Sometimes too fast, others drag on and on until the guard knocks at the door and he pulls away, embarrassed.
“They talked about foreplay,” he says slowly. “About making it… intimate.”
I meet his eyes. We’re nearly the same height, he and I. Over the last few weeks, though, it seems like he’s gained a few inches. I hit my growth spurt early, and he’s now coming into his. It adds to his lean figure.
Stretch upward, then fill out. That’s what I’ve heard anyway, when my father used to grumble about Apollo’s height. Or his skinniness.
Before he went away…
His fingers dip between my legs, touching just where I need, and I bow forward automatically. But then they’re moving again, inching down my inner thigh and coming back up on the outside. To my hip, then higher. He undoes my bra clasp, something he fumbled with before and now does with practiced ease.
I can’t voice the opinion that he should pretend to struggle more with that the first time he gets with a girl.
Will he know the meaning of consent with her? In the outside world?
“You have to ask,” I say roughly.
“For what?”
“Anything.” I meet his gaze, but my stance is already widening. The need is bubbling, driven on by a cursed drug. “The girls you’ll no doubt seduce. You have to ask them. It’s not like here.”
He nods once.
He doesn’t ask me. Not when his fingers finally return between my legs and his body folds down so he can kiss the swell of my breast. Not when he puts my hand on his cock through his jeans and leaves me to take over that job.
There is no asking here—just taking.
And when he is done, and my knees tremble with the pleasure still rolling through my body, the guard comes and helps me to my feet.
Tears burn the backs of my eyes when the boy leaves, and it’s not because of what he did to me. It’s because this time didn’t hurt, and I don’t understand how that makes this place eight thousand times worse.
“You’re okay,” the guard murmurs.
One I’ve never seen before.
“Let me get you to the showers. Clean you up, yeah?”
I don’t know why he’s talking to me like a person, but I find myself nodding and gripping his wrist anyway. I let him guide me away, and I wash the boy from my flaming skin. There’s no cure for the drug, and it takes hours to come down. Even the cold water barely touches the fire in my blood.
The guard walks me back, his brows furrowed.
I want to ask him a question, but the words get lodged in my throat. Silence is safer, right? And I can’t afford for this to be a cruel act on his part.
“We’re not supposed to share names,” he says at my door. “But I’m going to anyway. Is that okay?”
Permission.
Asked, and, with a single nod,granted.
He gives me a smile, and then his name. “I’m Antonio.”
4REESE
She’s not waking up.
My private room now has a second bed in it, and Artemis lies unmoving in it. She resembles a corpse, and a pang of worry travels through me again. It seems like every time I close my eyes, I relive our shared past.
With nothing to do in this hospital room—she just returned from surgery, and Saint is elsewhere—I have no distraction from Terror.
