Page 28 of Kings of Lust
Bad luck!
No. Did you finish with Cole?
Oh, I did. Though I’m not sure that he was referring tothattype offinishing.
Or maybe he was. I can never tell with them any longer.
Yes. I’m at home now.
Do you want me to come over?
The babysitter is here until tomorrow.
I didn’t really feel like leaving again, especially since the chances were he would try and use the advantages of hisdeal. But I felt obligated to ask, so I didn’t anger him further. Because I knew damn well how an angered Ferris got.
Come.
That was it, even though I waited for several moments to see thetyping...sign.
Just great...
I picked up something to wear the next day at school because the back and forth drives were making me dizzy, then proceeded towards Ferris’s estate.
To my surprise I found him in bed, half-asleep, waiting for me to join him, which I easily did, sneaking between the blanket, trying not to disturb him too much and risk waking up the monster. The one in his pants included.
‘I was thinking... Maybe I’ve acted the wrong way,’ he whispered, pushing aside a strand of hair from my face.
‘You don’t truly believe that, do you?’ I guess I was a poisonous bitch that night as everything that went through my head was leaving my mouth.
‘I do believe it.’ With one hand, he turned me so my back was glued on his chest, wrapping a warm arm around me. He was holding me impossibly close to his heart, giving me the peace I needed and washing a part of his sins away.
Strangely, it was like he understood exactly what I needed and was offering it to me, without asking for something in return.
At least not today...
How strange was the feeling to be having sex with one man and sleeping in the arms of another, while no matter on what side I would look from, they were always the enemy.
Chapter 7
When I woke up, Ferris was already gone, leaving me with a note that he had something to do today. Strange, since he usually didn’t leave the house, but I figured it was something of great importance to him to have gotte up that early. Well, maybe I didn’t know for sure how early it was since I hadn’t set the alarm and a few rays of sun were gleaming from up in the sky.
It was almost noon, I realized as I stared at my phone.
Too late for the Academy, at least for the first courses. I didn’t feel like going anyway. I didn’t have it in me to withstand Cole or his plans for me. Besides, I needed to prepare for something. There was one more answer I needed to receive, and the fact that Brax hadn’t given me a sign by now was starting to worry me.
With uncertainty pressing down on me, I returned to my home so I could spend the rest of the day with my family. I felt that I was betraying them somehow, at least when it came to the time spent with them. It was like constant guilt was weighing on me. Although I was giving every spare minute to them, I always felt I wasn’t doing enough.
I gave the babysitter time off, at least until the evening, then asked Nat and Seb to get dressed and took both of them to the park.
The place was so different from anything any of us had ever seen. Large playground areas, so green that one might think it was some kind of artificial vegetation, so contrasting with the grey pieces of pavement and the one square foot of grass that we were used to.
‘Bea, are you seeing this?’ Seb uttered, running towards some enormous slides. Of course, Nat wasn’t falling far behind, running to catch him while acting half her age. They weren’t free in so long… happy in so long.
‘Don’t run!’ I called at him since I would never hear the end of it from his doctors if they saw him running. Luckily, Nat caught up with him, grabbing him by the hood and making him act on my command. Not entirely though, since she couldn’t get him to stop, just slow down a little.
I chose a bench as they played. Maybe on a normal day, I would have joined them, but in those moments my body was feeling fifty, going on seventy at least. I just sat there, listening to the silence and watching the murky sky being not so murky any longer. Life was different in the Hills, and even the sun seemed to try harder to shine through the clouds of smog. But something was threatening to disturb everything. Like unspoken panic, plastered on everyone’s faces. A worry that was darkening their sights and making their tongues murmur with anxiety. I could see it everywhere I looked, from the women pushing strollers to the people walking in the street.
It was the beginning of the end as they knew it, cautious as to what untrustworthy politicians may have to say, and possibly some of them were as scared as the residents of the Pit who had nothing in common with the spirit of the riots.
