“Let’s play a game!” Audria insisted after she took her drink. She pulled out a second bottle with a green liquid swishing inside and handed it off.
“What kind of game?” Roake asked, burping. They all groaned, and he just laughed.
“Truth or Dare.”
“What’s that?” Fordham asked.
Kerrigan looked at him skeptically. “Surely, you played Truth or Dare in the House of Shadows.”
Audria laughed. “It must be so dull there if you haven’t. Either you choose to answer a question truthfully or you perform some action. If you refuse one, you must do the other.”
“Ah. We called it Challenge or Consequence,” Fordham explained. “Everyone was challenged with a question, and if they refused to answer, they were given a consequence.”
“Ooh,” Audria gushed. “Let’s play that way!”
Kerrigan nudged him. “Look what you’ve done.”
“My apologies,” he said with a smirk that said he was nothing of the sort.
“I’ll start,” Audria chirped. “I challenge Noda.”
Noda sighed heavily. “Fine.”
“What is your deepest, darkest secret?”
Noda frowned and thought for a long minute. “That I’m not good enough for the Society and I can’t hack it.”
“That’s not a secret,” Roake said. “You already are good enough.”
Noda withdrew at the accusation. “Well, that’s what it feels like to me.”
The circle was quiet for a moment. That would be a heavy burden to hold.
“Your turn, Noda,” Audria said.
Noda swallowed. “I challenge Fordham.”
He sat up straight, anticipating the blow. Kerrigan guessed that the ones in the House of Shadows were brutal. If her short stint there was any indication.
“Who is your one true love?”
He balked. Whatever he’d been anticipating, that hadn’t been it.
Kerrigan held her breath. She waited to see if he would name Dacia. He’d bitten her head off at the mere mention of her name. She never brought it up again.
“Consequence,” he ground out.
Everyone blinked. They’d all thought it would be an easy question. He could have named anyone. Could have said he’d never been in love even. Instead he thought it so private that he wouldn’t even answer.
“Oh,” Noda said. “Uh… your consequence is to strip naked and run a lap around the greenhouse.”
Roake burst into laughter. “Oh man, this should be good. No way you’re going to do that.”
But Fordham rose to his feet, and then as they all watched, he unbuttoned his silk shirt. Kerrigan gulped at the first inch of exposed skin and then all the way down to his abdominals. He wrenched the shirt off, exposing his chest and arms. The group was in a hush as he went for his pants, releasing the ties and dropping them to the floor.
Audria gasped and turned away at the sight of his muscular thighs. Noda, too, blushed and covered her face. Kerrigan was peeking. How could she not?
Only Roake laughed through the whole thing. Perhaps he’d expected him to stop.
Kerrigan’s mouth was dry. She could no more look away than make a joke of it. For his eyes found hers in the dim lighting. She wanted to blush, but all she felt was… need.
But Fordham didn’t stop. He arched an eyebrow at her. A challenge, waiting for her to be embarrassed. But she wasn’t embarrassed. Just interested.
He hooked his thumbs into the waist of his undergarments and dragged them off too. Every muscled inch of him on full display. Her mind went fuzzy at the sight of him in all of his naked glory. A pulse shot through her body, straight to her center. And still she didn’t look away.
Fordham threw his pants into the circle, whirling away from the lot so they all got a flash of a perfectly muscled butt. Then, he was running.
Kerrigan’s eyes rounded as he dashed away.
Roake whistled. “Well… I might be more into males than I thought.”
All the girls broke down into giggles.
“A body like that would make anyone interested,” Noda said.
Audria shook her head. “I have a horribly embarrassing question.” They all looked at her in question. “Does it always look like that?”
“Does what?” Noda asked.
“It,” she said, gesturing between her legs.
Now, they all fell backward in laughter at the question. No one answered, and Audria just snatched the green bottle back and downed it to hide her blush.
Fordham returned moments later, pulling his clothes back on as efficiently as he had taken them off. “My turn. I challenge Roake.”
“I’m ready. Lay it on me.”
“How old were you with the first woman you ever lay with?”
Roake sputtered. He puffed his chest up, and they’d all been around him enough to know when he was about to bluster.
“The truth, or you take a worse consequence,” Fordham demanded.
Roake deflated. “I mean, how old was I? I was… well, I haven’t… precisely.”
“You haven’t?” Audria gasped.
“You just asked if it always looked like that! As if you’d never seen one!” Roake shot back.
Audria giggled. “Yes, but I’m not the one always bragging about my conquests.”