Chapter 37 Kali #2
Education in Ilasall’s schools consisted of the best ways to serve the city, not how to loosen up.
And the restaurants? The bars? A green wristband had to dangle on your wrist to grant you access.
If you wore a black band, you could take your chances in the underground places, but you had to be ready to say goodbye to your body there.
It was all about trading, and often, not the willing kind.
“That changes now.” Gedeon seized my wrist and tugged.
I stumbled as he yanked me out of the chair. My shoes slipped in the puddle of apple juice—I’d managed to spill a pitcher half an hour earlier.
Catching my waist, Zion hoisted me upright. His hold lingered while I tried to match Gedeon’s long strides, aiming for the dance floor.
“Gedeon, you can’t just—”
He stopped, and I crashed into him. The muscles honed from years of actual battles met me like a block of cement, and I bounced off him. Training for the last half a year had strengthened my core, but my balance flew out the window any time I was near these two.
“Yes, I can.” His jaw verged on creaking from how hard he clenched it.
“Fuck. I’m sorry.” The strength in his grip on my wrist ebbed, and his thumb brushed over my skin, the contact so gentle I ceased wrenching free.
“Can we—” He sighed. “Can we forget about things for one evening? That’s all I ask. One evening. Dance with me. Please.”
I wracked my brain for a past instance of him stammering. Genuinely asking. Pleading.
That desperation persuaded me to nod, and he…lit up.
I couldn’t cease staring at him while he navigated us through the flock of people dressed in pinks, purples, greens, and yellows, the fabrics as bright as their laughter.
“Put your arms here.” Gedeon guided them to rest around his neck, his own gliding to the small of my back. The possessive splay of his hands warmed my belly, and a flush crept up my cheeks. “Now move with me.”
Clamping down on the rising need to jump and hook my legs around his waist, to grind against him, I puffed out, “You can’t teach me to dance when you’re terrible at it yourself.”
“I’m terrible?” His chuckle permeated the stuffy air from the herd of sweaty bodies swaying together, and the thunderous sound locked me to him. “Then be terrible with me.”
With me.
I swallowed.
“Not a chance.” Zion tugged on my hips, wrenching me out of Gedeon’s embrace. Spinning us around, he plastered himself to my front, precisely how Gedeon had done. “He can follow me while I actually teach you how to dance.”
A snicker tumbled out of me at Gedeon’s grunt, but not a second passed before he glued himself to Zion’s back and left a trail of kisses—no, nips—up his neck, one every three drumbeats.
Zion’s eyelids grew heavy as his head tilted aside, and his grasp on my hips relaxed.
Gedeon plucked Zion’s shirt out of his high-waisted pants, and his hands slid underneath the material, their journey headed upward.
Firelight cast shadows on an exposed patch of sandy skin, the flavor of which my taste buds craved to explore.
“See those flames?” Zion rasped, jerking his chin at the bonfire blazing near us. “Describe them to me.”
“They’re…” The bursts of orange, yellow, and red attacked and deflected, bowed and rose, the dozens moving as a whole while retaining their individual shapes, coasting like maple leaves in a river, unbothered by the splintering wood underneath them. “Free. Drifting. There’s no order.”
“Exactly. Dancing is the same; there are no set-in-stone rules.” Zion guided my hips to the left, then right, and shook his head at my staggering. “Close your eyes.” He patted Gedeon’s palm on his chest. “Both of you.”
Gedeon frowned at me over Zion’s shoulder, and my eyebrows rose in the manner his often did as a response to a challenge.
He skimmed his lips against Zion’s neck one last time and stilled, surrendering to the order.
I followed, submitting to Zion pulling me closer.
“Imagine you’re a flame.” His command stole control of my legs. “Flow like it.” His pelvis moved from side to side, and with me fixed to his front and Gedeon to his back, we had no choice but to mimic him. “Relax your muscles. Loosen your joints. Forget the ground exists.”
“Uh...” Easier said than done.
“Don’t overthink it.” Zion alternated the pressure on my hips, coaxing them to sway. “If you feel like taking a step, do it, but if there’s no pull to move your feet, then you don’t have to.”
