38 Heartrate-Accelerating Activities
Heartrate-Accelerating Activities
S pie had, admittedly, kissed a lot of women in her lifetime.
A few boys, too, when she was younger and still exploring her sexuality.
She’d always been a physical person, very in her body, quick to hug, to kiss, to touch.
The opposite of her twin. Nicky was far more cerebral, uncomfortable in his skin, as though some part of him had never fully settled into his embodied form.
She’d always thought that made her dumb, less than.
Good for little more than a tussle between sheets.
A fun time. Nicky had depth, mystique, a brilliant mind.
She had a pretty face, and a title bestowed upon her at birth.
Perhaps, if she was being blatantly honest with herself (which wasn’t something she liked to do often) that was why she’d shied away from being imperial successor.
Nicky was objectively more qualified for the role, and she didn’t want to give herself to something she would inevitably fail at. Easier not to try.
But there was something about the way Artemis kissed her that made her believe she was worth more.
That she was wanted for more than her title and body, for something deeper, something innate about who she was at her core.
A part of her that would continue to exist even if the Expani name were scrubbed from her DNA and her beauty withered to nothing.
Because Artemis Ialan didn’t want Spie’s title.
She wanted her money, sure, but being with Spie, now, did nothing to gain her that.
What existed between them was something terrifyingly real and even more terrifyingly forbidden.
But Spie couldn’t think about the latter right now.
So, she did what she always did: she compartmentalized.
Shoved the dis comfiting dissonance, the awful betrayal of her brother, the knowledge that there was no world in which this ended well, far from her conscious mind.
Spie was no stranger to pleasure. But intimacy? Real intimacy? When another’s lips worshipped your body for the soul it held?
Their kiss was gentle at first. Slow. Artemis’s lips slid and parted against Spie’s, wet and warm and achingly soft. Her tongue brushed Spie’s, her fingers clung tightly to Spie’s sweater.
Spie smiled against Artemis’s mouth, a warm contentment ballooning in her chest. She wanted Artemis to enjoy this more than she could remember wanting anything in her life.
Slowly, achingly, she deepened their kiss, giving herself entirely to this moment, knowing it would never come again.
She relished the coarse feel of Artemis’s hair between her fingers, the ragged sound of her labored breathing, the involuntary way she gasped when Spie tugged her bottom lip between her teeth.
“Holy fuck,” Artemis exhaled, breath hitching, against Spie’s lips. The catch in her accent caused a firm jolt of electricity to ignite in Spie’s core.
Artemis loosened her grip on Spie’s sweater, dipped her fingers beneath it.
Spie couldn’t stop her own sharp intake of breath as Artemis’s hands found bare skin.
They settled around Spie’s waist, Artemis’s thumbs brushing gently over the soft part of Spie’s stomach and dipping shallowly beneath the band of her shorts.
Gods and nebulas.
Spie accelerated their kiss. All prior gentleness vanished in an instant of need.
In one smooth move, she shoved Artemis back against the sand.
Panting slightly, Spie relished the vision of Artemis’s hair splayed about her head, her lips red and fat from kissing, the shape of her nipples hard and strained against the thin fabric of her white undershirt.
Damn, she was perfection.
Spie could’ve remained bent over the other woman for an eternity, devouring her with her gaze. But the freezing whip of coastal wind forced her back to the heat of Artemis’s body. She pressed one knee against the damp heat between Artemis’s thighs.
At the gasp that escaped Artemis’s mouth, she nearly lost her own sanity.
“Is this okay?” Spie whispered. She placed her palms against the sand on either side of Artemis’s shoulders and circled her knee meaningfully. “Say the word and I’ll stop.”
The X-er closed her eyes and arched her back, her lips parted. Her voice was thick. “Don’t ever fucking stop.”
Spie laughed. “I love it when you curse.”
She lowered herself onto her elbows to plant a messy kiss on Artemis’s mouth and nip at her lower lip, all the while circling her knee slowly, slowly. Artemis’s breathing hitched. It took everything in Spie not to shred her clothes then and there.
She hastened the circles drawn by her knee, careful to keep the pressure light, relishing the strain in her quad muscle.
When Artemis gasped again, the sound caused Spie’s own aching want to flare.
