Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 462(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 308(@300wpm)
His lips brushed against the bite marks on my neck he’d made days ago.
Shivering, I sank into him.
My eyes watered some more.
His heat pressed against my chest. His breath moved my braids.
My hands lifted on their own and settled at his sides where the bandages sat under his shirt. My fingers found the ridge of gauze beneath the fabric. My palms pressed there, and I let myself, for one second, be a woman held by her man.
He groaned again.
Then. . .to my shock. . .he let me go and stepped back.
Cold rushed into the space he left.
I almost reached for him, but I made my hands stay at my sides.
He rubbed his face with both hands and then sighed. "You are not leaving until we are done talking."
"I said I do not want to talk about it."
"Yet we will talk about this."
I frowned. "You may be the Dragon of Japan, but you are not the fucking Dragon of me—"
"I am most definitely your Dragon. Never forget that."
I edged back from him. “We won the war—”
“I know that—”
“Then, that’s it—”
“It’s not.”
"Why are you doing this?" My voice was not mine. "It has been a long night. So much was lost. I do not want to do this. Respect that. If you love me. . .just leave it alone. . ."
"Leave it alone. . ." He said it back to me soft and turned the phrase over in his mouth. “Leave it alone. . .”
Then Kenji walked away from me, returning to the chair with the children's books.
What the fuck?
I trembled.
He browsed the stack of children’s books for a few seconds and then picked up a smaller book with a bear on the cover.
He opened it and turned a page. "One night my father was out on business dealing with something. He’d taken my older brother Jobon because. . .he was my father’s favorite. I don’t know what the business trip was about. I was young."
I quirked my brows.
He closed the book, set it down, and touched the other book’s cover. This one had a rainbowed-balloon on it. “It stormed and thundered that night. So bad that I crept into my parent’s bedroom and slept next to my mother.”
I parted my lips.
He traced the balloon on the cover with his finger. "That stormy night a woman snuck into our estate. My father had given her a key to the back entrance of his office so they could privately meet right under my mother's bedroom as she slept."
I blinked.
He moved his hand from the book and turned his attention to all the empty beds on his side. "That night she came to my mother's room, dripping wet. Completely deranged.”
He raised his hands and stared at them. “She held a knife and screamed over and over, waking us up.”
I widened my eyes.
"So terrified, my mother and I sat up in shock. The guards should have stopped her. I did not know if she had killed them or what. Again. . .I was too young to know these things. . ." He let out a long sigh, left the stack of books, and stopped at the discarded IV line near a bed. "This crazy woman looked at my mother and said, ‘I know now that he will never leave you. I will never be enough.’"
I stood there on the edge of this story, needing to know how it ended.
"Then the woman sliced her wrists right there in front of us. There was so much blood. . ."
A tremor went through my legs.
"I screamed. My mother yelled for staff. The woman died instantly. The staff took her away and cleaned up. My father returned days later." Kenji left the IV line. "To this day I do not think my mother ever told my father this. I do not know why I think this. Maybe because they always kept secrets from each other. I was too young to understand what was really happening between them. And. . .by the time I was old enough to ask my mother, I knew better than to bring up that sort of heartbreaking memory so. . .it was our. . .unspoken secret. Mine. Hers. The staff's."
Kenji walked toward me, stopped three feet in front of me, and placed his gaze back on the scratches decorating my arm. "Then Hiro came to the house one weekend. You must understand that my father did not want to claim Hiro, but I remember my mother arguing with him about Hiro for weeks. Their yelling would keep me up at night. She was never adamant about much, but when it came to Hiro, she demanded that he grow up with me. . .”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. I was just a kid happy to have a baby brother. Due to my father, Jobon was never around enough to play with me.”