Page 114 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

“It sounds truly unhinged when you put it like that.”

I snapped my teeth at her nose, and she slapped my chest. “Crazy.” She shook her head, but a smile tilted her lush lips upward. “What will happen in the hall? Tarri said something about a celebration.”

“After I publicly claim you as mine, everyone will rejoice in their own way.” Gedeon pinched her chin and turned her to face him over her shoulder. “You can watch, but you are not allowed to join anyone unless I say so. Do you understand?”

“You have no control over me.”

“Yes, I do. See that?” He twisted her head to the table. Dorrian had finished and was cleansing her arm. “From now on, you answer tome. From now on, youbreathefor me.”

She sharply inhaled, and I whispered in her ear. “You’re ours.”

“I don’t want to interrupt this,” Dorrian paused, pulling the latex gloves off his dark brown hands, “thingyou have going on, but we’re all done. You can check it out.”

A bit awkwardly, she jumped off my lap. Raising her arm into the light and twisting it around, she examined the detailed artwork. Three thin but lush vines twined from her wrist to the middle of her forearm. On the outer side, a single silhouette of a bird fluttering its wings sat on the top vine, and on the inner side, a knife had fallen into the vegetation’s snare, the stems tangled around the blade and the steel handle—cold, ruthless, and trapped. Like her.

Too on edge to stay seated, I paced along the windows, the world outside dark, fallen to the night’s army. A minute, then two, ticked by, and Kali still hadn’t finished her inspection, her eyebrows drawn together.

Gedeon stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his jeans. “Do you like it?”

She lowered her arm to her side. “I love it. I just wanted to torture you for a bit.”

“Thank the gods. Because I don’t think I’d leave this room alive if you hated it,” Dorrian muttered as he packed up his instruments.

I stepped toward him for daring to propose such insanity as doing something that would displease her. Gedeon outstretched an arm across my chest and subtly shook his head.

Dorrian better return to Damia’s compound fast or I was teaching Kali where to stab someone to ensure a slow death, using him as a practice dummy.

Knuckles beat on the door. “How long are you going to take? We’re dying out here.” The wood couldn’t stop Jayla’s loud voice from penetrating it. “Some of us want to enjoy our night and not sit aroundonlylistening to you all doing…whatever. The walls are thin and you’re not that quiet, you know.”

I almost ripped the door off its hinges and was met with a mass of our people gathered in the hall, all focusing on the walls, the ceiling, the floor, or each other. All but here.

“So? Ready to come out?” Jayla pressed.

“Go fuck Ava.” I slammed the door in her face and blocked out the image of her gaping at me with an open mouth. I worked closely with Ava. And Jayla babbled. Wasn’t that hard to put two and two together.

“What is that?” Kali tried to take the small box from Gedeon. It drew a high arch in the air as he threw it to me. “Oh, come on!” She propped her hands on her hips.

Striding toward them, I opened the lid of the dark wood box. “We have something for you.”

She peered at the black leather coiled up inside. “I’m not sure what this is.”

“It’s a collar. Kind of like a necklace.” Gedeon took it out, demonstrating to her the masterful work of leather Lucia had done. “It wraps around your neck and fastens in the back, so it stays snug on your neck.”

“And this?” She lifted a longer strip of leather, its one end connected to the buckle at the back of the collar and the rest hanging in the air.

I wound it around the main part. “It goes around the collar a few times over, like those vines of your tattoo. It’s designed to look inconspicuous—like an intricate work of art. But we can unwrap this longer part and use it as a leash, or you can separate it completely from the buckle and use it as a whip.”

A grin burst out of her. “So that means whenever you annoy me, I can whip you.”

She remembered that night at Vice. Only then, the show had feltoff. The first part had been fine, nowhere near great without them, but the second… I’d had to employ my fantasies to finish.

Now, I could put them into action.

So. Many. Fantasies.

“First, you need to learn how. But he can teach you.” I nodded to Gedeon. A corner of his lips quirked up. “Or we can use it to control what you can and can’t do by tugging on the leash.”

He unclasped the buckle, revealing the velvet lining on the inside I’d requested to make it more comfortable. “Would you like to wear it tonight?”