She stretched her leg out and hastily lowered her body atop Artemis’s, reclaiming her lips to sate the worst of the ache.
Which was ultimately counterproductive. Touching Artemis, kissing her, experiencing the sensation of their bodies pressed together, inhaling her faint scent of cherry shampoo—Spie’s desire only burned brighter.
She’d never experienced a want this blinding.
Some aches, she surmised, could never be cured, only temporarily ameliorated.
Beep. Beep-Beep. Beeeeeeep!
An alarm began to shriek as a bright light shot out of Spie’s CB, strobing erratically.
She tore her mouth away from Artemis’s in exactly enough time to see three sets of headlights descending from above.
The hum of multiple engines became unavoidably loud.
As did the wind they whipped up in their descent.
Artemis scrambled out from under Spie and jumped to her feet.
Two guards in full uniform dropped ten feet to the sandy shore. “Your Highness! Are you in danger?”
Spie smoothed out the front of her borrowed sweater.
She refused to be embarrassed of her sea-draggled hair and ill state of dress.
She refused to be ashamed of what the guards must’ve witnessed her doing with Artemis.
This was her own fault for not taking her CB off before engaging in heart-rate-accelerating activities.
But damn, the read must have been high to trip the alarm.
“I’m perfectly safe!” Spie shouted over the wind and the engines. “Must’ve been a false alarm! I’ll have the biometrics gauge checked in the morning!”
“We’ll need to run a quick EKG to be sure,” the guard boomed back. “We’ll fly you to the set medic.”
“My heart’s fine!” Physically a truth. Emotionally?
Spie glanced sidelong at Artemis, who was standing a ways off, hunched in on herself, arms clasped tightly over her bare shoulders.
As a person who valued her modesty, she’d hate being seen like this.
A surge of protectiveness inspired Spie to shift so she was in front of her, however little difference it made. “Bridge Captain Glossen for me!”
“Yes, Your Highness.” The guard dipped their visored head and barked a voice command at their CB.
A moment later, Captain Glossen’s image projected into the night air.
He was visorless, his salt-and-pepper hair smoothed perfectly back.
Though Spie had known the captain for the better part of her adult life—he’d been issued command of her and Nicky’s private security when they turned twenty-one—she rarely saw him without his helmet on.
It was jarring to remember there was an actual person underneath it.
“Your Highness?” His voice without the visor was velvet-smooth. “I’ve been alerted to your irregular biometrics. What’s your report?”
Spie sucked in a breath of cold, briny air.
“I’m perfectly fine; nothing but a late-night dalliance with a contestant, Captain.
I need you to waive the EKG. And don’t make an incident report out of this.
The last thing anyone needs is my mother asking questions about what they saw me doing on the beach just now. ”
“I see.” Glossen scratched at a few days’ worth of growth on his chin.
He was a decidedly handsome man in his middle years.
“Will you consent to an EKG in the morning and a recalibration of your biometrics software? Off the official reports, of course. I’d be remiss if I completely overlooked this. The reading was concerning.”
Gods and nebulas. How many times had Spie slept with someone without setting her biometrics off?
More times than she could count. Hell, she’d dived into the ocean and swum in blisteringly cold coastal water without setting it off.
But two minutes of making out with Artemis Ialan, and her heart was apparently two seconds away from a myocardial infarction.
“Yeah, yeah, I’ll visit the medic before breakfast. Call off your hounds.”
“Thank you, Your Highness.” Captain Glossen addressed the waiting guard. “Back to patrol, Lieutenant. Nothing in the system about this one.”
“Sir.” The guard saluted the image of their commanding officer and shouted a few commands. Within seconds, they’d ascended to their hovercraft and were flying away.
Spie nearly plummeted to the sand in relief. But she didn’t have time to be concerned about herself. Behind her, Artemis appeared to be on the verge of an apoplectic episode.
“Sorry about that.” Spie approached the X-er, suddenly and uncharacteristically shy. Or perhaps not shy. Vulnerable. What had passed between them was a lot more than an over-the-clothes tussle in the dark. “Are you all right?”
Artemis tightened her arms around herself and nodded unconvincingly.
Spie opened her arms and wrapped them around the X-er, pulling her against her chest. She was relieved when Artemis didn’t resist. Having her close soothed something in Spie that had been awry for a lot longer than the last few minutes.
