Chapter 26
YELENA
Something has shifted since the party at The Spire a week ago.
Not just with me, after my night of strangely intimate revelations with Achilles. With a lot of my friends, and it’s not just because we, like everyone at that party, were accidentally dosed with ecstasy. Though that could have gone way worse for many of us.
The college administration is pretty hands-off when it comes to the clubs. But when a hundred partygoers get accidentally drugged, including three students that had to go to the ER, the school can't shrug and pretend nothing happened.
There’s an ongoing investigation into the party, and apparently Adrik is on the warpath to find out who drugged the absinthe they were passing out.
All of us—aside from Ari, who was smart enough not to drink those shots in the first place—had a pretty…
interesting night. But everyone was lucky enough to be looked after.
Arianna made sure that Wren, who was probably as high as I was, got home and to bed okay.
Lucia’s new friends—the gay couple she danced half the night away with—got her and a very trashed Galina back home.
But even with everyone getting home safe, things have felt…off with my girls.
For one, I’ve gone from concerned about Wren self-medicating with alcohol to outright worried. The rest of us have taken a very necessary break after the Reckless party. But Wren's doubled down and has gone out almost every night since.
Galina has also seemed off, somehow. Spooked, maybe? She’s never done any drugs aside from smoking pot a handful of times, so maybe it’s just the whole ecstasy thing.
Lucia, to be fair, seems to be completely normal. But then there's Arianna, who has definitely been distracted the past week and will not give me a clue about why no matter how hard I pry.
And I’ve definitely pried.
She and Wren, obviously, had about eleven trillion questions for me about “my night with Achilles”.
They’ve been mostly satisfied by me admitting again that we are sleeping together.
But I haven’t told them anything more, and they’ve proven to be great friends by not spilling the beans to anyone else— not even Lucia and Galina, which I do feel a little bad about. But also…I dunno…
Whatever this thing is with Achilles and I, it’s private.
It’s just for us.
Ugh, eyeroll.
As if we’re an “us”.
That said, I’ve seen him almost every night since that night at the cabin where things went from his usual brand of achingly hot violence and pleasure to strangely intimate.
Actually, it’s been five out of the last six nights, if we’re keeping score. He gave me a “night off” after the cabin, which, real talk, I needed. I was fucking sore. But after that, it’s been five consecutive nights of brutal, mind-blowing sex.
Sex where I get chased around the woods.
Or on the floor of the cabin as we scratch and slap and choke each other.
Or with my wrists tied with his belt behind my back, bent over the hood of his car, getting fucked senseless right there in the parking lot in the middle of the night while a sick part of me wonders if there are any security cameras watching, and then getting wetter because of it.
But then, that strange intimacy is also there.
And I don’t mean it feels strange for me to open up to him, or for him to tell me things about his childhood that I don't think are common knowledge. I don’t think it’s “strange” for people who are regularly having sex—especially our kind of sex—to open up to each other.
That just feels like something that would naturally happen.
What’s strange, I guess, is that I still don’t know what this is.
Is it a game that just hasn’t ended yet? Is it that each of us has found in the other an equal partner in the deranged physical release we both need and crave?
Is Achilles my fuck buddy? My situationship?
I don’t know. But I'm pretty certain that he’s not my boyfriend.
We are not a we.
…And I don’t know how I feel about that.
Or, more accurately, I might have an idea how I feel about that, but I’m embarrassed to say it even to myself in the privacy of my own head.
Because as much as I want to keep repeating my mantra about there being two boxes, one for sex, the other for love, the longer this thing with Achilles goes on, the flimsier the wall between those two compartments starts to feel.
I’m not naive enough to think I’m in love with him. But after every one of our “meetings”, looking at myself in the mirror and telling myself that it’s “just sex” is getting harder to pull off.
The problem is, I like him.
I like him more than I probably should. And that scares me, more than how much I love feeling his hands around my throat as he fucks me to within an inch of my life, and the delicious ache of his bruises on my skin the next day.
Achilles
I have to cancel tonight. Something just came up.
I want to smack myself for the way my face and heart drops. And it’s that second part that feels problematic.
Being disappointed that our plans of him taking me to the cabin and “painting my tits and face with his cum” before “stuffing my needy pussy with every inch of his fat cock” is one thing.
Deranged, probably a cry for therapy, and probably cause to have my feminist card up for review, but still.
