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)
“Tora.” Kenji followed. “It’s going to be okay.”
“It’s not.”
"You weren't supposed to see that, Tora," he said it the way you'd apologize for a surprise party gone wrong. For a ruined birthday. For something inconvenient.
Not for over a hundred corpses.
“Tora, I’m sorry.” He moved toward me with that predator's grace, all coiled power and quiet intention, and his hand reached out.
Those hands.
Those fucking hands.
That had held me minutes ago.
That had touched me like I was precious.
That had also signed the death warrants for all these people burning twenty feet from our bed.
"No." The word ripped out of me, raw and jagged. I pressed harder against the wall, shrinking from his reach. "Don't touch me."
He froze. “What?”
Hot rage flashed across his face, and his eyes went flat and cold.
Then he breathed, and suddenly his expression smoothed, and the Dragon’s neutral mask of calm slid back into place and his eyes only blazed with compassion and yearning.
What did it mean to love a man who could burn over a hundred people and still look at me like I was precious?
Meanwhile, behind Kenji. . .the dragon-shadow began to appear, rising from the floor like smoke given form, stretching and twisting against the wall until it towered over both of us.
Soon, its massive head reared back. The shadowy jaws parted wide and those dark, wispy wings spread across the bedroom wall like it was about to take flight.
The dragon-shadow glared at me and looked like it was about to roar.
And I couldn’t comprehend it all.
The man stood calm before me, hand still extended, face arranged in careful patience.
While the monster behind him raged.
I stared at him.
At them.
And then I thought about the burning people.
I thought I knew him. . .thought I understood the horror that I would deal with but. . .I had no fucking idea.
I'd told myself I could handle it. Told myself that loving a yakuza boss meant accepting violence as the price of admission. I'd rationalized the blood on his hands because those hands touched me like I was holy.
But this?
This wasn't a body in a warehouse.
This wasn't a rival shot in the dark.
This was a mountain of burning people.
This was a well-established system of consequence.
This was the machinery of death running so smoothly that his men tended it like groundskeepers while we slept twenty feet away.
Fuck. What did I get myself into?
Terror crept into my soul.
However, my body still remembered his warmth.
Still ached for his touch.
Still burned where his teeth had marked me.
And the fire inside me terrified my soul more than the fire outside ever could.
What am I going to do?
Chapter one
A Pyre of Souls
Nyomi
Kenji stood across the room from me, face carved from stone.
Calm.
Patient.
Like we had all the time in the world.
Like there weren't over a hundred bodies burning twenty feet from our bedroom window.
In the strange half-light, Kenji looked like something out of a Renaissance painting. A fallen angel, maybe. Or a god of death dressed in mortal skin. The shadows carved his cheekbones into blades, pooled in the hollow of his throat, traced the hard line of his jaw.
He was so fucking beautiful it made my chest ache.
Every part of him.
Especially that hard muscle covered in tattoos.
And behind him, his shadow-self spread across the wall like wings of smoke—terrible and majestic, a dark mirror of the man who pretended to be human. Those shadowed eyes fixed on me with a fury that made my skin prickle.
The shadowed-beast wanted to roar.
Wanted to lunge.
Wanted to punish me for my rejection.
The man just watched. "Tora."
My bottom lip quivered. I had one arm wrapped around my stomach, the other hand braced against the wall because I wasn't sure my legs would hold me.
I was still shaking.
Couldn't stop.
Every time I blinked, I saw them—the bodies, the flames, the flesh sliding off bone, the hand reaching out of the pile and liquifying.
Stop. Stop. Focus.
“Tora. . .”
I looked down at the floor to center myself. “Yes.”
"Don't ever. . ." Kenji’s voice went low and dangerous. "Don’t ever tell me not to touch you."
The words landed like a slap. My head snapped up. My eyes found his. Anger and disbelief hit me.
Are you fucking kidding me right now? Hundreds of people are burning outside.
He stepped forward.
For a split second, I saw it—what he could do if I kept refusing. The dragon-shadow behind him seemed to lean forward, eager.
And I hated that my body responded to the danger.
Hated that some broken part of me wanted to see what happened if I pushed him.
“No.” I threw my hand up between us. My palm surely was a barrier that meant nothing against his strength but I didn’t care. "Kenji. What the fuck is going on?"
He stopped. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
Even though he wasn’t near me, I could still feel the ghost of his body against mine. The imprint of his arm across my waist. The phantom heat of his chest against my spine. My skin remembered him even as my mind recoiled.