16. Chapter 16
Chapter 16
RICKY
A fter the events at the lake, we detoured into the woods to let the ogre and other monster on guard know that the worst was over, but they insisted on staying at their post to keep people away from the portal until it closed. Zinnia and Beck opted to stay at the portal too to continue watching the readings, but they asked that we bring Kai and Bina back to the house with us. We warned them that the assholes responsible for Kai’s attack would be there, but with Whitmore along, Kai wasn’t afraid. Jensen Senior and likely Colt too would not be some of the ones getting off with a warning.
Sandy was more than welcoming about the otherwise full house. I didn’t think anything could have soured her mood after the reunion of the decade.
Two decades really.
We’d saved the day. Not only had we— I , Jason stressed every time I said it—figured out how the natural portal worked, but we’d saved all the missing people, brought Bo home, and Jason, Bina, and Kai had rescued a little girl from drowning. Whitmore was going to make sure every detail of that made it into the papers, because with the natural portal now safe—or soon to be safe—there was no reason to keep any of it classified.
It would also be pretty difficult for the naysayer townsfolk to dig into their prejudices when we were heroes, and the majority of that we were monsters. Sandy didn’t even care that Bo had lied to her. She was so happy to have him back, to learn the truth, that she accepted it as readily as she’d accepted Jason’s change. Knowing what they were just meant there was a name for something she would have accepted regardless.
Everything that had happened might only mean a temporary lull in protests, but it was something. Something to build on. And that peace was still lasting well into the next week.
“That is awesome , Jason.”
“It’s just an idea of Dad’s. There’s no guarantee yet.”
“But the two of you working together to make the woods into a state park, it’s… it sounds perfect for you.”
He grinned back at me as he hurried ahead to the library doors and opened one to let me inside first. Jason wasn’t the only one with prospects on a new job. Kai had finally gotten a position at the library, and we were picking him up for lunch.
As we entered, Whitmore was chatting with Kai at the library’s front desk.
“Can I never escape you?” Jason asked once we reached them—quietly, since it was still the library.
“Just checking up on one of our resident heroes,” Whitmore said.
Kai’s face went starkly indigo, although it may have already been in blushing mode with Whitmore talking to him. I wondered if the agent knew how much the kappa had a crush on him. “We were talking about me being a sort of unofficial agent in the field, since working at the library lets me meet so many people.”
“Unofficial agent?” Jason questioned.
“You know, to keep an eye on things and report any disturbances.”
“So, Whitmore wants you to be a spy?”
“No! Well…”
“I am asking for no more than I asked of you and your father, Jason,” Whitmore said, “with you keeping an eye on those woods behind your house. All voluntary of course. At least if Kai comes to me with a report, I know he’ll be better company.” Whitmore smiled at him, and Kai may as well have been a ripe blueberry about to pop. “Right now, though, I have a lot to report back in Edgewind.”
“You’re leaving?” I asked.
“There could be a more permanent future for me in Elder Ridge eventually. Much as I am sure that pains Jason to hear.”
“It really does,” Jason said, “but I can tolerate you if I have to.”
I elbowed him with a laugh.
Jason laughed as well, and since Whitmore did too, it felt okay. It felt pretty great actually. When Whitmore extended a hand to Jason, he even shook it. Kai and I shook Whitmore’s hand too.
“Oh. Your phone please.”
Jason must have been anticipating that, because he handed it over without question.
Whitmore uninstalled the spy app, and then handed it back to him.
“Don’t make me regret that. Until next time, gentlemen. Behave, okay?” Whitmore nodded to each of us before heading out of the library.
“He is also interested in hearing more about my cultural studies,” Kai said after Whitmore had left, gazing fondly after him. “I have been chatting quite frequently with the incubus from Gilmer Rock who knew you were a leshy.”
“Oh right,” Jason said. “Dad told me the incubus contacted him directly, wanting to record as much as possible about our species. Wow, is that a weird sentence to say out loud.”
I chuckled.
