Percy Jackson and the Curse of Lust

Canned applause bathed the room as we stood blinded, trying to blink our vision back.

The first thing I made out were empty seats. There were enough to fit hundreds of spectators rising toward the ceiling in rows. Aisles ran between them for easy access. It was like standing inside a massive movie theater, except we were the movie. 

Ahead of us, directly between the stage and the seats, a rectangle rose out of the floor. Curled in the center of it was a huge shape with a lion's body, a woman's face, and a bob haircut.

We'd met her before, or at least Annabeth and I had. It was the Sphinx— The riddle-loving monster Oedipus first killed.

"Welcome ladies and gentleman, to the show! I am your beloved host, S. F. Inks. Please, hold the applause."

She held a paw up toward the empty seats. At the same time, I watched her click a button with her claw, restarting the canned applause.

"Well, if you insist," the Sphinx said magnanimously.

"What's going on?" Emily said. "What is that?"

"I'm glad you asked, contestant!" The Sphinx's head whipped around, focusing on us. She licked her lips, revealing sharp fangs on her deceptively human head. "You are here to compete on the hottest new show Hephaestus TV has to offer. One-hundred-percent more embarrassment! One hundred percent more drama! This truly is… Hole in the Wall: Couples Edition!"

The Sphinx hit her button and the crowd noise restarted.

"This is wrong!" Annabeth shouted, trying to be heard. "Last time was bad enough! You were asking trivia! Now you aren't even asking questions, it's nothing but a game show!"

"Thank you for noticing." The Sphinx preened. "I changed businesses. Game shows are where all the views are these days. You know what they say— keep up with the times or get left behind."

Shit hit another button next to the one that controlled the 'crowd'. Before I could blink, I'd been teleported across the stage.

I appeared on a separate platform about fifty feet from my friends. Still positioned in full view of the empty seats, I was standing on a wide white line at the end of what looked like a runway. A wall faced me at the opposite end, mounted on tracks and covered by a huge cloth.

"The game is simple!" Sphinx announced. "Choose a partner. Escape the wall. If you can do that three times, you win! But if you fail…

A metal sheet slid away behind me, making me jump. A vat of green liquid was revealed. Old bones scattered along the floor, every speck of skin and sinew picked away.

"Well?" said the Sphinx.

I dragged my eyes off the unlucky contestants that came before me. "Sorry, what was that?"

"Choose a partner," the Sphinx chided. "Deliberating is fine to build tension, but not too long. Audiences have short attention spans these days."

My eyes darted to my friends. They looked as confused as I felt, but my mind raced. The Sphinx called this Hole in the Wall. Judging from the pool behind me, we would have to squeeze through something to keep from being knocked back. I stared at Clarisse for a few seconds.

"What?" Clarisse demanded, crossing her burly arms. "I don't like the way you're looking at my glorious muscles."

"I'll take Lou Ellen," I said.

"Me?" Lou squeaked. But the Sphinx was already mashing another button.

Lou appeared beside me, looking more than a little surprised. I wanted to say something to reassure her, but our host was already on a roll.

"Our contestants are determined!" she bellowed. She faced the camera near the stage, treating it to an uncanny smile. "That means its time… TO REVEAL THE WALL!"

The curtain fell to the floor. Lou and I stared at a wall of solid steel too wide to dodge and impossible to scale. With a whirring of gears, the wall lurched toward us. There were only two small, distinctly human-sized cutouts for us to squeeze through— one female, the other one male.

The female figure was on her knees, head pressed against the male at a very specific height.

"Gaps are sized perfectly for our contestants, the magic worked on them verified by Hecate herself!" the Sphinx announced happily. "Unfortunately for our contestants — but fortunate for you, viewers — clothes are not included in that." She smirked at us. "I'd start stripping, if I were you."

The wall was closing in. It was only moving a few inches a second, but the speed was increasing.

Lou and I burst into motion, clawing off our clothes. In her rush, Lou dropped her shirt too close to the edge. It flopped over, dipping into the green pool, and instantly one sleeve was eaten away. We started at it, gulping.

No wonder the bones at the bottom looked so clean. The entire pool was a vat of acid.

Lou and I stripped even faster after that. When we were finished, our clothes disappeared, teleporting back to where we'd first entered and reappearing in neat piles. The wall was moving faster now. Lou met my eyes and dropped to her knees.

Maybe it was the danger, or seeing Lou's naked body again, or maybe it was just bad luck. Whatever caused it, my cock was fully erect.

Lou licked it a couple times to work up her courage. Then she opened her lips as wide as they'd go.

I felt the moist embrace of her mouth envelope me, sliding lower. My hands held the back of her head. That was where the cutout's were: pressing the woman's head with both hands.

