Chapter 22 Kali
KALI
The ultimate truth was that Gedeon wanted to return.
“I won’t deny it. I have dreamed of coming back since I woke up.” He stuck his hands into the front pockets of his pants. “But the question is, what do you want?”
My silence stretched in the bathroom like a rubber band.
I snapped it.
“I want to climb you and kill you at the same time.” Because the way he’d fucked me in the forest had felt like the last time.
For some reason, such a notion invoked a sense of wrongness in me.
“I want to feel you next to me when I sleep and smother you with my pillow simultaneously.” I pushed off the counter, heading for the door.
Entering my path, he stopped me. “You want a fight.”
“I want a punching bag.”
He spread his arms wide. “Will I do?” The bathtub behind him sparkled in white—a stark contrast to Gedeon lingering like a black stain.
Resolving not to second-guess myself, I lunged. Squeaky-clean floor tiles provided the much-needed traction as I swiveled, punching his side. The fleshy parts of a human body were perfect targets for raining damage on organs with minimal effort.
A grunt escaped him, but he didn’t try to defend himself. As still as a tree, he patiently absorbed my kicks as I twirled around him, concealing the hints of where I would strike next.
The flames in my ankles spurred me on, and I peppered him with a new set of blows. His stumbles carried him from the bathtub to the sink, the toilet, the towel rack, back and forth, all over the bathroom.
Once I got bored with chasing him, I switched to striking his face. A slap, a punch, a slap, a punch, I fell into a pattern of hits. Some landed on his swollen jaw. Some on his nose.
Blood poured from his nostrils, dripped off his chin, yet he remained still, unmoving. Simply tracked me as I bounced around him, ready to accept whatever I had to give.
My muscles didn’t burn. Sweat didn’t collect between my breasts. But the ire swirling in my bones, it simmered down. Turn by turn, it slowed like a river, the current ebbing to a trickle after miles of journeying from the mountains to the sea, and I…backed down.
Standing before him, I watched how he licked the crimson off his lips and instinctively mimicked the motion.
His gaze snagged on my mouth. The low noise rumbling in his throat invaded my being, causing my core to contract, the heat to pool between my thighs.
As his boot nudged my toes, I retreated. His eyes never left mine as we danced in a linear fashion, the tiles under my bare soles doing nothing to lower my rising temperature.
My backside crashed into the counter beside the sink, and he swiftly pressed into me.
“Did hurting me make you wet?” Cradling my head, he moved his lower jaw from side to side. “Because I think I understand Zion’s craving for pain now.”
I scoffed. “It’s just the adrenaline causing a physical reaction.”
Heaviness imbued his chuckle, the intensity furling low in my pelvis. “I thought we had a deal—no more lies.”
“I didn’t agree to anything.”
“You will,” he swore, solidifying his vow by pinching my nipple.
I whimpered from the unexpected sensation, and he fisted my strands, craning my head back. The angle forced my back to arch, pushing my breasts forward, right into his waiting grasp.
“Do you cede and accept the terms?” he whispered into my ear.
When I didn’t respond, he tweaked my nipple. I cried out at the explosion of pain—arrows of it shot up my nerves.
He didn’t relent, continuing to pinch the tiny piece of hardened flesh. “I won’t ask again,” he murmured, his tone so gentle it was reminiscent of a caress.
“I don’t know what terms you’re talking about,” I strained to say, squirming as I grew desperate for more. For friction, for stimulation, for something, anything, to alleviate the feeling of emptiness.
Gedeon released my nipple, and I slumped in relief. But then blood rushed into the abused bud, heightening the ache, and my thighs clenched.
“Allow me to lay them out.” He brushed a line between my breasts and down to my navel. South he went, searing a path hotter than the sun beating through the large window.
Gedeon kicked my feet apart. “First, when it comes to us, false words are off the table,” he detailed, emphasizing his condition by circling my clit.
He nipped my throat right as his fingers swept down my slit, gathering my wetness and bringing it back to the bundle of nerves capable of frying my mind.
“Second, when I ask a question, you answer.” He went back to my entrance, dipped two digits up to the first knuckle and withdrew to rub my clit once more.
And then repeated everything all over again, this time sinking his fingers deeper and curling them.
I contracted, and he pulled them out, returning to my clit. “Or I will do this every time you deflect instead of giving me a proper response.”
He tugged on my hair, and the ceiling blurred as my tears sprang up. First a drop, then a second rolled down to my temples. My hands flew to his shoulders as I tried to stay upright.
