29. Pressure #2
“I want you to stop acting like she’s already dead the moment she leaves your sight.
She’s smart. She sees things you and I don’t.
You know it.” Reo placed his hands into his pockets.
“Once again, let me remind you. She found Watari. She found Oguri. If you or I had ignored her instincts either time, we would still have two snakes in the grass.”
My fingers tightened around the banister. “And if I keep letting her play at this, it’s only a matter of time before she steps on the wrong snake.”
“Or she helps us find the spy, who can possibly help us find the Fox. Then you don’t need to send half your men to die. Can you see it? Victory.”
The image hit me hard—my father’s sliced-up body, my brother’s bloodied head bowed, the war over before it began. No mass graves on our side. No widows. No brothers’ blood on the sand.
But then another image followed.
Nyomi’s body. Her blood all over my hands. Her eyes closing while I was too far to reach her.
Reo sighed. “Fear makes you cage what you love. Respect sets it free to fight beside you.”
I looked away, jaw tight, because I knew he wasn’t entirely wrong. But fear wasn’t just fear—it was the knowledge of what the Fox would do to her if he ever got close enough.
I trusted Nyomi. I trusted the way her eyes caught what others were trying to hide. If she went out to that part of the island with the Claws, she would notice the wrong blink, the fake ease in a shoulder, the way guilt sat crooked on a man’s face.
I trusted that.
But trust didn’t change what the Fox would do to a woman like her if he ever got a clean angle.
Fast, Nura smiling at Hiro hit my mind and then my father’s bullet slamming into her head a second later.
I can’t let that happen to my Tiger.
I swallowed.
But. . .Hiro wouldn’t be tied up like with Nura. The Claws and him would be free to protect her. . .
I trusted Hiro with damn near everything. My brother came wrapped in jokes and sugar, but he was nothing sweet when the knife came out. I trusted the way he read a space—pulse by pulse, lie by lie—how he could peel a man to the truth with a glance and a hum.
I trusted him to stand between Nyomi and anything stupid enough to reach for her.
I trusted him to come back bloody and grinning, to make death look boring.
But my fear didn’t care who Hiro was. Fear knew that even gods tripped on wet stone. It knew bullets didn’t read names.
Fuck. What should I do?
Reo spoke, “You can ask her if she wants to do it.”
“Fuck you. We both know she will say yes. She loves danger and she’s too goddamn curious.”
Reo smirked. “That’s one of my favorite parts about her.”
I took in my Roar.
I trusted Reo too. I trusted his math—the way he lined a map with invisible thread and tugged until enemies fell into predictable ruin.
This conversation was unlike most we had ever had. He was never so blatantly determined to win.
Typically, if I said go, he went.
If I said stop, he held the line until his bones shook.
I trusted him with my corners, with my blind spots, with the orders I didn’t want anyone else hearing.
But fear was bigger than Reo’s perfect lines. Fear remembered the day the Fox snapped a plan in half with one ugly surprise and smiled while the table bled.
“I don’t know. My father is a monster. You can’t out-calculate a monster who enjoys the cost.”
“But you’re a monster too, Kenji.”
I swallowed.
I trusted myself. I trusted the Dragon I had built out of rage and oath, the man who could pull a city into focus like a rifle sight.
I trusted my hands to do what needed doing and my name to carry the weight.
But, then I met my Tiger and learned that there was a world worth living in after the war.
That was the problem.
Love handed me a future and fear took it hostage.
Every time Nyomi opened her mouth and changed the shape of my battlefield, I wanted to bow in gratitude and lock every door in the same breath.
Fear was older than any of us, and it learned our habits, our shortcuts, our tells. It knew which memory to show us when it thought we needed to be terrified.
Fear didn’t argue with logic.
It argued with funerals.
“I’ll consider it,” The line of my jaw twitched. “But I won’t move a piece on this board without speaking to my Heart first. I’ll give you my answer after I talk to her.”
A huge smile spread across Reo’s face.
“She’s not bait. She’s my Heart. I’ll talk to her. If she wants in, it happens on my conditions and there will be lots of them. It would have to be daylight only, fixed routes, layered decoys, Hiro leads, Claws always diamond around her, and there is always a live feed for me.”
“Understood.”
I shook my head. “I’m already asking her to make the Claws dinner. Now I’m fucking commissioning her to be my detective.”
Reo blinked. “Dinner? For the Claws?”
“Yes, Hiro batted his lashes and I crumbled.”
“But. . . just the Claws?”
I frowned.
Reo quirked his brows. “I’m the Roar. Am I not invited?”
Exhausted with them all, I turned around and headed up the stairs. By the time I climbed a few steps, the tightness in my chest now had a pulse of its own, drumming against my ribs like it wanted out.
I needed rest.
I needed heat.
I needed her hands, her mouth, her pussy.
“The Roar is more important than the Claws,” Reo called after me. “Does she know this?”
With each step, the fatigue sat heavy in my bones and Tet’s blood splatter on my chest felt like a second shirt glued to my skin.
I needed a shower hot enough to peel the night off me—steam, soap, her hands on my shoulders pressing the iron out of my muscles.
But more than water, I needed my Tiger.
I wanted the heat of her pinned under my palms, the curve of her hips in that skirt branded into my hands, the clean scent of her hair cutting through copper and gun oil.
I wanted to taste the laugh she kept just behind her teeth, to feel her legs tighten at my waist, to take all that softness and make it mine until the world went quiet.
And if she wanted me to kneel or crawl today. . .I would.
Power had crowded my ribs all day. The thought of kneeling for her made space inside me and even pushed some of the pressure away.
“Kenji,” Reo called up the stairwell. “She whispered one more thing.”
I stopped on the landing and looked down. “What was it?”
“She wants a Japanese translator to stay by her side, and she wants me to start giving her Japanese lessons.”
My grip tightened on the rail. “She asked for you specifically to teach her?”
“No. She asked if I could find her a good teacher, I decided that would be me. Who else but the Roar?”
I rolled my eyes at Reo’s cockiness and clear fascination with my Tiger.
You want to be closer to her to study her. You’re intrigued.
I turned away, heat low in my chest at the thought of my Tiger choosing to learn our tongue—choosing to step deeper into my world. Possessiveness nipped at the edges of that warmth. Of course Reo would volunteer himself and. . .he would in fact be the best.
“By the way,” Reo called up again. “What time is this dinner for the Claws happening? Is it tonight?”
I ignored him and kept climbing. I had a Tiger to find and a few answers to collect about why she’d left my war room early.
A minute later, the corridor softened. I neared our master suite. Our door stood ajar, perfumed steam curled into the hall.
Several of my staff zipped up the stairs, rushed past me, and entered the room.
What’s going on?
A housemaid hurried by with a silver tray piled with cut jasmine and rose petals.
Another followed carrying thick pink candles and a glass jar of bath salts.
I stopped as two more hurried along. One held black silk robes folded over her arm and a stack of snowy towels balanced in the other.
The next had an ice bucket and two crystal flutes.
As fast as they went in, they came right back out.
Each bowed my way and rushed along.
Stunned, I turned toward the door.
From inside came the melody of running water and a scent that uncoiled every knot in me—vanilla, jasmine, and lavender.
Mmmm. My Tiger is naked and glistening somewhere in all that steam. And. . .she’s been busy.