Twenty-four

Imoved through those spring days in a trance. My sleeping hours were filled with dreams of us together, warm young bodies tangled, scents and smells, and nightly expulsions that would wake me before the sun was up, wanting him.

The music room, the Arboretum, the boat that bobbed in the lake outside my window, on the deep grass inside the wood that ran on the furthest side of the grounds. In all of these places, he’d kiss me and touch me, opening himself up to me like the petals of a flower. I dreamt of him, of us, everywhere.

The awake hours were worse.

Because in these, I was fully conscious and able to direct my thoughts where I wanted them, and I wanted them on him. Back then, he was the beating heart inside my chest, the hopes and dreams I harboured in my soul. I existed only because he perceived me. He lived inside me then, in a different way to how he does now – like some exotic disease I was infected with in my youth and of which there is no cure.

And I wanted to live inside him too, crawl under his skin and settle there.

In the shower the morning after the night before, I’d closed my eyes and run my hands over myself, imagining they were his. I’d ejaculated against the tiles before wiping it clean with my hand. Then, as I stared at it, curious, I brought my hand to my mouth and tasted it.

I didn’t like it, but I couldn’t forget the memory of him having sucked the mess into his mouth like it was some delicious treat.

I cycled up to the mansion before lunch that Sunday and found him in the stables with Falstaff. He was brushing the horse’s coat in long, slow strokes while feeding him chunks of bright red apple with the other. I watched him for a bit from the door without announcing my presence.

He hadn’t invited me, and part of me feared his reaction to my being there. Maybe he wouldn’t want to see me. (I lived in constant fear that one day, he would decide he was done with me and shift his attention elsewhere.) He wore his usual riding outfit: tight beige trousers, black knee-high riding boots, and a fitted navy polo. His hair was still wet from the shower, slicked behind his ears.

When he moved around the horse, he caught sight of me standing by the open stable door. He said nothing, but neither did he look unhappy to see me.

“Did he miss you?” I asked him.

He let his gaze linger on me a moment before he went back to brushing the horse. “It looks like it,” he said.

“Are you taking him for a ride?”

“No. I’m out here for the invigorating conversation.”

I walked a little toward him. Toward the horse. I had always been a little afraid of horses; their size and strength and power. I’d read something once about someone being kicked in the head by one and their skull cracking open like an egg. Brains pouring out. It wasn’t hard to imagine it.

Falstaff was huge, with polished black eyes and a great chomping mouth. He eyed me cautiously as I approached. I could feel the heat lifting from him. Caspien watched me as he continued to brush before holding a chunk of apple out to me.

“Hold your palm flat, almost inverted,” he instructed. I was certain he could tell how terrified I was, but if he noticed, he chose not to mention it. “His teeth are blunt but strong. He could easily take your fingers off.”

I swallowed and held my palm out beneath his large mouth. He snuffled at it, hot breath ticklish against the flesh, before he scraped up the apple with his teeth and tongue and began to munch.

“Do you know of the old birdwatcher hut?” Caspien asked casually, still focused on the horse. “It’s on the far side of the estate, just off the long drive.”

I knew where it was. I’d stumbled upon it one day about a week after we moved here. It was a small wooden space with a bench inside, nestled in the trees and long rectangular openings cut into three sides.

“I know where it is.”

“I’m going to take him out for a run,” said Caspien, moving the brush into the leather pouch hanging on a hook on the stable wall. “Meet me there.” He didn’t bother waiting for my answer before leading the horse past me and outside.

He didn’t need to wait for my answer. Because it was very clear, even then, that I was always going to do whatever he told me to.

It was a good twenty-minute walk to the hut from the stables. I never saw him as I went, but I took a different, less obvious path to it.

I headed through the woods and followed the stream, crossing it in a couple of places when the edge became too challenging. It wasn’t a deep thing, just a small pebbled trickle which went all the way to the edge of Deveraux, under the wall, and beyond.

As I got closer, I began to consider why he’d wanted to meet there, in that small cramped darkened place. I suspected it was for one reason, and like having a sudden fever, my brain started to grow white, hot, and suffocating inside my skull.

It was hard to ignore the thoughts and images my brain presented me with, and as the hut appeared through the trees, solitary and vigilant, my breath had reached a frenzy. A small latch held the door closed, and it seemed as loud as a gunshot when I snicked it open.

Inside was as I remembered it, except for one thing: the promise it now held. The air was stale and a little hot, but aside from that, there was no sign that anyone had been here for some time. I didn’t think anyone used it for birdwatching anymore. Two slim bench seats ran along either side, and I sat down on one of them to read and wait for him.

It was another half hour before the sound of the door being pulled open drew me out of the pages. I’d heard nothing outside, but I’d slipped into my usual ‘readers trance’ while I’d waited.

Caspien stepped into the hut, breathing hard, his cheeks flushed from his ride. I sat up and closed my book, watching as he pulled across the snib to lock the door from the inside. When he turned to me, there was a look of fierce determination on his face. He took a step towards me, and to my utter surprise, he dropped to his knees on the muddy ground and reached for the button on my jeans.

