“Eat?” Drew removed the towel from his head and glanced at the table. “Idofeel better, but I really don’t want… Pancakes?” He stared at Bas, wide-eyed. “You made me pancakes andbacon?”
“Pancakes are your favorite comfort food,” Bas told him. But when Drew continued to stare without moving, he asked, “Aren’tthey?”
“Yeah. Yes.” Drew sounded breathless — breathless in agoodway, like Bas had stumbled into doing something very right somehow — and it took all of Bas’s self-control not to grab him and kiss himsenseless.
He went back to rubbing at his neck and motioned Drew to take a seat on the bed. “And I figured they’d be kinda light on yourstomach.”
Drew gave him an amused glance, but obediently sat and grabbed a slice of bacon. “You really didn’t have to go to all this trouble,” hesaid.
Bas folded his arms and leaned against the wall near the table. “Right.”
“You didn’t,” Drew insisted, glancing around. “You cooked medinner?”
“It’s pancakes, McMann,” Bas grumbled. “I didn’t fetch you a lobster fresh from the ocean.” Which he totally would have, if he’d thought Drew would want it. “Eat.”
“I’m eating, I’m eating,” Drew told him, forking up a bite of pancakes. “You don’t need to stand there and supervise, Sebastian! Who were you talkingto?”
“Oh, Cam and the whole crew.” He didn’t want to make Drew uncomfortable by watching him eat, but without anything else to focus on, his gaze kept returning to Drew’s broad shoulders, to the scruff on his jaw. He could feel his pulse kick up. “I told them what happened, and that you’re safe for tonight. They’re all worried, and they all, you know, loveyou.”
Drew raised one dark eyebrow. “They saidthat?”
“Eh.” Bas scratched at the back of his neck. “It wasunderstood.”
“Uhhuh.”
Drew shifted slightly in his seat to grab the water glass Bas had also placed on the nightstand, and his towel slid open to reveal a thick triangle of pale skin high on his thigh, a place where the sun neverreached.
Bas coughed to cover the sudden tightness of his throat and gripped his arms more tightly. He could be patient about this, he could. Hell, he’d waited decades, so he could wait a few moreminutes.
“So,” Drew began. He turned his head so that his warm, oh-so-amused brown eyes met Sebastian’s, and deliberately licked maple syrup from his lips. “How areyoudoing?”
“Me?” Bas shrugged his shoulders against the wall. “I’mfine. It’s notmeI’m worriedabout.”
Drew nodded. He put his fork down and grabbed his water glass again. “Yousure?”
No. Nope. He wasn’t sure at all. His entire body felt stretched thin and hummed with tension. The collar of the thick cable sweater was suddenly restrictive, the fabric of his jeans too rough against hisskin.
He wanted to talk, and he didn’t. He forced himself to stand against the wall, when he wanted to be three paces away, clutching Drew againsthim.
He was scared to death - not of taking the next step with Drew, but that he wouldn’t be able to convince Drew to give him,them,a shot. And he was angry, though he was trying really hard to push that down for Drew’s sake, at what that fucker Mark had tried to pull earlier tonight onhisman.
“Yeah,” he said brusquely. “I’msure.”
“Okay, because your hands are kinda telling a differentstory.”
“Myhands?”
“Yeah.” Drew stood, putting his plate back on the nightstand. He tightened the towel around his waist, and stepped forward, placing his palm over Sebastian’s forearm. “You kinda look like you wanna killsomeone.”
Bas glanced down, and saw that his crossed arms were balled into fists. He immediately relaxed them. But Drew didn’t stepaway.
“I wish you would call the police,” Bas admitted. “If only to make sure that this asshole pays for what he tried to do toyou.”
Drew shook his head. “First of all, nothing happened.” He held up a restraining hand against the argument Bas had opened his mouth to make. “Nothing happened, in the sense that there was no secondary crime. We can imagine what he was planning to do if he’d gotten me out of the restaurant, but he can’t be prosecuted for what wethinkmight happen. Plus, we don’t have the champagne from therestaurant.”
“Champagne,” Bas scoffed. “Asshole didn’t have the first clue about what youlike.”
“Not the first clue,” Drew agreed. He was rubbing his thumb over Bas’s forearm - the simplest touch, but Bas could hardly concentrate on anything else as Drew continued, “We can’t prove there was anything in my drink in the first place, and since I got sick, it’s unlikely there’s anything in my bloodstream at all anymore. So, getting them involved would be useless at best… and at worst, it might call the authorities’ attention to us when we don’t wantit.”
