Chapter 39 Kali
KALI
Awhite-and-purple cloud on a thin stick floated before Gedeon as he weaved between the-swaying-to-the-music hips and stomping feet. Spinning around a couple lost to the thrum of the drums, he turned his back to me, and the strawberry patch on the back of his t-shirt caught the firelight.
Zion might have been right. Gedeon truly resembled the fruit.
The seeds were like the protective armor he’d established around himself, but if you cut through it, you’d find a smooth and squishy texture, similar to Gedeon in the mornings, when he would squash you with his weight while he battled drowsiness.
“Here.” He offered me the strangest… Yeah, I had not a hunch on what the thing was. It literally looked like Gedeon had dragged a cloud down and stabbed it onto a wooden stick.
Hesitant about poking it—although I itched to do it—I asked, “What is this?”
“Cotton candy.” He wiggled the sweet, and it slightly bounced. It didn’t look edible, not by far. “They didn’t have any chocolate bars, but they had a booth making these.”
I dissolved into a puddle of goo. He’d promised he would bring us a dozen chocolate bars after Zion had learned I’d never had one last night. And now, he tried to make it come true to the best of his ability. Just…because.
They’d spent days convincing me, showing me they didn’t and wouldn’t require reciprocation for anything they did for me, but sometimes, it was still difficult to grasp the concept of others doing something for you out of nothing but kindness.
I flipped my hands so the blaze could warm their backs. “That can’t be candy. It looks like an overgrown cotton boll on a stick.” Only a dozen times bigger than those I’d seen pictures of—tiny clumps of white dotting a field of bushes.
“It’s a spun-sugar confection.” Gedeon peeled a strip off the top. “Try it.”
“I’m supposed to eat this?” I rolled the white bit between my fingers. It diminished in size, getting smaller and smaller until it was no bigger than a tendril. “It’s gone.”
His chuckle wrapped around me like a comforting blanket. It wasn’t contemptuous, the rumble too free to be anything else but genuine amusement.
“Perhaps you will like the purple.” He tore two more pieces off the cloud and passed me one. “Place it on your tongue and let it melt.”
Following his example, I stuffed the strip into my mouth. As the piece rapidly disintegrated, an explosion of sweetness overwhelmed my taste buds.
It was sugar. He hadn’t lied.
I studied the confection he held while I licked my sticky fingertips to collect any leftover crystals. Would the flavor of the white part of the candy be the same?
Gedeon’s smirk emerged for the hundredth time this evening. “Want more?”
“Always.” Popping out of nowhere, Zion clamped his teeth around the top of the cotton candy, wrenched a third of it off, and grinned around the confection.
My shock quickly melted into a glare, but he simply sucked in half of the giant shred.
Instead of issuing a reproach, Gedeon grabbed Zion’s nape and slammed their mouths together, ravaging both the sweet and the man before him.
Why was it so hot? They were eating candy. The fluffiest kind I’d seen, but that aside, the pure, undiluted need in them loosened the lid on my…
Yup, my panties were about to get drenched.
Withdrawing, Zion spotted the rest of the candy Gedeon had been holding on the ground, right next to the bonfire, the cloud quickly shriveling into nothing. “You dropped it,” he said with a pout.
Gedeon picked up the stick with a few tendrils stuck to it. “Did you like it?” he asked me.
My cheeks flamed like the blaze at my side. I wasn’t sure if he was asking about the kiss or the sweet. “Is this your way of trying to buy my forgiveness?”
He twirled the stick, and strings of sugar fluttered like ribbons. “Is it working?”
“No,” I huffed, but the lie was clear in my tone.
The conversation with Conall and Damia had brought to light what I’d been trying to snuff out for the past days—I’d forgiven Gedeon.
I couldn’t pinpoint the exact point in time it’d happened, but the past was the past. I was choosing to look to the future.
“What if I get you another one?” Scowling at the speck of dirt on his t-shirt, Gedeon flicked the crumb of dirt off it. “They have more colors.”
“Blue?” Like the clear sky earlier today. I’d wondered if it would be possible to carve out a slice of it.
“Keep Zion in line while I’m gone, and I will check,” he assured, then vanished in the throng of Conall’s friends filling the square to the brim.
