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Ghost let out a sorrowful bark and pointed at my throat.
“Oh, that?” I wiped my hand across my neck and it came away coated in red. Shit, that was way more blood than I thought. “Just a scratch. But, um…You better let me go clean it up.”
His tentacles—including the one still inside me—slowly retracted. He folded his mating tentacle back up neatly and closed the protective plates over it while I sat up. My head was a little woozy, but I’d had worse. Just a little light-headed.
With my hand over my throat, I wandered out of the bedroom to the bathroom to examine the damage. When I saw myself in the mirror, I winced. There were small puncture marks on either side of my neck, way more noticeable than I thought they’d be. At least they weren’t bleeding as bad as I thought. It just seemed that way because I was covered chin to chest in saliva.
I cleaned myself up at the sink and slapped on a few bandages. I’d probably need something more in the morning to cover up any lingering bruises, though. Thank God it was winter. Nobody would think twice if I put on that turtleneck sweater I never wore, would they?
“Axel hurt,” Ghost said from the doorway.
I turned my head, ignoring the shot of pain that went through my neck when I did. “It’s nothing, Ghost. I’ve had worse.” I left the sink behind to go put my arms around him and snuggled my head against his chest. “Besides, I obviously liked it, and you needed that, didn’t you? I think we both did.”
He huffed out a breath and combed his claws through my hair, nudging against my head with his cheek. “Good?”
“Yeah, I’m good. We’re good.” I kissed his jaw. “You’regood.” My chest swelled when he made that happy chirping sound in the back of his throat. I took a step back and, grinning, pulled him toward the shower. “Let’s get cleaned up and then sleep in. Tomorrow, I’m making brunch.”
I didn’t have theright ingredients to make a decent brunch, including a distinct lack of orange juice, so I dragged myself out of the house an hour earlier than planned and drove into town. It was after one, which technically meant brunch was probably going to be dinner by the time I got back, but whatever. Time was a made-up construct, anyway.
There were, in fact, no rules about when to eat what chiseled on a stone tablet anywhere as far as I knew. Nobody was going to show up and fine us for having bacon and eggs at nine at night, if that’s how long it took me to get it done, something I’d learned early on after Honor left me to fend for myself. I’d spent the first month living on cereal before it truly dawned on me I could eat anything whenever I wanted. After that, it was a week straight of birthday cake flavored ice cream before I learned a second important lesson.
Just because Icoulddidn’t mean Ishould.
I’d revisited that lesson when I woke up with a ring of dark purple bruises around my neck. Even the turtleneck hadn’t beenenough to cover all of them, so I opted to wrap my neck in gauze, hoping I could just shrug the whole thing off as a shaving accident. From the looks people gave me as I made my way through the store, I wasn’t pulling it off well.
Halfway through deciding which day-old doughnuts to buy, my phone vibrated with a notification. Sleepily, I pulled it out of my pocket and stared at the message, trying to comprehend the strange tangle of letters on the screen. It was a deposit notification from my bank for a lot more than what I’d been expecting. What the hell?
With a sigh, I dragged myself over to the little coffee shop and sat down to sort out what was clearly a mistake. Except it wasn’t. The deposit was from the porn site I uploaded to, which usually only made me pennies. Instead, I’d somehow pulled in four figures. After turning the volume off, I hunched over my phone and opened the site. My eyes nearly bulged out of my head.
Holy fuck. My last video hadblown upwith over a million views and hundreds of comments. I started scrolling through them, dumbfounded. People wanted more videos of me and my ghost getting it on, and they were willing to pay, probably more money than I’d ever seen in my life.
This can’t be real, I thought, scrolling through. But it was. No matter how many times I refreshed the page, the numbers stayed the same.
I lowered the phone, staring out at the grocery store in a daze. “Screw yesterday’s doughnuts. We’re having pasties!”
Rather than make them myself—because I was no cook—I stopped by my favorite little pasties shop on the way home and grabbed a dozen breakfast pasties with potato, egg, and sausage and another dozen pizza pasties for later.
When I climbed out of the truck carrying two giant bags, Ghost nearly barreled into me. “Easy,” I told him and shoved the bags at him. “Carry those in for me, will you?”
“Super Yooper’s Pasties?” Honor said from the door, his arms crossed. “Those don’t come cheap. What’re we celebrating?”
“Payday,” I told him simply and followed Ghost up the stairs.
Honor’s hand shot out and came to rest on my chest before I could make it through the door. “What happened to your neck?”
I winced. “Shaving accident?”
He frowned. “You shaving with irqed teeth now?”
“It’s not really your business if I am.” I shoved his hand away. “I don’t need you to approve of my life choices, you know, but it’d be nice if you trusted me to make them without questioning me every single day.”
“I’m just trying to look out for you, kid,” Honor said quietly.
I glared at him. “I’m not a kid.”
Something in his face softened. “You’ll always be my kid. That’s not something you outgrow.”
God damn him. Why was it every time I tried to be mad at him, he made me feel like a jerk?