Setting a brutal pace by thrusting his fingers inside me, he massaged the spot that froze my lungs, then returned to my clit, driving me to the highs of madness, testing how long I could sustain the torment without any relief.
His lips ghosted over my earlobe. “As much as I love your moans, I will not consider them as a sufficient answer.”
“Gedeon,” I begged, not sure whether for him to cease or to continue, to get off me or to keep pushing, keep bringing me to the brink of loss.
Loss of thoughts, loss of anything but need.
“Yes?” he asked as wet noises echoed in the bathroom. “Though I enjoy the sounds your pussy is making, your voice is what I want.”
Fire flowed through my veins, draining the strength in my knees as they quivered.
“Let me—” My nails dug into his upper back, without a doubt leaving indentations in his tattoos.
“Go—” I cut off before I could say “Gods.” I was well aware of how that would bring me another lesson.
Gedeon’s name had become a priority in my mind, his and Zion’s, the two names I could pray to again and again, and never say in vain. “Gedeon.”
He hummed in approval, his approach in snatching the speech from me as effective as usual.
“I wonder what it is that you want,” he drawled as I ground against his hand, crying out when he switched things up, the lack of consistency preventing me from falling apart.
He worked me up to the point I cared about nothing else but for the torment to end.
“Speak up.” He nibbled on my earlobe like it was the most scrumptious meal in the world.
“Please.” I’d already ceased caring about the bargain he sought to strike a while ago.
Gedeon sunk his digits deeper inside me, focusing on the small area that made me tense. “Please, what?”
“Oh— Let me— Let—” Everything climbed higher and higher, like the water retreating from the shore in preparation for the upcoming tidal wave. And you knew once it pulled you under, its overwhelming might would render you senseless. “Please, please, let me come.”
“Do you agree to the terms of our deal?”
Gripping the shirt at his back, scrunching up the cotton fabric, I vowed, “Yes, yes, I agree.”
“Then better be quiet.” He nodded toward the open window. “Or do you want the entire street to hear your screams?”
I shook my head in response. But there was no way I was going to be quiet. Not after the torture I’d endured so far.
“Good. Because your screams belong to us.” Gedeon positioned the heel of his palm on my clit, and I greedily moved my hips in search of just the right amount of friction. “Zion and I are the only ones who will ever revel in them.” He slapped a hand over my mouth.
I sunk my teeth into his middle finger. A hoarse groan rose deep from within him, and I bit down harder, the faint salty taste flooding my tongue. Drool gathered at my lip corners, but I held on to his flesh like a lifeline as the first sparks peppered my vision.
“Come for me, Kali,” he commanded. “Now.”
My muscles locked, and I ceased breathing—the world had combusted. I clenched around his fingers, each contraction prolonging the surges of pleasure. It rippled through me in a blazing manner, reducing my senses to ash. Content, I floated in the sea of them—
Abruptly, Gedeon pulled his digits out of me, gripped my thighs, and hoisted me onto the counter.
I grasped his hair as he knelt between my spread legs, buried his head in my pussy, and began lapping me up like a man gifted a first meal in forever.
Whimpering, I tugged on his silky strands. “Gedeon.”
Seizing my thighs, he hauled me to the edge. “Mine,” he growled, as if it was a sufficient explanation for the fervor he was devouring me with. “All mine.”
It didn’t take long for him to turn me into a gasping mess overloaded with stimulation. “Too”—I pushed him away from me—“much.”
Groaning, he nibbled my inner thigh, destroying the sensitive flesh and creating another mark of his for me to bear.
I suppressed a cry as the sting intensified, but a feeble sound slipped out, nevertheless.
His eyes flicked to mine. Chest heaving, he rested his forehead right on the brand he’d left on me like a savage. “I want to crawl inside you and never leave.”
A giggle vibrated through me. “I don’t think that’s possible.”
“I don’t care.” He kissed the reddened skin on my leg. “Promise me that from now on, you won’t wear any other bruises than mine.” Rising, he cupped my face. “Promise me that even if you can’t forgive me, you will not let another touch you.”
Taking hold of his wrists, I teased, “Even Zion?”
“I told you before, it’s different with him.” Gedeon kissed my forehead, and my stomach did a double flip.
A howl interrupted our conversation as the wind found its way in through the open window. Chirps and songs of birds followed, breaking the spell Gedeon had put me under.