Chapter 21 Gedeon
GEDEON
Not a single feather cloud floated in the bright blue sky. As if the heat from the sun had incinerated any and all fluffy intruders who could potentially mess with my plan.
I ripped off my t-shirt and tossed it on the beach blanket spread out in the shade of a cliff where the temperature bordered a tolerable level.
Seagulls soared the sky, not daring to seek the land, and their cries pierced the roar of the waves crashing on the shore and surrendering to the sea, pulling them back into its depths.
“Smart.” Sadira came to a stand at my left.
A breeze ruffled Zion’s hair as he lounged on his back, hands hooked behind his head. He had made his refusal to leave Kali’s side until she awakened painstakingly clear, and now hogged the majority of the white-and-blue-striped blanket.
Kali’s eyelashes fluttered as she rolled onto her side, her palm wrapped in gauze sliding under the dark blue folded towel Zion had placed under her head after I had carried her unconscious to the tiny bay not many knew about.
“You are going to have to be more specific,” I said to Sadira, focused on Kali about to wake up. I was not missing it this time.
Sadira snorted and nudged my side with her hip.
“You know what I mean,” she said, tracking the ball drawing arches high in the air as Jayla, Ryder, and Eli passed it between them along the shoreline, while Eislyn and Ezra unloaded food and drinks from our bags.
“You didn’t bring her here alone with you two. ”
An animal cornered in an unfamiliar environment by a predator hunting them always did one thing—run.
As such, inviting the group here guaranteed two things: she would not feel attacked, and even if she tried to flee, there was nowhere to go.
This secluded bay lay more than a hundred miles away from our compound and more from Ilasall.
“Catch!” Eli warned, and Sadira caught the ball with a thump.
“Don’t act like an egotistical brute and she might actually have fun today,” she said, striding backward. She threw the fraying-at-the-seams ball back to the group and sprinted off to join them.
“How many more times do you plan on drugging her?” Scowling, Eislyn rummaged in the duffel bag filled with water bottles. “You do know she will do the same to us one day if you don’t stop, right?”
“We didn’t drug her. They did.” Ezra sunk his teeth into a peach and flicked the juices flowing down to his elbow.
“If she wants to drug them in revenge, I’ll help her.
” Eislyn punched his shoulder, and he added, “You know I’m kidding.
It’s not like I would break into your med supply storage to get what I need. I’m not as insane as him.”
“She looks heavenly in her sleep,” Zion remarked. “And having her head in my lap while we drove here was worth it.”
“It doesn’t matter who knocked her out. The rest of us didn’t stop them. That’s the point. Make sure she drinks this.” Eislyn passed me a water bottle and dabbed the condensation left on her palms onto her nape. “It’ll help to flush out the meds.”
“How long will the pain meds work for?” I asked, pressing the cool steel bottle on the back of my neck.
“Four to six hours. She’ll have to take a pill after. But Gedeon, it’s really not good to have her swim in the sea while the stitches haven’t been removed.”
“I know.” But some rules were meant to be broken. And I had ensured we had a sufficient supply of antibiotics and pain meds for her.
A sleepy grumble attracted my attention to Kali flinging an arm over her eyes.
Hope simmered in her to break loose and return to life as she knew it, but I was going to crush it down to nothing.
When I had arrived back at our compound last night and saw her sleeping soundly in bed, an idea had popped into my head.
She loved the stars.
I wanted to pluck them out of the sky and offer them to her on a silver platter so she did not have to visit the damned forest in search of them but, unfortunately, my dream was unattainable.
Taking her to the seaside to spend the day swimming and the night marveling at her gazing at the stars was the best I could come up with.
If my plan brought unsatisfactory results, an option to lock her up in her room remained. I had already done so.
Although I would prefer it if she chose to stay. Free will, as they said.
“What the…” she groggily trailed off, blinking the bleariness away. With elbows propped on the blanket, her mouth dropped open as she gaped at the endless horizon.
“Here.” I situated myself at her other side and handed her the bottle. “You must be thirsty.”
“Where are we?” Kali licked her parched lips, her head swiveling around. Increment by increment, confusion melted into realization. She leaped up and hurled the bottle at me. “You drugged me? Again? What the fuck is wrong with you?”
