Total pages in book: 152
Estimated words: 154368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 617(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 772(@200wpm)___ 617(@250wpm)___ 515(@300wpm)
She pulled the flame away.
Moved to my thighs.
I groaned.
Frustration.
Ecstasy.
Surrender.
All the same sound.
I am going to marry this woman. I am going to put the biggest ring Tokyo has ever seen on her finger. I am going to get on my knees and ask her to be mine forever. And if she says no, I'm going to bomb cities until she says yes because she can never say no.
The thoughts came fast now.
Unstoppable.
I loved her.
I wanted to keep her.
I wanted her to burn me every night for the rest of my life and I would thank her each time.
I reached for Nyomi in the garden but my hands found her standing over the slab. The petals in her hair were sparks from the wand. The children's laughter was my own breathing. The garden and the tea house were the same place now and she was the center, the axis of my will and desire. And I was just her slave, broken, kneeling, lost in scorching surrender—
“Nyomi, that’s enough.” Hiroko stepped forward.
My Tiger was about to run a flame across my chest “I still want to—”
"Our time here is done."
My Tiger frowned. “It’s not done until I say it is.”
Hiroko quirked her brows. “We’re done. He is in subspace and you are most definitely at a heightened level of domspace. This is when you put the fire wand down.”
Nyomi looked at her with the fire wand still burning in her hand.
Her chest heaved.
Sweat gleamed on her brown skin—in the hollow of her throat, between her breasts, along the flat plane of her stomach.
Her eyes were glazed. Drunk on power. The dom high had her completely—I could see it in the way she stood, the set of her jaw, the steadiness of her hand holding fire like she'd been born to it. “Fine. . .”
Hiroko let out a long breath as if she had been nervous that she was going to have to fight my Tiger for the fire wand.
Nyomi blinked. "What's next?"
Hiroko gently, yet quickly, took the fire wand from Nyomi and put it out. "That's up to you two."
Next, she signaled to the men in the corners.
They filed out.
Hiroko's assistants gathered some instruments, cleared the side table, and then left.
Hiroko stared at Nyomi. “Have your fun, but do not forget the aftercare.”
She nodded.
“You did very good tonight.” And the professional mask disappeared from Hiroko’s face. Pride so fierce it could burn a hole through stone covered her face next. “Very good.”
Nyomi widened her eyes.
“Have a good night.” Hiroko bowed, headed off, and soon slid the door closed.
And we were alone with only the candles, smoke, and crackling flame.
I looked at her and ached beneath the silk. My body trembled. My wrists were raw from pulling against the restraints.
Every inch of skin she'd burned still hummed.
Still sang.
It was all a trail of heat mapping every path she'd taken like burning fingerprints pressed into my body.
When I finally spoke, my voice was rough and raw. "Take me out of these restraints. Now."
The garden faded. The children's voices dimmed to silence. The stone was cold beneath my back again.
The beast within began clawing to the surface, trying to take back control.
I expected her to comply, but instead. . .Nyomi tilted her head and looked at me.
“Tora.”
"I'm still in control."
The words landed in my chest.
In my cock.
In the place where the Dragon lived and roared.
“Tora—”
“I’m not done with you yet.” She stepped closer to the slab and even though there was no wand in her hand, I understood this one fact. . .she was the fire now.
What?
And I didn't know what she was going to do, but all I could think through the erotic bliss was that it didn’t matter.
I was willing to surrender to all her desires, even if they killed me.
Chapter twenty-four
Fuck Me
Kenji
I floated in subspace with my blood racing and my heart pounding. Every nerve ending in my body was singing, shimmering, and begging for more.
She’d unlocked a soothing erotic peace within my soul that I could never close, narrowing the world to sensation and continuing to soften time.
The air itself seemed to lean in.
I wasn’t thinking about what came next so much as what already was—the echo of the flames, the afterglow of my complete trust in her, the strange intimacy of being seen as a man without the armor of power.
My body remembered things my mind had forgotten in my years as the Dragon—how to listen, how to open, how to be guided without being diminished.
Love, I realized during this euphoric space, wasn’t the absence of control. It was the choice to place it gently in another’s hands.
There was a deeper word for what I was feeling too. It was the state the samurai trained their entire lives to achieve—the emptying of ego, fear, and conscious thought so the body could act from pure instinct.