Chapter 39 Kali
KALI
With my head high, I strode to the round standing table where Eislyn and Eli chatted with four others I hadn’t met yet. The tips of my boots peeked out from under my dress as I navigated around the people lost in their own dirty little bubbles on the floor, their limbs everywhere.
My flowing dress tickled my inner thighs and pricked my punished nipples—like Gedeon’s and Zion’s lingering phantom caresses—and I glanced toward the dais.
Gedeon sat behind the desk in a relaxed posture, the embodiment of nonchalance, of the casual power he held over everyone, and Zion lounged situated on top, one leg bent and one dangling from the edge, the epitome of insanity and sadism hidden behind a playful exterior as he fiddled with his knife.
He caught my perusal and flashed a grin.
I stumbled.
Damn it.
“Nice collar.” Eli made space for me to join them, inching closer to Eislyn sipping her drink. She pressed it to her cheek, but the condensation on the glass did nothing to counteract the flush coloring her face.
I blinked prettily at him. “Would you like me to put it on you?”
Eislyn choked on her drink. I hit her back a few times as she coughed and swiped away the tears. “Thank you.”
I knew Eli’s remark had been far from mean, but I could tease him back. “See? Eislyn likes the idea too. You should consider it.”
Her cheeks flamed. “It could put him in his place for once.”
His eyebrows shot up, and I smugly caressed the leather sitting around my neck.
Black, matte—matching my boots—and about an inch and a half thick.
The longer strip of leather was thinner and coiled a few times around the collar, above and under it, creating an illusion the whole thing was a one-piece, if you didn’t know better.
Only, everyone here did.
Gedeon might have sought to display me, to claim me, but I was not willing to give myself up.
Sure, I’d drowned from how hard he’d made me come in front of everyone in this hall, and his kiss alone had felt like he’d sucked my soul from my body, but my mind belonged to me, not him and Zion.
Our deal contained conditions explicitly about my physical being, and I wasn’t willing to amend it to include more than that.
Walking past us, Ezra clapped Eli’s shoulder. “Have you seen what Ava’s been up to with Jayla? Training should be fun tomorrow.”
Eislyn gasped, and I followed the direction of her gaze, finding a mass of disheveled strands the shade of fire falling over the back of the lanky woman kneeling in front of a couch occupied by Ava, her legs spread wide and her fist twined in Jayla’s hair.
Beside them, a familiar woman clutched the backrest of the same couch as a man pounded into her from behind.
Tarri. The one I’d seen in the hall during dinner my first night here. So that was the reason why Jayla had said something about Tarri having had rehearsed for today.
I shuffled on my feet in search of a more comfortable position and froze at the familiar stickiness coating my thighs. So familiar, I trembled as I carefully moved my dress aside without exposing myself to take a better look.
Air sucked itself out of my lungs as I gaped at their cum dripping down my legs.
They had finished inside me.
I’d let them do it.
I hadn’t checked their status. I hadn’t asked about it.
The color, the color, what was their color?
They didn’t have colors.
No wristbands—no colors. And no answers to the pressing question.
I’d sworn to myself to always know whether they were green- or black-banded before giving anyone my body in exchange for what I needed. I couldn’t allow the unplanned consequences of the bargains I made to take root. They’d give away my secret.
“Kali? Is everything okay?” Eislyn asked.
Milky liquid dribbled down my thigh, the drops cool on my heated flesh. The noise of moans and groans died out. The scent of sweat and sex permeated the air to the point of such stuffiness that suffocation latched its claws on me.
I tried to suck in a breath, but my lungs refused to expand. The world tilted on its axis. My dress slipped from my grip, and the fabric stuck to my leg along the trail of their fluids.
“I— I ha— I have to go.” I backed away from the table on trembling legs.
I spun around, searching for an exit. The multiple lights on strings burned my eyes as the world blurred and fogged up.
Blinded by my tears, I caught myself on the hallway wall, rushing out, out, out, out, and clawed at the collar on my throat. A vertical crack caught on my nails, and I scrambled for the handle.
The door gave way, and I bolted to the window, practically tearing it off the hinges. But my throat constricted, refusing to take in the crispness and dewiness swirling in my nostrils into my airway.
I leaped out of my skin at someone twisting me around.
“It’s me, Kali, it’s me. Can you tell me what’s wrong?” Sadira searched my face. “Go get them,” she told someone. “I saw you talking at the table, and then you suddenly ran past me and Ryder and out of the hall.”
