Chapter 6
Chapter six
The Dragon’s Possession
Kenji
The lights were still on.
I didn’t dim them.
I wanted nothing hidden—no shadows to swallow her expressions, no darkness to blur the truth on her face.
The room held its breath with us, amber glow pooling over the sheets, gilding the curve of her shoulder, the line of her throat, the quiet rise of her breathing.
She lay naked on my bed—our bed now, whether she said the word or not—and I stood there a moment longer than I should have, just to memorize what victory looked like.
Not my victory.
Hers.
My Tiger had walked through my test—a field of knives—and returned with her feet uncut. She had seen through my three most trusted Fangs—men who didn’t shake and didn’t blink—and she had found the seam where their lies lived and pulled them until they came free.
She doesn’t even understand. . .not yet. . .she doesn’t know. . .
If anyone looked at her for too long, I would string them upside down in my bamboo room and let their blood soak the roots, their marrow drip into the soil until the stalks grew thick on their agony.
The bamboo would creak and split with new life, each shoot rising through the sound of their screams.
If anyone dared to speak her name without respect in their tone, I would slice the syllables from their tongues and leave them mute forever. Their mouths would gape uselessly, trying to form the sound of her while only silence bled out.
If anyone thought to touch her, even by accident, I would take their hands, pickle them in glass jars, and line my shelves with the trophies.
Each jar would be proof that the punishment for reaching her was worse than death.
The fingers would shrivel and warp inside the liquid, pointing eternally toward her, forced to witness what they could never touch again.
And if she ever tried to walk away from me, even for a breath, I would build her a gilded cage of gold and bone, line it with silk, and fill it with every comfort. I would kiss her through the bars, feed her with my own hands, wrap her in furs and jewels.
I would keep her soft, keep her mine.
If she wept in that cage, I’d collect her tears in crystal vials and drink them like communion wine.
And all day and night I would sit at the cage door until she understood that freedom was an illusion.
Possession surged through me then like black water in a flood, filling my chest, drowning my lungs, saturating my brain until it pressed against the backs of my eyes.
A darkness so thick it whispered orders.
Kill.
Burn.
Keep.
Destroy.
The same pulse that hardened me inside my pants was the one that told me I could never let her go. Desire and death ran in the same vein now, pumping side by side. She wasn’t just mine by choice—she was mine by physics, by gravity, by the law of the fucking universe.
Until the only safe place for her in this world was inside my arms or beneath my cock.
She wasn’t just a woman in my bed. She was my goddamn empire.
Not territory.
Not money.
Not turf.
Her.
My Tiger.
My human lie detector.
The one weapon no other syndicate could buy, steal, or breed in the shadows. She could strip a man to bone without a blade, rip secrets straight from his throat just by looking.
With her at my side, the whole landscape of Asia would change.
No one could play me again.
Every rival in Asia just became irrelevant. Their women, their armies, their bloodlines meant nothing.
After this war. . .and with her. . .I could take over control of this whole fucking continent.
She was leverage, strategy, future. And still—she was more than all of it because. . .she was the first person I’d ever fallen in love with.
The lights painted her dark brown skin, turning it richer, darker, decadent.
My Tiger.
Black and radiant.
Curves stretched across my sheets.
The soft swell of her breasts rose with each breath. The lush dip of her waist gave way to the storm of her hips. God, her hips—made to ride a man insane, wide enough to cradle an empire, thick enough to keep me buried for eternity.
Her thighs were the kind of sin men got killed for. Smooth, solid, spreading into the curve where my cock already ached to live.
Even the faint sheen of sweat along her stomach gleamed like a trail I wanted to lick, bite, and worship until she screamed my name loud enough to shake the walls.
Mmmm. I’m going to bite her again. . .and again. . .
Every line of her was a trap.
Every curve was a chain.
All I could think was. . .
Touch.
Taste.
Take.
She raised her eyebrows. “Are you going to come to bed or not?”
I dragged my gaze over her one more time, then started unbuttoning my pants. My cock was already thick, straining.
“Careful, Tora.” My voice dropped to a growl as I shoved my slacks down my hips. “You don’t want me to rush this.”
“Why not?”
I stepped closer, my cock heavy between us, my hunger written all over my face. “Because, I already plan to hurt your pussy some more.”
“No.” Her breath caught, but she didn’t look away. “You’re going to be nice to my pussy. It’s already sore.”
That word was a blade sliding between my ribs.
Sore.
My cock twitched, thickening, the hunger in me spiking.
Sore meant she already carried my cock’s mark.
Sore meant her body still remembered me, even when I wasn’t inside her.
Sore meant she could close her legs and still feel my cock there—phantom weight, phantom stretch, phantom ache.
“Sore.” I tasted the syllable. “Mmmm.”
“You look pleased with the fact that my pussy is sore.”
I climbed onto the bed.
The mattress dipped beneath my knees.
I got above her. My cock rested heavy against her thigh, the heat rolling off me thick enough to drown us both. “You think sore is going to save you? No, Tora. Sore is the beginning.”
