Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Elliot
Much to my relief, there was an old napkin from a local burger place in one of Ricky’s jacket pockets so I could clean my hand.
I hadn’t really wanted to wipe jizz on my pants.
We were lucky that it hadn’t really gotten on our clothes, but I still grimaced with a hint of discomfort when I tucked my messy cock away and felt it immediately stick to the fabric of my underwear.
Once we were both straightened up and there was no evidence of what we’d just gotten up to aside from Ricky’s pretty, kiss-swollen mouth, we stepped back out from between the decks as casually as possible. Just in case someone happened to be lurking on this section of the beach.
It was still empty, and I relaxed enough to reach for Ricky’s hand again.
Without exchanging a word, we carried on meandering slowly down the beach, away from the bars and stuff, where both our cars were parked.
Which had to mean he didn’t want to go home yet, just like me.
Right? I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to him for the night.
I couldn’t stop smiling, and every time I peeked over at Ricky—which was a lot.
Pretty much every few seconds—he was smiling too.
My eyes were way better than a human’s, so even in the weak moonlight I could see the delicate flush staining his cheeks.
The flush of a man who’d just unexpectedly come hard.
The flush of a man who’d done it with someone he genuinely liked.
The flush of a man who was happy for a very specific reason.
And I’d been the one to put it there, that soft color in his cheeks. Me.
I was already getting dangerously possessive of Ricky.
Which was making me feel very conflicted.
I didn’t like being conflicted. I liked stuff to be easy. I wasn’t a big overthinker. Mainly I just did what I wanted, when I wanted, as long as it didn’t mess up someone else’s day or whatever. I wasn’t a dick about it. I just didn’t let stuff get to me.
But this blossoming thing with Ricky was getting to me. Because I really, really didn’t like lying to him.
He was so sweet and gentle and kind of innocent. And it was pretty clear that this was his first time doing anything with another guy, which meant hiding the truth from him felt… dirty. The wrong kind of dirty. Not the fun kind.
I’d thought about him all day again today, but that wasn’t unusual by this point.
Since the moment I’d met Ricky, he’d consumed my thoughts.
I was officially, one hundred percent addicted to him.
I wanted to know everything about him. I wanted to carry him home and wrap him up in my bed and…
I dunno, rub his feet or feed him grapes or just stare at him adoringly.
I wanted to suck his dick again. I wanted to get naked with him.
And that was where the internal conflict was coming from.
I was a ghoul. I literally had to eat humans to survive.
I did it in the most ethical way I could, but I still had to do it.
And the thing was… humans didn’t really like being eaten.
It was A-okay for them to eat whatever other animal they wanted, but cannibalism was, like, a big no-no in most places, and they definitely wouldn’t like it if they knew there was something higher on the food chain than them.
I’d spent a good chunk of my teen years questioning the moral dilemma of my very existence, which had made things pretty bleak for a while there, to be honest. I hadn’t asked to be born.
I didn’t relish the fact that I had to eat humans to survive, like some other ghouls did.
My dad had eventually gotten sick of all my questions, snapping at my mom that “this is why ghoul kids shouldn’t go to human schools. ”
In the end, I’d come to terms with it all, mainly because there wasn’t really another option. That was when I’d stopped letting stuff get to me so much, because if I didn’t, I’d probably be in a permanent state of existential dread.
Kind of like the one I was feeling myself start to slip into now.
As much as I’d been trying my best to ignore the very real moral dilemma hanging over me and this whole situation—the fact that Ricky was a human, and I was something else that had to eat humans—it was getting harder to do that. To just pretend that part didn’t really matter.
Because it did. It did matter.
It felt like I was lying to Ricky about something huge.
No, scratch that. I was lying to Ricky about something huge.
I was pretending to have a medical condition that I didn’t.
I was a different fucking species to him.
I ate human meat on the regular—every single day, in fact—to survive.
So no, I wasn’t just lying to him about one huge something. I was lying to him about several.
Those horrible moments of stark, jarring realization kept hitting me at the worst times.
In the bar, when he’d asked about Liz having the same ‘medical condition’ as me.
When he’d been seconds away from touching my bare cock for the first time, something my entire body had been aching for, straining for, breathlessly waiting for.
It had physically pained me to stop him, but something had made me do it.
Guilt, I guessed, or my own fucked-up version of a moral compass.
Apparently, to my horny idiot ghoul brain, letting Ricky touch my bare cock when he didn’t know I wasn’t human was too much.
Too wrong of me. But letting his bare cock touch my bare cock—and not just touch, but grind against it in my fist—was evidently fine.
It was some weird compromise I’d made with myself, because I already knew I was fundamentally incapable of leaving Ricky alone at this point. I had to touch him in some way, but if it was just me touching him, not him touching me, it was all copacetic. I wasn’t crossing a line. Apparently.
I wasn’t going to let it ruin my night, though, so once again I shoved it to the back of my mind. Into a little imaginary closet back there marked Ghoul-Related Ethical Shit that I regularly added to with the uncomfortable and difficult thoughts I preferred not to ponder too deeply.
This time, though, it felt like this particular thought process was a little too big, a little too pressing and life-altering and important, to just vanish easily into that closet.
It was like I couldn’t get the proverbial door shut behind it.
Like I had to push my whole weight against it just to hear the latch click, and even then the door was bulging out as though there was a hungry, rabid monster trying to escape from within.
I got it shut eventually though. I was good at that. Even managed to conjure up an imaginary padlock to make sure that door didn’t burst back open at the worst time. Like whenever I next had Ricky’s tongue in my mouth and his hand down my pants.
God, I hoped I had Ricky’s tongue in my mouth and his hand down my pants again soon. Like, very soon. By tomorrow at the latest, preferably. And hopefully next time, I wouldn’t get that horrible rush of weird guilt again, the one that had made me stop him tonight.
