Percy Jackson and the Curse of Lust

If you had asked me a few days ago what I expected to be doing, I never would've said standing on a Brooklyn street corner beside four girls holding enough toast to feed a family of four for a week. But sometimes that's just how life turns out.

Before the motel could kick us out, we had plundered the complimentary breakfast for every crumb it was worth. Turns out the staff weren't all that happy with five teens shoving every scrap of food into their pockets and making a break for it. The move got us kicked out a little early, but considering we were officially out of money and options from now on, we set aside our pride to keep our stomachs full a little longer.

"What next?" Lou asked, voicing the question we'd all been wondering. 

By that point we'd spent fifteen minutes standing there feeling lost. The only one that seemed like she was doing anything was Annabeth. My girlfriend had her eyes shut. Her forehead was creased in concentration.

"I'm thinking," she said.

The rest of us went back to waiting.

It wasn't that I didn't want to help. Honestly, I would've loved to have been the one coming up with a genius strategy for once. But without money, a ride, or even spare clothes, our backs were so close to the metaphorical wall that I could feel bricks digging into my spine.

Wait, no, that was just Valentina's fingers poking me.

"Weren't we going to Hawaii," she asked.

"That was the idea," I said grumpily.

Valentina looked around. Somehow, after everything the night before, she looked like the most alert out of all of us— even more than Clarisse who didn't participate at all.

"You guys didn't plan this very well."

"Whose fault is that?" Annabeth suddenly yelled, her eyes snapping open. "We were supposed to have money, a car, and train tickets if that failed! We packed! Then you unpacked it all, and we ended up with you instead!"

Passersby had already been giving us strange looks — y'know, because of the arms full of breakfast food — but they really stared when Annabeth raised her voice. We'd ended up in an upscale part of brooklyn. The sort of place where the white dogs that passed by on walks were even crustier than usual, and the women walking them looked like they spent at least thirty grand per year to look the opposite. From the glances we were getting, I got the feeling more than a few had mistaken us for homeless teens.

That was… kind of depressingly close to the actual situation.

"C'mon Annabeth," Valentina said patiently. "Sure I unpacked your bag, but you would've lost everything anyway, right? The cow would've destroyed it. Nothing survived the crash. We checked."

Annabeth glared at her. "That… That… Why did you actually make a good point? Gah!"

She threw her hands up, returning to strategizing.

"The problem is that we don't have a car anymore," Lou said forlornly.

"Nah," Clarisse disagreed. "The problem is that we don't have any money. You can buy a ride. But even if we had the van, it wouldn't be going far on one tank of gas."

"Should we make some money?" Valentina asked.

Clarisse smacked her shoulder. "You can't make money just like that."

"I'm pretty sure we could though," Valentina said. "Hey, what if we have Percy fuck me right here? Live porn, we'll call it. Ten bucks to stay and watch. Clarisse can run off stragglers that don't pay. And if someone gives extra, they can suggest the next position!"

We all stared at her. Even Annabeth opened her eyes to join in. As we stood there in silence, someone finally decided we actually were homeless and tossed a dollar our way. The bill fluttered to the ground between us.

"Look at that!" Valentina stooped to pick it up, waving the bill around. "That's a good start! I'm telling you, we'd make real money with this— if there's one thing life has taught me, it's that people like me at least ten times more once I take off my clothes."

Lou frowned. "That's kind of really sad."

Valentina grabbed her. "No moping! Help me get Percy's clothes off, and we'll be traveling across the country in style within the day."

"Woah!" I held my hands up, dropping a couple slices of toast in the process. "I never agreed to this!"

Valentina licked her lips. "Just hold still for one second…"

Clarisse caught the back of her shirt. "I am not getting arrested as an accessory to indecent exposure."

Valentina whined and strained like a dog on a leash, but Clarisse's grip held. The daughter of Ares turned to me.

"This is your city. You live here. Can't you just run home and grab some stuff?"

"It's not that simple," I muttered.

"Why not?"

I pointed at myself. "Cursed." I pointed west toward Manhattan. "My mom's house." I crossed my bread-filled arms. "I'm not going any closer than this."

