Chapter 35 Zion
ZION
“You want me to do what?”
Now this was a first. Gedeon usually prohibited me from playing with our people, not allowed or asked for it.
“I need you to take them to the underground. Scare them for a day or two, but their blood has to stay in their bodies,” he said, then added, “All of it.” He raised his empty glass as Kali passed our table, dressed in a black t-shirt with Vice embroidered in white thread above her chest.
She was so happy to receive it from Jayla this morning, having officially completed her full two weeks of training, that instead of grimacing at me lounging in my corner at Vice, she’d ran over to me, kissed my nose, grinned, and later brought me a beer and a sandwich, all before the bar opened at nightfall.
The sweet curl of her smile and the sound of her laugh had liquefied me.
And that, in addition to the need to tug her into my lap and taste her, smell her, feel her, was overpowering.
Every time her perky ass swayed as she weaved between the tables, I had to bite my fist—only that prick of pain alleviated the need to chase after her.
Gedeon’s rule forbidding me from taking it further until she had the tattoo inked on her was scrambling my brain.
Despite the multitude of cold showers or endless sessions of getting myself off thinking about her or them together, I craved more.
Her whimpers were as intricate and fine as the rest of her.
It took everything in me not to tie him up beside her in my underground and have my way with both of them.
“Here you go. Anything else?” Kali set a new glass on the table for Gedeon and scrutinized my expression for what felt like not enough time of her exploring me.
“What did you do to him?” she asked Gedeon.
“This”—she motioned at what was visible above the wobbly table we occupied—“is not right. He looks too calm. It’s disquieting. ”
There she was in her utter perfection. Her plump lips wrinkling, ready to spit arrows, those perky breasts I’d yet to taste propped up by her folded arms, the dip of her waist leading to the swell of her hips.
“We’re proud of you,” Gedeon said, looking at her like that black-as-a-night kitten used to do to him. “You have worked hard these past weeks.”
“Yep, this is freaking me out. I don’t know what has come over you two, but it’s freaky.
” She shook her head, and the black cloud of her hair whooshed around the mistrust creasing the angles of her face.
“I’m out.” Twisting on her heel, she strode off to the round table with a group of five customers three rows from us.
I didn’t notice I was rising out of my chair until Gedeon’s hand on my forearm stopped me. “Sit down.”
“I’m fucking one of you and I don’t care which,” I snarled, loud enough for him to hear over the rumbling music that coaxed my…needs out.
My patience was non-existent at this point.
For the life of me, I was starving. Thinking about hauling someone to my bed or bending them over the table or taking them outside for all to see gnawed the back of my head incessantly, pestering me for it to be one of them and pinching ferociously if a thought about another had the courage to cross my mind.
“Five days,” he said, carefully, his voice controlled.
I blinked. “What?”
“Her.” Gedeon gestured to her huddled with Tarri and Jayla at the bar.
Kali clutched the edge of the polished countertop, her back to us, her shoulders rocking. She said something to them, and their trio very inconspicuously glanced at us before doubling down and laughing so earnestly Jayla had to wipe her eyes.
Kali’s joy, even on our account, was contagious. Like a virus infecting my system to the point I dreamed about hearing more of it. Tasting it. I bet its flavor would carry notes of smoke and honey—peppery and sweet.
Delicious.
“As I was saying…” Gedeon continued. “Take them both to your playground and play. No scars and no additional broken bones, but everything else goes.”
I picked up my glass and welcomed the chill from the condensation. Five more days. The finish line of my suffering was near. Or at least a partial end.
“I’ll deal with them.”
The scent of evergreen plants and jars of all kinds of citrus-smelling concoctions drifted out of the wide-open door of the store, the fragrance carried by the autumn breeze rustling the reddening maple leaves around my boots.
Tiny bushes and grasses peeked out of the cracks in the asphalt of the street I was trudging along.
Such small and perilous lives the greenery had chosen.
My boots crunched them one by one, and their transparent yet with a greenish or yellowish tint sap coated my soles in their stickiness, their tenacious grip on survival.
The last three nights I’d spent in the underground playing with the two morons, who’d decided to start real fights in our training rings, had affected me more than I’d expected.
Two brothers of one of the leaders of the mob, who had extorted our shop owners, had attacked their family members peacefully going through training.
They’d claimed their sister was supposed to have been given a second chance and blamed her execution on the victims, complaining that the owners shouldn’t have babbled about them to us and instead solved the matter peacefully themselves.
They hadn’t. Their friends had implied they’d mess around with Dorvan’s kid, so they kept their mouths shut. And threatening a defenseless child who couldn’t read yet? I had to draw a line somewhere.
Gedeon and Ezra had talked to both of the idiots after the first incident, and they’d seemed to have calmed down.
But then it happened the second time and more bones got broken.
So with Gedeon’s permission, I’d dragged them both by their collars to my underground to drill into their meager heads that disobedience wouldn’t be tolerated.
If they believed their sister had done right, they shouldn’t live here.
Seeing them stumble out of the basement this morning and into the street, where they exclaimed at the bright daylight and dispersed in different directions, had been surprisingly entertaining.
I had chained them up, their mouths plugged, and their vision obstructed to cause sensory deprivation, and left the repulsive idiots to rot for two days and nights without food or water.
Well, in a sense. I had turned on the faucet on a steady flow, so a non-ceasing trickle of water hit the metal sink at equal intervals, the echo of each impact quietening just in time for the next drop to shake you up.
Drip.
Drip.
Drip.
If any gray matter in their brains had remained in a functional condition after the forty-eight-hour game we’d played, hopefully, the principles of freedom, not coercion, had imprinted themselves on the inside of their thick skulls.
If they hadn’t, my knife would. They were walking the edge of a blade with me—their impending death—below them. Bloody, slow, and addictively painful.
I stuffed the package I had picked up from Lucia’s shop under my left armpit and rocked on my heels at the sound of the thin brown paper crinkling from the pressure.
My muscles vibrated from pent-up energy and excitement.
Eislyn had taken out my stitches an hour ago and relented from her infuriating insistence that I restrained from any intense movements.
Right on the mark of three days before I would’ve done it without her permission anyway.
Kali’s squeal rolled over from the far side of our field hosting our makeshift-turned-permanent training rings, and my steps slowed in admiration of her curves. Wider hips, sharp shoulders, and a waist created just for my arms.
Only too many clothes covered her, and knowing the black leggings and the white long-sleeved, tight-fitting shirt she wore were hers and not mine irked me.
Once she had the tattoo, she was wearing my clothes or none at all, available day and night for me to play with.
She could also serve as an irresistible bait to get Gedeon to come.
I pulled my sweatpants away to adjust myself, but the shift of fabric spurred my imagination to conjure up a visual of her hands on me, and an appreciative groan rumbled in my throat.
Stalking over to the far end of the field, where Eli had claimed a few training rings for himself and was teaching a knife-throwing lesson to their group of four, I wondered who she visualized in place of the target she hit on the very edge, way off center, and jumped, laughing and hugging Tarri.
Kali glanced back and spotted me. “Oh, no.”
“Who let you out?” I put the package on the bench and pulled her flush with me, stroking the pulsing artery along her long neck with my thumb.
“No one.” She squirmed in my hold. “Come on, let me go. I need to train. We have to beat Ava. You can grind yourself against me another day.”
“It’s you who will do that.” I moved her hair to fall over her back, kissed the goosebumps on her neck, and whispered in her ear. “And then you’ll come chanting my name.”
She stilled. “Make me.”