Chapter 50 Gedeon
GEDEON
“Iget why everyone says you’re cute now.” Kali leaned against the shredded kitchen island, yelping as a jagged edge must have poked her hip.
Erasing the distance between us, I grabbed her, squishing her in an embrace. She struggled between me and Zion, twisting and turning, huffing and puffing, but the flames blazing in her green eyes brought my pulse back to normal levels.
Zion caught her hip. “Let me make your boo-boo better.”
“Zion, that’s—” She squeaked as he dropped to his knees. “What—”
He licked her hip, and she jumped at me, trying to hide from him in my chest.
“You can’t—” Sputtering, she squirmed, accidentally swatting his arm.
His features contorted in pain. A fresh trickle of scarlet dribbled down his elbow and dripped onto the floor, the crimson drops exploding on the milky surface.
I shuffled Kali away from him. “You’re injured.”
“It’s not that bad,” he hissed.
Adrenaline must have still coursed through his bloodstream. “Show me your arm.”
“It’s fine.” He waved me off, his golden-brown hair as messy as the ruins of the kitchen, his strands poking in all directions like the broken edges of furniture.
My molars ground. “Show me your arm, Zion.”
He swiveled, using his body to keep his injury out of my sight. “It’s just a graze.”
Just a graze.
As I strode forward, he retreated, matching me step for step, both of us stuck in a dance of sorts, and soon, my patience neared its snapping point.
His side hit the kitchen island, the counter sporting grooves as deep as the one across his right forearm.
I licked my upper teeth. “You’re missing a chunk of meat, Zion.”
“It’s superficial. The skin will grow back.” He lifted his wounded limb into the moonlight pouring through what was left of a window. A deep gouge distorted the inked forest wrapping around his forearm. Poking around the injury, he pouted. “They fucked up my tattoo.”
“That’s—” I exhaled through my nose. All hope was lost with him. If not for me or our friends, he would have died from infection a thousand times by now. “It needs treatment.”
“Eh.” Zion shrugged and jerked his chin to Kali sneaking over to the cream closet. “She’s worse than me.”
“I am not,” she scoffed as she dug into our meager clothing supply. “These”—she motioned up and down her front, indicating the million of small cuts—“will heal in no time.”
“So what you’re saying is that I will have a pretty scar and you won’t.” Zion scratched his chest, his nails leaving bright red streaks in their wake, first across his pectorals, then below them.
A habit betraying his anxiousness he had never learned to get rid of.
“Zion.” I seized his wrist, gently squeezing the joint to draw his attention to me.
Things were different now. Eight months ago, everyone had looked after themselves, but now… Others had become my priority.
His expression flickered with uncertainty.
“I know.” I kissed his knuckles.
He flushed, and so did my chest. The man could kill with joy, torture with excitement, crawl to you with nothing but need, but the simplest expression of affection turned him into a puddle.
Stroking his jaw, careful not to move his injured limb inadvertently, I wiped off the smear of dust dulling the shade of his stubble. “I will take care of her. Can you—”
“Find Conall?” He nuzzled my palm. “Yeah.” His lips skimmed my skin, the faint brush enough for tingles to spark in my nerves. “I’ll inform him.”
“You or your dick?” Dressed in a pair of black cotton leggings and a matching sleeveless top, Kali stomped over to us, carrying a pair of gray sweatpants. “Unless you plan to spell out the explanation with your cock, you better cover up.”
Zion’s grin flashed as quickly as he snatched the clothing from her. “Which would you like more?” Stuffing his legs into the pair of pants, he drawled, “If I remember correctly, your pussy loves it when I spell my name together with my thrusts.”
Her blush rivaled the minuscule cuts marring her body. But then her chin lifted, like any time she was about to spit fire.
“We’ll see if your ass likes it when he”—she stabbed a finger at me—“fucks you.”
“Can’t wait.” He secured the strings of his sweatpants, the waistband slung low on his hips, so low I wanted nothing more than to rip the clothing off him.
Grabbing his well-worn boots off the floor, he kicked the door open, threw over his shoulder, “Fuck you later!” and vanished in the gloom obscuring the veranda.
Our car’s engine rumbled, but the thrum dwindled away as Zion flew down the road, his driving skills always of a questionable kind.