“I just really hope Del isn’t away from Elder Ridge for too long,” Kai said, still staring at the library doors.
Wait. “Del?” I questioned.
“Whitmore’s given name is Delroy.”
“Delroy!” Jason said way too loudly, causing a few annoyed hushes to come our way. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “You cannot date a Delroy.”
“That is why he goes by Del,” Kai defended. “He doesn’t like his name either. He said he would have been more offended if you’d called him Delroy instead of Agent Asshole. Oh!” Kai seemed to recognize that maybe he shouldn’t have told Jason that.
“Oho!” Jason grinned. “I don’t even care how he knew I called him that. I am so calling him Delroy from now on.”
“No, please. He’ll know I told you.”
“No promises.”
Kai pouted. “We are not dating yet anyway. We have barely spoken. But I think… maybe someday…” He trailed off dreamily.
“Urg, I give up,” Jason said. “It’s bad enough I have to see my dad macking on my mom every time I turn a corner.”
“Aw, come on.” I elbowed him again. “You love it.”
“I did . Less so once I started finding hickeys on Mom’s neck every morning.”
I was sorely tempted to pull down my collar and say, “You mean like these?”
Like father, like son.
“Beastly Brewhouse for lunch?” Kai asked.
Another member of the library staff had come over and shooed us toward the door. Apparently, we were still being too loud, and she was fine with letting Kai go a few minutes early.
“I was thinking It’s Alive,” Jason said.
“Isn’t that a bar?” Kai asked.
“They serve food. And you only have to be over twenty-one to go in if it’s after nine at night. I’m feeling like greasy bar food.”
It was all so normal after everything we’d been through. After how much the town had been on the brink of something it maybe couldn’t have come back from if someone actually died. One thing about this being a small town was that neighbors couldn’t avoid each other, so people who’d been on either side of the chaos had to face each other every day and choose to move forward.
The other thing about being in a small town was that a walk down main street made it pretty likely you’d run into someone you knew.
First was Bina, who acknowledged us with a nod. That was pretty good actually, considering we were with her lame brother, something I knew intimately from my own sisters. She definitely whispered something to her friends as they passed us, because they all giggled. Jason had lauded Bina as the real hero in the article about the incident in the woods, and she’d been eating up every bit of the attention.
“Hey, Kai, can I ask you something weird about—”
I elbowed Jason for the third time that day. I’d told him under no circumstances was he to ask Kai or Bina about skin licking to get high. Or Zinnia and Beck! It wasn’t true anyway.
I didn’t think.
“Yes?”
“Uh… just… about your upcoming move!” Jason recovered. “You must be excited to finally be getting a real house.”
Then, before Kai could answer, the next person we saw—crossing the street a block ahead of us, and when he saw Kai, he waved—was Colt Jensen.
“You’re not dating him , are you?” Jason asked.
“No! I am not interested in him like that anymore, but did you know he apologized for his dad forcing him to catfish me? I know it doesn’t excuse it, but because he has been cooperating, the charges fell mostly on his father. He didn’t touch me when the others were hitting me, so he’s only looking at community service. I figured it was better to accept his apology and make friends instead of keeping an enemy. Don’t you agree?”
Jason and I exchanged a look, because I think we both agreed that we couldn’t have done the same.
“You’re a bigger man than us,” Jason said. “But good on you for it.”
Third, because of course there had to be one more reminder, we ran into Ronald McPherson and his daughter Esther. She waved wildly at us, while McDickhole—which was really hard to not default to calling him—mostly stared ahead at the sidewalk. Then, at the last second, he nodded at Jason about as cordially as we could have hoped for.
It was a start.
He really did smell like patchouli though.
“Oh! But you asked about our upcoming move,” Kai said. “I am very excited. So excited I almost forgot to tell you something. The realtor’s friend and boyfriend said they know you. They were going to see if they could join us for lunch. Let me message them that we changed locations.”
“No need.” Jason nodded ahead of us down the sidewalk. “I think I see ‘em.”
