“Oh, holy shit, it’s freezing!” Petey said as he broke the surface, gasping for air.
“Are you OK?” I asked, flicking my hair back out of my face and treading water.
“I’m fine. You?”
“It’s deeper than I remember here. Andreallycold.”
“I won,” he said with a cheeky grin. He had duckweed in his hair. I laughed, unable to control it—my body looking for every opportunity to convulse, to generate some heat. I moved towards him, intending to pluck the stray greenery, but my inner child took over and instead I put my hands together tomake a big paddle and sliced them down into the water, almost drowning Petey with the splash.
“You bastard!”
He splashed me back. So I splashed him back. So he splashed me back, and I was laughing so hard I almost choked on the water. I kicked my legs out and swam maybe twenty, thirty metres out into the middle of the lake—to a spot where I knew I could touch the bottom. I turned to watch as Petey bobbed slowly towards me in a gentle breaststroke, his head never going below the surface.
“Truce?” he said when he finally reached me. He held out a pinkie.
I linked my finger into his. “Truce.” I pulled him towards me, and Petey’s legs wound their way around my hips, his arms wrapping around my shoulders. He was weightless in the water. My hands held his waist. He was so slender, he seemed almost fragile to me. How was I allowed to hold this gentle, breakable, perfect, precious object? It was cold, and he shivered. I pulled him closer to me, so our bodies could warm the still water between us. Petey squeezed his legs tighter around my hips. His breath was short and sharp, and it felt hot against my face. My heart was thumping in my chest. Every cell in my body was telling me this was it.Thiswas the moment. Very slowly, ever so slightly, Petey nodded—urging me on. I leant into him and he leant into me, his eyes flicking down to my lips for a second before he closed them. I didn’t close mine until my lips had locked with his.
Chapter 25
Petey
Before that night, I had known lust. I had known sex. I had known the throwaway junk food diet of cheap gratification that was endless hook-ups and meetups and nights under the Vauxhall railway arches. A world where I was comfortable and in control. Where the sex was on tap and incredible and nobody got emotionally involved. I thought I knew everything attraction entailed—a headless torso on an app, a lustful glance on a dance floor, a naked body in a darkroom. But I had no idea. No one had made me ache for them like William had. And all he’d done was kiss me.
We walked back along the path beside the Long Water. The gravel was digging into the soles of my feet. William suggested I walk on the lawn, but the grass was cold and slimy.
“Hop on,” he said, and he gave me a piggyback all the way to the house. I expected him to put me down in the doorway, but he didn’t. He carried me up three flights of stairs and along the corridor and deposited me on the tiles in my bathroom.
“That’s an incredible service, my lord—does everyone get this kind of treatment?”
“I believe we did something similar for Charles the First. Churchill, probably. Mostly to stop him circling back via the cellar after dinner en route to his bedroom.” William leant against the door frame, not taking his eyes off me. “But, no, only really special people get to ride the old Buckford chariot.”
Knowing his family’s comfort around nudity, I took a punt and let my wet briefs slide to the floor. There was very little William hadn’t already seen, or been able to make out, in any case. William looked me up and down like I was a precious exhibit in a glass cabinet. I’d never felt so exposed—or so exhilarated. No one had ever looked at me the way he looked at me. It wasn’t lust, which I’d experienced plenty of times before, but wonder. His chest heaved as he breathed. Then he looked over my shoulder and into the mirror.
“You have duckweed on your back.”
“Oh.” I turned around and watched in the reflection as William stepped towards me and removed it as gently as if he were unlacing a gown. He held it up to show me, then dropped it into the wastebasket. His eyes never left mine. His hands held my hips and he pulled himself towards me, nestling against my buttocks and back. Softly, he kissed my neck.
“Is this… OK?”
“Yes.” I felt his wet hair against my neck and leant into it. “It’s always OK, William. You don’t need to ask.”
“You do me an honour,” he whispered, like a hero from one of his books—a character from a different time, with a different moral code. From anyone else, it would have sounded ridiculous. A teenager’s idea of chivalry. But I knew William meant it. He felt honoured to be allowed to touch me, like it was something he had earned, a gift I had given him. I suppose it felt like that to me, too—because I’d never been touched like this before. A new heat boiled up inside me, molten and intense, like lava.
“Let’s get you warm,” William said, kissing my shoulder and releasing me.
He let his boxer shorts slide to the floor, turned on the shower taps, and gestured for me to join him under the thundering water. I ached to feel him inside me, to feel as close to William physically as I felt emotionally. But he did not give that to me. He took the bar of rose-and-geranium soap and, as the steam billowed around us, explored my body with what I can only describe as reverence. I had never felt so adored, so desired, in all my life. It felt powerful—and I never wanted it to end.
Late the next morning, I walked into the production office to a knowing smile from Indira. Indira smiling made me feel extremely uncomfortable.
“I keep meaning to ask how things are going with Lord Cockchug up in that love turret of yours?”
I shrugged, playing it so cool I could have sunk theTitanic. “Fine. Why?”
“Anything I should know about?”
“I don’t think so.” I slid into a chair in front of one of the computers.
Indira turned her screen to face me and hit the space bar on her keyboard. Footage of a basically naked me riding through the house on a basically naked William played out on the monitor. I felt my heart stop. I had been so caught up in the moment, I hadn’t given the cameras a second thought.
