Chapter 29 Gedeon
GEDEON
Lifting the cup, Zion finished his second serving of coffee.
Knowing him, he was going to be jumping and shaking in about an hour. The participants of his next close combat class were in for a ride.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “What about you?”
“I’m good,” Kali mumbled around a third of a lemon muffin, the pink box hovering under her chin to collect the raining crumbs.
“Nope.” He snatched the food container from her. “It’s your turn to share.”
Her glare betrayed the calculations going on in her head. Zion was going to pay for daring to steal pastries from her.
“I don’t have anything boner-related,” she puffed out.
“Or sentimental. Any good memories I have are from my early childhood.” Using the hem of her t-shirt, she cleaned her lips.
“You really don’t want to hear how we used to deform the utensils in the school cafeteria or draw mustaches on someone when they dozed off. ”
“I will make you another deal.” Lying on my back, I folded a corner of the blanket to serve as a makeshift pillow. “You give us one memory, and I will find a way to convince Ryder into baking croissants with raspberry jam next.”
She had perked up before I could finish my sentence.
My gut stormed. Nobody should react to the notion of a baked good the way she did.
All kids should be raised in loving families.
If without parents, then in proper schools, ones with teachers devoted to caring for children.
Including introducing them to a spectrum of foods, from nutritious meals to desserts overloaded with sugar.
“But it has to be embarrassing. I want all the nitty-gritty details.” Zion pulled a lemon muffin from the food container he had stolen from Kali. “The story better be as scrumptious as this,” he said, and bit into the buttery goodness.
Scrutinizing the box on his lap, Kali huffed, “Fine.” It served as a sole warning before she dived at him, climbing over me, her knees shoving into my thighs and ripping a grunt out of me. Screeching, she snatched the muffin from Zion and stuffed it fully into her mouth.
Half of it instantly burst from her, the clumps showering us and raining down her front as she tried and failed to grin at Zion.
Sitting up, ignoring Zion gaping at her, I drew her between my legs and picked off the golden particles dotting her clothing.
“Do that again sometime,” I encouraged her. “No one else has the balls to challenge him.”
Between fits of coughing out the rest of the muffin, she strained to say, “You have to promise to protect me from his revenge.”
“Deal. Here.” I passed her the half-full cup of coffee, and she chugged it down so fast my chest rumbled from amusement.
Mischievousness gleamed in Zion’s eyes as he licked his upper teeth. “Oh, you’re in for a round of tickles now.”
Sniffling, Kali shot me a look, and I chuckled. “It’s a one-time card. Are you sure you want to use it now?”
Her eagerness turned her nod into a multitude in rapid succession, and I maneuvered her to my side, twisting to hide her from Zion.
“If you leave her alone,” I told him, and then added to drill the point into both of their skulls, “this time only. I’ll owe you.”
Zion pouted. “You’re no fun.” After fishing out another lemon muffin from the box, he cautiously tore a chunk off, glancing at Kali for any further attempts to steal his treat.
“But I will take my favor once the time comes. And you”—he pointed the falling-apart chunk at her—“still haven’t told us your most embarrassing memory.
” Throwing the lump in the air, he caught it with his tongue.
“I will use the favor Gedeon owes me to eat all of your raspberry croissants if you won’t. ”
“You can try.” She peeled the lid off the last food container, the blue box containing a mix of two kinds of muffins, and plucked the chocolate one out. “But if you do it, I will tell Jayla she got food poisoning because you wrote the wrong expiration date on a bottle of milk.”
Zion’s jaw fell, and mine widened as my smile broke out. These two were worth each other. Luck had to have waded into my territory to steer them both toward me.
“You’re a mean birdie,” he groused.
“And you’re a bad boy.” She ripped into her sweet, the walnut-colored crumbs raining onto the plastic box in her lap. “But”—she swallowed the bite—“I keep my promises.”
Swiping off the evidence of the baked good off her leather jacket, she cleared her throat.
“It was right after I turned thirteen. I was rolling in bed, unable to fall asleep. The dorm room I’d been assigned to held six girls, so when I heard one of them gasping and…
crying out, I hurried over to her, afraid she’d gotten injured.
I kind of ripped the sheets off her in my rush.
She was naked—not that it was out of the ordinary, since we all had lived together for years—but her hands were… ” She flushed.
“You caught her touching herself.” It wasn’t that hard to figure out the rest of her story. “That’s not that bad.”