Kali plopped down onto the couch the shade of stone. “Will you ever actually fuck him?” She wiggled her left foot into a gray sock, and then set on cramming in the right one.
Marching to the bathroom, I asked, “Do you want me to?”
Incomprehensible mumbles reached me through the doorway as I located the first aid supplies in the mirrored cabinet above the sink. Dark blue tiles chilled my soles as I made my way back—
And froze in the doorway.
Kneeling on the couch, Kali was driving her hips into an indigo cushion pressed against the backrest in a nonsensical rhythm. Her glutes clenched as she varied the speed, the thrusts growing strong enough for the couch to start rocking.
The entrance door swayed from a gust of wind, and the creaking hinges plucked me out of a haze of bafflement. “What are you doing?”
She adjusted the cushion’s position. “Imagining it.” Widening her legs, she resumed humping the furniture. “Fucking someone.”
Chuckling at her little pants of exertion, I strode toward her, my footfalls inaudible, and smacked her hip. Her gasp of indignation was worthy of admiration.
And so was the contented little sigh when I kissed her forehead. “That’s not how you do it.”
“Then show me.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I want to watch you and Zion.”
The angry marks soiling her throat stirred my fury, and I seized the too-colorful cushion trapped between her pelvis and the backrest.
Opening the first aid supplies, I jerked my chin toward the center of the couch. “Sit.”
Lowering as instructed, she shook her head. Dust rained from her hair, coating her shoulders in a layer of light gray. “Is that what you will ask Zion? To sit? Not bend over or something?”
Seated on the low oak table, I picked out a tiny flashlight and tweezers out of the first aid box. “If I tell you, will you promise not to tell him?”
Her frown returned. Mute, she looked away, focusing on the obliterated kitchen.
Promises were a heavy matter to her. Once made, they were never to be broken. Like a noose around your neck, waiting to snap your vertebrae if you spilled the secret.
Clicking the flashlight’s rubber bottom, I aimed it at the expanse above her sleeveless top. The multitude of grazes absorbed the light, the cuts matte from clotting blood, like all the other minor injuries on her face.
“Chin up.” I gestured, and she obediently followed the instruction. “This is going to hurt,” I warned, positioning the flashlight between my teeth, the aluminum cool, the taste of metal as acidic as the terror at the possibility of losing her.
The tweezers glinted in the silver light as I brought the slanted tips to the fragment of glass embedded in her flesh.
She grew rigid, yet not a cry escaped her as I fished out the seven minuscule shards, opaque from her blood.
Fresh waves of scarlet rushed down her neck, gathering in the hollow of her throat, but her swallow was the sole indication pain was blazing within her.
Dropping the tweezers onto the box's lid, I exchanged the instrument for a brown glass bottle and a clear bag. “How is your hand?” She had been holding a glass when it exploded.
She slumped against the backrest of the couch. “It’s fine.”
Her refusal to be taken care of rattled my bones. The fact she’d had no one to rely on for years and had developed a habit to close off, to guard herself whenever unpleasant things hit her… Not being able to uproot that tendency grated on my nerves. “Kali.”
“See?” Kali held up her palm, the fair skin as smooth as it was yesterday, and the absence of lacerations appeased my decaying patience. “Just a scratch. I guess it got lucky. My face, not so much.”
Her face, her neck, above her chest. Blood had branched out, the trickles creating a painting of a crimson spider web.
Sitting on the wooden table—an uncomfortable seat if there ever was one—I spread my knees. “Come closer.”
With a roll of her eyes, she scooched to the edge of the couch, right between legs. “So…have you?”
I fished out a cotton ball out of the plastic bag. “Have I what?”
“You know”—she gestured at my crotch—“had someone in your butt?”
The aluminum cap crunched as I twisted it off the glass bottle. “Yes.”
She perked up, curiosity getting the better of her. It always did. “Did you like it?”
Soaking the cotton ball with the antiseptic, the whiff of the chemical potent enough to curl the hairs inside my nostrils, I smirked. “Did you?”
Her cheeks reddened. “I asked you first.”
“It was…” Nothing compared to how she had reacted when I had rocked into her ass the first time.
How she had writhed on top of Zion to try to get me to move.
