Chapter 40 Kali
KALI
The ice in Gedeon’s voice snapped my attention to him.
His gaze roved down between my legs, searing a path of scorching fire. He radiated menace on such a level I feared it was going to wilt the three cotton candies he’d brought. “I thought I had told you to keep Zion in check.”
Shit. I hadn’t considered that would include anything outside of making sure Zion’s knife stayed in its sheath.
“She is.” Zion kept his palm pressed over my mouth, smothering my sputtering, and began to massage the small area weakening my knees. “She’s gripping me so tightly I can’t do anything else.” He stuffed his middle finger into my mouth.
As if nudged by something invisible, I leaped at the chance to suck it, taking it as deep as I could. He groaned, his hips bucking into my backside as he rubbed himself against me.
“You should feel her.” He adjusted his grasp to encompass my lower jaw, his grip brutal enough to hurt, unrelenting in bringing me to the precipice. “She’s so drenched that if not for those drums, everyone would hear it.”
My eyes widened at the obscenity. The awareness that we were in a public space, at Conall’s wedding celebration, crashed on me like a bucket of cold water.
This is bad, bad, bad. We have to stop, I wanted to yell, but with Zion’s digit on my tongue, all that came out was a string of garbled noises.
“Good.” Gedeon maneuvered the three sweets he was holding to one hand. “She can imagine what the ride home tomorrow will be with our cum dribbling out of her pussy and ass.”
My mind blanked out. I contracted around Zion’s fingers, and his chuckle rolled over me like thunder as he ground the heel of his palm against my clit. “She likes that sound of that.”
“Because that’s what you want, is it not, Kali?” Gedeon swiped a sweaty strand off my nose. “Ten hours in a car with us, each bump on the road reminding you what it’s like to be fucked by us?”
I gulped. It seemed I’d inherited the proclivity for trouble from Zion. If it was even possible to inherit something from mere proximity to them.
But it didn’t surprise me. With Zion, everything was possible.
So I focused on sucking his middle finger instead of answering.
“Let her speak,” Gedeon barked.
Zion withdrew his digit. The pad of it traced the side of my neck, down to the hollow of my throat, between my breasts, trailing around the left one, closer and closer to—
He pinched my nipple.
I gasped from the sting, but it blossomed into a pool of heat in my lower abdomen.
Gedeon pushed his thumb between my lips, only to retreat and tug on the bottom one. “Admit you want it, and I won’t add this misbehavior to your punishment tonight.”
My thighs clenched. “Punishment?”
“Did you think yours and Zion’s little game of toying with my clothing and you two dressing all in black would go without consequences?”
My toes curled. Why the hell did his warning dangle before me like bait? A promise so dangerous I hoped for it to come true.
Zion switched his rhythm, thrusting his fingers slower, more precisely, and my surroundings lost their form. The buildings, people, and food weighing down the tables blended into one concoction without a start or an end.
I held on to his forearm as he twisted my nipple, increasing the prickle to a steady burning. “What do you think he’ll do?” Zion’s whisper barely penetrated the haze muddling up my common sense.
The spring inside me coiling tighter and tighter was all I could think about.
My joints threatened to disintegrate, my muscles locking up—
“Stop.” Gedeon’s order rang out like a whip.
“No,” I cried out, spasming around Zion’s digits as they stilled.
He flicked my nipple, teasing me with a shred of what a release would have been like.
My brain scrambled to make sense. “Why?”
“I had warned you, yet you disobeyed me.” Gedeon waved the three cotton candies, each in a different color, the closest to the bonfire glinting as the sugar crystallized.
“Be glad my hands are busy carrying these for you, or I would make an example of you right here, in front of everyone. As it is, the loss of your orgasm will serve as a lesson for now.”
If a person’s tone could slither inside you, that was what Gedeon’s had done.
To further drill the point, Zion pulled his fingers out of me and fixed my pants, checking if the four remaining buttons held.
“Know that if you defy me again, I will not hesitate to show you what real discipline is.” Gedeon’s eyes, the shade of liquid night, flicked to Zion. “Both of you.”
“Please do.” Zion adjusted his cock, the lack of underwear failing to conceal his excitement, and snatched the pink cloud from Gedeon. “I’ll eat it right up.” With a quirked eyebrow, he slurped in the top of the confection.
Gedeon extended the blue one to me, keeping the last one for himself, the candy as white as his shirt, and a scream bubbled inside me at the gesture.
He was offering me a consolation prize.
“Take it,” he growled. “Or I will give you something else to taste.”
My feet unsteady, I seized the short wooden stick from him. Poking the blue cloud, testing if it was as squishy at the bottom as it was in the middle, I refused to look anywhere else.
The dampness in my panties reminded me too much of what I’d lost.
A crunch signaled someone was approaching, and two tips of leather boots came into my sight. “Are you okay?”
I sniffled. Yes, like a petulant child. My emotions had deteriorated into utter chaos, and I had not a hunch on how to put them back together.
His touch as soft as the cotton candy, Gedeon lifted my chin.
I immediately focused on Zion munching on the pink goodness. How I would have given anything to be able to relax and forget, to simply float and…exist. Not get nauseous from the vortex lacing my thoughts with its poison until they lost their shape.
“No, don’t you dare look away.” Gedeon drew me back to him. “Are you okay?” he repeated.
“Yes.” Side-stepping him, I bit off a large chunk of the candy to do something, anything other than talking.
“Kali.”
Ignoring how the sugar coated my teeth in a sticky layer, I chewed the sweet until it began to taste like ash.
And then shakily exhaled, willing my tears away. The more than two decades I’d spent in Ilasall had ingrained a set of five principles in me.
