Chapter 38 Gedeon
GEDEON
She drummed her fingers on the collar locked around her neck as I led us into the hall with Zion trailing behind. The black leather complimented her spectacular dress in a way that declared you could look, but if you had the balls to try anything, your bones would become mine and your blood Zion’s.
The backless dress Jayla had picked out fit Kali immaculately. She was the personification of death cloaked in the night, a creature with a sharp jaw for a scythe and forest-green eyes flaming with the fire from the souls she had claimed. Only a crown was missing.
Celebratory shouts and cheers greeted us with raised glasses and Jayla shouted from beside Ava in the corner, “Finally! Now go fuck yourselves!”
“Ahm…I’m not even going to ask what she meant,” Kali mumbled as she beheld the crowd filling every corner of the vast hall except the far end, where a large desk stood on the raised dais.
A multitude of light bulbs hung from the ceiling on individual strings of varying lengths, the illumination a faint glow warring with the swirling shadows.
Everyone was mostly dressed for now, but some were already shedding the extra layers on the large couches lining the walls. Ryder passed out the fresh-out-of-the-laundry cushions that would soon cover the scuffed-up floor for the comfort of those preferring more space than the couches provided.
Kali released the collar and fixed her hair so it fell both over her shoulders and back. “What’s happening?”
“They’re preparing to celebrate us.” I pulled her flushed bottom lip out from the entrapment of her teeth. “They are waiting for me to declare you as mine so the real festivities can begin.”
“But I already have the tattoo,” she said as we sauntered to the ebony desk positioned in the center of the platform. It was the one from my study that I had requested to be brought here just for this purpose. I wanted to remember this night each time I walked into my study.
“Hold on.” I hoisted her up on the desk with her back to the crowd and checked to see if Zion was lingering nearby to make sure no one dared to come close. She was not to be shared with others. Him playing with her, I was indifferent to.
That was a lie if there ever was one.
I had questioned the soundness of my mind from how Zion had jumbled my senses while Kali was getting inked.
Fuck, seeing how my words had affected him, how he had obeyed me without questioning it, without an ounce of hesitation, it had taken everything in me not to throw Dorrian out of the room to have my way.
Encouraging shouts and whistles from the crowd enshrouded us, and Kali glimpsed over her shoulder. “There are people here. A lot of them.”
“Do not look at them.” I positioned myself between her spread legs. “Keep your eyes on me.”
I had always been inclined to show off what was mine. Our friends, acquaintances, and the rest watching only solidified the need to announce. But I wanted her attention on me, not the crowd enjoying the spectacle I was planning to put on.
“Do you understand?” I pressed. Testing a person’s limits came at a cost. Push too far and they would fall apart.
Fear would choke them lifeless. So I was not going to push her over her edge of comfort.
Not yet. I had full intentions of breaking her in the days to come. “I need your verbal confirmation.”
“Okay.” She slid her hands over my shoulders and up to my neck. “I just…” she trailed off, fixating on my mouth.
“Use your words,” I encouraged. “I am particularly fond of your voice.” I tightened my hold on her waist. “And the rest of you. The way you spit fire with your tongue. The way you make those little noises of delight when you take the first bite out of a freshly baked cream puff. The way you squeal when Zion tickles you.”
Her slow-to-appear smile muffled the sounds of the crowd, and the world shrunk to her before me and Zion keeping an eye on us from across the desk.
“Yes. I understand,” she said, and rushed out, “but I want a deal. My agreement for a question.”
I chuckled. “Ask away.” It was foolish to bargain without knowing the conditions. But with them, they did not exist. Both of them were the only conditions I cared about.
“Why haven’t you kissed me? You’ve gotten me off multiple times, but…”
“But what? Say it. Tell me what you want.”
“Not knowing why you don’t touch me like Zion does drives me crazy.”
“Because once I do, I am not taking my mouth off you. Your lips, the dip between them and your chin, the line of your jaw, behind your ear, your long neck, the curve of your breasts, your belly, yo—”
“You’ve already had your mouth in most of these places.”
“And it has never been enough. I knew that once I began, I would not be able to stop.” I caressed up her spine, marveling at her eyelids turning droopy, and cradled her head. “You have a need to make deals. So I chose one for you. I would claim you fully after you willingly took my mark.”