The others looked a little green at the implication.

"You don't think the curse would really…" Lou trailed off.

"I don't know," I said honestly. "Which is why I'm not taking any chances."

I hadn't called home once since this whole business started up. I knew too much Greek mythology to expect any built-in morals on a mysterious curse. We didn't even understand how it spread. I wasn't going to go anywhere near my mom until we were absolutely certain I was fixed.

"You don't know anybody else?' Clarisse asked, apparently accepting my reasoning.

"What, like, close friends? I had two, but one turned out to be a goat and the other is living on the ocean floor. They aren't much help right now."

"That's it?" Clarisse asked.

Lou's eyes got wide. "That's kind of really—"

"It's not sad," I snapped. "And why are you putting this on the same level as Valentina admitting she has to take off her clothes for people to spend any time around her?"

"I feel like what I said has become worse since I said it," Valentina observed.

"Look, it's not like I was some sad kid who only ever hung out with his mom. I'm just saying there's no chance someone will just wander by who recognizes—"

"Percy?"

Very, very slowly, I cranked around to face the voice.

A woman in a modest white sundress and large straw hat stood there staring at us. At me, in particular. She tilted down a pair of expensive-looking sunglasses to reveal awfully familiar green eyes.

"It really is you!" she said. "You've gotten much taller since the last time I saw you!"

When her identity finally clicked into place, my first words were a little silly.

"Shouldn't you be in Hawaii?" I exclaimed.

The others stared at me, completely lost. But those green eyes, the long red hair spilling out of her straw hat… they were features she had given to her daughter. The same daughter we were currently stalled out on a cross-country trip just to meet.

"Why would I be… oh!" she said. "I guess you wouldn't have heard."

"Heard what, Mrs. Dare?"

Rachel's mom smiled at me.

"That it isn't Mrs. Dare anymore. Please, Percy, call me Emily. I insist."

-

Emily Mcmillan — formerly Emily Dare — was a much nicer woman than I remembered her as who owned an equally nice Brooklyn suite. After inviting us over, she wasted no time in sitting us down at a nice mahogany dinner table before disappearing into the ultra-modern kitchen for drinks.

I used the chance to look around discreetly. The dining area was attached to the living room, a sparsely decorated room with a couch, three coffee tables, and a bookshelf filled with a strange mix of gossip rags and high literature. There were six separate paintings on the walls starting next to the door, each getting progressively more abstract the deeper into the room you walked.

"Do you like them?"

Emily returned, laying tall glasses of water in front of each of us. Unfortunately, I turned toward her at a bad time. Or a good one, depending on your point of view. As she bent over the table to set my glass down, her cleavage hung right in front of my face. Unlike her hair and eyes, there was at least one feature that hadn't been passed down to her daughter in full.

"Rachel helped me pick them," Emily said, obliviously finishing placing the glass. "I'll admit, at the time I wasn't too certain. But they've really grown on me."

"I didn't know the two of you were so close," I said, pointedly looking away.

She straightened and walked around the table, taking a seat on the far side in between Lou Ellen and Annabeth.

"For a long time we weren't," she said. "That's a regret of mine. One in a rather long list." She laughed in that way people do when they don't want you to think the super sad thing they've just said is actually sad. "But recently we've bonded a lot. We even discovered a shared interest!"

"What's that?" Annabeth asked.

"Hating her father," Emily said, completely serious. She took a long swig of her own amber drink— possibly tea. "She's been a dear ever since the divorce. I honestly don't know what the process would've been like without her."

I didn't know much about Rachel's mom. I was honestly surprised she even recognized me. All the times when I'd been over to Rachel's house, she would just be reading in a corner. The few times she spoke, she always kept it short. When she was our age she had gone to the same prep school Rachel had been forced to attend. Other than that, I couldn't think of a single interesting detail.

"We were actually on our way to visit your daughter," Annabeth said. "Things just went… a little wrong with our travel plans."

"She's all the way in Hawaii right now," Emily said. "That's a long way to go on short notice. I guess this is Oracle business, then."

