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Artemis chokes on her apple. “Oh my God. How are you not funnier when your dad is a comedian?”
“How are you not more charming whenyourdad is—”
I don’t finish the sentence because Hercules walks into the room with Ares and Apollo, and I have no brain cells for anything but him. I have no energy for anything but him. He’s carrying one of the little glow-lamps in his palm, and the shadows on his face are so beautiful that I’d keep my eyes open forever, even if it killed me.
Whoops. It might kill me.
Hercules holds out the lamp like he’s offering it to me. Ares makes a face at him. Nobody here should be offering me a ball of light if they want me to survive.
But Hercules would, because he’s not actually offering me a tiny ball shaped like the moon to stick in my face. He’s sayinghere, destroy this, and we can go be somewhere in the dark.
That would be extremely preferable to this.
Not to mention…it’s necessary.
I didn’t think through the consequences of coming home. I didn’t have a choice about getting on the plane due to being unconscious. But if Ihadbeen conscious, I’d have pointed out the sex problem. Namely, that coming home is a guarantee that we’ll have to find the limit of the sex boundary.
It was working, for a while. The longer I go without it, without him, the more likely I’ll have a nightmare.
In fact…
There’s one in the room right now.
I started feeling it about an hour ago. The dark, gravitational pull. Increasing fatigue, though I’ve spent hours and hours sleeping.
Hercules feels it, too. He narrows his eyes and glances over his shoulder, like it might be visible.
It’s not. It never is. But the fact that everyone’s walking around with small lamps in their hands makes it seem like it could be lurking in any one of the pockets of darkness.
Itpulls.
Hercules whips the lamp in his hand at Ares, who barely manages to catch it before it hits him in the eye.
“What the fuck, man?”
Horny,mouths Apollo. Hercules doesn’t see, because he’s moving across the room like he’s on a battlefield somewhere. The only part of him that’s not all fluid grace is his shoulder, which is hurting him. It’s a recognizable stiffness.
“Um,” says Artemis. “Should we…give you guys the room?”
“We’re in a mansion. There are tons of rooms. And anyway—”
Anyway, Hercules is here, and he bends down over me like this isn’t a family room full of our family and picks me up from the couch.
Artemis covers her eyes with one hand.
“You can look,” Hercules says. “I don’t care.”
“I don’t know therules,” Artemis shoots back. “What are the rules for this?”
“Doesn’t matter.” His voice drops so I’m the only one who can hear. “Your house or this one?”
“This one.” I run my nose along the side of his neck and honestly, truthfully can’t resist biting him. Softly. A little bite. “It’s closer.”
* * *
So,being home means that Hercules occasionally has to whisk me upstairs to fuck.
It would be more awkward, I think, if it wasn’t the general consensus that the sex is keeping me alive. As it stands, it’s still pretty awkward. At my house in California, nobody could hear what went on unless a member of my security team happened to be walking nearby, and I pay them to keep their mouths closed as well as to protect my safety.
