Hands and mouths and all they touch occupies my brain. And when I look at him — really look, he’s no apparition. Not a figment of my imagination. Not a ghost that lurks in my heart.
Cas cups my face with his hands, kissing me again and again like he’s dying of thirst and only my mouth can quench it.
“I missed you, Baylor.” His forehead leans on mine as he sucks in air like he’s at the end of a show. “God, I thought I knew, but I had no fucking idea.”
Our chests rise and fall as we stare at each other in the grey light of my room. Cas’s hands move to my shirt, unbuttoning it slowly, one fumbling button at a time as he refuses to look away.
The Cas I thought I could keep locked away in my heart, safe and forever mine, has already merged with the man in my bed. Kissing him was supposed to end something, not completeeverything.
I catch his hand as his long fingers start to trace skin and ink.
“Cas,” I start, trying to stop my head from spinning, “I can’t just be time that you are killing.”
His blue eyes, almost jade in this light, widen. “Never that. You are. . .what all the other time wasfor,baby.”
My thumb traces lazy circles on his hand as my heart races. I don’t register my head shaking until he gently presses the palm of his free hand against my cheek to still it.
“Tell me there is no Gray, Bee.”
I frown. “You should be telling me that. If you are with someone, I’m not going to get in between that. You know I was never the kind to–”
A swift kiss cuts off my thoughts. I pull back, resting my ass against my ankles, and I hand him my phone from my back pocket, the article already pulled up on my browser. His eyes briefly roam over it with a bit of a grimace while his other hand moves in soft circles against the exposed skin from where he unbuttoned my shirt.
“There is no Gray. That wasn’t even a real photograph. Didn’t you notice? I left that shirt here, actually. They pieced it together from other shit — old shit — to make a story.”
I think back to the shirt in the laundry. He did leave it here.
“Then why write the story?”
“Because it sells? You know that. Hell, Gray’s people could have paid them for that. Probably did, in fact.”
I frown again. Obviously, I know how rockstar lives work — kinda. At the most, I am on the fringe of that whole scene. I don’t go to LA except once or twice a year. I don’t go to award shows or parties. I never wanted to take something away from Cas.
My tux is much more likely to be used for a Mann Foundation gala or to raise money for the hospital than to be seen on Hollywood and Vine.
“I have missed you, Baylor. I haven’t been the same without you. But, I also had no idea how to tell you that in a way you would hear it. There’s no one else. There is just you. And that’s the way it’s always been.”
Fuck, it was almost like a song.
“I’m not going to say I haven’t been with anyone else. Saving myself or some shit,” he whispers, and I know the after-show high and the best way to come down from it. I would have been shocked if he had been celibate. “But, fuck, Bee. You touching me is still better than all of that.”
I hadn’t been saving myself either. Maybe saving myself from the constant try and fail at making something work with other guys, but not saving myselfforanything.
Cas’s hand on the buttons of my fly captures all my attention, and he smirks as he works the buttons and cups my dick over the denim.
I toss the phone out of the way, using my freed hand to run up his thigh and pull him closer. Cas always did like a rough kiss or nip, and I try to have the presence of mind to keep any resulting bruises in places that can be covered in any photos. But, it’s difficult as he arches against me with every bite, whispering how he wants me to mark him up.
We get the clothes off in a combination of uncoordinated kisses, fumbles that almost lead to someone getting a black eye, and then serious desperation to do something about a decade of pent-up need.
My hand trails down his inner thigh, and my hips jerk at the thought of marking him up there with bruises and bites.
I could keep doing this all night, kissing and touching him, but the ache in my balls is getting insistent, my cock wanting to slip between the cleft of his ass and stay there. Clearly, my body remembers damn well how sex with Cas is supposed to go.
A ragged breath escapes as I rake my teeth over his chest, moving toward his inner thighs with my previous thoughts. I place a dark bruise on his inner thigh with my mouth. Cas arches up and threads his long fingers in my hair, pulling me in for another kiss.
“Get some fucking lube, Bee. Before I come all over you untouched.”
He doesn’t have to tell me twice, because I am right there with him. I reach over and knock shit around on the nightstand while still keeping my lips on his skin until I find what I was searching for.
