Page 36 of Locking Down Qetesh

She took a deep breath. "Yeah, I do. It's been a while, and it is more fun with another person rather than on my own. But I've never actually had sex with someone who completely understood my situation, and I'm kind of curious about that."

"Sure. We can have sex if you want," I said.

"Are you sure? I don't want to push too far."

"It's fine, Tesha," I assured her. "And like you said, it'll be fun."

She let out a sigh of relief. "Okay, so, just how planned do you like it?"

"We don't have to write minutes to have sex," I assured her. "Though I do have ground rules."

"Sure. What are they?" She leaned against the counter and took a sip of her coffee.

"We use protection."

"Absolutely. Trust me, I've seen enough complications that come from gods having kids, I don't have any desire to add them to my life."

I stared at her for a moment, a little taken aback by the statement. Not because she was against having kids, but because I'd kind of assumed that she couldn't have them. Then again, she had said something about being able to control her fertility,and there'd be no need for that if she couldn't get pregnant.

"What?" she asked curiously.

"I didn't realise you could have kids."

"I have no reason to think I can't."

"And is that where demi-gods would come from?" The question wasn't really relevant to the current conversation, but I was too curious to not ask it.

"Oh, no. Any child I had would be either a dryad, or whatever the father was. They'd be mortal."

"Ah, I can see where the complications could come from," I said.

"Exactly. It's just not something anyone wants without being prepared. Is that your only rule?"

I cleared my throat. I didn't think I really needed to say this part, but there was no reason not to say it when we were clearly going to be putting these rules in place. "I don't want spontaneous sex at any point. We have the sex we agree to, and if we want more, we have to plan it."

"That's fine by me," she promised. "I like it that way."

"Good. So I guess that's it."

She raised an eyebrow. "Nothing about what we can and can't do?"

"I mean, it's the first time we're going to have sex, I was assuming that things would be fairly standard. Unless there's something in particular you like that isn't."

She nodded. "I've not done this part before. The actual talking about it. I guess I feel like I should have a checklist or something."

"We can do that, if it would make you more comfortable," I said.

"Do you have one?"

"No, but I'm sure someone does somewhere, all we have to do is look for it. I've never had one with anyone else."

"Not even with your ace ex?" Her dark eyes watched me intently, making me feel a lot safer than I had with anyone else. It was clear that she wasn't just assuming that everything would be fine just because we'd agreed to one thing.

"He was sex neutral, so we didn't have sex very much," I said. "It was just never really an issue."

"Ah." She frowned. "Maybe it's something we can do if we think it's really fun and we want to do more?"

"Sounds good to me." I checked around to make sure no one was paying attention. There was nothing in my contract that said I couldn't date another Jinx employee, but I didn't want rumours to start going around until we were ready for them.

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