I looked. I didn’t have any guesses as to who the realtor might be, other than having heard he’d practically single-handedly helped most of the monsters in Edgewind find or build homes, and he was now helping monsters get settled here. But when I saw the owner of the vape shop from Edgewind that Jason and I used to frequent, the truth hit me real quick.
Jason once told me how all these people connected, though I hadn’t met most of them myself. The vape shop owner was Warner Penn. I only remembered his full name because he used his surname for his shop—The Penn is Mightier than the Sword—meaning a vape pen over a cigarette or joint, which was pretty funny.
His boyfriend, the realtor, was a monster. A cecaelia, I’d been told, which were one of the monster types that had tentacles in place of legs. Usually. They could shift at will from having tentacles to legs, which was how the realtor did his job. At a glance, walking down the street, he looked mostly human, aside from frilled ears like Kai, webbed hands, and a purplish tint to his skin. Which meant the third person, Warner’s auburn-haired friend, was Miles Wainwright, Jason’s monster friend Cael’s boyfriend.
Before I could wonder if Cael was here too, I felt him.
The trio was getting closer, set to converge with us right as we reached It’s Alive. The presence of Cael beside—behind?—Miles was palpable, almost as much so as when I neared one of the portals. It made the hair on my entire body stand on end, especially when Jason confirmed my guess as his eyes drifted above Miles’s head, and he waved.
“There’s my fellow aquaphile!” the realtor said to Kai as our two groups met.
“Hi, Ursino! These are my friends Jason and Ricky. But you already know each other?”
“Used to see these two in my shop all the time.” Warner shook both of our hands.
I was definitely not clinging to Jason for dear life with my other hand. Definitely not.
“It’s good to see you, Jason,” Miles said, and then reached to shake my hand like Warner had. “Although I don’t think we’ve officially met yet, have we, Ricky? I’m Miles.”
“I-I remember. It’s nice to officially meet you though.” Don’t make it obvious and look up. Don’t make it obvious and look up.
Damn it, I did!
I couldn’t see anything over Miles’s shoulder, because Cael had to show himself for anyone to know he was there, but if you acclimated to his presence, you could always see him. Like these three. And Jason. Who kept snickering at how tightly I was holding his hand, but it wasn’t funny! I elbowed him again. I didn’t mean to be so nervous, but I couldn’t help feeling unnerved that the shadows didn’t only feel like they were watching me; they were!
“Up for a larger group for lunch?” Ursino asked.
“We were thinking of changing our destination to right here.” Jason gestured to the bar.
“Works for us!” Warner said. “You all old enough?”
“O-oh, w-well—” Kai stuttered.
“Just teasing!” Warner threw an arm over Kai’s shoulder and pushed on into the bar first. “Urs was telling me all about the indoor freshwater pool they’re building for you and your family, just like the one he has in Edgewind. You’re going to love it.”
Don’t make it obvious and look up again. Don’t make it obvious and look up again.
I did! As we were filing into the bar, and Jason gestured the others inside for us to be last, I couldn’t help looking up where I knew Cael to be. Then I felt something new, a wave of calm and comfort and… kindness, like Cael was trying to say hello. Maybe part of it came from Jason, since he’d been trying to learn to ease people like his father could, but whether from one or both of them, it helped.
They were a really cool group to hang out with too. After lunch, Miles asked, “Can you hang out longer? Ursino was going to show us some of the other properties he has a hand in.”
“Or tentacle.” Warner chuckled.
“Sorry, I have to go back to work,” Kai said.
“And we have something to do right now,” Jason added—which was news to me. “But meet up later?”
“Sounds great,” Ursino agreed.
On our way out of the bar, I whispered to Jason, “We have something to do?”
“Yep. At least for a few hours.” He grinned at me. “I want you all to myself.”
While it was amazing that Jason’s father was back in his life, I was eternally grateful that he was not at home right now, and Sandy was at work.
