Page 19

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.”