Page 118 of Cold-Blooded Creatures
“You don’t tell me what to do. If I feel like it, I’ll fuck whoever I want.” With a scoff, she jumped off the platform, untangling the mess of her hair and striding off to Eli and Eislyn.
Disobedient little death.
But now she wore my mark. I was free to carry out the consequences.
Only, not tonight. No, tonight, I would let her roam the hall freely while she mulled over my words in that beautiful head of hers.
I paced back and ripped the chair from underneath the ebony desk, taking my seat overlooking the hall. My legs spread wide, I folded my arms across my chest.
“That was fun.” Zion hopped on the desk and situated himself in a cross-legged position. Because, apparently, a chair was not a sufficient seat for him. Not that his action surprised me.
As he looked me up and down, my still half-hard cock throbbed. A grunt was all the response he was going to get from me. The memory of him yielding to my orders together with her had carved itself into my retinas.
He was the one thing I had never allowed myself to take. Because if I did, I knew he would have paid for it with his life. Leading our people did not come without a cost. A high one.
And he had survived all this time. Stood next to me. Bent to my wishes. Played his games with me. Repeatedly, despite me throwing him off the board at the finish line of each match.
I could not make him a more prominent target than he already was. I simply could not wreck him again. I was the one who had broken him twelve years ago, turned him into who he had become. In a moment of weakness, I had given the only command I regretted to this day. Hurt him so much that he had to find a new way to exist. Learn to wear the mask of madness. Relish cruelty. View people as walking dolls to be toyed with. Hide the limbo he was stuck in behind the wall of his teasing remarks.
He might say insanity had claimed him, but it was not the truth.
It was me.
39
KALI
With my head high, I strode to the round standing table where Eislyn and Eli chatted with four others I hadn’t met yet. The tips of my boots peeked out from under my dress as I navigated around the people lost in their own dirty little bubbles on the floor, their limbs everywhere.
My flowing dress tickled my inner thighs and pricked my punished nipples—like Gedeon’s and Zion’s lingering phantom caresses—and I glanced toward the dais.
Gedeon sat behind the desk in a relaxed posture, the embodiment of nonchalance, of the casual power he held over everyone, and Zion lounged situated on top, one leg bent and one dangling from the edge, the epitome of insanity and sadism hidden behind a playful exterior as he fiddled with his knife. He caught my perusal and flashed a grin.
I stumbled.
Damn it.
“Nice collar.” Eli made space for me to join them, inching closer to Eislyn sipping her drink. She pressed it to her cheek, but the condensation on the glass did nothing to counteract the flush coloring her face.
I blinked prettily at him. “Would you like me to put it on you?”
Eislyn choked on her drink. I hit her back a few times as she coughed and swiped away the tears. “Thank you.”
I knew Eli’s remark had been far from mean, but I could tease him back. “See? Eislyn likes the idea too. You should consider it.”
Her cheeks flamed. “It could put him in his place for once.”
His eyebrows shot up, and I smugly caressed the leather sitting around my neck. Black, matte—matching my boots—and about an inch and a half thick. The longer strip of leather was thinner and coiled a few times around the collar, above and under it, creating an illusion the whole thing was a one-piece, if you didn’t know better.
Only, everyone here did.
Gedeon might have sought to display me, to claim me, but I was not willing to give myself up. Sure, I’d drowned from how hard he’d made me come in front of everyone in this hall, and his kiss alone had felt like he’d sucked my soul from my body, but my mind belonged to me, not him and Zion. Our deal contained conditions explicitly about my physical being, and I wasn’t willing to amend it to include more than that.
Walking past us, Ezra clapped Eli’s shoulder. “Have you seen what Ava’s been up to with Jayla? Training should be fun tomorrow.”
Eislyn gasped, and I followed the direction of her gaze, finding a mass of disheveled strands the shade of fire falling over the back of the lanky woman kneeling in front of a couch occupied by Ava, her legs spread wide and her fist twined in Jayla’s hair.
Beside them, a familiar woman clutched the backrest of the same couch as a man pounded into her from behind.