I yanked at the collar, but it wouldn’t come off, it wouldn’t, it wouldn’t, and I choked on a sob. I was going to strangle myself.
“Calm down, calm down. I will take it off, but you have to stop twisting it around.” She fumbled around the buckle, and I jumped as the collar tightened, but then it was off, my neck free of the leather preventing oxygen flow.
Yet it didn’t come.
I pleaded with my lungs to restore it, but they rejected my ask. Wavering, I clutched the windowsill to hold on to something as I leaned through the open window in hopes of finding something, anything I could inhale.
A loud bang of a door hitting a wall made my diaphragm convulse, and I sucked in a gasp.
“Where is she?” Gedeon barked, and two pairs of dull footfalls closed in on me. “Kali, what is it?”
I wanted to yell that I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I couldn’t, but my voice was gone, stifled by my cramping muscles. I twirled around, and my legs twined, the weakness snatching my feet from under me.
“Shit.” Gedeon caught me as I collapsed. He righted me back up and turned me to face the open window, the night air a non-existent aid as my throat had closed up. “Can you feel my hand on your back?”
I nodded the best I could. My pulse roared in my ears, as thunderous as my heartbeats bordering on fracturing my ribs.
“I need you to listen to me. I will make you a deal. Inhale as I stroke upward and exhale as I bring it down, and I will get you all the puff pastries you want. Can you do that?”
“I— I can’t—” I raked my nails along my throat in hopes it’d remove the obstruction halting my breathing.
“Yes, you can.” Zion ripped my hand away from my neck. “Focus on squeezing my fingers as hard as you can. Break them.”
“Inhale.” Gedeon stroked my both-on-fire-and-freezing back in an upward motion.
I begged my lungs to execute his command. If they dismissed my pleas as not satisfactory enough, maybe they’d listen to him. But air hit the wall inside my trachea, bounced off it, and I choked.
“That’s okay. We will try again,” Gedeon encouraged. “Inhale.”
Zion’s grip squashed the bones in my hand and a shriek rippled through me from the sudden pain, shocking me enough for air to drift into my lungs.
“Exhale.” Gedeon caressed lower, and I expelled that precious swirl of air, wishing I wouldn’t have to release it. Tears streamed down my cheeks, as if their saltiness could trap it.
Ten more times, I went along with his rhythm. My pulse slowed enough for the street outside to come into focus.
“Can you talk?” Zion asked.
“I thi— I think so,” I whispered.
“Name any three things you see. Doesn’t matter what, any three things will do,” he said.
“The roofs.” I inhaled per Gedeon’s order moving up my back, this time deeper. “The night outside. The full moon.”
“Now, can you tell me three things you hear?”
“People in the street, the wind, the noise from the hall,” I rushed out, in turn losing the rhythm and panting.
“Breathe in.” Gedeon continued his pace. “Breathe out.”
“Now the last one. Can you tell me three things you feel?” Zion tucked my sweaty hair behind my ears, as if he knew it made it easier to breathe.
“You.” I inhaled deeply. “Gedeon’s hand on my back.” I exhaled deliberately slowly and blinked as my vision sharpened. “The breeze.”
“You are doing so good. So good.” Gedeon rubbed my lower back, away from my weighted lungs. “How do you feel?”
“I’m…better.” I turned around, swaying slightly. “I think.”
He swiped the wetness from under my eyes and the concern drawing his eyebrows together made more spill immediately after.
He cared.
He had come to find me.
They both had.
“I don’t know what that was.” I clutched the edge of the windowsill as my knees grew weak.
Zion brought a chair for me, pulled his t-shirt over his head, and began dabbing my cheeks with it to soak up the tears. A situation as such, and yet he’d found a way to do a crazy thing. A fleeting smile tugged on my lips.
“You had a panic attack.” Gedeon situated himself in another seat and rested his elbows on his thighs. “Have you always had them?”
“Panic attacks? No.” I stuck my palms between my thighs to restrain them from going to my throat. “How did you know what it was?”
“His sister used to have them. I learned how to calm someone down from watching him take care of her.”
Zion put his t-shirt back on and lowered to the floor at my feet.
Between his bent legs, he positioned the tip of his knife on the floor.
His forefinger on top of the handle held the blade in place as his thumb spun the instrument around its axis.
The steel gleamed in the faint moonlight streaming through the windows, and the flickers morphed into realization.
“Is that the knife—” I cut off, my voice too loud for such a question. “The one your sister used when you found her?” I whispered.
His head dropped on his chest.