With a grunt, I threw the thick, heat-trapping duvet off me?—
A crouching shape snatched something off the floor. A tall body uncurled as Kali straightened, clutching the treasure to her chest, the fabric bundled into a ball.
Before I could say anything, she darted into the hallway, her wild hair swaying, the door banging shut behind her.
I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes. A difficult conversation awaited us. I had not planned to return so soon, but once Zola had shared her suspicions, there was not a chanceI would have left Kali and Zion to deal with a potential-turned-real ambush by themselves.
With Zola’s and Carys’s assistance, infiltrating the crew of soldiers had been surprisingly easy. Soldiers unfamiliar with each other had assembled their group. So one slit throat in an alleyway, a reprogrammed chip in my hand, a uniform concealing every inch of me, and nobody could recognize me as the leader of the opposition. I had become one of their own.
Climbing off the bed, I aimed for the bathroom. Late night doused the space, obscuring the interior. The swipes of water struck the large bathtub in sharp, repetitive taps as I undressed, discarding my underwear on what I knew to be a black-and-white marble floor.
Facing the showerhead, lathering up his hair, Zion paid no attention to me as I joined him in the bathtub large enough to fit at least three people. After spending so many years in shabby apartments in Ilasall, I had predicted Kali would enjoy it and had been proven right. Her first night at our compound, she had soaked in a steaming bath despite the summer’s heat having been blistering enough to solder your clothes to you.
Not that it was a surprise.
In Ilasall, the rights to hot water and enough of it to luxuriate in baths were bestowed upon green-banded citizens exclusively. And it wasn’t like Ilasall or the other two cities lacked the safe and drinkable resource. They simply switched off the heat toggle for the black-banded’s residential buildings.
Warmth soaked my front as I embraced Zion from behind. His contented hum rumbled under my palms. Drawn by the slickness dripping down his body, I licked the wetness off his neck. “Just feeling you like this…” I rested my chin on his shoulder. “Tell me this is not a dream.” Now I knew what Zion had meant before. “That if I open my eyes, you will still be here.”
He chuckled. “I’m that dreamlike?”
Yes.
Like the water trickling through my fingers. Impossible to hold on to. To contain.
My low grunt elicited a short bout of laughter from him.
I could not pinpoint when it had happened, when childhood friendship had morphed into attraction, when lust had transformed into a desire for more.
What I could tell was that Kali had awakened me. She had kicked my footing from underneath me, and that was when everything I had kept at bay, harbored behind a stone wall, erupted. Struck by lightning, that wall had fractured. And the following thunder had eviscerated the bricks until the need to have Zion grew overwhelming, all-consuming, its maw greedy because of the time we had spent apart.
I lowered my lips to his pulse point, searching for his heartbeat:thud, half-a-second pause,thud, half-a-second pause,thud.
“I’m here.” His voice took on a more serious note, a terrifying one. This thing, it felt like a sandcastle built on a seashore—brittle, unsteady, about to succumb to the foaming waves threatening to ravage it. “I’m not going anywhere.” He leaned into my chest. “I’d never seen you this speechless before.”
“Can we”—I splayed my hands on his abdomen—“just stay like this for a bit?”
“And asking? That’s unheard of.” As he rested his forearms atop my own, the water fused our skin. “But yes, you can touch me.”
An errant strand of my hair fell on my forehead, its tip ticklish and irritating, yet I remained plastered to Zion, absorbing the connection as if the next sunrise depended on it.
Perhaps it did. Its plea for fuel compelled me to kiss the two-soon-to-emerge bruises on his neck. The space between them. Behind his ear.
“I won’t be able to stand for long if you keep doing that,” he drawled. “But other parts of me will surely stand.”
“I thought you would be satiated for?—”
“Never.” He snickered, drawing a smile out of me. “You’re the best shower snack there is. A dripping wet ice pop.” Twisting around, he flattened his tongue at the base of my throat, searing a trail up to my jaw.
My eyelids fluttered closed as my head tilted back.
Never had I suspected being called a summer treat would make me want to turn Zion around, shove him into the bathroom wall and show him precisely what it meant to provoke a man who had been frozen for eternity.
But not yet. Not so soon. Merely knowing he had never been fucked stirred the satisfaction hibernating in my gut. I was going to take my time making him guess when I would take him.
Anticipation could be a potent weapon.
Pushing the stray thoughts deep down, to my toes and then into the silver drain sucking the water into its depths, I asked what had been weighing on me, “How is she?”
