Chapter 42 Zion
ZION
“Just go.” Sadira reached into the backseat for her bag.
“We’ll see what we can do with the microchips, but it will take a few days at the minimum.
My guess is more like a week to get everything ready and going.
Not counting the time to run the tests to check if they function properly. So go do, I don’t know, them?”
“Already did before we left,” I shared, helping Ryder unload the five plastic crates full of tech we’d brought from Damia’s compound from the trunk. “But thanks for the idea. Want to join our show?”
“Not in your bedroom.” She adjusted the strap of her patched-up duffel bag. “Or your underground. But if you’re proposing for your trio to go on stage at Vice, I’m sure Jayla would be ecstatic. And it would make for an interesting evening.”
Ryder lifted two white crates stacked on top of each other. “Spoken as if you haven’t been up there yourself.”
“One time, Ryder. It was one time.” Sadira propped a box on her hip, and her long ebony braids swayed from the motion. “And like a year ago.”
“A year is a long time. I could lend you my chains again. You seemed to enjoy them quite a bit,” I said as I collected the few electronic pieces that had fallen out of their confines and dropped them back in the crates Ryder was carrying.
“Now that was an interesting evening.” Ryder grinned. “Never suspected you’d be into restraints so much.”
“Not as much as you are into watching,” she pointed out and crossed the street, vanishing at the entrance to hers and Ryder’s workshop.
I crouched to pick up the last boxes waiting on the sidewalk, but Ryder shook his head, his tight brown curls bouncing around his shoulders. “Don’t worry about them. Like she said, go.” He jerked his chin toward our central building and followed in Sadira’s footsteps.
Darkness had fallen, but no lights shone in Kali’s or Gedeon’s windows on the upper floor.
A chill raced up my spine, originating from the idea of a similar thing befalling them as Damia’s daughter, and I hurried up the stairwell to our rooms. We’d dealt with the soldier successfully, but if we had a traitor hiding inside our teams in plain sight, we were fucked.
The stairwell door slammed behind me as I entered the hallway, and a tall figure peeked out of Kali’s bedroom. Had she been waiting for me?
Kali stomped over to me, yelling, “Where is all my stuff? I came back to my room, and this was all that I could find.”
A white t-shirt I’d left in her closet loosely hugged her curves, her long legs on display, and my mouth watered.
“It’s all in my room,” I admitted, leading us deeper into the hallway.
She dug her heels into the ground. “Why?”
I shrugged. “Because that’s where you live now.”
“I’m not living in your bedroom. Or wearing your clothes.” She picked at the t-shirt, her nipples poking through the cotton fabric.
“You don’t have to.” I gripped the neckline and ripped it halfway to her stomach. The sound of her gasp was better than any screams I’d lure out in my underground. “You can stay naked.” I leaned in to lick, suck, and taste her exposed breasts.
“You changed.”
Our heads snapped to Gedeon standing ten feet away from us, his expression as icy as his tone.
“No, I didn’t,” she objected. “You told me not to change my underwear, but nothing about not wearing them at all.”
Her underwear? “Why didn’t you say you wanted to play?” I reached between her thighs, finding her deliciously bare, and raised the thin material covering her to admire her fully. “I know so many ways to get under his skin. For starters, chaining him up.”
Gedeon’s jaw ticked.
Taking control from him would be so freaking fun.
“You deserve a lesson. One that will remind you to follow my orders.” He closed the distance between us, pulled Kali into my bedroom despite her loud protests, threw her on my bed, and pinned her in place with a knee on her back.
All while I salivated like an idiot.
“What are you doing?” She squirmed, slipping in the sheets as she tried to push off.
Gedeon wrenched his black belt out of his fitted jeans and tied her hands behind her back. “Ensuring you learn.” He hoisted her up and bent her over the footboard, the carved metal digging under her hips. “Give me your belt and go sit on the bed.”
I handed him my well-worn leather belt and crawled over to her vehemently struggling to spit the hair out of her mouth and swear at Gedeon at the same time.
“You moving will not do.” He harshly slapped her ass, and I could feel the imprint it should have left from how loud the smack echoed.
Jerking, she reached to cover her backside. “You fu—”
“Where are they?” Gedeon asked me, ignoring the flood of profanities she directed at both of us. “I need one with clips.”
“I’ll get it.” I jumped off the bed and rummaged in the bottom drawer of my dresser, the piece of furniture holding much more than just my clothing. “Here.” I passed him one end of the long chain, a large clip dangling off it, and he fastened it to the belt restraining Kali.