Her eyebrows drew together. “Your mark?”
I brought her tattooed arm between us. “There is no going back once my ink is on you. I warned you when you asked for it.”
Tattoos were my way to mark the inevitable—me. Getting inked meant handing your life over. Your sole solution to freedom was to flay your skin to rid yourself of it.
“Who says I want to go back? I chose this for a reason. I need your compound to take down Ilasall.”
She could pretend as long as it took her fascinating mind to come to the conclusion she wanted us.
I more than took pleasure in having her crumble on my fingers and tongue, seeing her tense up right before an orgasm burned through her, but she always fought me.
Not that I did not like that. I did. But I wanted her to fully give in, to claim all of her.
I wanted to dissect the corridors of her memory, etch my name into every crevice, so whenever she opened her eyes, my name occupied her vision.
I needed her to be mine.
I had prohibited Zion from taking it further with her since that first dinner and the way it drove him bat-shit crazy was incredibly entertaining. And stirred something up in me.
And her… Each time Kali stood up to me, her chin held high in a challenge and a mischievous tilt of her lips, it tested the limits of my patience holding me back from bending her over, tanning her ass until she dripped down her thighs, and fucking her into oblivion.
She suspected that I liked to control and to hurt, in a different way than Zion, but I knew that if I had shown her a glimpse before she had the tattoo, she would have run away.
She had to choose it consciously. And she had done so mere minutes ago, riding Zion while Dorrian painted her skin, linking her to me irreversibly.
Though she struggled to admit she liked pain and to fight, now she was going to take it and anything else I chose to give.
“You belong to me now. Your pleasure, your nightmares, your dreams—they are all mine.” I grabbed her throat through the collar, the leather supple but firm—like her.
A reed plant swaying in the wind, bending with its strong gusts and yet always springing back up.
“I want to simultaneously strangle you for not succumbing to me and worship you on my knees. I cannot get you out of my head. I hate how I can’t stop thinking about you, yet I want nothing more than to have you. ”
She gulped, and her hands glided to rest on my chest. “Why are you saying this?”
“Because I want you to keep it in your mind while I completely ruin you in front of our friends.” I hauled her to the edge of the desk, her ass nearly hanging off it.
She threw her arms around my neck to keep her balance. “I asked you to do your worst that time in the bathtub. I’m not afraid of you, Gedeon. Nor you, nor Zion. Nothing can ruin me.”
I fisted her hair, and she angled her head.
“I have already begun, whether you realize it or not. You did not come until I allowed you, you begged me to give you permission, and just now admitted you crave me to kiss you.” My tongue skimmed the seam of her mouth.
“I am not a good man, Kali. I am one who takes what I want. I do not ask.” I settled my eyes on hers, as green as the forest. “I will hurt you. And I will make you scream loud enough for everyone to hear you call out my name.”
“Not go—”
I smothered her protest by capturing her lips, adjusting my hold on her back to give me the perfect angle to devour her.
The taste of her was excruciating. Her tongue twining with mine sucked any semblance of coherence from my thoughts.
I groaned into her mouth, and she melted in response, pressing up as close as possible, scrunching up my shirt, erasing any inch of space between us.
Legs wrapping around me, she ground against my obvious bulge, eroding my self-restraint.
Little sounds coming out of her grew wilder, her hips searching for friction more frantic, and I released my grip on her hair, instead sliding between her legs, gathering her wetness, hers and Zion’s leaking cum, and pushed two fingers inside her.
“Your body is demanding to be claimed,” I growled into her mouth, consuming her gasp.
“Oh, gods.” A moan danced on her breath.
“What did I say? No gods here.” I withdrew to rub circles around her clit. “You pray to me.”
She wriggled, but the position I had her in did not give her much freedom to move. I ripped my jeans open and, without a single warning, plunged inside her drenched pussy.
Wet, hot, and so tight. I groaned into her neck. As if that would help me to hunt down the dissolving pieces called self-control.
“Gedeon,” she cried out, the muscles in her legs straining and, fuck, her saying my name did things to me.
I uncoiled the leather strip connected to her collar and draped it over her bare back. “Lean back.”
“Why?” She clenched around me deliberately.
I hit my palm on the wooden surface. “I want everyone to see you fall apart,” I ground out, and nodded to Zion waiting on the other side of the desk.