Although, I mean, that had still worked out pretty great, seeing as I’d gotten to grind my cock against Ricky’s, feel his hard dick throbbing against mine and his cum dripping all over me. Not a bad compromise, to be honest.
Not the same as getting to feel his hands and mouth and tongue all over me, though.
Which I desperately wanted. I wanted Ricky to explore every inch of my body.
I wanted to feel his gentle hand wrapped around my dick, cupping my balls, sliding lower.
I wanted his cock inside me. His fingers too.
His tongue. I wanted every part of Ricky.
I wanted him to consume me, just like I wanted to consume him.
If he knew how intense my thoughts about him were already, he’d probably run as far away from me as possible. Even without finding out about the ghoul stuff, which made everything way more nebulous and complicated.
“Are you working tomorrow?” I asked as we wandered slowly down the beach, even though I already knew he was. Since he’d started working at Broth with a Bite, I studied the shift schedule carefully every time Liz pinned the newest one up in the office and memorized Ricky’s hours alongside my own.
Which meant I already knew that he wasn’t closing tomorrow, for once.
Our shifts didn’t align perfectly, like they’d mostly been doing since he started.
It was a little miracle I’d been silently thanking Liz for, until I’d seen the schedule for tomorrow and been unable to stop the seething glare I’d aimed in the direction of her tiny manager’s office.
Maybe I could offer to start helping her work out the schedules.
She’d probably jump at the chance to offload another task.
Liz was pretty lazy as a manager. Her rich dad had given her the business in the mall so she and her friends had a “safe, healthy way” of getting the nutrients they needed without turning into a pack of delinquent ghouls roaming the streets at night looking for fresh meat.
It was the unfounded fear of every ghoul parent. Not that different from human parents, I guessed, who were busy worrying that their teen children were going into the woods every night to carry out satanic rituals and sacrifices and orgies.
“Yeah, but I’m not closing.” Ricky glanced over with a rueful little smile, and it mollified me to know he’d noticed the same thing I had—that we wouldn’t be finishing up together for once. “I get off at five, so my mom is insisting I make it home for a family dinner.”
“Oh. Nice.” I did my very best not to scowl in the hope that his stupid mom, who was going to keep Ricky away from me for an entire evening, would feel it from miles away.
A little selfish of her, if you asked me.
She’d had Ricky all to herself for twenty-three years.
I’d only had a week or so. It was my turn. “Uh, what is she making?”
“Probably tuna noodle casserole.” He chuckled as I looked out at the ocean so I could wrinkle my nose in disgust without him seeing. “That’s one of her go-to dinners. Pretty sure my dad hates it as much as I do.”
“I’m a really good cook,” I said, as if I were a little kid eagerly trying to convince an adult that I was all grown up like them. Shit, how embarrassing. Even as I told myself I didn’t actually have to compete with his freaking mom, I added, “And I never make tuna noodle casserole.”
Ricky laughed, swaying a little closer to me as we walked so his side was pressed firmly against mine, our joined hands tucked in the small space between our hips. “I know you’re a good cook. You work in a kitchen.”
“Oh. Yeah. Doy.”
“Although, I’ve never tried the special broth you guys make. Maybe I will one day.”
“No,” I blurted, horrified, then felt my face grow hot when Ricky blinked at me in surprise. “I just—it’s really not as good as the stuff you make in your kitchen. We have to be careful, so… it doesn’t have as much flavor.”
Another lie. My belly cramped with guilt, and I hated it. Felt like I was condemning my ghoul soul—already a questionable concept, honestly—by lying to someone as sweet as Ricky.
“I’m sure it’s still rad.” He nudged me again. “Especially if you’re the one making it.”
I huffed a little sound that was supposed to be a laugh.
I hoped he didn’t notice that it was lacking its most fundamental component—humor.
The guilt was getting to me. That door in my mind was bulging outward again, the monster within trying to escape and ruin everything. “You’re too fucking sweet, Ricky.”
He was. He was perfect. My perfect, sweet little sugar muffin.
Our hands were still linked, and I felt him give mine a gentle squeeze. His skin was hot in the best way, and I just wanted to snuggle into him and let him keep me warm. Instead, I tugged his jacket tighter around me with my free hand and discreetly breathed in another hit of his scent.
I was going to do everything in my power to stop him noticing I still had this jacket so I could go home with it. Just so I could wear it all night in bed.
And jerk off.
“I’ll still see you tomorrow though, right?” he said, bringing the conversation back to work. The hopeful edge to his voice made my heart fucking melt right in my chest.
“For sure.” I squeezed his hand back. “Gonna be pretty bogus closing up tomorrow without you.”
Honestly, I was gonna hate it. I could already feel myself getting ready to be in a bad mood tomorrow evening after Ricky left work. Then I was going to make sure I stayed in a bad mood all night, and the following morning, until I saw him again.
Maybe I’d keep going to Liz’s little office to bug her constantly with inane non-problems, just to punish her for unknowingly ruining my day by scheduling Ricky on a different shift to me. That seemed like an appropriate response, and a decent use of my time.
“We’re both closing on Saturday, though,” I said with embarrassing eagerness, realizing a split second too late that I’d just outed myself as a very softcore stalker. One who just liked to keep track of his work schedule, that was all. Then I decided I didn’t care. “So maybe we could—”
I stopped mid-sentence when a shout came from nearby, much closer than I’d realized anyone was to us. We’d made it a lot farther down the beach without really noticing, and now the glow of that fire from the party that had previously been in the distance was much bigger and brighter.
And the voice we’d just heard yelling something was kind of familiar.
Familiar in a heinously bad way.