“You call your brother names?” We had no way to confirm if Gedeon and Ezra were related, but still. Family was off limits. “That’s not very nice of you, is it?”
Ezra bared his remaining teeth. “He’s a pig, not my bro?—”
A scream replaced his scorn as I wiped my blade across a clotting laceration in his armpit, right along a crease, his coarse hair crusted with his life essence. Crimson drenched my knife, quenching its thirst, beckoning my core to coil.
And coil.
Andcoil.
To the point the zipper of my stained jeans grew painful.
At first, toying with our friend-turned-traitor had soured my mood, but him agreeing to play my little game had turned this into a particularly enjoyable experience.
Electrifying. I buzzed every time he refused to speak, as I got to remove a piece of him.
“Say something like that again, and you will boast aforkedtongue.” I dragged the steel along the contour of his bottom lip, slicing the sensitive tissue corner to corner. “It doesn’t need to remain whole to work.”
A hard body pressed to my back, and I tightened the grip on my knife.
Embracing me, Gedeon hummed. “You have no idea what seeing you this wound up does to me.”
His low tone zapped through me, the force so overwhelming I feltalive.
“Ezra insulted you.” Leaning into Gedeon on pure instinct, I threaded my fingers in his hair so smooth you could mistake it for water.
“The jab is not what I care about.” He caught the hem of my red-smeared t-shirt, lifting it to bare my torso.
The combination of high humidity and low temperature attacked me?—
“It’s that you threatened him.” Calloused palms glided down my abdomen in search of that sensitive strip of skin above my low-slung pants.
My pelvis twitched.
“That you want to protect me.” Gedeon gripped my bulge over my jeans, and a hiss slipped past my lips. “That I’m what’s on your mind.” As he rubbed my hard length through the thick denim in smooth strokes, my cock jerked in response. “I’ll never forget the evening you fell to your knees for me.” He peppered kisses up my neck, underneath my jaw, behind my ear. “How beautiful you looked.” His murmur ghosted over my skin like sunshine. “I learned a lot about you that night. How you tasted. How you felt in my hands. How you overloaded my senses. How I feared my heart was going to explode from how fast it pounded.”
He massaged me harder, rocking into my ass simultaneously, spurring my imagination to go off the rails as fantasies unraveled in my mind, conjuring image after image. My legs verged on giving out.
“And then, three months later, you slept in my arms for the first time.” Gedeon nipped my earlobe. “You tore my world apart, Zion.”
His admission swelled in my chest, overfilled it, the liquid born from his words filling the gaps between my ribs.
Holding on to his upper thigh, I tugged on the ends of his locks. “How does it feel to live in the ruins?”
He gripped my throat. No throttling, but the intention was clear. The land of debris and rubble, wrecks and relics, had no rules.
He compressed the sides of my neck. “Thrilling.”
His fingers burned their shapes into me, the scars as permanent as all others. The decrease in oxygen intake leached my strength, beckoning me to yield, to enjoy the approaching dizziness.
“Disgusting,” Ezra sneered. His light brown skin gleamed with a sheen of sweat, his glands working overtime, the perspiration soaking the clotting or freshly opened wounds,halting their efforts in closing up. “We will level your pathetic compounds to the ground and test your people for fertility, exactlylike it should have been done from the beginning. You are mutts living like this, watching out only for ourselves, oblivious to the cities’ struggles, ignorant of how your lack of care drives everyone to theextinctionof the human race.”
His tirade dripped down my vertebrae, settling in the discs and imbuing them with an itch to stab the throat of the moron brainwashed by Ilasall.
“I warned you,” I ground out. “I told you what I would do if you poked at Gedeon again.” I stepped toward my knife resting on the edge of the table?—
Gedeon’s grasp on me tightened, preventing me from launching onto the shackled and naked worm. “It’s not worth it. I doubt he will give up any useful information today.”
My fists balled up. “But your brother keeps insulting you.” And his lower legs hadn’t yet experienced my blade’s kiss. We had work to do.
