Page 87 of Oleander

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. Icould 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, andfelt 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 Ifelt him rise and come to sit next to me on the bench, I opened them to look at him, awed.

Everythingabout him awed me.