Page 86 of Original Sins (Dark Odyssey 6)

“Are you?”

“I am if you want me to.”

“Henry, I’m always going to want you to fuck me in the shower.” I feel like such a slut, but in the best possible way. I never talk like that, but these two guys have brought out a side of me I like.

“Let’s go then, Duchess.”

He picks me up and takes me to the shower, where we fuck for far too long.

When we eventually leave the house, he takes me shopping. While there, I touch base with Cordelia just to let her know I’m okay.

We’ve been messaging back and forth, and it’s perhaps a good thing I haven’t been back at the house, so Peter can’t keep an eye on me.

Cordelia doesn’t know which guard told Peter that information about me, so it suggests either someone is lying, or he managed to keep tabs on me in some other way.

I think it might be the former since Peter would have done more by now if he was watching me. I think I’d have a phone call from Dad issuing my death sentence for selling my body.

Being with Henry pushes all of that out of my mind as we spend the hanging out.

We decide to finish the day in the park with ice cream. That’s where we are now, playing a game of twenty questions. We’re both on our last three.

“It’s my turn, isn’t it?” I say, each time it’s my turn, I worry about what he’ll ask me. The game itself is breaking the rules of the contract.

I don’t even remember how we got playing. We just did and realized we were asking each other questions.

Henry nods, and a wicked smile crosses his face. “Tell me something true about you.”

I think about it, and I know what to say. “My mother died when I was twelve, and it felt like the world ended. Nothing has been the same since.”

“I’m sorry, Duchess.” Sympathy comes into his eyes. “Death can be the hardest thing ever. Mine died when I was twelve, too, and I get what you mean. Nothing was the same for me either .”

“I’m sorry about yours.”

“Thanks. My Dad remarried after, and life was a bitch. I got by because I had football. Until the day I didn’t.”

He hasn’t spoken about that yet, and I never expected him to. Of course, I had to pretend to be none the wiser when I saw football pictures of him in the house with his team.

“What happened?”

“I busted my leg in the middle of a game. We won, but that was the last game I played—my last touchdown and my last day as The Rocket. I was the fastest quarterback the team ever had. I got caught in a tangle for the ball. Someone rammed into my leg, and it felt like death by a thousand knives, but I still ran with it, knowing it was the end.”

He pulls out a cigarette from a pack in his jacket and tilts his head to the side with the cigarette slinking to the corner of his mouth.

He looks even sexier. “Mind if I smoke, Duchess?”

“No.”

“One last question, then we head home. I’ll go first. Ask me anything.”

I think of what to ask him. “What do you want most?”

“That’s a tough question.” He thinks about it. “I have all the money I can stand. When you have money like that, you want the little things people take for granted. What I want most is to be okay with my father, but that’s a story for another time.”

I wish I could be okay with my father too, and mine is a story I can’t tell him.

“Same question to you, Duchess. What do you want most?”

I don’t have to think about the answer to that. “I want to be able to live my life the way I want.”

---