Chapter 43 Gedeon
GEDEON
Ishoved a pillow into my face as the light pouring out the windows grew blinding. It had to be late morning with the sun so high.
All responsibilities aside, I dreaded getting out of bed.
Last night, Kali had accepted the strikes so well, raising her ass up for more, and it had taken every shred of self-control to not push her limits, to not trample them into dust.
But she was more important than my wishes.
And the way Zion had carried out my orders with such eagerness, I had almost lost it at one point, ready to bend him over the footboard and—
No.
I could not risk hurting him again.
That damned night haunted me. Seeing the funeral flames lick his flesh because I had told him so, because I had decided a permanent reminder would be a suitable punishment at the time, ignorant of the fact that the city had wrecked my mind into splinters and hurled them into a chasm and I was not thinking clearly, had incinerated me.
I had become a carrier of the cold, repelling any warmth courageous enough to reach for me.
He had survived the night, but that was it. Survival did not equal a life.
I rolled to my side, and anxiety crept under my ribs at my fruitless search as empty bedsheets greeted me.
“Get away from me, or I will shove one of these fries up your cock,” Kali threatened, her voice muffled by Zion’s bedroom door.
I snapped my head toward it.
“Why don’t you try?” he proposed.
She yelped. “Stop slapping me and open the door. Or I will ask Gedeon to do the same to you.”
“I would love that.”
The door handle clicked, and they entered the bedroom carrying three plates brimming with golden fries and tomato sauce drizzled on top.
“You made fries for breakfast?” I asked incredulously.
“He did.” Kali elbowed a half-naked Zion, only a pair of gray sweatpants hanging low on his hips, his muscled and scarred abdomen tensing as he strolled behind her, grinning at her swaying hips with every step as she made her way toward the bed. “I figured he owed me for testing my patience.”
He rushed after her, lifting his breakfast plate higher, and smacked her backside, the loud crack ripping a screech out of her.
“I swear to gods, I will take my collar and whip—”
“Your ass bounces so nicely,” he remarked.
Balancing two plates of golden fries, she hissed, “Do it again, and will find my collar and whip you myself.”
“Do not start what you are not willing to finish,” I warned her. Because Zion would undeniably be down for it. “Pants off and on your stomach.”
“No. It still hurts.” She climbed onto the bed. “Leave my butt alone. It needs its rest.”
I gave a curt nod to Zion, and we seized the plates from her, setting them on the bedside tables.
“What—”
He swiftly pulled her black sweatpants—more like his, since she had clearly stolen the pair from his closet—down to her knees and spun her to lay on her belly. I straddled her thighs and grabbed the tub of lotion from the bedside table. “Do you trust us?”
Her back muscles rigid, she buried her face into the pillow.
The stretch of time passing in silence, tick tock, tick tock, furled around my neck like a noose.
“Little death?”
The name I had chosen for her seemed to prompt her as she relaxed, her shoulder blades smoothing out. “Yes. You know I do.”
“Assuming is not knowing.” I grazed the swell of her hip. “What is it?”
Zion pushed back the dark strands stuck to her nose. “Did someone say something that made you think badly about us? If they did, I promise I’ll sew their lips together so they can’t do it again.”
Her snort blew the loose hair from her mouth. “That’s… I don’t have the words to respond to that. Gedeon can pin you with one of his disapproving looks instead.”
Zion’s eyes crinkled in amusement at my dirty look. “He’s doing it right now.”
Her faint snicker lifted the weight off my chest. “Good. I like it when he broods.”
“That’s not brooding.” I slapped the side of her ass, and her squeal dissolved the last wisp of tension restricting my airflow. “And I do not brood at all.”
“You do,” she mumbled. “So much. You start with a glare of death, and then it morphs into brooding.”
“Even in your sleep. It’s like a perpetual state of your existence.
” Zion sat back on his heels, and his sweatpants stretched around his toned thighs.
The waistband sitting low on his abs called for someone’s grip to yank them down his legs and toss them aside.
To bind his arms above his head and make his pelvis twitch, like it did now.
To see his neck arch backward, to hear his grunts stutter, to feel him pulse in your grasp.
Someone who would not force him to burn himself in a funeral blaze.
I swallowed.
His grin widened as he met my rising gaze. “You done exploring?”
“Exploring?” Kali wiggled to twist on her back, and I lowered on her upper thighs to keep her in place. “What are you two doing back there? I assumed we were going to tell Gedeon about the game we have going on.”
