9. Kenzo
CHAPTER 9
KENZO
The gala’s auction begins, but I already put in my bids, so I grab Vi and we slide out unnoticed. After giving instructions to my driver, I open the car door for Vi, then slide in next to her. The driver takes us down the Strip, so that our drive back to her motel room takes a long time. I want a couple of extra minutes with her before I take her back to her uncle.
Her cheeks are red like her hair, and her big blue eyes are glossy and bloodshot from the champagne. The woman had three glasses, but it’s been a long evening. She’s probably not drunk anymore, and the coffee may have balanced out her sobriety, but I don’t know for sure.
I find the refrigeration compartment and give her a cold bottle of water. As she guzzles it, I study her. She looks like she was born and raised in the Midwest, though she’s got the scent of southern California on her. I want to pry back those layers.
“What’d you think?” I ask, angling my head toward the conference center.
“About what? ” she snarks. She must be a little fuzzy from the whole evening. I run a hand across my face, sniffing in her glorious scent. I can still smell her tangy sweetness on my fingers.
“The gala.”
“Oh.” She lifts her shoulders. “It was fine.”
“And your salmon?”
She stiffens, and we both know we aren’t talking about the fish.
“It was good. I guess.”
After that, she’s quiet. She was compliant throughout the entire dinner, but now, her shoulders are stiff. She hunches in toward the bottle, crunching the plastic in her hands like it’s a stress ball. Every so often, her eyes angle toward her lap, like she’s too afraid to meet my gaze. But I don’t believe it for one second. If she was truly afraid of me, she wouldn’t be here.
But why is she trying to trick me into thinking she’s scared?
“Did you enjoy your evening?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” she says. “I suppose there are worse things.”
She’s not agreeing to everything I say, like I thought she would. It intrigues me. She has uncertainties, but she admits to them. She isn’t an obedient little lamb like her uncle implied.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask.
She widens her eyes. “You say that as if I have a choice.”
“You do.” I gesture toward the car doors. “The driver will stop. You can leave at any time. It’s not like I made your uncle promise you’d go on this date with me.”
“That’s right. You only cut him up.”
I chuckle, and she crosses her arms, pissed at me, but she doesn’t realize we could’ve killed him instead. Then, there would be no need to have this “date.” Hell, I could’ve held her at gunpoint and forced her to come with me to the gala. It’s still an option, but I like it better like this, watching her move on her own.
I smirk, then say, “You seemed to like your dinner a lot.”
“What was I supposed to say? ‘Stop fingering me in front of everyone?’”
Her cheeks redden, her blue eyes glowing like sapphires stuck in a cauldron. She’s even hotter when she’s pissed.
“You could’ve pushed my hand away,” I say. “Or taken a bathroom break. But you didn’t; you kept your legs spread wide open for me. I think you liked being exposed.”
“You,” she hisses. “You are?—”
But then she stops mid-sentence, and forces her gaze out the window. I let her stew for a moment. I’m not a beggar, and I never will be. I know how much power I have in the yakuza, and there are plenty of virgins I can buy.
But it’s not about that with Vi. For some inexplicable reason, I want her hunger. Her sensual greed.
I glance at the tattoo behind her ear: a bluish-green candle, the kind that comes in a jar, in a water color style. Even if she’s a virgin, the tattoo hints at something else. An alternative side. A symbol she can take pain, if she wants the end result. The reward.
She must like being a good girl.
“You like candles?” I ask.
She strokes her fingers over her tattoo absentmindedly. “Everyone likes candles.”
“Not enough to get a tattoo of one.”
She licks her lips, then slides her hands down the side of her dress. The fabric parts at the slit, exposing her soft knees, and my dick twitches. She’s probably still soaked. Fuck—what I wouldn’t give to lick her from her clit to her ass right here in the back of this car.
But we’ll have to wait. She may not know it, but right now, she’s being interviewed. And so far, I like her sarcastic honesty. It’s amusing.
“Why are you doing this?” I ask again. “We already taught your uncle a lesson. You didn’t have to come here with me.”
“My uncle asked me to,” she says.
“And you do whatever your uncle says?”
She pauses for a moment. Tenderness shimmers behind her eyes, a storm briefly clouding over her pupils. But then she shifts, and the bad weather is gone, and it’s clear skies again, like it’s always sunny in Vi’s world.
“Yes,” she says. “It’s what you do for your family.”
Family.
I ponder that for a while. I ran away from home when I was twelve, and so, I’ve got my biological family back in Los Angeles, and the Endo-kai Yakuza here in Vegas. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for my biological parents or anyone in the Endo-kai, and part of me wonders if that is what this is for Vi.
Loyalty runs through her veins. I like that.
Even if she doesn’t feel that way about me, there’s time. I can earn respect from her eventually.
“If you had a choice, would you have come tonight?” I ask.
“If you were me, would you agree to a dinner date with the yakuza?”
She has a point. If I was a twenty-five-year-old woman, virgin or not, I wouldn’t go on a date with a member of an organized crime group. I’d know exactly the kind of power they’d have over me.
Still, Vi never tried to leave. Never fidgeted away from my touch. Never even searched for a door. In fact, I’m sure she didn’t realize it, but she actually inched closer to my hand. Practically melted when my fingers touched her bare neck. Sunk into me whenever we were close.
I’ve never wanted a wife, but the idea of having a partner who is like her—loyal to her family—appeals to me. The part of me that knows family comes before everything else.
I tap the partition. The driver rolls it down.
“Flamingo?” he asks.
“Thanks,” I say.
The partition rolls up, and Vi looks at me. “Our motel is on Paradise, not Flamingo.”
“I’ve got a job to run,” I say. “It’ll be quick. Promise.”