We were doing pretty well until I hit the back of her throat.

With nearly half my cock still to go, Lou ran out of room in her mouth. It wasn't like she wasn't trying. I saw her stretching and straining. I was sure her jaw would be sore in the morning. My cock was just too big for her.

The wall was getting close. Emily was covering her eyes. Valentina and Clarisse were shouting at Lou, telling her to stop messing around. For the first time in my life, I cursed not having been born much smaller between the legs.

"Oh no!" said the Sphinx. "A distinct lack of deepthroating has them in deep trouble! Will this be it for our heroes? Find out after a quick word from our sponsor!"

There was no time. I looked down at Lou, cross-eyed and straining without luck, and offered her a mental apology.

I shoved with all my strength.

Lou tried to cry out in surprise, but all it ended up doing was passing a peculiar vibration through my cock. I had to be halfway down her throat. Her mouth was stuffed and her nose was squished shut against my abs, cutting her off from drawing even half a breath. I tried not to feel guilty… or get carried away by how good it felt.

The wall rushed past us. The Sphinx wasn't kidding about the fit. I felt it brush my skin, but the gape was perfectly sized. With Lou affixed in position, nothing so much as clipped us, and we avoided what could've been the last bath we ever took.

As soon as we passed Lou disappeared. She reappeared next to the others, gasping for air and clutching her throat. As she coughed, the Sphinx frowned.

"Hmm," she said. "Something's missing."

"This is your show," I reminded her, a little bit annoyed that risking our lives and Lou's tonsils still hadn't satisfied the monster. "What's with that reaction?"

The Sphinx's face lit up.

"Reactions!" she said. "That's it! That's what we're missing! And I have just the way to fix it."

She started mashing buttons on her platform in a never-ending chain. Just as I was about to ask what we were waiting for, the first one arrived. A Harpy teleported into a seat near the back.

Chair by chair the audience space filled. Some, like giants, took up three seats by themselves, while other seats fit whole families of Stymphalian birds. Monsters blinked, disoriented, before starting to catch sight of us. They roared and squawked and clamored. I was sure they would all mob the stage, but when they tried to rise seatbelts strapped them down.

"Much better!" said the Sphinx. "Now we have live reactions! I can't wait to hear the way you dull brutes will clamor!"

"Yes, it'll be quite a sight won't it?"

When hundreds of monsters go silent, something is wrong. It's simply not in their nature. They're only obedient in front of a power much greater than theirs… sort of like middle schoolers in math class. So when the entire studio turned quiet enough to hear a drachma drop, my whole body stiffened up.

Heavy footsteps descended the aisle. Monsters kept their mouths and muzzles shut tight. I scanned the room for the source of the voice, only finding her when she had nearly reached the stage.

"Oh my," said the Sphinx. She turned to the camera. "We have a celebrity in the house tonight! Please, help me in welcoming—!"

"Echidna," I said.

The Sphinx shot me an annoyed look for stealing her thunder before quickly smoothing it out with a smile. "Even our contestants know the Mother of Monsters! What a treat, folks, to have an A-lister in attendance!"

The 'celebrity' stopped at the base of the stairs, right next to the Sphinx's platform. She cast slit pupils over the room. Her lavender sundress showed more skin (or in her case, scales) than anybody ever needed to see, while her arms and torso were squat and wide. She looked like she couldn't run fifty feet, and she probably couldn't. She didn't have to, not when you gave birth to almost every monster in existence and had them on a tight leash. She and her pet Chimera nearly killed me within my first week of being a demigod, and even now she was the only monster I ever fought that I never killed.

"So, what brings you here tonight?" the Sphinx asked, holding a microphone she scooped from somewhere out toward Echidna.

"Oh, it's quite simple actually," Echidna said. "My dear husband has been trapped under volcanos for the last couple millenia, and the one time he finally breaks free, he gets defeated without even paying me a visit. Well, a lady has her needs. And recently, a lovely thought just magically appeared in my head. Wouldn't that hero that Zeus had me test as a boy, who's all grown up now, make a wonderful toy?"

"Fascinating!" said the Sphinx. "What a heartfelt plea!"

"And on that note…" Echidna leaned a flabby, scaly arm on the edge of the Sphinx's platform. "Won't you be a dear and hand him over? I think I've already been quite patient, you see, and my children as well. They're just itching for a meal."

"Contestants are off-limits," the Sphinx said, still smiling. "They're mine. If you'd like some demigods, find your own."

The crowd began booing and jeering. I spotted a giant straining against his seat's restraints. But Echidna quieted them with a raised hand.

