Chapter 55 Gedeon #2
“What do you want?” I asked hoarsely, pushing through the haze clouding my comprehension and logic. The latter had splintered into non-existent pieces and the former had simply melted away, thus making concentration on a subject not related to Zion challenging.
“Kali’s shift is over.” Tarri pointed to the exit, the door closed to keep the chilly night at bay. “She left.”
Shit. We were supposed to escort her home so she would not meander around alone without any protection, as one of three targets Ilasall sought to obliterate.
“Let’s go,” I told Zion as I reluctantly withdrew from him. My palms immediately chilled from the loss of his warmth, and I flexed my fists to get my head right. Based on his grin, he was not done with me either.
I shook myself off as we passed the rows of shabby tables, half of the customers observing us with pure amusement and the other half pretending the ice cubes in their glasses were more interesting than their leader dealing with his second-in-command.
I did not give a shit about them gawking. I craved to feel Zion’s body obeying each order without me so much as saying them out loud. It made me feral.
We neared the exit, slowing at the last table and catching their attention. Zion embedded his knife into the mottled wooden surface. “You tried to touch our girl,” he stated, his voice taking the familiar note he used on his playthings in our underground.
“What? Who are you talking about?” The ballsy fool frowned and searched for support in his two friends.
The left one shook his head, as puzzled as him, but the right one sat as still as a statue. Kane, the husband of a restaurant owner three streets over from Vice. Years he had been with us, so he had to have recognized my ink on her.
“Who do you think? She has the tattoo, you idiot.” Tarri slapped the back of the long-faced moron’s head and pinned me with a look. “Whatever you have planned, take it outside. I’m not cleaning up after you.”
“I told you,” Kane hissed to the offender. His and the other friend’s chairs screeched as they pushed away from the wobbly table. “We didn’t do anything. We know better than that.”
“I didn’t touch anyone!” the idiot protested. “If you mean the waitress, she flirted with me. It wasn’t my fault. And she wouldn’t let me touch her.”
“But you tried.” Zion snatched his right wrist, splayed his hand on the table, and used the handle of his knife to hit it right in the center.
The man’s wail pierced the already subdued chatter of the bar’s customers.
“Hold it there,” I told Zion, and took the knife from him, positioning the sharp tip on the second knuckle of the man’s middle finger.
“If you even think about touching her again, I will ensure you will come to regret it.” I twisted the blade and a drop of red welled up to the surface.
He blanched, as if the single scarlet bead had leeched the blood from his freckled face.
“I will pluck the bones out of your fingers, one by one, and make a necklace out of them. I will use a paintbrush to color them with your blood and then watch you gift it to her as your apology.” To emphasize my message, I drove the knife all the way through his joint.
The cartilage gave way for the blade to slide between the tiny bones so satisfyingly I practically missed his scream.
Unfortunately, not a pleasant one. Nothing compared to hers.
The handle lodged in the table vibrated from the force, and a small puddle of crimson encircled the blade. Whining, he cradled the stump, and his flowing blood drenched his maroon, long-sleeved shirt.
Fitting.
“Take this as a warning.” I picked up the useless body part, the flesh still warm, and held it above his glass.
A steady trickle of scarlet contaminated his drink, pink streaks swirling in the clear liquid, and I dropped the severed finger into the glass.
Holding it by the nail, I mixed the upgraded cocktail.
“You dare to look in her direction, and I will kill you so slowly you will wish you were never born.”
Zion shoved the glass into the man’s uninjured limb. “Bottoms up.”
“Wh— What?” he stuttered, a hint of white peeking out from his profusely bleeding stump.
I arched an eyebrow. “Are you saying one finger is not enough for you? I could make it two or twenty, depending on how much iron you would like to taste in your drink.”
Trembling, he lifted the glass to his mouth and gulped it down, most of the liquid spilling down his chin and soaking the dry parts of his shirt.
“It was nice to meet you.” Zion patted his pasty cheek. “By the way, you may want to have your finger—or the lack of it—looked at. I heard Eislyn and Jayce are on duty tonight, so be sure to tell them we sent you their way.”