She fiddled with her muffin, destroying the poor pastry by squishing it into a flat chocolate pancake.
Zion wiggled his eyebrows. “Did you join her?”
“No,” she squeaked. The breeze twirled her dark strands into a cloud around her. “Again, I was thirteen.”
He shrugged. “Not that it would’ve stopped me.”
“Do not lie to her.” I threw a buttery crumb at Zion. “You were twenty the first time you had sex. At thirteen, you were crushing on our classmate.”
Kali’s mouth dropped. “Twenty?” She quivered with barely contained delight, but Zion’s glare pushed her over the edge. Her laughter exploded out of her, much to his dismay.
“Your debt to me just increased,” he grumbled. “And this is not about me. Unfortunately.”
Instead of granting him a response, I scratched the back of his neck, right where his hair thinned out, only for a second, but it was enough for the creases lining his forehead to smooth out.
Rolling her lips together, Kali continued. “She practically screamed at me while I stood, frozen, with her duvet in my hands. But I didn’t find any wounds, so I asked if everything was okay. She mumbled that she was fine, of course, and to leave her alone, but…I was a curious kid.”
I rested my forearms on my bent knees. “You asked her what she was doing, didn’t you?”
Kali nodded. “And that’s not even the—”
Hiccup.
We whipped to look at Zion.
He stared right back at us. “Tha—” Another hiccup rocked his form. “I can’t—” A third spasm of his diaphragm cut off his curse, and he threw his head back, convulsing again. “Fu—” Hiccup. “I ha—” Hiccup.
Suppressing the chuckles about to flee me, I passed him the thermos. “Drink this.” Hopefully, it would help him hold his breath long enough for the involuntary twitches to pass.
He chugged the coffee like a life-saving drug. Caramel liquid dripped off his chin and trickled down his leather jacket, soaking into his sweatpants, coloring the hemline in dark stains.
Heaving, he swiped his sleeve across his mouth. And paused. Waited a second. Two. Five. “No more.” Another six. “Yeeees.” Relief slumped his shoulders. “Now continue. I want to know what happened next.”
“As I was saying, I pushed her to tell me what she was doing,” Kali said, toying with the zipper of her jacket.
“When she realized I wasn’t going to leave, she relented.
Details aside, that’s when I learned a little extra about female anatomy—what a clit was.
And what can be achieved by touching it.
” She released the slider. “But that’s not even the worst.”
Fiddling with the purple blanket, she went on.
“The following day, I spent some time in the shower…” She looked toward the woods, toward the sun rising from their depths, the scorching globe a far lighter shade than her blazing cheeks.
“I doubt my…exploration had brought me an orgasm, but it’d felt good, and so, I ran to Alora.
” Sadness danced in her features before she deadpanned, “I taught my best friend how to fuck herself. I literally helped her find her clit.”
Godsdamnit, I loved how she still blushed talking about pleasure.
She had sold her body numerous times, called it favors, a price of whatever she was in need of, and I longed to rain murder on all those sick fucks who had accepted her proposal or requested such payment.
But whenever the time came to admit what she wanted herself, she closed off. Shied from taking, too used to giving.
She was touch starved. Famished for affection. Ravenous for kindness. Malnourished in intimacy. It bolstered my resolve to provide her with a collection of all. To the point that she drowned in happiness. Cried from it.
Besides calling them mine—I wasn’t going to deny it; I was a territorial bastard—I wanted them both to shatter the shell hoarding their true selves from the outside world.
I wanted to ensure they did not have to fight for tomorrow.
I wanted to have endless breakfasts together, to cuddle them both in bed, to count their drowsy exhales as they yielded to slumber’s seduction.
I wanted it all.
“So that’s how my pretty birdie has learned how to pick her feathers.” Zion sucked a crumb off his forefinger. “I need to see it. Right now.”
She startled. “I’m not—”
“You will.” I flicked a flake off my jeans. “Not necessarily tonight, but we own your pleasure, Kali. So if we wish to see you fall apart by your own hands, you will do it. Because you have given yourself fully to us. Or have you forgotten your promise?”
I’m yours, she had vowed four months ago.
An irrevocable pledge.
“That may be true, but you gave the same promise that night. You swore to me in blood. And yet, you broke it by leaving us.” She rose to her feet. A gust of wind flapped her jacket, the air currents as vicious as her. “If you can’t comprehend that, maybe I should treat you the same way you did us.”