My demand boomed across my study. “Is this what I think it is?”
59
ZION
This was my own fault. Mine entirely. I wanted Gedeon, and I got him. Now, I suffered because of him.
For him.
This morning, after he’d declared he wanted me tofeelhim for the rest of the day, I’d seriously considered I might have a heart attack. Or an aneurysm. My mind had blanked out and just…took off. The notion of him leaping on me had been so heady; it’d overloaded my system.
It wasn’t like we hadn’t fucked before. We had. Literally last night. But I’d had Gedeon back for less than two weeks, and as the days ticked by, each one seemed more and more like a hallucination.
Surreal.
So when he’d popped up in our training rings after lunch, dragged me away from the group formation class Ava and I had been running, cornered me in an alleyway, and stuffed a plug up my ass while murmuring how he couldn’t stop thinking about me, I’d lost it.
Ava had to fully take over so I could lounge on a bench, stare at the horizon, and pretend the toy wasn’t affecting me.
Like I was also doing right now. All the while, Gedeon sat on the other side of his study, utterly nonchalant, as if his chair was a throne and the desk before him—a grand table fit for a feast. Granted, he’d spread Kali on it once.
“What is Gedeon talking about?” Sadira whipped toward me, her thin braids whooshing around her bare shoulders and pulling me out of my haze.
Thelist.
The one I’d mentioned to Gedeon the first time I’d dropped to my knees for him, right before winter had begun and after Kali had been attacked by the messenger—the soldier we’d decapitated, dismembered, and sent back to the Head of Ilasall with a message carved into his bones.
The nine sheets of paper Gedeon was currently holding contained all my fantasies involving him, or Kali, or both.
Well, almost all. I hadn’t added the three new ones I’d come up with since yesterday.
Ignoring Sadira’s question and Ryder’s and Eli’s confusion, I flashed Gedeon a grin. “Depends. If it’s the list I’ve been working on, then yes. If it’s your misplaced notes, then no. Or also, yes? I don’t know. Are there any drawings on there? Our girl has quite a hand.”
Kali covered her mouth to hide her mortification. I dreamed of dipping my brush into the redness raining damage on her cheeks.
“What?” I stroked my favorite knife against the one I’d found in the kitchen. “I like how you drew his ass. It has a nice roundness to it. We should frame it.”
In all honesty, her skills were terrible at best, but I would never say it. Catching her attempting to sketch naked Gedeon from behind had been so hilarious I’d stolen the drawing and attached it to the end of the list.
“Zion,” she squeaked, eyes wide as she glanced at our friends, all three of them exchanging bewildered looks.
“Fine. Let’s do it the hard way, then.” Gedeon reclined in his seat, his knees spread, arms woven around Kali in his lap. Like a king from the fairy tales his father had read to us during our childhoods, he looked like he could watch the world burn.
And if the flames retreated, he wouldfuelthem.
“Do you know what’s happening?” Ryder asked Eli, and both of them leaned forward in hopes of skimming the text scribbled onto the paper.
Gedeon slammed the few sheets secured with a clip onto the desk. “How long did it take you to come up with this?” he asked, or more like demanded, his tone implying honesty was the only acceptable answer.
Kali’s focus bounced between the list and me, back and forth, over and over again.
She was well aware of what it was.
So when Gedeon steepled his fingers, all king-like, I shifted on the floor?—
The metal toy pressed againstthatspot, and I struggled to contain a groan. Because that was what Gedeon wanted: me on edge, for hours on end.
If I managed to relax, to forget, all it took was one look at them, at the flush creeping up Kali’s neck, at the severeness of Gedeon’s features, the appraising eyes so heavy they pinned me down, and I was hard again.