He didn’t say, ‘I can check.’ No, he’d stated his search as an inevitability. Something he wouldn’t steer from until it was done.
It made me buzz with primal satisfaction.
Zion’s tongue peeked out, but before it could snatch the crystal of sugar stuck to his lip corner, I wiped away the sticky piece. “Why did you run off after Aria?” I asked.
Twisting me to face the crowd, he plastered his front to my back. “I figured she might have what I forgot to pack.”
I rested my arms on his wrapped around my midriff, his hold firm but not too tight, the perfect balance for me to relax. “What was it?”
“So curious.” He rubbed his half-hard dick against my ass, and it roused the heat hibernating in my belly to awaken. “But you’ll see.” Toying with the top button of my pants, he added, “I also talked with Dorrian. He agreed to visit us in two days.”
I traced a vein on the back of Zion’s right hand. “Both of us?”
“Are you thinking about the last time?” He sucked on my earlobe, and my knees wobbled. “How you dripped all over my cock, fucking yourself on it while Dorrian tattooed you?”
A squeak fled me.
I cleared my throat in hopes of finding my way back to my sanity. But it turned out to be challenging, as Zion ground against me, his movements free for all to see if they so much as glanced at us.
“But yes.” His fingers dipped under my waistline—
Two of my pants buttons popped off, clattering onto the ground.
“Zion,” I hissed, grateful that at least the other four buttons had held and my pants hadn’t completely fallen down.
Drawing lines right below my navel, he murmured, “Dorrian will do us both at the same time.”
Clenching at his words, I pressed my lips together to keep my composure.
Fine, more like attempted to do so.
A venture I undeniably failed when Zion skimmed the hem of my panties, and a whimper slipped out of me.
“Do you like the sound of that? Someone fucking us both?” His breath drifted from behind my earlobe to underneath my jaw. “Because we can arrange that.”
I shuddered, my imagination running rampant, reminding me of how his licks had felt gliding down my body and settling between my thighs.
“No.” I gripped his arm tightening around my waist.
“No use in lying to me.” He cupped me over my underwear. “Your pussy betrays you.” As his middle finger pressed along my slit, my hips moved of their own accord, encouraging him to rub me right where I needed it the most.
A head full of sleek cornrows ending in silver clips twisted toward us right as Zion brushed right over my clit. On reflex, I pushed my ass into him, to run away or to ask for more too muddled up for me to discern.
Damia’s eyebrows shot up, yet she didn’t pause her conversation with someone near another bonfire, her acquaintance concealed by the shadows the flames couldn’t deter.
Zion stroked lower, to my entrance, and hummed his satisfaction at the wetness soaking my panties. “If her watching turns you on this much”—he pushed a fingertip inside me—“imagine what it would be like having Gedeon in her place.”
I rose onto my tiptoes, digging my nails into Zion’s forearm holding me up.
Grinning, Damia raised her amber drink to us, took a sip, and then returned her focus to her companion.
“How he would trace the rim of that glass while he ordered us around.” Zion returned to circling my clit, slow and deliberate, his torture much too light for my preference.
I squirmed, hunting for the friction I desperately needed.
“How he would refuse to touch himself, instead observing us for any sign of deviation from his commands,” Zion whispered, and his rubs roughened, reaching the intensity I liked.
Writhing, I burned with the need flooding my veins.
I’d missed this, all of this, from the teasing to the notion of Gedeon joining us. Physical connection had become my safe haven, a healing salve. I hadn’t fathomed how much I’d been deprived of genuine contact meant to please me until Gedeon and Zion had addicted me to it.
“Shh. As much as I love your singing, Gedeon would murder us if we caused a scene. And we want him in a merciful mood, don’t we?
” Zion kicked my feet apart. “Unless you want him to drag you to the middle of this square, shove you to your knees, and turn you into a beautiful mess painted with our cum.” He yanked my panties aside.
“But that would ruin Conall’s celebration.
” Rapidly tapping out a melody on the sensitive bundle of nerves, Zion muffled my cry by clamping a hand over my mouth.
“So be a nice and good little bird and keep the chirps to yourself while you come all over my fingers.” He pushed two digits inside me, swiftly curling them.
My back bowed as I squeezed my eyes shut, my cries spurring him on as he found that spot.
“I see you started having fun without me.”