Chapter 52 Gedeon #2
My legs apart in a wider stance, I emptied the magazine into a wooden target, drawing a horizontal line across the dummy’s neck. The severed head rolled across the gravel of our shooting range. A fifth dummy I had destroyed in the last ten minutes.
I loaded a new magazine into the handgun for the sixth time. The moment Ava had noticed me coming, she had kicked everyone out, stating they would continue training tomorrow, silently handed me a box full of bullets, and left.
My bullets flew right to the head of an arguably intact target until the handgun’s trigger ceased calling out the hits.
The wood splintered vertically, and a portion of the dummy’s head struck the ground with a crunch, fracturing into tiny fragments illuminated by the orange and purple streaks of the sunset.
Ezra had returned a few hours ago with news that his contacts in Ilasall would ensure the delivery of my message to the Head of Ilasall. I had no other options besides warning the city we were coming.
I was coming.
Reloading the semi-automatic handgun again, I chose the next target, about sixty yards away, a bit out of range for this type of weapon.
The swirls in the wood morphed into the image of the man who reigned over Ilasall and had identified Kali as an effective tactic to bring Zion and me to our knees.
With my eyes shut, I shot blindly, despite my instincts blaring at the danger of it. The vibrations of the firearm working permeated my muscles to the point my body bent to their oscillation, swaying back and forth.
“Wrath looks good on you.” A firm body pressed against my back and steel tickled the lower part of my throat.
The chill from the blade raised the hair on my nape and my forefinger froze on the trigger.
His chuckle slithered into my ear like an omen of his next move.
“I wonder if it has its own distinct flavor.”
“Zion,” I said in warning, my voice gruff. Yet the hard lines of his form compelled me to not move away. Like gulping down a bottle of water after an intense training session, the sensation of him pinned to me was something I could not dismiss or reject. Not anymore.
Not when it felt so fucking good. Right.
“Your brooding tastes sour.” His tongue flicked my earlobe.
Then traced the outline of the shell of my ear, and an involuntary shudder rocked through me.
As he grasped my wrist, my bicep slackened, and he brought my hand over my shoulder.
“Control”—Zion licked the handgun’s shaft in one long stroke—“spicy and sweet. As addictive as she is.”
No denial left my mouth. My vocal cords refused to let out anything else but a hoarse groan.
His lips wrapped around the barrel and his head bobbed slowly, the regrowing stubble along his jaw scratching my own. A fist formed at my side in a worthless attempt to draw my attention elsewhere. Enduring hunger for years, and then having your craving jump you…it could cloud anyone’s rationale.
He let the gun go with a pop, and the metal glistened from his saliva. “Now wrath…” His palm glided down my abdomen, pausing underneath my shirt, above the hem of my jeans. “Enticingly bitter.”
My muscles twitched under his warm touch as it skirted the sensitive sliver of skin. “You are mad,” I gritted out, clutching the post of the booth we were in. My own two feet were insufficient support when the gravel under my boots turned liquid and threatened to snatch away my balance.
“More than that.” He unbuckled my belt and slid inside my underwear. A choked grunt tore my throat apart as he gripped me, firmly and unyieldingly. “You see, I have a whole list of the depraved things I want to do to you.”
He brought out my already hard cock, and it stiffened further with him pumping up and down. Thumb brushing over my tip, he twisted his hand and squeezed.
A repressed hiss escaped my clenched teeth. The same exhale expelled any doubts or hesitation left in me.
Fuck showing restraint for his own safety.
Fuck keeping distance.
Fuck not taking what I wanted.
“I could write it down, hide the list between your notes, so when you’re in the middle of a meeting and accidentally pull it out of a pile, I’m what occupies your thoughts.
” The blade scratched my neck as Zion stepped around me and dropped to his knees.
“Is this how you imagined it? Me on my knees, begging you to fuck my mouth?”
“Yes.” I tangled my fingers in his golden-brown hair and yanked his head back.
His lips parting made my sanity slip. “Bent over a table, crawling on the floor in my study, on all fours while you eat her out, licking me clean from her juices after I fucked her.” If he thought his list was comprehensive, he was sorely mistaken.