Something that had been aching for the last ten years. Or maybe her entire life.
She kissed the top of Artemis’s head. “We probably shouldn’t have—”
“I know.” The X-er’s voice was muffled.
Gentle warmth ballooned in Spie’s chest, nearly bringing tears to her eyes.
She wasn’t a crier. Like, she literally never cried.
But something about this nebula-cursed woman had her emotions constantly boiling over.
The feeling was foreign and overwhelming and made her never want to let Artemis go.
A new ache, completely different from the ache of desire, this one centered more acutely in her heart, yearned for the night to stretch on forever.
Because once morning came...Spie could never hold Artemis like this again. She shouldn’t, even now.
Spie didn’t know the exact depth of her brother’s feelings for Artemis, but it didn’t matter. She’d promised him. And tonight, she’d broken that promise. There was time enough to hate herself for it tomorrow.
“I need to tell you something.” Artemis pulled back just enough to look up into Spie’s eyes.
Spie had the overwhelming urge to kiss her.
Not for heat or passion but for something much more tender and much more frightening.
“I came to tell you earlier, and I should’ve said it straight away, but we got distracted—” She shuddered.
“What is it?” Spie brought up one hand to brush a stray strand of hair from Artemis’s cheek. The warmth in Spie’s chest wouldn’t stop expanding.
“It’s— Fuck, there’s no easy way to say this so I’ll just say it. Contestants are dying.”
Spie froze, dropping her hand from Artemis’s cheek. “What?”
“It started with Kya Ep-Kmin, the Pikliminian ambassador. Our first night here, I found her body in the bathroom across from mine and Arbora’s room.
She was on the toilet fully dressed and there was blood leaking from her eyes and her nose and her mouth and I felt for her pulse and there was nothing, and then there was Rosaria last week.
She came back from a cocktail party with you and Nix coughing blood, and I tried to help but instead we both ended up crashing into the pool and I think she drowned because of me, like maybe she could’ve lived but she didn’t, and we were actually kind of friends, and there was blood in her eyes, too, and—”
“Breathe,” Spie commanded gently. Tears were fully coursing down Artemis’s cheeks. “Kya Ep-Kmin was sent home four weeks ago. You’ve been keeping this to yourself all this time?”
“I didn’t know what else to do!” The volume of Artemis’s voice rose.
She shifted slightly farther away from Spie.
“I told Kalvin; he was there—he saw Kya, too. But he told me I needed to stay silent, that it would be dangerous for me if anyone found out I knew. We’ve spent weeks trying to figure out who’s behind the murders but then Jasmine Gross took ill earlier tonight and I have no idea if she’s okay and. ..and . . . I’m fucking terrified.”
Spie’s mind churned quickly. “Jasmine Gross took ill?”
Artemis nodded vigorously, hugging herself tighter. “Same symptoms. Bleeding eyes.”
That was bad. It was all bad, but if Jasmine died, the impact would reverberate across the empire.
Spie thought back to that first night. She hadn’t known Kya Ep-Kmin, could barely remember her beyond a faint image of dark hair and delicate features.
That night, Spie had found her brother hyperventilating in the darkness of his bathroom.
She’d thought his panic attack had been related to Temmi, but could she have been wrong?
When Kal said the girl had taken ill, it’d made sense to send her home.
Spie hadn’t thought twice about eliminating her.
“You’re sure?” Spie’s mouth had gone dry. She stepped close to Artemis again, grabbed her upper arms too hard. “I need you to be sure.”
Artemis jerked away from her. “Yeah, obviously, I’m sure. You think I hallucinated two dead bodies?”
“No, of course not; I’m sorry.” Spie began to tremble. Did Nicky know about this? Had he kept it from her? Kal obviously had. Why? Something felt extremely off. She turned around to stare at the ocean. “I think you should go back to your room, Artemis. Thank you for alerting me to this.”
“Spie.” A hand on her shoulder. “Don’t shut me out. I—I’ve never felt less safe.”
Spie closed her eyes. “I’m sorry, Artemis.” She hated how cold her voice had gone. But her defenses were rising like a reflex, the shield that was her rank and title shutting the X-er out. The power difference Arbora had gone on about. “But I need to go talk to my brother alone.”