Not waiting for his response, we left him to be taken care of by his friends and hurried outside.
“Do you think she,” Zion scanned the deserted street besides the few customers coming out of the bar behind us, “went back home or to the clearing?”
“The clearing. She would have waited for us otherwise,” I said, and we ran through the neighborhood, most of the streets desolate as people had turned in for the night, then across the field of high grasses and through the forest. Moonlight filtered through the naked branches and twigs sticking out like withered thorns.
Kali appeared on the far side of the tree line lining the circular field of open space, restlessly shifting her weight from one foot to another.
Clutching the trunk of an oak, as if encouraged by the life of the few half-dead leaves clinging with all their might to the lower branches of the tree, she raised her foot and stilled with it mid-air, not daring to take that final step.
A minute ticked by, the sight of her like a photograph, a moment frozen in time. The sole sign she was alive was the night’s wind tousling her hair. Finally, she stomped her foot and vanished, the forest’s shadows engulfing her figure.
Our footfalls thudded as we hurried across the clearing and back into the woods, listening for that telltale crunch of dried branches under the rubber soles of her favored boots. She emerged in the grassy field leading to our compound, and we rushed to catch up.
“I don’t want to talk,” she gritted out, hugging herself so tight her nails had to prod her skin through the fabric of Zion’s leather jacket she was drowning in.
Exchanging nods with him, we respected her request and steered her along the streets in the shortest way back home, trailing her as we climbed the stairs to the uppermost floor, our footsteps echoing in the concrete stairwell.
Kali shuffled on her feet in the center of her bedroom. “I don’t feel very well. I—” She glanced at the bed. “Would you mind if I slept alone tonight?”
Zion helped her out of the jacket. “Why? You know we won’t do anything unless you ask.”
Not until she was ready. But I was set on making it happen. For her. She had to trample the messenger’s nightmare haunting her.
“It’s not that.” She tucked her dark hair behind her ears and hugged herself around her waist again. “I got my period. Everything hurts. I just want to curl up in bed and groan into a pillow.”
Without a single word, Zion marched out of her bedroom.
Anticipating her question, I asked, “That’s it?”
“What do you mean ‘that’s it’?” she sputtered. “Do you want me to kick you so I’m not the only one hurting?”
I crossed the distance between us and kissed her forehead. “I will not sleep if I know you are suffering across the hallway from me. So go get ready for bed. And no is not an acceptable answer.”
Huffing, she disappeared into the bathroom, and I took the time to discard my clothing in the laundry hamper she insisted on keeping in her closet. She came out, having changed into a pair of black sweatpants and a cotton t-shirt—evidently stolen from my room—and slipped under the bedsheets.
“Lay on your side,” I told her as I crawled in beside her and pulled the suffocating duvet she had an obsession with over us.
“Just so you know, you’re an overprotective prick,” she muttered as I pressed to her back. “No one is going to snatch me away at Vice. You didn’t have to sit there my entire shift.”
“We do not have a fifty-foot-high wall or similar protection measures. And even with them, I brought you out of Ilasall, did I not?” I asked, chuckling at her mumbles about a kidnapping.
“Their military has tried to take out Zion and me multiple times, and now we have two cases of them targeting you. They will not cease their attempts until they are successful. But I will not allow them to take you back, and that entails watching your back,” I said as I massaged her pelvis in clockwise circles, using a scrap of knowledge Eislyn had drilled into me during her first mandatory first-aid training.
She had nagged me into going through with it a year ago by declaring we were useless if we had no clue on how to manage pain without meds.
If Kali thought being ours meant we would ignore her discomfort, she was terribly mistaken. Zion and I were the select few permitted to cause her pain, specifically the type that made her beg for more as her thighs quaked from the strain of clenching her muscles too hard.
“Miss me?” Zion drawled as he returned, carrying a clear plastic bottle.
He climbed right over me to get to the other side of her while lightly drumming his fingers down my back and grinning widely as I tensed.
His teasing was sure to get him a lesson about the consequences of poking a sleeping wolf.
Tossing aside his clothing, he settled under the covers and pressed the bottle filled with hot water low on her stomach.
