Page 142 of The Devil We Crave
There’s an ongoing investigation into the party, and apparently Adrik is on thewarpathto 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…interestingnight. 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 dancedhalf the night away with—got her and averytrashed Galina back home.
But even with everyone getting home safe, things have felt…offwith 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 hasdefinitelybeen 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 wearesleeping 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 fuckingsore. But after that, it’s been five consecutive nights ofbrutal, 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 myfuck buddy? Mysituationship?
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, Imighthave 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 inlovewith 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 wantto 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.