We could barely keep our hands off each other until we stumbled down the basement steps and into Jason’s room. Only then did he back away from me and say, “Close your eyes for a second.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.”
I did. The first thing I heard was the Shawn Mendes album starting to play. Then I heard… shuffling? Not shuffling feet, more like rustling paper.
“Okay. Open them.”
Right in front of my face was a note, and written on it twenty-five times was:
I LOVE YOU
“I figure this counts as my final to one hundred,” Jason said, peeking over the top of the paper.
I snatched it from him and pulled him in for a kiss by the back of his neck.
We kissed and kissed and kissed , until we were both panting.
“I love you, too,” I said.
“I meant to give that to you forever ago, but I kept getting distracted. And, well, I never believed you’d beat me to saying it, when I’ve felt it for years. I never thought I’d hear you say it at all. But I mean it. I mean it so much, Ricky. I will not be a dick.”
I laughed. “You probably will be once in a while, but I love you anyway. Also, I am so putting all four notes in a frame.”
“You go right ahead. I’m keeping yours too. I am keeping you for as long as you’ll have me.”
Jason backed me up to the bed and pushed me down on top of it. He carefully took this newest—and final, at least for now—note from me to set it on the nightstand. When he returned to settle on top of me, he ran his hands up under my shirt, teasing my nipples with his thumbs, before he finally tore the shirt off over my head.
“There’s something I figured out,” he said, bending to tongue my nipples next. “About my leshy form. About what I can do with it.”
“Y-yeah?” I shivered.
“Want me to show you?”
“Is that even a question?”
“Do you want me to?”
“Yes! But you’re, um, comfortable with it?” We hadn’t been together with him in his leshy form yet. He’d seemed hesitant, more so than he’d been with the chimera mix or single forms he’d had.
“I’ve been doing some solo practicing,” he said.
I laughed again.
“I had to! That first time I transformed into a leshy, the shock of that form messed with my head. I hated what my subconscious made me think I’d done to you. But I’m not afraid anymore.” Jason took his shirt off and kicked away his jeans and socks and underwear, totally nude as that form blossomed out of him, which was how I thought of it now— blossoming . “I know I can use this form to make you feel good.”
He technically didn’t need to remove his clothes anymore when he changed, but he preferred to actually get naked if it was naked time —his words. It was a seamless shift now and didn’t cause him any pain. He could just succumb to it, like I planned to succumb to him.
Maybe I was a teratophiliac given how sexy I found his leshy form. Even the skull face with hollow pits to house his glowing eyes. Amid his fur and scales were wrappings of the softest branches and vines I had ever felt. Actual trees did not feel like this, soft and pliant and without threat of leaving slivers. If there had been any possibility of that, I doubted I could be as excited.
The more Jason changed, the more of those corded branches were around him, which he slithered off his body and used like extra fingers to undress me the rest of the way. I hadn’t known he could use them so dexterously.
“Do you know why I enjoyed the little show I got to see on the train between Cael and Miles?” Jason grinned.
“Because you’re a perv?”
More vines shot out from Jason’s body to connect with hooks in each corner of the room—when had he added those ?—as the ones that had undressed me wrapped around my ankles and wrists and thighs and hoisted me from the bed as if I’d been caught in an intricately woven trap. “Because I was imagining it was something I was doing to you,” Jason said, and he also left the bed, climbing and balancing on the vines that suspended me. “And guess what? I have my own tentacles now.”
Oh, fuck yes .
Jason’s face turned serious for a moment, even as one of the tendrils wrapped around my hardening cock. “Not too kinky, right? You trust me?”
“Always,” I said. “And it is just the right amount of kinky, whatever you have planned.” Naked, weightless, bound, and at his mercy, I had never felt so eager for what came next, but I was also glad I didn’t know everything it would entail.
“Good.” The heat returned to Jason’s expression and his glowing amber eyes pulsed brighter. “Because I really, really think you’re going to like this.”
