Chapter 22 Kali #2
The beating bass gradually subsided and a slower and smoother rhythm replaced it. A sensual melody weaved through the crowd like the rare snowfall in winter, the large snowflakes formed from music floating and swirling as the chatter hushed.
Jayla stepped into the light and strolled to the front of the stage like she owned the place.
She spread her arms wide, her smile sparkling.
“Welcome to Vice. We all know why we are here, so let’s cut to the chase.
I know you all have missed our shows, as we took a break,” she paused, surveying the mood of the place, “but we had a good reason.”
Tense silence enveloped the room, and I wondered how it would taste if I cut a piece of it with my knife I’d left in my bedroom.
Her smile turned devious, her signature tell something was about to come, and I could barely stay still from anticipation.
“It’s been a long time since we had our own second-in-command join us on stage,” she announced.
The crowd went wild. I covered my ears as everyone around our table yelled, whistled, and stomped their feet as loud as they possibly could.
Ryder joined us, shouting something incomprehensible, and plopped down across the table.
Minutes ticked by before everyone calmed down enough for Jayla to continue her speech about tonight’s participants.
I didn’t recognize a single name besides Zion.
“What’s happening?” I asked.
“Everyone here knows Zion’s…habits. And people love to watch him get on the other side of them. Enjoy the show.” Sadira raised her drink with a nod. “I know I will.”
An unexpected jolt of pain bloomed on my bare shoulder, and I almost leaped out of my seat.
Gedeon slid into a chair on my left. He looked me up and down, from the slit in my skirt, exposing my thigh, to the leather strips of my top clasped around my neck. “I should have expected Jayla to set me up.”
“Set you up?” I inspected the pink flush on my shoulder. He’d bit me. Again.
Instead of answering, he smirked.
I ignored him, not granting him a reply to what was probably supposed to be a compliment of sorts, but the presence of him sitting so close to me beckoned me to squirm in my seat.
The noise in the bar hushed, and the rogue clangs of glasses being put down on the tables died out.
Zion marched onto the stage with an escort of two: a generously curvy woman clad in a pair of leather shorts hugging her wide hips and a black mesh shirt with nothing underneath, and a shirtless man with a stony face, the single light bulb above the stage accentuating the contours of his muscular physique.
Pulling a pair of scissors from the waistband of his leather skirt—had he and the woman coordinated their outfits on purpose?—the man began cutting Zion’s t-shirt from the collar to the hem.
Dim light deepened Zion’s slight frown as he scanned the bar behind us while the duo worked to remove the fabric. He spotted us, and the wrinkles on his forehead smoothed out. A lopsided smile took their place.
They tugged the scraps of his t-shirt off, revealing his scarred torso, and a need rose to sink my teeth into those sharp shoulders. Whoever had created them, they’d undoubtedly done it for this exact purpose.
As the woman bent him over the table, her full breasts swayed under her loose, transparent shirt.
The man cuffed Zion’s wrists to the far end, so his upper body stretched out and his hips dug into the edge of the table.
He tugged on the restrains, but they had no give, and snickers rolled over from the spectators.
Fingers curled around my wrist, and Gedeon kissed the stitches through the gauze on my palm. “Eyes on the stage.”
His order furled around me like a tether, yanking my attention to the raised platform and the show.
There was definitely something wrong with me.
The woman passed a shimmering silver handle from her right to her left hand, and multiple black thin strips, the leather matte and seemingly soft, whooshed in the air as she flicked it back and forth.
Satisfied with the results, she drew a high arch in the air with the instrument and the leather landed on Zion’s bare back with a crack.
I gasped sharply. It had to have hurt.
At least a dozen whips fell, and his back flushed, its shade certainly similar, if not identical, to my cheeks. A few strikes later, the woman gave the instrument over to the deeply tanned man, who continued in a harsher manner, and bright red streaks appeared across Zion’s rippling muscles.
But he didn’t ask them to stop. Not once.
A soft kiss landed on my inner wrist. “It’s called a flogger.
It can be gentle.” Gedeon matched each whip with a feather-light touch of his lips.
“It can hurt.” He nipped on a sensitive spot, and a prick climbed up my nerves.
“It can bring you both pain and pleasure. Put you on edge. Make you crave more. Beg for it.”
The frequency of the whipping increased and so did his barely-there kisses. I had to clench my thighs to prevent a whimper from escaping.
With my legs trembling from the non-relieving tension, I somehow managed to ask, “Why did you take me?”