“The game?” I scooped a dollop of lotion out of the glass jar.
Zion reclined on the headboard, a hand behind his head. “Whoever catches you brooding during dinner first, they’re off breakfast duty the next morning. The loser has to cook.”
So that was why they refused to help each other fix up the meals in the mornings. And why I would end up cooking with one of them while the other smugly awaited their plate. My lips quirked. “But I made breakfast yesterday.”
“We take some days off from the game. You make good scrambled eggs.” A smile was evident in her voice. “Now can I pull my pants up? Having my butt out in the open is becoming weird.”
“Do I need to remind you? Your ass is mine. So if I want to admire it, I will do so for as long as I please. If I want it spread wide open for me, you will hold it until I tell you that it has been enough. If I want to be inside, you will accept me. Your tattoo marks you as mine and includes every part of you. You may resist for now, but you will give in.” Her tiny whimper was music to my ears.
I rubbed my palms together to warm up the lotion and prepare for the unpleasant question I had to get the answers to. “Why did you tense up before?”
Her back expanded and collapsed with a deep breath. “Sometimes I go to bad places,” she admitted, throat bobbing. “And I need a minute to come back.”
We had triggered a memory. And there was not a fucking thing I could do to erase it. The saying that the soothing balm of time was a universal medicine for wounds was an utter piece of shit. Time injured people irrevocably, including those who inflicted the wounds.
I adjusted my weight on the mattress, my knees at each side of her legs. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“No,” Kali said so fast it cut through the air. “No, I… No. Please. Just no.” She sighed, and quietly added, “I don’t want to go back there.”
I flexed my jaw to placate the razors cutting up my insides, and gently worked the lotion into her slightly pink skin, undoubtedly aggravated by Zion’s smack, while he left a trail of kisses down her spine. A minute later, she was practically purring like a kitten, her mumbles incomprehensible.
Carefully pulling her sweatpants back up, I brushed my lips along her shoulder, coaxing her to sit up. “Come on.”
“Nooo,” she groaned into the fluffy pillow. “This is so comfortable. I don’t want to get up.”
“But my cock is already up,” Zion drawled, squeezing himself over his gray sweatpants. The fact that he wore nothing underneath stood out undeniably, recalling last night’s events and spinning them in a loop, like a chain with endless links from his collection.
“Ask Gedeon to take care of it.” She rolled onto her back and winced as her sensitive skin grazed the sheets.
“Pillow.” I hauled her up and down on the pillow he had put underneath her and passed him one plate of fries, placing the second one in her lap. “Eat. You need your strength.”
“What for? I’m staying in bed today and not moving anywhere until my shift at Vice.”
“I like it when you fight. And you cannot do that without breakfast.”
“One day, I will kick both of your asses.” Resting a hand on her chest, she looked up at the ceiling. “I swear it to the gods.”
Zion snatched a potato strip from her plate. “What gods?”
“Don’t talk with your mouth full. At least not when it’s not me in there,” she scolded.
“And those who live in the stars. When I was a kid, I found a book with a story about all-powerful gods ruling over humans. The teachers said it wasn’t true and that I shouldn’t read things like that.
They took the book away, but since then, I have always imagined the deities are hiding in the stars and laughing at us from there.
That they can help us, but they choose not to. ”
“No one is laughing at you. Only with you. Do not think otherwise is even an option.” My knuckles brushed her jaw, as sharp as her mind. A scythe to slice her opponents into pieces. “But is that why you stare at the sky at night?”
“Something like that.” She dipped a long strip of potato into tomato sauce and bit the reddened end off. “It’s like they listen to me. React to my thoughts. Know my secrets. See who I am. I don’t know. It simply helps.”
A coping mechanism. A way to withstand the stifling atmosphere of Ilasall and its cruel principles and methods. An ability she had developed and nurtured with the help of her imagination and folklore tales.
“A question for a question.” She munched on another fry. “What does your tattoo mean?”
“That I lead the compound. That I take care of everyone.” I twisted my right arm marked with a drawing of an abstract forest and a lonely bird perching atop a branch of the tallest tree. The fading ink absorbed the late autumn sun like a void created specifically for such a purpose.
“No, not that one. The one on your back.” She traced a line from my neck to my shoulder, and I closed my eyes to savor her soft touch.
The birds.