I climbed on top of the stool I used specifically for this purpose and threaded the chain through one of the hooks installed on the ceiling.
One tug on the loose end, and it lifted her arms behind her back, pulling on her shoulders enough to cause discomfort but not outright pain and pushing her front into the mattress.
I secured the smaller clip at my end of the chain to one of the chain links to lock her place.
“I did as you told me!” The sheets muffled her shouting, her upper body rendered completely immobile as any tiny movement stretched her tendons. “Gedeon.” She spat out his name as a swear word.
“Do not lie to me.” He hauled my t-shirt over her naked ass and gestured to the bed. “Do you need a lesson as well, or will you obey?”
His question ripped a groan out of me. I clambered back onto the bed, not caring how awkward it had to look with my buckling knees at how his cold tone affected me.
“I’m going to spank you, and you will count.” Gedeon doubled my belt and snapped it. “Ten should be a sufficient number for this transgression.”
“I’m not counting anything,” she scoffed.
“I’d do as he says.” I shifted on the mattress. “Or he will make it worse.”
Gods, how I wanted to be bent over the footboard beside her. The satisfaction pain could bring. She knew that. Craved it. Just like me. Dashing it out, receiving it; I could find pleasure in both.
“I thought we’d made a deal to whip him, not me!” She glowered at me as I held her head up so she could breathe freely for a few precious moments.
Gedeon used my belt to caress her lower back. “Say ‘stop’ if you want this to end. I want you to enjoy our play, not suffer through it.”
She blew her hair away from her face, pointedly disregarding his request. “I will kill him.”
I tucked the drool-soaked strands behind her ears. “It’s important. Will you remember the safe word if this ceases feeling good?
“Yes,” she murmured, and a blush bloomed on her cheeks. “But what if I say ‘stop,’ but I don’t want you to?”
I pondered for a minute. “What about ‘hell’?” I asked Gedeon.
He nodded. “It will work. I need your confirmation, Kali. What do you say if you need a break or wish to put an end to this?”
“Hell.” She gulped, but repeated, “I say ‘hell.’”
“Good girl.” Gedeon struck her backside, and my core twitched as she yelped. “This was a warning. You are going to count to ten. If you stop, I will start all over. Do you understand?”
“Fine, yes, I understand,” she ground out.
Sitting on my heels before her, I pulled the zipper of my jeans down to free myself. “Spit.”
Confusion knitted her eyebrows, but she dribbled saliva onto my palm.
“Now watch me while you count.” I leisurely stroked myself up and down, coating myself in her essence, the fluid as arousing as a person's blood, both serving as signs of life.
When he landed another strike, her back arched, chin pressing into the mattress as she locked her gaze on me. “One,” she obediently stated.
Her eyes fluttered with the next hit, and my abdomen contracted. The silver of my chains on her, my belt in Gedeon’s hands reddening her skin, her objections, and Gedeon’s gravelly voice…
I squeezed myself harder, twisting around the tip and marveling at Kali taking her punishment. With each whip, her breathing grew heavier, her eyelids droopier, and her cries louder.
Gedeon whacked her upper thighs, and she mumbled, “Six.”
He took a step back. “Spread your feet as wide as you can.”
Sniffling, she buried her face in the sheets. They absorbed her shriek when he slapped between her legs, and they closed as she trembled. “You said you would whip my ass, not my pussy!”
“I said I was going to spank you. I did not indicate where or how.” He shifted his weight, his jeans stretched out across his crotch so enticingly I gripped myself firmer. “I also said not counting will earn you extra strikes.”
“That’s not fai—”
“Under the bed,” I cut her off, proposing a solution to Gedeon.
Crouching down, he seized her left ankle and wrapped it in a short chain, its end connected to the foot of the bed. Once her right foot was restrained in an identical manner, he stood back up and redoubled the belt, the snap drying out my mouth.
She tugged on the restraints, the steel clattering in hypnotizing notes, but they kept her legs apart. Gedeon slapped her pussy with the belt a second time, and she rose on her tiptoes, crying out, the sound so spell bounding that shudders skated down my spine.
“Seven,” she gritted out.
I moved faster with her next counts, my cock throbbing from her gasps bringing me to the edge, and my hips bucked as I caught Gedeon narrowing in on me.
“No,” he said hoarsely. “Not yet.”
Exasperated, I threw my head back and fisted the sheets, the fabric too soft to ease my suffering. I was so close. Five more seconds. That was all I needed.
He struck her for the final time with a loud crack, and my cock jolted in response.