Page 167 of Oleander

Cas was watching me very closely, breathing very quickly.

“I see,” he said at last.

“What do you bloody see?”

“You’re in love with him.”

I stared at him, speechless. Then, I began to laugh. Near hysterical laughter that sounded insane in the echo of the kitchen.

“Oh, I fucking wish,” I said when it had died in my throat. “I fucking wish.”

With a last contemplative look in my direction, Cas stood and carried his plate into the kitchen. I watched him tip the food waste into the small compost bin and then set the plate on the counter so he could open the dishwasher.

The laughter had died off, and in its place, sadness and regret swelled inside me. I hadn’t wanted this. I’d wanted to talk properly, to show him that he could trust me and talk to me about whatever was wrong.

How had I made this about myself? I was acting like a child again. I carried my own plate over and scraped the leftovers. He’d begun clearing the rest of the table, and I watched him for a bit before moving to help.

“I can do it, Jude,” he said without any heat.

“Yeah, I know you can.”

Still, I helped him. When the kitchen was a white expanse of polished marble again, we stood awkwardly at opposite sides of it, looking at each other. The words I’d thrown at him at the table sat weighty in the space between us.

“Well, I think I’ll go to bed,” he said, though it wasn’t even 8 pm. “I’m tired.”

He went.

After he left, I poured another glass of wine, but it had turned to poison on my tongue, so I poured it down the sink and tried to fight what was clawing against the inside of my chest. But I was tired. I didn’t want to fight anymore. It felt like I’d been fighting him, us, for years and I was done with it.

I turned and charged upstairs and down the hall toward his bedroom. I didn’t knock as I opened the door and went inside. He stood in front of the mirror in the bathroom, and he whipped around as I approached him.

We reached for each other at the same time, and as he gasped into my mouth, I took his face in my hands and kissed him hard. I backed him up against the sink, careful not to hurt his hand, as I slid my hands into his hair and tasted his mouth for the first time in a lifetime. It was an antidote. Except he was my poison, too.

“Tell me again,” I said.

He made a small, desperate noise as I bit his lip roughly. Holding his chin, I forced him to look into my eyes. “Tell me again that you missed me.”

“I missed you,” he breathed, reaching for the button of my shorts.

The desperate way he nipped at my jaw went to my head, both of them, and I pulled him out of the bathroom. We undressed ourselves, though I helped him pull his T-shirt over his head and unfasten his sling, before I pushed him back on the bed.

As he lay sprawled there, panting, naked, and hard, I tried to consider what this would mean, how much it was going to hurt when he left me again – because he would, it was what he did, and decided I didn’t care. I was Jude. He was Cas. This wasus.

What was one more battle scar on my heart when the war was this glorious?

I also decided that, this time, I would take my time.

I kissed every inch of skin that I could reach with my mouth, dotted kisses along every dip and rise of his body, swallowed every gasp he let slip past his lips, pressed my mouth over his heart, and made unspoken promises against his skin.I love you, I love you, I love you.

“Jude,” he said breathlessly. My name spilled over and over again from his mouth as he writhed and begged and reached for me with his hand.

I kissed along his collarbone and down his inner arm, all the way to his injured hand, where I kissed the exposed part of his palm. He fisted my hair, and I looked up to find his gaze sparkling with some intense emotion I couldn’t name. I wouldn’t say it out loud again; I wasn’t strong enough not to hear it returned, but I tried to say it with my eyes, with my hands, with my mouth. I crawled up his body to kiss him on the mouth again, and he kissed me back deeply, devouring my lips as though he was starved. He pushed at my chest and nudged me onto my back, climbing over me so that he was facing away from me, the nodes of his spine popping out as he bent his head and swallowed my dick. I arched up into the perfect sweet pleasure of his mouth, moaning his name.

“Cas, fuck, that feels...” I broke off into a groan as he pushed me deeper into his throat. Tight heat swallowing over the head again and again, driving me insane. When I heard him choke on it, I stopped thrusting and pulled out. The apology never made it past my lips.

“Do it again,” he said, forcing my dick down his throat again.

It felt so good I was seconds away from coming, but somehow he knew when to pull back just enough, when to loosen his throat just the right amount, to keep me teetering on the edge. I grabbed his thighs, and pulled him backward so I could reach his hole with my mouth.