“How did you know?” she asked, adjusting the bottle’s position.
“It used to help my sister,” Zion explained, and without missing a beat, kissed her nose. “Now sleep.”
She covered her mouth to muffle her giggle, her eyes darting from him to me.
I rolled her onto her back. “Something funny?”
She loosened her grip for her voice to flow through. “Aren’t the two of you going to have a goodnight kiss too?”
“Did you like the show at Vice, little death?” I brushed the underside of her breasts through her t-shirt. She must have seen us in the corner booth before she had left.
Crafty, sneaky forest nymph, using us as a distraction to escape.
A tactic I could appreciate. But one that called for another lesson using the collar we had gifted her, now curled up in my desk’s top drawer in my study.
The shape of it resembled the messenger’s bruising hold on her throat too much.
For now. I had full intentions of replacing it with better experiences in the future.
Her nipples hardened, poking through the thin material, and her hand dropped aside, revealing her pressed-together lips failing to hold off a smile. “Maybe.”
Who was I to say no to her?
Seizing Zion’s nape, I yanked him toward me, right above her.
But instead of giving in, he fought for control, shattering my patience as his tongue explored my mouth and fogged up my mind. He had once said she tasted like addiction, but he felt like coming home after spending your entire life in exile.
I held his neck as we separated, my thumb idly stroking the underside of his jaw covered in faint stubble as I admired the brightness in his blue eyes, the angles of his high cheekbones, the arch of his upturned nose, the curve of his smug smile.
“That was—” Kali bit her fist.
Releasing him, I propped myself up on my elbow. “Yes? Finish your sentence.”
Her cheeks flushed. “Hot.”
Zion sat up on his heels. “You know, there are more ways to decrease pain.” He hauled the fluffy duvet off us and cupped her pussy over my black sweatpants.
She slapped at him. “I’m bleeding, for gods’ sake!”
“I’ve never cared about blood.” I braced an arm beside her head.
“He especially.” Feather-light, slow and soft, I kissed down her neck.
“And the only god whose sake we will do anything for is you. You are fucking divine, Kali. Our own little goddess of death.” She tasted like a liquid star, like she had fallen from that night sky of hers, so sweet I could not get enough of her.
She tipped her head back on the pillow, and I brushed my lips down her throat. I was not going to hurt her, not tonight, not when she was coming back to us, fighting the memory of that despicable messenger.
“You know I enjoy blood,” Zion murmured as his hand glided into her underwear, and she half-gasped, half-sighed. Mimicking me, he swirled his tongue along my spine. “And when it’s yours… Bleed for me.” He viciously bit down on my hip, undeniably leaving a bruise.
“Zion,” I growled in warning.
Chuckling, he licked the imprints his bite had left in my flesh.
Biting was my thing, not his. Something about sinking your teeth into the flesh of your possession writhing underneath you always caused me to unravel entirely.
“She is tonight’s priority.” I paused nuzzling her neck to glance at him. “If you can be her pretty boy for the night, I might play with you later.”
He groaned, a primal sound coming from deep inside his throat, and it took every morsel of control left in me not to jump all over him.
I was done keeping him at arm’s length. I was done surviving in solitude to lead my people without any distractions, any possessions, any cravings, so I remained focused on one goal—to keep our compounds alive, to make them thrive.
I was done not having anything, so no one could be held hostage or killed because of my work.
I was done giving a damn about bringing risk to others because I was the leader of the opposition.
I was done giving a fuck that it meant people close to me could get tortured simply because I cared for them.
Kali had changed everything. Now, I wanted to take what was rightfully mine. She was my death, one I had claimed, and he was my sinner, one who would pledge his fealty to me on his knees, begging to be used.
But not tonight.
Tonight, my focus fell on her, on pulling her out of her own personal hellhole. On making her squirm and shredding her vocal cords until the heavenly taste of unconsciousness claimed her. Until her pleas to stop morphed into tears. Until she realized, once and for all, that she was ours.
Not the prey of her nightmares. Not the property of Ilasall and its soldiers.
Ours.