"If they fail, they're of no use to you anymore, isn't that correct?"

"True enough," said the Sphinx. "Losers aren't good for ratings."

"Give them to us then," Echidna said. "If they fail, I'll take them off your hands. Permanently. And I'll even leave a few of my children to use as you see fit, just as a show of faith."

"Deal!" the Sphinx announced into the microphone. "Now, if you will please take a seat."

Echidna paused, staring straight at me. We made eye-contact and I shivered. When her forked tongue darted over her lips, I shivered again. When she put her fingers in a heart shape, I almost vomited. Then she sauntered to the closest seat, shoving a stray Harpy to the floor to take it for herself.

"Enough delay!" said the Sphinx. "We have our competitors! We have a crowd! And now, we even have raised stakes! It's time to get the second round underway."

She paused expectantly, and I realized she was waiting for me to pick a new partner. A second wall had replaced the first one Lou and I beat. When I looked at my girls, one stood out.

Valentina had pushed her way to the front, jumping up and down with her hand raised.

"Me!" She said. "Ooh, ooh! I want to try!"

She started stripping before I even picked her. At that point, it would've just been rude not to.

Valentina appeared next to me as naked as I was.

"Isn't this exciting?" she said. "There's so many eyes on us! Doesn't it make you just want to put on a show?"

I stared at her. "You're turned on… by having monsters watch us?"

She pouted.

"No," she said. "I'm turned on by your big fat cock. But c'mon, you can't honestly tell me you thought you'd ever have sex in front of an army that wants to kill you. I'm all about trying new experiences."

"Begin!" cried the Sphinx.

The new wall revealed itself. This time, the man was the one on the ground. The female cut out was perched on him with her back arched, holding his hands.

"Get down!" Valentina squealed.

She pushed me so that I landed on my back. From there, she jumped down, spearing herself on my cock. She moaned immediately, tossing her head back and bucking her hips.

With a start, I realized these cutouts were moving. The woman's ass actually bounced and grinded against the man at a methodical pace. It should've been almost impossible to sync up your hips to a specific speed like that, but Valentina wasn't a daughter of Aphrodite for nothing. 

She moved perfectly— both to bring us pleasure, and to save our lives. But as beautiful as she was, dark skin glistening under the bright spotlights, I kept glancing back at the crowd. My head was screaming that it would only take one monster getting loose to be ambushed with our guards down. And there at the front Echidna was watching, a hungry expression I was sure I didn't like clear on her face.

"Focus, Percy," Valentina chided. 

I nodded. But seconds later I was back to scanning our surroundings.

It was too much to let go of. The danger pumped adrenaline through my body, making lying still almost impossible. My battle instincts had roared to life. Monsters bellowed and jeered, calling for us to make one mistake and end up as their lunch or worse.

Warm lips mashed into mine.

My eyes widened, Valentina stealing back my full attention. The wall was almost on us, and she'd completely abandoned the position, bending forward to kiss me fiercely.

Our tongues danced and slipped against each other. My movements were clumsy at first, but slowly experience took over, getting me in the groove. At the last second, Valentina pulled away.

"Attention on me, Baby!" she cried, slipping back into the proper position with less than a second to spare.

Her hips synced up. Her hands pulled mine into the proper place. The wall passed over us, wiping away a thin trail of spit that had still been spanning the gap between our lips.

"Ohh, that's the spot!" Valentina cried.

That moment of danger and the last-second save was exactly the thrill she volunteered for. I felt her cum, even though we'd hardly had sex at all.

She was teleported back to the others while still in the spasms of her orgasm. The monsters booed, but I felt nothing but relief as I struggled back to my feet.

"The competitors survive to the end!" the Sphinx announced. "It all comes down to the final round!"

The monsters' displeasure only grew louder. Unbothered, the Sphinx started her canned applause up again, giving the impression of a mixed crowd.

In the front row, Echidna yawned.

She didn't say anything. She didn't have to. Right away, the Sphinx's eyes locked onto her.

"Is our local celebrity bored?" she asked in a sickly sweet voice. 

"I would never disparage your show that way!" Echidna said. "But, Deary, don't you think that was a bit tame?"

"Tame?" asked the Sphinx.

"I don't mean to offend, of course. But surely to beat this show they'll need to do better than that."

The Sphinx rubbed her chin with two clawed fingers. C'mon, I thought. You're the host! Just tell her to sit quietly.

Finally, the Sphinx said, "I suppose we can step it up a notch."

A screen dropped from the ceiling above her, flashing the words: Random Participant! At the same time, the new wall revealed itself. This time the man was holding the woman off the ground, and he was the one moving— although just the word moving didn't really do it justice. He was pummeling her, pumping his hips faster than a mortal could ever manage, without the pace dipping for even a single second.