How the duct tape had muffled her whimpers.
How Zion had felt underneath me, my thighs bracketing his.
How his skin had seared mine. How his groans had subjugated me, each grunt a conquest of my logic and reasoning.
Returning the small bottle to the stainless-steel box, it clattering as the glass hit the metal, I divulged, “Tense.”
Similar to how Kali stiffened when I pressed the damp ball to the first scratch near her nose.
The antiseptic obliterated bacteria, no doubt aggravating her exposed nerve endings, and she hissed. “Why?”
“You have to feel safe enough for it to be pleasurable.” Willing myself not to flinch at her wince, I moved the cotton sphere to the next injury.
“You didn’t relax,” she mused as I cleaned four nicks close together on the right side of her jaw. “It hurt.”
“A little,” I admitted. “But pain is not the reason why I never did it again.”
She caught my wrist to stop me from continuing to clean her, her grasp a perfect shackle if there ever was one. Silence stretched between us, her demand not requiring words to convey the expectation.
“You need trust for it to work. And trust implies there is a relationship.” I twirled the wet ball.
The antiseptic chilled my skin, the streak of red in the cotton as severe as the decisions I had to make for the benefit of my people daily.
“I have never allowed myself to have them. Before you and Zion, I could not imagine putting myself in a vulnerable position for a stranger.”
“But you would for us.” She patted the backrest, the cream upholstery as bright as a summer day. “You know, bend over this couch?”
Apparently, last night’s lesson had not been sufficient for her to learn her place. Perhaps another public fucking was in order.
I gripped her knees, the material of her leggings as soft as her.
“I may consider it.” Prying her legs apart, I reveled in her sharp intake of breath, wishing I could roll in it.
“You sitting on my face so I can drink the juices gushing out of your pussy while Zion moves inside me does sound appetizing.”
Another little gasp fled her, accompanying the flush blooming above her breasts.
“But”—I stroked up the inside of her thighs, marveling at how she battled herself to remain composed—“you will need to work for it. Show me that you can bite your tongue and follow orders, and I will allow you to come instead of leaving you hanging. You saw how Zion suffered last night. Do you want the same to happen to you?”
She gulped.
I brushed my knuckles over the fire licking her cheeks. “Beautiful.”
She cleared her throat. “How long do you plan to make Zion wait? He’s more than willing to offer his butt for you.”
I swiped the cotton ball down the column of her neck, over the scattered cuts. “I like to see him squirming.”
She sighed. “I don’t know why we like you,” she grumbled, scratching the crown of her head—
Her eyebrows furrowed. Slowly lowering her hand, she stared at the red flakes stuck to her nails.
My blood ran cold.
“Are you bleeding?” I took her head, twisting and turning, searching for the injury. “Where? Where is it coming from? Where does it hurt?”
“Gedeon.” She swatted my hands away, her slaps furious. “I’m okay. I think it might be tomato paste,” she said, sniffing the scarlet bits and flicking the flakes away with her nails. “There was a jar of it on the shelf. It probably shattered.”
My heart restarted, its beats dependent on her well-being. If her skull had been fractured… I gathered saliva in my mouth to counteract the desert that had built its nest there.
“Do not stop me from taking care of you again,” I ground out as I exchanged the dirty cotton ball for a clean one. “Or I will tie you to the bed next time. Am I clear?”
Her eyes narrowed.
My lip corners curled up.
A huff deflated her chest. “Fine.” She drew the fallen strap of her dark top back up her shoulder. “But you have to promise to do the same.”
“Deal, little—”
The hinges creaked as the entrance door opened, the broken lock doing a terrific job of protecting us from outsiders.
The cadence of footfalls told me it was Zion. Only, his steps were not the reason my instincts blared, yanking on the ropes of all alarm bells.
It was the fact he had returned too soon.
“Is everything okay?” Kali asked Zion as he hovered in the doorway, the sweatpants hanging on his hips as low as the temperature was in the room.
The seriousness as rare as rain in summer in his expression drenched me in dread. My voice thick, I asked, “What is it?”
“I ran into Damia on my way.” He ran a hand through his hair, tugging the ends. Finally, after seconds had stretched into hours, he met my eyes. “There is something you need to see.”