One. Regardless of the state you were in, you pushed through all obstacles.
Two. If strength left you, albeit temporarily, you pretended it didn’t.
Three. Logic was more important than anything.
Four. If someone hurt you, you pushed it all down, to the deepest pits of yourself, where no light could bring it back up.
Five. You never allowed yourself a display of vulnerability.
Failing any rule meant handing your opponent an advantage over you. And I couldn’t afford it. Not when it—
Gedeon wrenched my blue cotton candy away from me.
Next thing I knew, strong arms enveloped me. “It’s okay.” Stroking my back, he murmured, “Breathe.”
His body heat seeping through the thin material doused the hail storming in my gut.
Sticky hands or not, I clutched him like my next inhale depended on it. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
“You are allowed to feel how you do. You don’t need to reason it.” His chest expanded as he squeezed me, crushed me, but it convinced my pulse to slow.
“But—”
“No, Kali.” He cradled my head, and the gentle grasp mollified my warring insides. “Getting overwhelmed is normal, especially during or after sex. You don’t need to hide it from us. It won’t make us think any less of you.”
“Why?” I snorted, and a little bit of snot flew out of my nostrils. Hopefully, Gedeon wouldn’t notice as I buried my face in the crook of his neck. “I’m already worth so little?”
“Fuck no.” Clasping my nape, he roughly maneuvered me to look at him. “Is that what you believe?”
“You did leave us without hesitation, Gedeon.” I dropped my arms to my sides. “What else am I supposed to think when you spent no time weighing your options?”
“That I would die for you.” He fisted my hair, drawing his nose to mine.
His breaths mingled with my own, a torrent of heavy inhales and exhales, the exchange of air an echo of the fire in his words.
“The rest of the world doesn’t matter to me.
You want me to kill every single citizen in the city?
I will help Zion slit their throats myself.
The seven Heads of Ilasall’s government?
I will rip out their bones, from clavicles to femurs, one by one, in any order you want. ”
My insides flipped. “You would do that?” Catching the t-shirt hugging his waist, I savored the feel of his rigid muscles shifting. “For me?”
He relaxed his grip on my locks. “Yes. I would. That and more.” The shadows dancing on his austere features painted the story he’d told me. “Similarly to how I’m pretending that you did not wipe your nose on my t-shirt a minute ago.”
Embarrassment flushed the tips of my ears, and I cringed at the wet spot on the neckline of his t-shirt. “Sorry about that.” Thank the gods the smear hadn’t damaged the strawberry patch on the back of his clothing.
“I’ll survive.” Gedeon’s lips ghosted over my forehead, and the affection tickled my belly. “I can pretend the stain is from the rain.”
“You’ll keep the t-shirt?”
“I will incinerate it.”
The reference to Zion’s methods coaxed a giggle out of me. At least it wasn’t my wardrobe this time.
“Now go get—” Gedeon cut off.
Following his line of focus, I turned around, preparing to deal with whoever—
Zion.
Of course it was Zion.
His eyebrows scrunched as he tried to free the wooden stick stuck to his pants. A shred of blue peeked out from the corner of his lips, the hue identical to how my cotton candy had looked.
“Where…” I trailed off right as he sucked in the blue lump, and the last-in-existence colorful bit vanished. “Did you just eat my candy?”
“No.”
I took a step toward him. “Zion.”
He swiftly hid the three bare wooden sticks behind his back, as though he could turn the evidence invisible. “Yes, pretty birdie?”
“What did you do?” I hissed, huffing at Gedeon seizing my waist to restrain me.
Nobody. Ate. My. Sweets.
“No one.” Zion shuffled sideways, closer to the bonfire. With a flick of his wrist, he fed the three sticks to the flames. “Yet.”
“I didn’t ask who— That’s not—” I mumbled as I tried to pry myself out of Gedeon’s hold by stomping on his feet and swiveling to elbow him. Unfortunately, the bastard knew my go-to moves too intimately. Giving up, I bit out, “Fine.”
Twisting us around, Gedeon positioned himself between me and Zion.
Traitor.
Shaking my head, I poked my protruding stomach.
“I look more pregnant than Eislyn.” The reason my pants stayed up with only four buttons instead of six was probably because of the number of desserts I’d inhaled.
The gallon of water I’d drunk. And the couple of bites of cotton candy I’d managed to eat before Zion had devoured all three clouds, which I was still sour about.
Zion dropped to his knees before me. “It’s a food baby.” He caught my hips, his smile so reverent it bordered on terrifying.
“What are you—”
He buried his teeth below my navel.
I jumped, pushing at his head to get him off me before the slight ache had a chance to grow into actual pain.
“What?” He kissed the spot he’d nibbled on. “I wanted a taste. Everything we ate today was delicious, so the baby should be too.”
I lacked the words to form a response as he stood up, his form rippling from his graceful movements.
“You should know that this will not absolve you of your sins.” Gedeon seized Zion’s waistband, pulling him away from me.
“You have ten minutes to go get whatever you have stolen from Aria, and not a second more.” Gedeon jerked his chin at the tables on the far side of the square. “Meet us at the car.”
Walking backward, Zion agreed, “Okay,” and then added, “my strawberry.” Laughing, he rushed off before Gedeon could come after him.
The man beside me smirked at Zion prancing through the crowd.
His loose pants fluttered in the wind, molding around his toned legs, and warmth spread in my chest at how easily Gedeon had fallen for Zion.
How it’d changed him. Softened him. Taught him how to be more open. Lured more smiles out of him.
Zion had filled the gaps I couldn’t. And because of that, dread spooled around my bones.
I’d thought war was what I wanted.
But what if it meant losing the two people I couldn’t imagine my tomorrows without?