“Ah!” Another tendril was already poking at my entrance, with little teasing dips inside me. It wasn’t any thicker than a finger, but knowing how many there were, how deep they could go, made me more feverish imagining where this led.
Jason’s hands had full leave to drag up my chest and thumb my nipples again, while his vines supported us and tilted my hips back until I was folded. The position made me feel so wide, even with only one tendril inside me. Then another started to enter me, prying open my walls with slithering slowness. The one on my cock was twisting like the grip of a hand. There was so much of Jason around and in me, and yet he could still hold me and kiss me with his forked tongue…
While a third and fourth tendril started to find their way inside me too.
I had seen that adult Monster Match ad. Tentacles writhing across skin, quick flashes of lips stretched as a tentacle filled it, hips being tilted back and thighs spread wide like how I was being positioned now, and more tentacles slithering in and out of a taut hole until...
Oh fuck. Oh please . I knew what tentacles were capable of and I wanted it all.
“I love you, Ricky,” Jason said, catching me up short from my fantasy, because that somehow made everything that was to come better.
“I love you, Jason.”
He kissed me again with his thick, textured, forked tongue and pressed his tip to where the tentacles were still in me.
Finally , I was with the version of Jason that was really him, the version he had been so afraid to become. And it. Was.
Beautiful.
JASON
Nothing could have compared with knowing who and what I was. To truly know and accept—no— embrace it. Except getting to live out my greatest fantasy with the man I loved, and to have him love me back.
Kissing Ricky, just as I entered him through the wider expanse I’d prepared with my tentacles—which I kept inside him to keep stretching him for my knot—was everything.
I was holding every part of him with different parts of me, and it was all me, every branch and vine. Every tuft of fur or scale. Every bit of bone. Every flower that bloomed on my antlers. It was me. And I could feel the slide of my tentacles in and out of him just as incredibly as it felt to have my cock inside him too.
I was a monster so attuned to life that part of me could even understand Ricky without the need for words. Fill me , his expression said like an echo in my mind when our eyes locked. Hold me and have me and keep me until I burst .
I will , I conveyed back to him.
I would forever if he let me.
“Ohhh…” Ricky clenched around me as my knot popped in, more easily every time that we did this, but we’d never done it with the added stretch of vine-like fingers. “H-how… am I taking so much of you?”
It was so hot hearing him say that, knowing an impossible amount of me was in him, yet he could still take it. I thought maybe it was because my true form was meant to bring calm and balance, easing the way even when what came next might seem like too much.
Not bad of an identity to embrace in the end.
I felt the experience through every part of me too, and in such strange ways. Ricky writhing against his bindings and pulling them tauter was like the stroke of a hand somewhere extra sensitive—the inner thigh, just behind my ear. I could feel Ricky’s heartbeat matching mine too. Hear it and feel it. I could feel the flutter of wind outside the house, because my tentacles anchored us to the walls. I felt connected to so much, but nothing, nothing compared to being connected to Ricky.
I thrust, swinging us on our tentacle swing above the bed.
“We should do this in the trees sometime,” I said and licked up Ricky’s throat.
Then I latched my fangs there, enough to mark him like I had countless times before, making him shudder. I shuddered too.
Each swing of the tentacles brought my knot deeper inside him. His eyelids kept fluttering, enough that I thought he’d transcended some blissed-out state he wouldn’t recover from until he came. But he surprised me, because when I traced my claws over his lips, he darted out his tongue and sucked one of my fingers into his mouth.
Ricky’s dark eyes met mine with a widening blackness of his pupils, as he sucked, and I thrust, and the narrow tentacles I still had inside him climbed deeper and deeper. He thought he could outdo me, huh? But I had another trick.
I was basically a tentacle too.
Arching my back up, I contorted myself as easily as if I was another of my vines. While Ricky sucked my finger, I unwound the tentacle that had been leisurely stroking him and sucked his cock down my throat.
“Mmffph!” Ricky sucked my finger harder, pumping his hips into the suction from me.