He would not be able to walk once he reached the end of mine.
Holding my hips, he licked up my length, from the base to the tip. Pure sin colored his curving mouth. “Like this, kitten?”
“Shut up and suck,” I snarled, and shoved his head down. “Hands behind your back.”
He obeyed without a hint of hesitation, widening his knees and crossing his wrists at his lower back, his knife clutched in his right hand, the steel resting against the rubber sole of his well-worn boot.
The eagerness he took me with blurred my vision, and I seized control, forcing him to take me quicker and rougher, tightening my hold of his hair.
Guiding him and seeing, feeling how he instantly leaped to do whatever I wished, not a hint of refusal or uncertainty, like he had been waiting for this for too long… Holding back ceased being an option.
He twirled his tongue around my tip when I pulled him away and pressed it to my underside when I pushed him to take me fully, dutifully fulfilling my non-verbal commands and doubling up his efforts when I began thrusting into him.
Drool dripped down his chin as he hollowed out his cheeks and his slurping sounds mixed with my grunts.
Doing as he was told, despite barely being able to breathe, despite my brutal rhythm without breaks, despite plunging into him so deeply I slipped down his throat, brought me to the sky-high edge, and tipped me over.
I crammed into him for the final time and held him immobile, his mouth stuffed full of me, as I fell the hundred miles back to our compound.
Obediently, he remained still, unmoving, watching me with wicked amusement, his throat constricting as he swallowed spurts of my cum.
I loosened my grip, but he did not retreat, instead lapping me up, his tongue one of a starving man working to catch every drop.
Zion lowered onto his heels, using a finger to collect a milky bead from his lip corner and sucking it clean.
“Even more delicious than I thought.” He smiled smugly, wiped saliva off his chin with the sleeve of his gray, long-sleeved t-shirt, and rose back on his feet.
“Now, will you come back? She hasn’t left the room and refuses to eat.
Again.” Plucking the gun out of my hand, he clicked the safety on and placed it on the table, among the others Ava had chosen for her lesson.
“Or do you need me to bend over this table?”
Yes.
Shaking myself off, my mind fuzzy and confusingly cleared up at the same time, I fixed my pants and trudged away, toward the streets leading to our central building.
Zion’s laughter echoed behind me.
It was a slip of my better judgment, stealing Kali from Ilasall. She would have been relatively safe there, not targeted because of my proximity.
But then she would not have been mine. And that I could not have.
“You can go,” I told Amari. She sat cross-legged on the floor, leaning against the wall in the hallway, an open book in her lap. Zion must have put her on guard duty. We were not leaving Kali unprotected, not for a second.
“She hasn’t come out.” With her russet hair weaved around her head like a crown, Amari rubbed her temple, a habit she had likely picked up from Ava. “Jayla brought her dinner but I had a suspicion she wouldn’t eat, so I peeked inside. It was untouched.”
My fist connected with the wall.
Was it smart? No. But I was definitely not in the right headspace. Usually, I expended everything in the training rings, but if I went there now, I knew I would not stop the fight until my opponent lay at my feet.
And right now, Kali needed us, not our mess.
And not my thoughts tied up in Zion.
Amari’s eyebrows flew up. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” I flexed my fingers, checking if anything was broken, but only one knuckle had split. Striking the wall sideways to avoid fracturing my bones had been the extent of control left in me. I was hanging on my sanity by a thread.
Praying the sound of my lashing out had not disturbed Kali, I dismissed Ava and entered the bedroom. The stuffy air hit me like a brick, and I aimed straight for the window, cracking it open a notch. The tray with the now cold dinner sat on the dresser, as Amari had said.
I gestured to the bowl of pumpkin soup and a plate full of cream- and raspberry-filled puffs Ryder had baked at my request this morning. “I thought these were one of your favorites.”
Half hidden by the fluffy duvet she liked to wrap herself in, Kali closed the book she was reading and hugged her knees. “I’m not hungry.”
Gritting my teeth at her answer, I brought the glass of water from the tray to her and sunk on the mattress near her legs, wary of my proximity. But she didn’t scooch away, and relief flooded me. “Please drink this.” I sighed at her frown. “I will not ask you to eat. Just drink this. Please.”