Annabeth's gaped. "She told you about that?"

Emily giggled primly, covering her mouth with the back of her hand. Now that was the kind of trick a Clarion Ladies Academy education got you. "Oh, yes. She told me everything."

"And you believed her?"

Emily leaned forward over the table. "Disliking her father isn't the only thing we share. My daughter has particularly good eyes, and I happen to know where she got them."

Suddenly, inviting five dirty kids into her home didn't seem nearly so crazy. She was clear-sighted, just like Rachel, and knew exactly what we were. It was kind of relaxing to realize.

"So what's at stake this time?" she asked. "The fate of the world again, or just New York? Please tell me it's neither. I'd hate to see this place's property value go down so soon after buying."

"It's not that big," I assured her. "But there are lives on the line. If there's any way you can help us…"

I felt guilty asking when we hardly knew each other, but I was telling the truth. We really did need anything we could get.

Emily looked thoughtful. "Stay here for one night," she said, "and I'll find a way to get you west by the morning. Maybe a flight— wait, no, that won't work for you. Perhaps a train then… I'll find something."

"We'll pay you back," Annabeth promised.

For some reason, Emily just laughed. "Honey, don't bother. You have no idea how little money means to me right now. Instead, tell me about yourselves. What's this camp I've heard so much about like? Do you really fight with actual swords?"

The conversation went on but turned to lighter things. We told her stories about old quests, camp traditions, and embarrassing mishaps. Nobody touched on our current quest, but then the details weren't all that fit for polite company.

I was particularly invested in telling the story of how I first met Rachel when a touch under the table made me trip over my words.

Valentina wasn't looking at me, but it was definitely her hand that had begun rubbing my thigh.

"Is something that matter Percy?" Emily asked.

I shook myself and decided to just ignore it.

"Sorry. Anyway, like I was saying, we'd reached the top of the damn…"

I kept telling the story, but Valentina kept going too. Her hand slid progressively higher up my leg. Just as I was getting to the part about the Ophiotaurus, it took the plunge.

And I mean that literally. Into my pants.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Emily asked me, looking concerned. "Your face is getting red."

The others were staring at me. Suspiciously. I managed a smile.

"Yep. Perfectly fine. I just get very… excited when I tell a good story."

She let it drop, but from her expression the doubts were still there.

Valentina's hand stroked my quickly hardening cock. I don't know how she did it without looking or moving her upper body at all, but that didn't make it any less distracting. Her technique was flawless.

"So after I left the elevator, I'm running around basement without anywhere to go. I'm desperate, so I sprint for the bathroom— speaking of bathrooms, can I use yours? Like, right now?"

Emily blinked. But she said, "Just down the hall."

I muttered a thank you and rose, Valentina's hand sliding free as I stood up. I hobbled out of the room trying not to let my erection show. As I left, I heard another chair slide back.

"You know," Valentina said, "I need the bathroom myself. I think I'll go and wait my turn."

-

"You are so much trouble!" I growled, slamming my hips into Valentina.

"Oh yeah," she moaned. "Right there. Oh yeah. Oh, yes!"

She was perched with her luscious ass on Emily's marble sink countertop, her legs spread around me. We hadn't even undressed, just pushed our pants down enough for me to shove my cock into her.

"Can't you just make anything easy?" I demanded. "We just found a nice woman willing to take us into her home. Are you actually trying to get her to throw us out?"

"Fuck me!" Valentina moaned. "Ohh, bang the shit out of me Papi!"

I grabbed her by the ass, tearing her off the countertop and shoving her against the locked door. The hinges rattled as I thrusted into her roughly, trying to finish fast.

Valentina moaned and yelped. She laced her hands behind my head, gasping for air.

Just as I was getting close, I slammed a hand across Valentina's mouth, stifling her noises. I slowed down, trying to quiet the sound of the rattling door.

I'd heard footsteps.

They faded in from down the hall before stopping. Just when I was hoping whoever it was had passed by, a voice called out, "Percy? Is everything alright in there?"

The voice was Emily's.