It's still a full-time job, even if I’ve been shirking my duties since coming back to the city.

She leans against me as she turns to Shiloh on her other side. “And don’t even try to tell me that you had anything resembling normal teenage years.”

I tense, but Shiloh just shrugs. “It was normal for me.”

I don’t like the shadows that flicker across her face when she talks about the past. She survived horrific things at the hands of her parents. We’ve touched on the subject enough for me to know that, even if I don’t know all the gory details. Her parents were religious and abusive, and they hurt her terribly. I clear my throat, determined to bring the conversation around. “You’re the Amazon heir. You can’t honestly tell me your childhood was normal.”

“Normal enough.” She tilts her head back to lean against my shoulder. “I’m sure most children don’t have weapons training and the various things my mother required of me, but Amazons take childhood very seriously. There was plenty of fun, too.” She gives a sexy little wiggle. “We can work on recreating other memories later, but today I was thinking of a tried and true experience.”

Even though I’m technically in on this, my stomach goes a little hollow. “What experience?”

The satisfaction in her voice is nearly overwhelming. “Truth or dare.”

Chapter 21

Monroe

This is all technically part of a plan for Broderick and me to seduce Shiloh, but there’s a reason I decided to go about it in this way. Truth or dare is a silly game, and it was sort of a rite of passage within my friends when I was a teenager. I want to share that experience with these two people who are rapidly becoming…important to me.

Neither of these two had much in the way of “normal” childhood experiences. Best I can tell, Broderick was second father to his brothers. It’s no wonder he’s got such a stick up his ass after being responsible for so many people for so long. And I’ve been training to be queen long enough to be able to identify a person’s fault lines. Broderick wants to protect the people he cares about, the people he feels responsible for.

We have that in common.

Truth be told, we have a lot in common.