Warm breath trailed from my wrist to my inner elbow, and he murmured in my ear, “For years, I have grown our compound.”
Crack.
“I have killed, protected, and punished.”
Crack.
“I have sacrificed everything to get where we are.”
Crack.
“I gave and gave.”
Crack.
“And I wanted to take.”
Crack.
“Then I saw you in that clearing.”
Crack.
“You did not flinch at the sight of me.”
Crack.
“You showed no fear, worry, or trepidation.”
His hand rested on my nape, his fingers idly stroking. “Your faint smile was enough for the chains to lock me to you. And from how you stomped over to me with such ferocity, seeking to punch me square in the jaw, I instantly knew it was you who I wanted to claim.”
“Who says I wanted to be claimed?” Independence was the precise reason why I’d done what I had. Why my nightmare haunted me. How I’d earned my relative freedom in Ilasall and lost it because of them.
Blond hair swayed around the man’s stony jaw as he slowly dragged the leather along Zion’s spine. A split second later, another strike echoed.
“Because you need someone to hold you up, to follow you to the end.” Gedeon’s thumb stroked idly along the side of my neck.
“Because no matter how lost you are, you keep carrying on, keep fighting. Because you need someone to free you from yourself.” He removed his palm from my nape, and the emptiness gnawed at me, tempting me to lean into him.
“I’m perfectly fine by myself,” I muttered, though my chest tightened at what now sounded like a lie.
I expected an instant arrogant remark, a smirk, something of an answer, but it was as if he hadn’t heard me. Dimness deepened his clenched jaw as he fixated on the stage where Zion’s back moved with his breaths.
“What happened between you?”
They unchained Zion, helped him get up, and conversed with him in such hushed voices I couldn’t hear them despite sitting so close to the raised platform. Once he nodded, they moved him to the chair in the center of the stage and tied his wrists to the backrest.
Gedeon finally spoke. “Something I cannot undo.”
So I wasn’t the only one with secrets. “If you could, would you go back and change it?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Is that why you’re okay with him”—I searched for words—“touching me?” Not once had he objected to Zion bending my body as he desired, toying with my senses until they were reduced to utter giddiness, and I swayed on my feet after he released me.
Gedeon would merely give me a restrained grin and stride away, totally unconcerned.
“Yes and no.” Gedeon’s lip corner twitched upward.
“But you should know that no one besides us is allowed near you, Kali. I do not share.” His tone took on a serious note as he stared at Zion.
“His case is different. He can be with you, and you can be with him, but if you seek others, or if they themselves so much as try to approach you, remember this.” I shivered as his voice lowered.
“There will be nothing left of their body to burn. I will extract their skeleton and feed the bones to the dogs as chewing toys, and Zion will bring you a bouquet made from their organs with their intestines serving as a ribbon.” Pinching my chin, he twisted me to him and tugged on my bottom lip. “Is that clear, little death?”
My answer flew out of me as a whisper without much thought.
“Yes.” His warning, the need for control, for ownership, opposed my determination to keep my independence, but at the same time, the goosebumps skating up my arms sought to persuade me into succumbing to his demand in the shape of a statement.
No one had ever expressed any wish to protect me before them two. Or wanted me for me, not for what I could provide. It made it so much more difficult to hate them, to resist them.
“Good.” He squeezed my thigh. “Although, there is one more thing you should know. Zion is on stage for you.”
The man knelt in front of Zion, removed his sweatpants, and tossed them aside.
The woman walked behind him and skimmed the leather strips of the flogger all the way down his front and back up to his chest. “How many?” she asked, loudly enough for the spectators to know the question was directed at them.
“Six,” Gedeon declared, not giving anyone else a chance to answer.
Chuckles broke out behind us. What did they have planned?
The man’s head lowered, and he took Zion inside his mouth. From where our table was, I couldn’t make out every detail, Ryder and Eislyn partially obstructing my view, but judging by how his head dropped back, he was into it.
But it didn’t feel right, not like when they’d been whipping him.
His hips bucked, and his low grunt rolled off the stage, finding its home in my ears.
“Stop,” the woman commanded.
Zion’s chest heaved as a minute ticked by, the wait as heavily loaded as the things Gedeon had omitted in his answers when I’d inquired about their relationship.
The woman said, “That’s one. Five to go,” and murmured something in Zion’s ear. The man resumed bobbing his head up and down as Zion bore into us, the intensity of his gaze raising even more questions.
“There’s more,” I said in question to Gedeon.
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
“Something I should not have.”