I blinked at him in shock before leaning back to let him undo the button and then the zip. He pulled me out carefully. There was not a single moment of hesitation before he sucked me into his mouth.

I wasn’t hard, not at first, but it didn’t take long at all. He took me to the back of his throat, and I felt something tighten around the head like a fist. I gasped, overcome with the sensation, and felt my cock go all the way hard. He released me and began to suck and lick, clinically almost, competently certainly, and I dropped back against the wood behind me and tried not to come as quickly as I had last night.

I couldn’t look away. The sight of it in his mouth was extraordinary. I could see it and feel it, and yet my brain was unable to accept it was happening. Pleasure raced up my spine, flooded my chest and squeezed at my heart. His eyes were open, focused and calm as he watched me watch him. When he pulled off and licked at the saliva that had collected on his wet lips, I groaned.

“Have you thought about this?” he asked, his voice rougher than I’d ever heard it.

Words weren’t possible, so I nodded.

“I thought about it too, while I was riding. About what it would feel like in my mouth, about how it would taste.”

He took me back into his mouth, and this time, he used his hand, too, twisting while he bobbed his head. My brain was on the verge of implosion, my dick too. His fingers curled and stroked and caressed while his mouth moved over me with expert skill. I thought: how did he learn how to do this so well? Who taught him how to do this?

I imagined Xavier Blackwell, Hannes Meier, and countless faceless rich boarding school boys whom I loathed and wanted to thank profusely at the same time.

“Caspien...I am going to...” I whined.

He pushed me down his throat again, then tickled his fingers over the soft, sensitive skin of my balls, and I was done. I reached for his head and thrust into his warm, tight throat, holding him there as I finished. When it was over, I fell back again, panting and soft-limbed and swimming in more bliss than I knew what to do with. My eyes were closed, but when I felt him rise and come to sit next to me on the bench, I opened them to look at him, awed.

Everythingabout him awed me.

I was bewitched in the truest sense of the word. I felt his spell hanging over me like a veil, the world hazy and white whenever I was near him.

I loved him. I was as certain of that as I was my own name, both universal truths. I am Jude Alcott, and I am in love with Caspien Deveraux.

“Stop looking at me like that,” he said, tucking a stray strand of hair behind his ear. It had dried on his ride and now sat curled and golden on his head.

“Like what?”

“Like that.”

“Don’t all the boys you do that to look at you like this, after?” Maybe it was a pathetic attempt to find out how many boys there were, or maybe it was an attempt to make myself look less...less in love. But his eyes grew very serious as he looked at me.

“No,” He said. “No one looks at me the way you do.”

I felt those words like a burn. My cheeks flooded with warmth.

Embarrassed, I sat up, tucked myself into my jeans, and buttoned them.

“I don’t mind it,” he said obliquely.

“What?”

“The way you look at me.” His gaze was very intense suddenly, his eyes holding my own in their pale grey snare. “Everything you think and feel is in your eyes, you know. When you hated me, I could see it. When you didn’t, I could see that too.” His voice was horribly self-assured. “It’s rare. Most people try to hide what they truly feel. But not you, Jude Alcott.”

He knew, then. How I felt about him. He could see it in my stupid face every time he looked at me. I couldn’t think of anything more humiliating.

“Is that what you do?” I asked him. “Hide what you feel?”

“You think I have feelings? My, how times have changed.” He was smiling a little.

“Oh, I always knew you had them. I just figured they were mainly about how best to murder me and hide my body, how much you resented my entire existence. That sort of stuff.”

A dimple appeared on his cheek as he smirked.

“As if you never had similar thoughts about me. More black and murderous by far.”

I laughed. “Yeah, that’s true. I pretty much wanted to murder you the first time I saw you.”

“Oh, I know.”

“You were pretty awful,” I admitted.

“I still am.”

“You’re not so bad. Or maybe I’m just used to you now.”

“Perish the thought.” He moved to stand. “I’m hungry. Elspeth is making bean crock – it should be about ready.”

I stood as well, swiping up my book and stuffing it into the back pocket of my jeans.

“Okay, well, I’ll see you later, then I guess.”

He turned. “Don’t you like bean crock?”

It was as much of an invitation as he’d ever given me. I nodded, smiling like a fool.

“I do, actually.”

I walked back the way I came while Caspien rode Falstaff. Falstaff, who he’d left grazing near the stream, bridle looped around a low-hanging willow branch while he’d done what he’d done to me in the hut. He’d told me that by the time he’d brushed him down and fed him, we’d be in the kitchen around the same time.

A warm buzz of pleasure had settled over me as I walked, as I played over what he’d just done to me, the sight of me in his mouth, the look in his eyes. I realised with a jolt that I hadn’t even kissed him.

Neither had he gotten off. What would I have done if he’d asked me to return the favour? Would I have gotten to my knees for him? Let him grip my hair and thrust into my mouth? As heat shot up my spine and between my legs, I knew that I would.

But then Ellie’s face appeared in my mind, and the warm buzz turned to a chill.

I wasn’t hungry anymore.