The driver turns onto the correct street, and my mind goes wild, imagining her pussy in my hands, her tangy scent on my fingers. I keep finding excuses to sniff my hand; she must think I’ve got a coke problem.
Eventually, we pull into the parking lot of a run-down motel. Potholes crest the lot, and a few people in tattered jackets smoke by the fenced-in pool. I slip out of the car and hold out my hand for Vi.
“Where are we?” she asks.
“I asked my brother if he had any jobs I could take off of his hands,” I say. “Part of the business, I’m afraid. Figured I’d give you a taste.”
I pull a keycard out of my pocket, about to tap it on the scanner, when Vi grabs my arm. Shock jolts through me; it’s a voluntary touch. She must know what’s coming, and this is her attempt to stop me.
The card hits the scanner, and the lock flashes green.
The door opens.
Inside, a lanky, middle-aged man with yellow eyes and a stained shirt, startles from his seat on the bed.
“Hey!” he shouts. “You can’t just?—”
I pull out my gun and shoot him in the forehead. The bullet is quiet—the traffic in Las Vegas is loud as hell, and with the silencer, it’s like the pop of a corn kernel. His body slumps back onto the bed like another unshapely pillow. A trickle of blood winds down his temple.
Vi holds her mouth, her eyes wide. She’s beautiful like that—pure shock in the form of lightning bolts, flashing across her blue eyes. Red cheeks. Pink lips.
Her lips tremble, but she finally spits out: “You killed him.”
I stow my gun. “He owed us a lot of money. He didn’t have a niece to offer. Tomo already gave him a second chance.”
“You’re a killer.”
Her lips pout with trepidation, but she stays rooted to her spot. If she is as innocent and untouched as her uncle says, then she would’ve had more of a reaction. Even touching her at the gala should’ve made her squirm, but she leaned into me. Embraced it.
And this? She’s gawking. Stunned, maybe. But she’s not scared.
The delicate blood vessels in her neck twitch. The charge in the air radiates between us as her breathing hitches.
I can’t take it anymore.
I grip my hands in her hair, yanking her back and guiding her inside of the motel room. Then I press her against the closed bathroom door, the whole wall rattling with the sudden pressure of our bodies. Her thighs clench, and I press my leg between them. Her dress parts to the sides, and her pussy is warm and damp through my pants.
Virgin or not, Vi drives me wild.
“You’re right,” I say. “I am a killer. I’m yakuza. But I like to give people a chance. People work harder for you when it’s their choice. Don’t you agree?”
She doesn’t say anything, so I take that as a yes. I breathe onto her lips for a few seconds, inhaling her deep, burnt-sugar scent, then I let go of her hair. She finds her balance on her feet as I grab a small black box from my pocket, handing it to her. She opens it.
A giant diamond ring twinkles up at her, shimmering even in the crappy fluorescent lighting.
She stutters: “Kenzo, I?—”
“This is it, Vi,” I say. “I need a date for these events.” I pull out the ring and press it in her palm, clasping her thin fingers around it. “If you choose to marry me, one of our kanbu will drop off the paperwork, and our designer will be here in the morning. We’ll get married on Saturday.”
“In one week?”
I nod. “Our designer will set you up with whatever you need.”
Vi opens up her palm. The ring cost me a hundred thousand. She could pawn it and flee; there’s no doubt it’d pawn for a pretty penny. Lying flat, it’s almost like a collar, and though I like the idea of a pleasure slave, what I want from Vi is different. It’s more than sex.
I want honesty. Respect. Loyalty.
In any other city, after a gunshot, there’d be sirens within minutes. But in Sin City, life goes on. The next-door motel neighbor increases the volume on his television, and a car honks on the main road.
No one cares.
But I still want to remind Vi she has power. At least for now.
“You don’t have to pay for your uncle’s debts,” I say. “You have a choice. You can run away. Where you go is not my business. I won’t hunt you down.”
“But if I don’t marry you, you’ll kill my uncle,” she says calmly, but from the way her voice wavers, she knows it’s not true.
“This is about you, Vi.” I crack a smile, and she squeezes the ring in her palm. I lean in closer, smelling her: smoke, sugar, vanilla, champagne, and a hint of mint.
I guide her out of the motel room, then tap on the driver’s window. We speak in a mix of Japanese and English, then I turn back to Vi.
“He’ll take you wherever you want to go,” I say.
Vi nods, then peeks at the motel door. There’s a dead body in the room. It means nothing to me, but it must be surreal to her. And I want her to feel that way. I want her to know exactly what she’s getting into. She should know the yakuza is the real fucking deal. If she accepts my marriage proposal, there will be danger.
Her eyes are watery, a storm about to break over the desert. Too stunned to move.
I hope I’ve ruined her, and that she’ll be gone in the morning. Running away is in her best interest.
“Once you’re mine, I won’t hold back,” I murmur. “So if you don’t like how I am, then run away while you still can, Vivian.”
Her lips quiver as I say her full name. I open the car door, but before she moves, she gawks down at the big-ass ring like it’s a magical treasure that will disappear if she doesn’t keep her eyes on it.
“It’s yours. Pawn it. Or wear it,” I say. “I don’t care. But if you’re still at your motel in the morning, I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’ and we’ll be married next weekend.”
In a daze, she moves toward the car. I guide her inside, and she puts on her seatbelt absentmindedly. At the last moment, she turns to me.
“Saturday,” she says, a hint of curiosity in her voice.
“Saturday.”
I close the car door, then slap the outside. The driver leaves the parking lot, and she disappears into the night.
I may have scared the hell out of her, but something tells me she’ll still be there in the morning.
She hasn’t run yet.