“The first hotel with a vacancy.” Sebastian shot him a small grin. “Unless you wanted to stay in the apartment full of paranormal bohemians and my family?”
“Don’t you even.” Wesley used an oncoming gaggle of flappers as an excuse to press against Sebastian’s side. “There are too many people, you know. We’re never going to find a room.”
“I will find us one,” Sebastian promised, with flattering determination.
And he did, despite Wesley’s pessimism—maybe with magic, obviously that was going to be Wesley’s explanation for everything now—in a five-story, cream-colored building with wrought-iron smoking balconies and a gray roof.
Wesley followed Sebastian up carpeted stairs to their first-floor room. “Are you sure that brooch didn’t mess with your head?” he said, as Sebastian unlocked the door. “Blanshard and Mercier are gone, your brother is improved, and I’m not in danger anymore. Surely you’ve realized that you don’t have to keep putting up with me?”
It came out gruffer, more vulnerable than Wesley had meant. But all of Sebastian’s reasons for staying with Wesley were gone now. There was no reason for Sebastian not to tell Wesley to take a boat train back to London tonight, where all this paranormal lunacy would be over. Where nothing in Wesley’s life would ever be magical again.
Except Sebastian had taken his hand and was pulling him into the hotel room. “Get in here,” he said, like hewantedWesley with him.
A second later, their door was shut and locked. Wesley found himself pushed up against the wall, Sebastian fitting himself between Wesley’s legs, his head tilted back so they could look into each other’s eyes. Christ, he made Wesley breathless.
“You came for me, at the fair,” Sebastian whispered, as Wesley’s arms encircled him in an automatic sort of way. “You knew there would be fire, and you didn’t know if Isa’s magic would keep you safe. You came anyway.”
“Of course I did,” Wesley said, still gruff. “But you did hear the part where that’s all over, didn’t you? The part where you don’t have to put up with me anymore?” he said, like he wasn’t holding Sebastian tight, refusing to let him go. “You could find someone nice, not a scoundrel like me.”
Sebastian bit his lip. “Is that whatyouwant?” he said, looking up at Wesley. “You don’t need me anymore. Do you want a nice man, not a scoundrel likeme?”
“How dare you.” Wesley pulled him closer, so their bodies were flush. “No, I don’t want anice man. If I haven’t made it obvious enough—I wantyou.”
Sebastian kissed him.
Fuck, his lips, the taste of his mouth. It lit Wesley up like a signal flare, reducing his thoughts to only the man in his arms. He pushed Sebastian over, so he was the one with his back on the wall, and Sebastian’s throaty sound of pleasure went straight to his cock.
“And I don’t care what kind of scoundrel you think you are; you’ve never scared me, you know that,” Wesley said into his mouth. He pushed his leg between Sebastian’s, pushed him more firmly into the wall, and drew another sound of pleasure. “Until today, when you almost fucking died. Don’t ever do that again, do you understand?”
“You either.” Sebastian threw his arms around Wesley’s neck and pulled him down for a deeper kiss.
They kissed until Wesley’s lips buzzed, until he finally pulled away, breathing hard and achingly stiff in his trousers. “I would happily have you on the wall or the floor, but is there a bed in here? I haven’t managed to look at anything but you.”
Sebastian’s eyes were the golden-brown of whiskey in the room’s dim light. “You do know you’re very handsome yourself, yes?”
“Flatterer.” Wesley cupped Sebastian’s jaw and ran his thumb over his lips, now deeper pink and shiny from their kiss. “There are so many things I desperately want to do to you that I can’t decide where to start. Do I drop to my knees? Toss you down on the bed I assume is in here somewhere? So many choices, and I want them all.”
Sebastian tilted his head and kissed Wesley’s thumb. “I grabbed something off the dining table before we left the apartment, from Isa’s art supplies.”
And then he was squirming to get his hand between them, twisting his body to get into his own pocket before bringing his hand back up to hold a small tube of petroleum jelly in front of Wesley’s face.
“I say you toss me down on the bed.”
Wesley was already hard, but a fresh bolt of desire ricocheted out from his stomach, like lightning up his spine, fire down his limbs. He used the hand on Sebastian’s jaw to tilt his head back, then took his lips in a kiss so long and deep it left both of them panting.
Sebastian finally pulled insistently at Wesley’s hips, and they staggered their way off the wall into the room with their lips still locked. They fumbled at each other’s clothes as they kissed, their hats dropped uncaringly in one place, their jackets and waistcoats discarded in heaps on the rug. Sebastian was stripped to his T-shirt, Wesley’s trousers undone, by the time they bumped into the decent-sized bed filling most of the hotel room. They tumbled down together, Wesley on top, Sebastian on his back.
Wesley found Sebastian’s hand, wrapping his palm around the tube of petroleum jelly and enclosing cool fingers in his own warmer ones. “And did you have a plan for this?”
Sebastian’s gaze had turned hazy with need, his skin flushed. He licked his lips, and Wesley wanted to kiss him all over again. “Um, no plan,” he admitted, a little sheepishly. “I kind of hoped I could throw it at you and you’d know what to do and, um. Take over.”
“Fuck,” Wesley muttered. “Say all the things that drive me mad, why don’t you.”
Wesley had never believed in fairy tales, true love or other childish nonsense. But with Sebastian, magic was real.
Maybe all of it could be real.
He deliberately pinned Sebastian’s hands to the bed, on either side of his head, in an echo of the handcuffs he’d put on Sebastian only days before, and the small, sharp breath was like music to Wesley’s ears. Held down as he was, in only the T-shirt, the rampant lion on the inside of Sebastian’s wrist was perfectly visible to Wesley’s eyes.