I couldn’t even if I wanted to. Not one of my ten toes was willing to cooperate. Add in two heels with their own minds, and—
“Kali,” he warned with a hint of lethality, and his fingertips dug into the top of my ass. “If you don’t comply, I’ll throw you over my knee, use your pants to tie your ankles and your panties to secure your wrists, and then spank you until you sing louder than the drummers.”
His threat coaxed a whimper out of me, and I gulped to tamp down my squirming.
“Perhaps ruffling her feathers is what she needs,” Gedeon murmured.
“I’ll dance,” I croaked out, not a drop of courage residing in me to open my eyes.
Zion hummed his satisfaction, and it nudged me to listen to the rocking of his hips.
Slowly, the oscillation of our bodies dissolved the square we were in. The wisps of concrete dissipated like a fog, and the aroma of roasted meat and vegetables ceased watering my mouth. The crowd’s chatter hushed until it died completely, and the crackle of fires receded.
The drumbeats formed a tidal wave that pulled me under, the rhythm morphing into a current coaxing me to move, to yield to their might, to—
Zion’s grip on me firmed up.
I tensed up, scrutinizing our surroundings, hunting for trouble—
And relaxed.
Gedeon had stopped moving. He still stood flush with Zion’s back, but his focus had strayed away from us.
Not far from our trio, Conall, Nissa, Dain, and Aanya laughed as they danced, all of them smashed together, a pile of twined legs and clumsy turns as they repeatedly staggered into each other.
Dain guffawed as Aanya tried to duck under Nissa’s arm during a spin and failed, tripping and face-planting right into it. Conall steadied his partner before she could sprawl on the ground, rewarding her clumsiness with a kiss on her temple.
Admiring his friends, Gedeon blinked rapidly, his throat bobbing.
“Are you…crying?” The whisper of my disbelief drowned in the pulse of the drumbeats.
“No,” he scoffed with a note of hoarseness.
Reaching over Zion’s shoulder, I swiped the inner corner of Gedeon’s eye and raised my forefinger, the tip gleaming with wetness. “What’s this then?”
Gedeon’s palm glided higher, coming to rest low on Zion’s throat. “The rain.”
My snort joined Zion’s.
“He won’t ever admit it. It’s kind of adorable.” Zion craned his neck to look at Gedeon, and his voice lowered, as if his thoughts alone could strike that chord promising trouble. “We won’t like you less for spilling a tear or a dozen, you know. We’ll just lick them off you.”
Gedeon grunted, sighed, and growled at the same time, employing the entire spectrum of his wordless retorts at once. I had to roll my lips together to prevent any reaction from bursting free.
I hadn’t seen him display his vulnerability openly so far. It…did things to me.
“It’s…” he trailed off, clearly enjoying the sight of his friends losing themselves in their bubble of joy. “I haven’t seen Conall this happy in a very long time.”
“I was only joking about crying. I don’t know what it’s like to grow up surrounded by people who care about you, but seeing all this…” I gestured to the square brimming with Conall’s close ones. “It’s heartbreaking.”
Gedeon’s frown returned, and I rushed to clarify.
“In a good sense. Seeing you care for your family is so beautiful it hurts.” Widening my feet, I pretended the more stable position steadied my voice too.
“So please don’t hide your emotions from us.
Don’t hide from us at all, Gedeon,” I murmured.
“Because I’m not sure I could survive it again. ”
“Kali—”
“I see the reasoning in why you did what you did, I do, it’s just…” I filled my lungs to their capacity, the surplus of oxygen being the fuel I lacked. “It doesn’t make it ache any less.”
“Little death—”
“No, let me finish,” I cut him off. “I can’t erase the three months without you. I believed you were dead. That I killed you. I know you asked me to forget everything for tonight, but I can’t, Gedeon. I can’t. It’s not something I can pretend never happened.”
A minute of stillness passed, Zion for once calm in the sixty seconds it took Gedeon to admit, “I know.” He shuffled closer, merely an increment, but it wedged Zion between us.
“To survive, you have to believe in something,” Gedeon said.
“My whole life, that has been our people.” His gaze burned with things unsaid.
“You changed it, Kali. It’s you and Zion now.
You are who I believe in. Who I choose to follow. The only ones I will ever bow to.”
I swallowed the ball clogging my throat. “Then why are you so set on breaking us?”