“Oh, I agree, we need to clean up.” Strong hands spun me around by my waist. “And we’ll do precisely that.” Zion bent to grip my upper thighs.
“What are you?—”
My nose bumped into his back.
“Zion,” I hissed. The bastard had thrown me over his shoulder.
Again.
He seemed to have developed a mania for it. And unfortunately, I was the one on the receiving end.
Sometimes, I wished he was the size of Eislyn. Then I would get a break from being carried like a sack of potatoes.
As he zoomed out of the kitchen, the shapes of our friends and Gedeon blurred past us. Fuming, I tugged the hemline of my t-shirt to maintain a semblance of decency. Our friends didn’t deserve to be flashed.
Despite me begging Zion to put me down, the stubborn ass carried me up the stairs and set me down only after we’d reached the safety of our bathroom.
“Too many clothes,” he groused, and before I could open my mouth, his knife was slicing my clothing. Not that there was much of it to begin with.
Scrambling to undress himself, Zion almost sprawled on the floor, the black veins in the white floor tiles as prominent as the ones bulging in the backs of his hands.
Hoping a shower would conceal my smile, I climbed into the giant bathtub. Zion was truly adorable. A mad sadist losing his balance because of a pair of socks.
As if imbued with nature’s secrets, hot water leached any tension lingering in my body. Sticking my face under the spray, I relished the warmth so easily accessible in the compound.
It still boggled me that cities purposefully flicked the switch on hot water, steering it solely toward the green-bandedapartments and depriving the non-fertile folk of such a small pleasure as what I’d learned to be a proper shower.
Joining me, Zion squirted a dollop of shampoo—undoubtedly cherry—onto my hair. “So that’s how it feels.”
It took me a minute to comprehend his remark. Him massaging the suds across my scalp felt divine.
“What do you mean?”
He maneuvered me to stand directly under the spray to rinse my locks. “Gedeon’s cum trickling out of my ass.”
A giggle worked its way out of me. He talked as though his own cum wasn’t swirling around in my butt. “Do you like it?”
“It’s…” he trailed off, reaching for the conditioner.
I squeezed the excess water out of my strands. “You have to get used to it.”
Zion motioned for me to turn around. Any time he’d climb into the shower with me, he’d comb my hair until not a single tangle remained. More than once, it’d brought me to the brink of tears.
He worked the viscous liquid into my locks as gently as a man obsessed with a knife could. “Have to?”
“He won’t stop now that he’s fucked you.” Swatting Zion’s arms away, I exchanged the jar of conditioner for a shampoo bottle. “It’s going to be a regular occurrence now.”
As I rubbed foam all over his head, he muttered, “It better.”
And so, I put extra effort into taking care of him. Granted, nobody had shown me a drop of kindness in Ilasall, so I was mostly mimicking what Zion or Gedeon had done to me or what I’d observed our friends do for each other, but he didn’t complain once.
He never did.
Huddled up in the fluffiest towel in the universe, I wiped the condensation from the mirror above the sink. The bunch of tiny wounds littering my lower face, neck, and above my chesthad scabbed and would heal in no time, but the bullet graze distorting Zion’s tattoo…
I frowned at him wrapping a roll of fresh gauze around the injury. With our reserves depleted, we couldn’t waste any meds for non-life-threatening situations, but watching him skip the antiseptic didn’t sit well with me.
Sensing my concern, two pointy ears popped into the bathroom. Shadow’s silent paws carried her across the tiled floor to me, and I picked up the fluff ball to distract myself, scratching between our kitten’s ears. Instantly, her half-closed eyes placated my agitated gut.
