Chapter 18
Dear me/ journal/ god.
It’s over. We are so dead.
Do you remember the sad clown ghost prank from two weeks ago? Well, in order to get back at me, Loch Ness poured a whole bunch of sugar sticks into all the pockets of my backpack last week to make everything sticky and I didn’t know.
Long story short now our school has ants.
“Die, peasant!”
I crumpled the jack of diamonds in my palm and threw his sorry ass toward the fire. The slimy bastard bounced clean off an invisible shield, flopping undramatically onto the rug.
So I stomped on him.
Dominic snorted into the bottle of whiskey before taking a sip.
“And you!” I pointed an accusatory finger at the half-peeled duct tape hanging off his rosy cheek. “Your tongue was cut off three turns ago.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t drink,” he pointed out.
I snatched the bottle out of his hand, pressing the tape back over his mouth. We’d run out of gluttony cards two turns ago. Greed was scarce. And wrath was on its last legs.
I dropped back down in my seat, frowning at my hand.
One four. One six. One nine. One jack.
All hearts.
I took another sip, sinking a little further into the warm, cozy embrace of the whiskey buzzing through my blood. “I’ll draw again.”
Dom peeled the tape back off. “Overruled. You have more than three cards in your hand. You have to play something.”
“We can just change it,” I said, fingering the edge of one card.
“Either play something, Lice, or forfeit.”
I pinned him with a half-hearted glare. “You’re doing a lot of talking for someone without a tongue, Dom. Remind me what the rules are around not following through on assigned consequences? Something about it being grounds for disqualification…?”
“You may draw,” he conceded before putting the tape over his lips again.
I smirked, pulling another card from the thinning deck.
The two of hearts.
Darn.
Chewing the inside of my cheek, I played the card, placing it next to my delegate. “My king is bored and demands a two-minute break. Entertain him.”
Dom scribbled on his notepad. Be more specific.
I sagged deeper into the squishy cushions, resting my cheek against the buttery leather as I tried to think. It wasn’t easy, what with all the heady contentment floating through me. “I don’t know,” I muttered, closing my eyes for a moment. “But make it good. He’s so bored he might fall asleep.”
Something nudged at my forehead, prompting me to open my eyes.
It’s almost 4. Forfeit so we can sleep.
I sighed, studying him. “I only have hearts left.”
He gave a slow, lazy blink, then flipped his hand to show me. All hearts.
“Okay, so then you forfeit.”
He tossed the cards to the side and picked up his pen. All I’m asking you to do is keep the bandages on. That’s it. Just quit.
“Not unless we agree on a draw. I really need that night off.”
He wrote something, then scratched it out, opting instead for: What’s Thursday night?
“Why does that matter?”
Because if you’re planning on spending the evening popping balloons at the children’s hospital, I’ll need to suck it up and take one for the team.
I’d have tried a little harder to swallow my smile if I weren’t so exhausted. “Nothing that exciting, unfortunately. Rachel’s been asking me to do drinks with her coworkers for months, and I’m running out of excuses as to why I can’t go.”
He snorted. Why? Is she trying to get herself fired?
My eyelids drooped again. “The opposite. She thinks they’ll love me. Her boss, especially.”
The silence that followed stretched for so long, I almost lost my grip on consciousness before a low, silky voice pulled me back. “So it’s a date.”
My eyes barely opened; they’d grown so heavy.
“Kind of. Rach thinks we’ll hit it off, and she knows me better than anyone, so here’s to hoping…
” A small smile tugged at my lips. “Maybe we’ll go back to my apartment after drinks, and I’ll bring out a deck of cards… this game’s more fun than I thought.”
More silence. “It’s our game.”
“It’s a sex game,” I mumbled, too tired to worry about my filter. “Remember the conqueror rule?”
If the two delegates were the king and queen of the same suit, they’d seize command of the greater court, their suit would become law, and their sin would touch everything.
“I could rig it,” I went on. “Have him pull the king of hearts, give myself the queen. It would be mayhem.”
Sexy mayhem, but mayhem nonetheless.
“Can you believe we came up with this game in high school?” I said, failing to pry my eyes back open. “Imagine hearts rule, and you play a wrath card. Lust and punishment combined, for however many minutes. How many PG-13 dares or commands can you think of that would fit that criteria?”
Gluttony would translate to body shots. Or food being licked off body parts.
With greed, you could demand to be pampered with pleasure.
The game was rated so R, it felt wrong to think too hard about it in public.
Dom said something else, something that my head flagged as too crucial and important to forget, but I couldn’t fully make it out before losing the battle and sinking into the snuggly depths of sleep.