Title: It Begins
Author: Eule Grey
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: 09/30/2025
Heat Level: 3 – Some Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 45700
Genre: Horror, gay romance, explicit sex, group sex, sex games, first time, students, waistcoat love, happy ending, Halloween ‘fun.’
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Description
Byron, PhD student and waistcoat admirer, knows about yearning and betrayal. It’s been four years since the love of his life, Ruben, walked off without explanation. Byron dreams of midnight sex he can’t fully remember and a beloved man with dancing eyes. If only Ruben would return… But life moves on. At least it did until you-know-who unexpectedly pitches a tent in the garden, provoking ghosts from the past as well as Byron’s aching heart.
Ruben understands how to push Byron’s buttons. But he doesn’t know why someone is stalking them or why his memories are haunted by students playing a naked truth-dare game in an ancient room. What happened on the claw-marked table covered with crispy skin flakes?
Halloween draws close, and with it comes a rollercoaster ride of sex, fear, and love. At the back of their minds, a chilling, familiar voice reminds Byron and Ruben of a game from long ago and a pact that can’t be abandoned or left unfinished.
True love never dies.
It Begins
Eule Grey © 2025
All Rights Reserved
We moved at the same time. Rube reached the sink and I, the window. He filled the washing bowl with hot water while I perched.
“I bought the tent and rucksack from a camping shop near the airport. Realised it was for kids when I arrived in your garden.” He squirted washing-up liquid liberally. “It’s waterproof.”
I tried to make sense of his words. Nobody bought a tent to pitch in an old boyfriend’s garden. His actions were jerky and abrupt, and I judged it best to give him a chance to explain without me firing questions. “I can wash the pots later.” What the fuck are you doing here?
He immersed his hands in the water and began rigorously scrubbing. “It’s fine. Doing something ordinary is a relief. The last few weeks have been so crazy, Brains. I can’t tell you.” His body suddenly sagged against the sink. “I crave normality. I need—”
But it was not clear what or whom. His eyes shone with pain. Maybe it was mean of me—certainly, it was mean—but I was glad his life wasn’t perfect. By ‘crazy’, I assumed he was referring to a work-related incident; perhaps a failed interview, nothing more.
Still, his anxiety affected me. I moved beside him, trying not to hug him hard. “You’re scaring me. Is it the police?”
With Rube in my kitchen, the autumn sun shining, and birds singing, it was difficult to imagine him in trouble. He’d been an excellent student who worked hard and kept to the rules. I didn’t recall him ever taking drugs or doing anything that could remotely be considered risky.
Except in bed…
And the woods.
Surrounding fields.
The refectory at midnight.
Lecture halls.
Etc.
For a while after his disappearance, he’d sent postcards via my parents’ house, arty pictures with humorous comments from France, Germany, Switzerland, and other countries. There was never an address. Mum would hand them over with a concerned expression. “It’s him again, the boy who broke your heart.”
Those postcards hid beneath my pillow for years, promises never to come true, each causing a cruel hope to rise within me and then wither again when he didn’t appear.
He looked as good as ever, with a classically handsome brown face and shoulder-length locs, and it was clear from his demeanour all was not well.
He spoke quickly and erratically, occasionally glancing behind him. “No, no, nothing criminal. I’m in a whole heap of trouble. But first, can I use the bathroom?” He finished the washing-up and then vigorously scratched his head without moving from the spot. “I must look a state. Feel like I’ve been dragged through a hedge.”
His explanation was worrying. Although it was typical of Ruben to overdramatise, he’d never lost his cool or appeared out of control; he was anything but.
I nodded. “Sure. Use the shower. Do you need anything else?”
He rummaged through his rucksack. “I’d be grateful to use the washing machine.”
My mind was still on the postcards. “I kept them all. I admire the German collection but not the Austrian. Are you still living in Spain?”
He stood and turned, his expression as innocent as a child’s. “Kept what?”
We were face to face at last, close enough for me to appreciate the amber flecks in his velvet-brown eyes, close enough to remember how his eyebrows almost met above his nose. He’d aged a little, the same as me.
I answered dismissively, though his admission hurt me deeply. “The postcards.” He didn’t remember the postcards I had lived for?
His expression changed. The tightness faded. “Oh. I’ve forgotten.”
How easily he smiled away my youthful heartbreak. How could he not have understood the depth of my feelings?
I should have kept quiet instead of revealing my desperation. “I always keep postcards. Yours are just some of my collections. Some people collect pictures of trains. So I’ve heard.”
He watched me, trying not to cry as I gathered up all the bits of me he’d slain five years ago.
A change came over his body, an unwinding that relaxed him into the confident young man he used to be. “Aw, Brains.”
It was a shock when he squeezed my arm and kissed me lightly on the cheek. For the tiniest second, his cheek pressed into mine. The moment was over too quickly to be anything other than a kind gesture from an old friend.
I hid my anguish beneath my messy hair. “The bathroom. First on the right. Picture of a merman on the door.”
“’Course it has. Hah-hah. Thanks. Quick shower, then we can have a nice chat.” He grinned and disappeared upstairs.
I violently dried the plates and cutlery, making a lot of noise. My little sister called it my angry dry, though it wasn’t anger that made me violate the spoons but a need to hear evidence of my existence.
I wasn’t upset.
I wasn’t upset.
I told myself I should have been upset. After five years of longing for what was lost and what might’ve been, to face my first lover and not feel anything was disconcerting. “Nice chat,” my arse. He was never as bland as nice.
Rube’s elusive hints about why he was here were intriguing though. I reckoned debt or a psychotic boyfriend, but neither seemed likely. He was always full of secrets and had been a bit of a drama queen. At the end of our time together, he’d found work abroad as a researcher at a medical company. I’d still faced years of studying, but he was finished and ready to see the world without me. Perhaps he’d been right to leave when he did. After all, I still worked at the same college five years later while he’d travelled the world. I’d always been too ordinary for him.
He eventually breezed downstairs into my sorrow, rubbing wet hair, smelling of heaven. “I hope you don’t mind, but I used your Peppa Pig soap?”
I thought of lathering soap over his lithe body. “You’re welcome. Help yourself.” You always did.
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Eule Grey has settled, for now, in the north UK. She’s worked in education, justice, youth work, and even tried her hand at butter-spreading in a sandwich factory. Sadly, she wasn’t much good at any of them!
She writes novels, novellas, poetry, and a messy combination of all three. Nothing about Eule is tidy but she rocks a boogie on a Saturday night!
For now, Eule is she/her or they/them. Eule has not yet arrived at a pronoun that feels right.
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