It’s the twinging sensation in my heart, though, that scares me.
Because this—this thing with Achilles, whatever it is—can’t be that.
Me
Everything ok?
I try not to mentally berate myself, like I notice I've started doing whenever our texts, at least my texts to him, feel like they’re bordering on “relationshippy”.
“Girlfriend-esque”.
“Everything okay?”
I look up with a start.
Ari looks at me curiously. “You had this sad puppy dog look on your face.”
I frown. “No, I didn’t.”
At the other end of the Morvaine common room couch I’m slumped on, Wren clears her throat and nudges my feet with hers.
“No, that was one hundred percent a sad puppy dog face.”
I shrug. “I was just reading something on my phone.”
I feel my face tingle when she and Arianna trade knowing glances.
“What,” I sigh.
Wren lifts her shoulder. “Nothing?”
“Yeah, nothing,” Ari grins.
I glare at them both. “Just spit it out.”
Wren grins wickedly at me. “You sure?”
“Yes?”
“Fine.” She glances around to make sure the common room is still empty and then turns back to me, leaning closer. “Was your nightly dick appointment canceled?”
Heat explodes over my face as she giggles. Arianna looks scandalized, with a hand clamped over her mouth. But she’s giggling too.
“Excuse me?” I say, my cheeks throbbing. “I don’t even know what—”
“You totally do,” Wren snickers. “Unless you want to look me in the eye and tell me you’ve been going to ‘study groups’ every night the last week.”
I groan, feeling my face tingle.
“Study groups that look like they might also involve full-contact sports with no safety gear?” Ari adds with a snorting laugh that sets Wren off too.
“Fuck you both,” I mumble.
Wren grins widely. “You sure you’ve got the energy for that after getting fucked silly by Achilles every night?”
She and Ari both howl with laughter.
Whatever. The embarrassment will pass.
Joke's on them: I have been getting fucked silly.
I sigh heavily. “Are we done yet?”
“Hell no,” Ari snickers. “But for now, yes.”
Just then, my phone dings again.
Achilles
It’s fine. Talk later.
I realize I’m glowering at my phone, and I can't stop even though I know that they’re both looking at me.
His brush-off feels…
Ugh, I don’t know.
It feels dismissive, and it annoys me. But I feel even more annoyed at myself for feeling that way at all. And round and round we go.
We’re not a couple.
Not a “we”, or “us”, or anything like that.
Me
no prob
Oh my God, cringe.
“I don't know,” I say, shrugging as I give them my best neutral face. “We’re just…” I shrug again. “You know, whatever.”
They glance at each other again.
“Can you please quit with the looks?” I sigh. “We…have an arrangement.”
“The sort of arrangement where you spend the next day walking around like you rode a horse all night?” Wren grins.
My face throbs.
“It’s not serious. We just…”
“Fornicate, frequently,” Wren says in a posh British accent.
I groan as I sink into the couch. “Yeah…that.”
Ari’s brow furrows. She opens her mouth, then shuts it.
“What is it?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Nothing.”
“C’mon,” I grin. “It’s not like I can blush any harder than I already am.”
She smiles shyly, biting her lower lip. “Do you…like it??
Wren snorts. “Please. Have you seen the way this girl is walking around with a shit-eating grin on her face these days? Yeah, hon, she likes it.”
Ari turns as red as I am. “I meant…” she sighs. “I didn’t mean the having sex part. I mean…” She lifts a shoulder. “Well, okay, yes. But specifically…I mean…”
I roll my eyes. “Spit it out.”
“The bruises? And the scratch marks?” She swallows nervously. “I mean, I’m not an idiot. I know you’re not being, like, abused. I understand what rough sex is…mostly.” She takes a deep breath, still chewing on her lip. “But do you…like it?”
Wren giggles and turns to arch a brow at me. “I would also like to know this.”
My face throbs. “I…yes?” I croak. “I mean, I wouldn’t be doing it if I didn’t?”
“But those bruises…” Ari’s brows arch to the ceiling. “I mean, damn.”
I look away, heat humming over my skin. “I mean… It’s not being hurt that I like, it’s more…” I groan. “Okay, this is embarrassing.”
“Cone of silence,” Wren says breathlessly. “Total cone of silence.”
I exhale heavily. “Okay. It’s not that I like getting hurt. I just…”
God, how do I even explain this?