Bright lights flashed down from the ceiling, illuminating each of the girls that hadn't gone yet one at a time. Finally, after an extremely long few seconds, it settled over Emily.

That was better than it could've been. If I had to hold Clarisse in a position like this one, I think my arms would've given out before the wall got us. I just hoped Emily's mortal hips could hold out under that kind of pounding.

She appeared in front of me naked. I was reminded again that even among trophy wives, her body was the kind you'd get a case special-made for.

"We'll be alright, right?" she asked nervously.

I tried to project confidence. "We'll get through this," I said. "Just… maybe you won't be walking much for the next few days."

The wall started moving. She shut her eyes and held her arms out, giving me permission to lift her. With a deep breath, I got to work.

I bent forward, hooking my elbows behind the back of her knees. I had to look at the wall a few times to even decipher the position. By the time I had it right, my arms were looped under her legs and around the back of her head, holding her almost straight up.

Then came the hard part. I bucked my hips and started to speed up.

Emily's voice erupted right away. The danger certainly wasn't keeping her dry. My cock slid inside her easily, which was necessary if I was going to have any chance at this.

I sped up. Emily's voice erupted even louder, but it was drowned beneath the monsters roaring. The wall came closer.

Our friends were shouting encouragement. I could just about hear it, very slightly, over all the noise. Our bodies clapped together. Emily was definitely going to be sore in a few key places after this. But I still wasn't fast enough.

My voice joined Emily's, grunting as I demanded more from every muscle. The wall was bearing down on us. This one was faster than either of the two before it. Echidna leaned forward, smiling. The Sphinx was commentating but I couldn't make out a single word. 

With a desperate final wind, I pushed my hips to the speed of the wall just as it hit us.

Something went wrong.

I'd been so focused on the speed that I missed a key detail: the male figure was holding the woman's breasts. Without my hands containing them, Emily's huge rack was clipped. It wasn't enough to send us flying, but it destroyed our balance. My grip loosened. Emily tumbled toward the acid, screaming as she went.

"Urhng!" I grunted.

At the last second, I caught hold of Emily's red hair. Her face hovered inches above the acid, close enough for a few drops of spit to drip from her mouth and sizzle into nothing. Her scream of terror twisted into something else, something different, at the sudden tug on her scalp and the sensation of my cock deep inside her. As I pulled her back to safety, I could feel an orgasm shaking her body.

"I think I just developed a new kink," I heard Valentina say from beside the others.

"We did it!" I yelled as I helped Emily tenuously stand. "We beat your game! So release us!"

"Yes," Echidna purred. "Release them."

The monsters in the crowd rose, breaking through the bindings that had held them down, and all of a sudden I had a sick thought: Echidna was so calm because she'd been hoping this would happen. She cut a deal to get us if we failed the game show, and if we beat it, she planned to get us from the start. The moment we were released, we would be mobbed.

"We had a deal!" I told the Sphinx. "If we win, we survive! Letting her take us is breaking that! The integrity of this show will be ruined!"

The Sphinx didn't immediately answer. For once she was silent, sitting like the Egyptian monument atop her perch.

"Nonsense. You aren't breaking any promises, Deary," Echidna said. "They survived your show. You let them go. It isn't your fault what happens after. And anyway… Don't you think it would be wise to listen while my mood is so good?"

"The viewers will boycott!" I said.

"I can do much worse than any faceless viewer," Echidna promised. "And I'm right here."

She made a gesture and monsters streamed toward the stage. I ran for the others, but I wasn't going to make it, especially since I had to pull Emily along. I didn't expect that whole 'unable to walk' thing to catch up with us quite this fast. I watched the girls get ready as best they could, Annabeth drawing her knife and Clarisse brandishing her spear, but the odds were a million to one.

The monsters collided with an invisible barrier. Harpies were squished flat in an explosion of feathers. I watched a Laistrygonian bounce off and fall back, beginning to cry. Others pounded on the obstacle, all without any luck.

"Prizes must be handed out," the Sphinx said, hitting buttons on her control panel. "Otherwise, the people will never trust Hollywood!"

I was way too grateful to point out that her studio was about three states away from California.

Another teleport hit me, Emily, and all the others, the room fading around us. The last thing I saw was Echidna shaking her head.

"Bad choice," she said. "I'll have to look elsewhere for my meal now."

The studio disappeared along with its seats, cameras, and monsters. We reappeared in our van. I was back in the driver's seat. Faster than I ever had before, I cranked the wheel around and stomped the gas.

We squealed out of the parking lot and sped off into the West.