The vines I had wrapped all around him moved almost independently, not only as we swung, but twisting over his body. More wrapped around him so some were taut across his nipples, rubbing them pert. One tentacle lifted to his mouth, catching and wiping at the drool escaping from his finger fellating.
Even with my eyes down as I swallowed his tip and licked my forked tongue up his underside, I could still see it all, as if every part of me that touched him was another set of eyes. The vines always around my own body seemed to be twisting too, rubbing me to over-sensation and making me suck and thrust harder too until—
Ricky came, hips stuttering and insides clenching tighter around me.
Too tightly. I extracted the tentacles but thrust in deeper beyond my knot as I swallowed his earthy come, moving harder, faster, fervently to finally—
“Mmmm!” Ricky’s next moan was more like a humming whine around my finger, still gently sucking and tonguing its claw, as he surrendered to the heat of my release.
It was more than I ever could have imagined I wanted. A year ago, I could have done without the monster bits, but today, I wouldn’t have changed a thing. Ricky’s flushed cheeks and trembling lips seemed to say the same without saying a word when I pulled my finger from between them.
The best part—well, best part of the afterglow—was being able to cocoon Ricky in my tentacles and slowly lower us to the bed without having to pull my knot free until it shrunk enough to slip out with ease.
I returned two of my tentacles to the gaping mess I’d left of Ricky’s hole and massaged his tenderized walls with soothing gyrations.
“Mm… okay, keep doing that, and I’m going to get hard again,” Ricky warned.
“How to tell me to not stop doing something.”
He laughed.
I listened though, slowing their motion little by little before pulling them free. Only some of what I’d released in him spilled out. I absorbed most of it now, which was weird but handy.
Once we were more comfortably lying on the bed, I let myself return to being human, so it was easier to hold Ricky in my arms, no tentacles necessary—for now. He nestled in my hold as contentedly as he had accepted everything else.
“What are we going to do with the rest of the afternoon?” Ricky asked.
“Well, there was something I had planned that might take a while to convince you to agree to.”
“What…?”
Maybe it was a bit dickish, but I was seriously eating up how freaked Ricky looked.
“You’ve all done this?” he asked.
We were upstairs in the living room, with Ricky sitting in the crook of the L-shape, legs extended, so once he passed out—and he would—he’d already be lying down.
Because he was going to get his first taste of hearing Cael speak. Being able to see Cael would take longer.
I’d actually known Cael and the others were coming to town but leaving it as a surprise for Ricky had been too good to resist. Now that we understood the natural portal better, Cael had felt okay coming to visit, though he still planned to stay away from the woods, just in case.
Anyone could look at Cael if he allowed himself to be seen but looking him in the eyes was the dangerous part. It took time, patience, and acceptance to eventually be able to look at him without any trouble—without the madness of the Void creeping in, whatever that meant.
“Yep, all of us,” Miles said, sitting at the kitchen island with Warner and Ursino. I was on the sofa next to Ricky. And Cael was standing right in front of us.
Tall and willowy like a normal man who’d been abnormally stretched, Cael was almost entirely black from his skin to his hair to the suit he manifested as his clothes. He didn't wear a tie, but he did have a red flower pinned to his lapel. His face was the really spooky part, because while he had a fairly normal nose, his smile filled the entire bottom half of his face and showed way too many teeth with points that looked like razors, and he had two sets of eyes—meaning four total—that were white irises on red everywhere else.
Super freaky, but really cool, especially when his tentacles came out.
“Don’t worry. It doesn’t hurt,” I told Ricky. “It’s just a little jarring. And we’ll be right here the whole time until you wake up.”
“I’m a scientist,” Ricky said with a chuckle, and only a slight waver in his voice. “Nothing quite like rewiring your brain chemistry to meet new people. Ha! Okay.” He took a breath, settling one hand on his stomach, and the other he reached over to take hold of mine. “I think I’m ready. Cael? Are you there?”
“Hello, Ricky,” Cael said.
Ricky was out in two seconds flat.