I ducked to avoid getting hit, and the bottle rolled on the beach blanket, ending its journey at the hem.
Nothing could put out the fight in her. Not drugs, not being taken by two strangers, away from what you held as your home with no option to come back. A fierceness that called me to think about her time and time again.
Her feet tangled from the leftover meds coursing through her system, and she swayed, losing her balance and falling.
Zion caught her and licked the tip of her nose. “So tasty.”
“Something is clearly very wrong with you,” she sputtered and pushed him away, scooching closer to me.
Her back collided with my shoulder. Startled, she crawled to the edge of the blanket and hugged her knees. With her chin resting on top of them, she squeezed her eyes shut. Like she was wishing for a bad dream to end and to wake up in a different place.
If she thought I was her nightmare, she was going to learn to love them.
Her wish remained only a wish, and she sighed heavily.
Emotions warred on her expressive face as she surveyed her surroundings once again, her forehead wrinkling and smoothing out, the tiny muscles working overtime, and soon the rumble of the sea dissolved her fury into wonder and the wind tousling her hair melted her shock into astonishment.
“I’ve never seen it before.” She covered her ears and half-shouted, “It’s so loud.”
Awe only highlighted her beauty.
I gently pulled on her wrists so she could hear me. “Wiggle your toes in the sand.”
Warily, she stuck her bare foot into the sand and giggled. “It’s soft!” She slapped a hand over her mouth and that frown popped back up. Gradually, it dissolved as the foaming waves lured her mouth to lift into a subtle, unintended smile. “We’ve been this close to the ocean all this time?”
“The sea. We are about a three-hour drive from our compound. The ocean is about a thousand miles that way.” I gestured along the shoreline to where sand fused with the sky.
“Why?” she asked, watching Zion leap up and jog to the sea. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Drink.” I offered her the water bottle she had aimed at me.
“Why would I? You won’t answer my questions either way.” She huffed, concentrating on dipping her toes in the sand, the grains sifting between the gaps, and tilting her head aside at the crashing waves on the shore, the ground darkening in areas the sea had claimed for its territory.
“A deal, then. Drink the water, and I will give you the answers you seek.” It had worked the previous time.
She agreed to anything for a price, and the predictability made me consider the possibilities of what she must have gone through to develop a need to search for hidden meanings.
Mistrust had implanted its roots deep within her.
She drained the water, grimacing each time I raised my eyebrows at her for taking a break between the gulps.
“Explain. Now,” she demanded.
“I thought you would like it.”
“That’s not an explanation.”
“It is.”
“Not if I have a say in it.”
“You do not.”
“You have no hold over what I have and don’t.”
“And yet that is all you are going to get.”
Growling from frustration, she zeroed in on Zion coming back. His abdomen muscles tensed as he stretched his arms above his head. “Come swim with me.”
She put the empty bottle on the beach blanket and buried her feet back in the sand. “I don’t know how. They don’t teach us that in the city.”
“I will teach you.” I reached for Jayla’s backpack in the heap of others at the edge of the blanket.
“You will not,” she spat out with a lovely bit of indignation. “I won’t let you so much as touch me.”
“You already did,” I said, rummaging in the mottled brown leather bag.
She stammered for a retort, but came up short.
Chuckling, I handed her a few clothing items Jayla had packed. “Here, you can go change behind the cliff there.” I motioned toward a narrow path leading out of the bay.
Suspicion was evident in how fast she snatched the clothes from me. Like a child about to be cheated out of a lollipop.
She stepped out of the shade on the sun-heated sand and yelped, “It burns!”
“I can carry you,” Zion offered up.
She jabbed a finger at him. “Not a chance.”
Once she marched off, the rush of the sea called to me, and I followed its trail starting at his neck, the glittering droplets of seawater trickling into the hollow of his throat and down his muscled torso.
Multiple scars marred his front, from his chest to his green shorts glued to his hips, accentuating every curve of his body.
My tongue dried out.
I willed the sensation away. Physical attraction could pull me to any person and, ordinarily, I would satisfy the urge to get it over with, but he was not someone I could consider ordering to crawl to me.
He was worth too much.
“Something you want?” Zion scratched his chest, and lines of pink appeared where his nails had irritated his skin, right underneath two linear, crisscrossing scars below his right peck.
“Go swim. I will wait for her.”