was more confused
than ever.
    Sebastian had never before considered hope
terrible but now he felt eaten alive by it, warm and then cold,
bursting and then empty. He watched Peter distance himself from him
and circle back. He listened to Peter talk about anything but what
had occurred between them on the road and then invent reasons to
keep Sebastian from leaving. Peter’s state of discombobulation was
so great, he stayed in the room when Sebastian started to get
undressed only to freeze when Sebastian glanced at him as he pulled
his cravat free.
    Peter’s head went up. He hadn’t bothered to
fully redress after his bath, and his simple white shirt was open
at his throat, exposing the marks from Sebastian’s mouth that he
did not seem to notice. The footmen at dinner most certainly had.
Sebastian had as well. He had a difficult time looking away from
them.
    Sebastian began to unbutton his waistcoat,
noting the wrinkles from Peter’s desperate grip, and Peter frowned
and disappeared from the bath room into one of the other rooms in
his bedroom suite.
    “Hot water helps with aches and pains,” Peter
commented helpfully from his ridiculous distance.
    Sebastian stopped rubbing his backside and
finished removing his clothes. He slipped into the bath water
before responding. “Enormous, deep, comfortable cushions,” he
called out on a sigh as the hot water did indeed soothe away his
discomfort. He reached for the soap then stopped when Peter
reappeared in the doorway.
    “Yes, cushions,” a harried, guilty Peter told
him, then looked him over before ducking out of the room. It wasn’t
as though he hadn’t seen Sebastian nude before, although if Peter
had been focused on his work Sebastian could have paraded past him
naked and Peter wouldn’t have noticed.
    This, Sebastian recognized at last, was fear.
This was what Peter did before meeting someone new, talking himself
into and then out of the meeting at least a dozen times. Sebastian
had known Peter for so long he had assumed Peter did not do the
same for him. But he must, or at least, he did now, after what they
had done together on that blanket.
    He took the soap and cleaned himself up
quickly then got out of the water. He dried off and reluctantly
donned his dusty clothes, leaving his hair the way the road and the
goggles had left it. He kept his waistcoat unbuttoned and didn’t
put on his coat or cravat, taking them with him into Peter’s
bedroom. Peter wasn’t there. That was likely no accident although
it was interesting. Peter had something he wished to say and he
didn’t want it to say it in the bedroom.
    Sebastian left his coat on a chair with his
shoes and put his shoulders back before heading into the outer
rooms.
    Peter was on a sofa with his notepad in his
lap. He was sketching or writing at a feverish pace but stopped the
instant he realized Sebastian was observing him. He clenched his
hand tight around his pencil then took a breath and put the pencil
down. “You have never done that before,” he burst out, picking up
his