Page 87 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

Pulling a shining red apple out of her backpack, she impaled it on the knife Zion had gifted her. “Stick it in your balls.” She offered it to me with a calculated smile. “Want a taste?”

My cock twitched in my jeans at her demonstration. She was as vicious as they came.

I plucked the apple off the tip of her knife and sunk my teeth into the fleshy fruit. Sweetness invaded my taste buds as juice coated my tongue, part of it escaping from the corner of my lip and dripping down my chin, the drop cool in the hot and humid air.

“Delicious,” I said.

The apple was too.

29

GEDEON

Thud.

A loud slump to my right peeled my eyes open.

Muscle memory alone carried me out of my bed, the thin bedsheets sliding off my form like water and pooling on the floor. The polished wooden floorboards chilled my soles as I tensed in a defensive position: my knees bent, fists half-curled, core tight, feet grounded, and my toes clenched to stabilize my balance.

Calculated breaths delivered oxygen to my brain, dissipating the last shreds of sleep, and my ears strained for any sounds. The night’s heaviness had buried my bedroom in total darkness, my vision limited to the tip of my nose.

A sudden burst of bright light blinded me, and I lunged sideways to avoid becoming an easy target. Someone had turned on the lamp on my bedside table.

I squinted to adapt to the overwhelming illumination, and a silhouette came into focus on the other side of the bed.

“He’s dead,” Zion announced, scratching his abdomen. Only tight, thin fabric hugged his hips, the rest of his toned body exposed, full of lines begging to be explored in a way that would make his muscles twitch.

A clear sign I had to fuck someone.

It had been too long.

Not since I had found her in that clearing.

A month.

Her tattoo celebration was in a month.

A fucking month.

He surveyed my naked form from my face to my toes and back up again—at least the bleariness prevented me from gettingfullyhard. Amusement danced on his upturned nose and high cheekbones. “Not going to ask?”

I took, not asked.

So realization had delayed its arrival.

That was not what he had meant.

Sleep. I had to be still hung up on sleep, my brain refusing to do its job properly.

Clearing my throat, I walked around the bed. An unfamiliar man with his neck in an unnatural position lay on the hardwood floor near Zion’s bare feet. Dressed in black cargo pants and a dark green, skintight shirt with a standard issue chest strap with two knife sheaths, the top one full, and the bottom one empty. A combat knife glinted inches away from his paling face.

Ilasall’s military.

“Who is this?” I did not bother checking for his pulse. If Zion said he was dead, he was more than that. Erased from this life and the next.

“I’m guessing a soldier sent to kill you.” Zion rolled him onto his back and searched his front pockets. “Shit.” He handed me three pieces of paper he had pulled out.

Photographs of her, him, and I.