Chapter 22
“I am not embarrassed about this,”I say into the pillow. Sun slants through the window of the castle we’re staying in. A castle that is, apparently, owned by Uncle Hades. I’ve never known anyone who could buy a castle that fast.
“Good,” Artemis answers from her spot between my legs. She sits behind me on the mattress, her fingers stroking gently at the base of my spine. “You shouldn’t be. You’re, like, incredibly hot.”
“I feel like I should be,” I admit, because I guess that’s what I’m supposed to do now. Admit things. About how I feel. Stop hiding from everyone. Although I don’t think everyone in my family wants to know about this. Just Artemis.
“You have nothing to be embarrassed about.” Artemis’s fingers move lower, over my crease, and she does a bit of tentative tracing that gets less tentative with every second. “I already told Uncle Hades that we were fucking, anyway.”
“What?” I keep my voice relaxed, and my body relaxed, because anything else is counterproductive in this situation. What Artemis is doing with her fingers is amazing. I want her to keep doing it.
The truth is, there were a lot of things that happened during those favors that I didn’t like because I was a child and what was happening was completely fucked up. It was a crime. And none of it was fun, even if it wasn’t painful in the moment.
As an adult who is so foolishly in love with Artemis I can’t stand it, I can admit that there are some sensations I’m interested in exploring.
Lucky for me, Artemis is a stone-cold killer and is not afraid of anything, which is why her lubed-up finger is pressing into me?—
Right.
Now.
“You have to relax,” she whispers. “I’m not going to hurt you. I love you.”
“I know you’re not. I love you too.”
I know it’s going to feel incredible, because Artemis has done internet research, and if there is anything I’ve learned throughout this whole ordeal, it is that she is the best at internet research. As a result, I am about to get fucked in a German castle, in a room the size of some houses I have been in, sprawled out on the most comfortable pillows I have ever had the pleasure of sprawling on.
Let me reiterate: fucked. Artemis is wearing a strap-on. I almost died from how hot it is when I first saw it, and she did not appreciate the joke.
Life could not be better.
Well, it could be a little better. I still have intense fatigue from throwing up half my internal organs and having my brain completely short out on me. I have to take two naps most days.
But Artemis is okay. The fever didn’t touch her. Watching me almost die was Very Bad, but I’ll make sure not to do it again.
“Anyway,” she continues, as if there was no break in the conversation. She’s past her first knuckle now. “I sort of shouted it at him in a waiting room at the hospital.”
“We…really don’t have to talk about this.” Oh, no. “Please tell me our parents didn’t hear.”
“I was shouting,” Artemis says. “There’s no chance they didn’t hear.”
“Promise me that you will not shout anything else about our sex life to anyone. Ever again.”
“No.” Artemis takes the sting out of her denial by pushing her finger farther inside me, which is—holy fucking crickets, it’s good. And then I realize what she’s said. “Relax,” she orders. “I’m going to tell Daisy. Like, I’m going to brag about you, and you can’t stop me. Sorry. That’s just how it is.”
“No parents.”
“Deal.”
“Stop mentioning parents.”
“You’re mentioning parents.”
“Shh,” she says, and pushes her finger in the rest of the way. And then she does something—she?—
She does.
Something.
That feels so good I let out a groan into the pillow.
“Does it hurt?” she asks, and I can hear my stone-cold killer of a fiancee smiling. I can hear a summer’s worth of warmth in her voice. “Should I stop?”
“It doesn’t hurt. It feels so good. Everything you do feels good.” I sink further into the pillow. “Do it again.”