Her eyebrows furrowed further as she noted the red speck on my knuckle. “Why is your hand bloody?”
I pushed the glass for her to take. “I will tell you if you drink it.”
Torturously slowly, she took a sip. I pressed two fingers to the bottom of the glass. Gasping between every few gulps, she finished it, spitting at me every profanity she could come up with.
On average, a person could survive starvation for up to three weeks. But dehydration? Three days. And today had come to an end, if you held the sunset as the night bringer.
“Happy?” she sneered and rested her chin on top of her knees.
“I punched a wall.” I picked up a pair of my black sweatpants and a matching t-shirt from the bedside table I had left them on this morning, my movements unhurried and steady to avoid triggering an unwanted reaction.
“We need to get you into a fresh set of clothes.” Zion had burned all of hers, but she had not called him out on it. Did not seem to care.
“That’s not an explanation.” Kali ripped off Zion’s white t-shirt drenched in cold sweat and shivered. “And I’m not a child. Your help is unnecessary.”
“I will agree to disagree.” I inspected the shallow cuts he had carved under her breast for signs of infection. I was not taking chances. “And I care about you. So whether you want it or not, I am helping.”
“Asshole.”
“That I am. An asshole who will not let you go.”
After getting her into my t-shirt, the sweatpants she had discarded tossed on the floor, I positioned myself behind her, leaning against the headboard with her between my legs, and handed her the book she had produced from somewhere.
At least she was angry. Not simply going through the motions. Fighting was her method of self-defense, self-preservation, and the pressure eased in my chest at seeing it kick into action.
But a thin line, a barrier, stood between fighting for survival and fighting yourself, living to see another day and erasing it from your future.
Because a fight was a whirlpool of emotions and logic, a vortex spinning you in circles, tugging you into its depths, scrambling your mind, numbing your senses, snatching the path from under your feet.
You could easily lose yourself in it, and wake up one day without knowledge of why you had started the fight, without direction to seek, without motivation to go on, without the will to live.
There were days when the reason for my own battles evaded my comprehension, and I feared the same for Kali. Healing could so easily become misdirected and lead to self-destruction.
The book forgotten in her lap, she stared out the window. Flat concrete and brick-red tiled roofs floated under the dusk-colored clouds, the sky seemingly on fire, its flames licking the peaks of the mountains looming a day’s drive from our compound.
I lifted the printed copy that had endured the test of time, the corners of the back peeling, the cover ten times darker shade of cream than it was the day of its manufacturing, and wondered what had inspired the author to write the story.
Glue residue marred the broken binding, and part of the yellowed pages was missing, the rest loose or in bundles barely contained by fraying threads.
Careful not to launch a rain of them, I flipped the book over to see the title pressed into the cover.
Years had obscured half of the letters, but the familiar lines told me the rest: The Three Realms.
A collection of tales about the gods ruling the skies, seas, and lands. Both good and evil, and simultaneously neither. A book my father would read to me before tucking me into the bed and switching off the lights.
Amari must have wandered into my study and brought it for Kali to read. The book had been collecting dust on the top shelf, the third tome from the left, between the others I had not dared to touch since I had taken over my parents’ positions.
Finally, she asked, “Why did you hit a wall?”
I returned the book to her lap and gently splayed out my left hand on her belly in a possessive manner. She was mine. I was not giving her up to the messenger, his memory be damned. Whatever it took to bring her back to the surface, I was doing it. “Because you are not eating.”
She took my right hand, inspected the split knuckle, and used the hem of her t-shirt to clean the crusting blood. When the wound didn’t restart bleeding, she mapped out the lines indented in my palm, her promise a barely audible whisper. “I’ll eat something tomorrow.”
Minutes ticked by, and she relaxed in my arms, seduced by sleep that soon pulled me under too.
Startling awake, I found Zion curling up beside us, the room drowning in darkness. Unmoving, I listened to their inhales and exhales while calculating the risks and odds of us going to war, pacifying the ire boiling in my bones, and squelching the need to bend him over and fuck him senseless.