I brushed my fingers down her stomach, stopping just above the curve of her pussy, watching her shiver.
“I’m going to play that ache like an instrument.
I’m going to make you moan through it, cry through it, come through it, until you can’t tell the difference between pain and pleasure.
Until sore becomes worship. Until every nerve in your body confuses agony for ecstasy, and every sound you make is mine. ”
She shivered under my touch. “Kenji—”
“No, Tora. Right now, you’re about to fuck the Dragon.”
She widened her eyes.
I lowered and pressed my mouth to her ear, biting the lobe before whispering, “That little soreness you feel now? It’s nothing.”
Her breath hitched, her thighs shifted.
“I don’t just want your pussy wet. I want it raw, ruined, and dripping with my cum.” My hands slid under her shoulders, not to pin her to me yet, just to lift her a little and press my face to the warm hollow below her ear.
“Mmmm.” I breathed in her intoxicating scent—black amber and ripe plum.
Now I knew that the scent. . .had been fate.
Heavy.
Rich.
Sweet.
It crawled into my lungs and branded them. It was the same phantom note that had haunted me since childhood, drifting through memory like smoke I could never catch.
Black amber—the darkness, the resin, the heat of fire smoldering in secret.
Ripe plum—sweet, lush, almost forbidden, like biting into a fruit that could stain my mouth forever.
Together, they were her.
My Tiger.
My curse.
My cure.
My secret weapon.
I lapped at her neck.
She shivered, and her scent clung to my tongue, slid into my blood, rewrote me molecule by molecule until I was no longer man but creature.
The Dragon.
Obsessed.
Unchained.
Unhinged.
Goddamn it. If I could devour her. . .
The thought cracked through me like lightning, dragging Rin’s voice back from the test. “I eat a human heart once a month for strength and vitality.”
At the time, I’d thought it ridiculous.
Now?
Looking at her curves glowing under my light, hearing her breath break in my ear—fuck, I understood.
I wanted to eat my Tiger’s heart.
Not in metaphor.
Not in poetry.
In fact, I wanted to bite into her flesh, taste the muscle that kept her alive, feel it pounding against my teeth. To rip her chest open and feast, to fill myself with the proof she was mine inside and out.
Madness.
That’s what she did to me.
And it wasn’t the first time.
I’d already had a taste of her blood in the shower. That warm liquid stained my tongue.
This heated copper rush slid down my throat, thick and intimate.
It had made my cock throb.
Made the world tilt.
It burned through me.
That taste in the shower. . .that wasn’t enough. I need more. I’ll drink every vein dry if that’s what it takes to keep her inside me.
I looked at her neck, at the pulse beating beneath her skin, and my teeth ached. I wanted to kiss her and fucking bite her until she screamed.
She’s making me fucking crazy. . .now I don’t need wine, don’t need air, don’t need food. I need what runs under her skin.
She whispered, “Kenji. . .”
I rose a little and pierced her with my gaze.
“During the test. . .I didn’t know if you were pissed, unimpressed, or. . .disappointed.”
My Tiger—my fierce, unbreakable woman—had actually feared failing me.
My chest clenched. “Disappointed in you? That’s blasphemy.”
She bit her bottom lip.
I lowered until my forehead pressed against hers. “I was so fucking impressed, I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know how to show it without giving myself away. My men were watching. Reo. Rin. Satoshi. Kaoru. They can’t see me unravel. They can’t see how deranged you make me.”
Her lips parted.
“You didn’t just pass that test, Tora. You stripped me open. You reached into my chest and ripped out every defense I had left. My brain. . .” I lifted my head to look deep into her brown eyes. “My brain left me. It went into your grip and it hasn’t come back.”
Her eyes filled with warmth.
“I fell in love with you again.”
She raised her hand and brushed her fingers over my jaw. “Again?”
“When you came into my office that first day, my cock fell for you. I breathed you in and my nose and lungs fell for you. Then on our second date, when you cooked for me, my stomach fell for you. You made me crawl and my soul fell for you. Piece by piece, I keep losing myself to you.”
Relief softened her face, curved her lips, and sparkled her eyes. She looked so fucking gorgeous that it hurt. In fact, her relief undid me more than her fear ever could. The curve of her smile, the light in her eyes—fuck, it made me feral.
She had no idea how dangerous it was for her to look that happy in my bed, under my rule.
I brushed my thumb over her bottom lip, slow, like I was memorizing it before tearing it apart. “Soon there will be nothing left but what you allow me to keep.”
“I’m not going to let you keep anything.”
The words detonated inside me. My heart slammed against my ribs, my cock throbbed against her thigh, and the Dragon in me uncoiled with teeth and fire.
“Greedy Tiger.” I kissed her forehead, slow, loving, as if the gesture could brand my devotion deeper than my cock or my teeth ever could. “You’re the first person who’s ever made me want to be human. . .and the only one who makes me proud to be a monster.”
Before she tried to speak, I lowered my mouth to her jaw and bit her there, sharp enough to make her gasp, sharp enough to taste the edge of her skin.
“K-Kenji.” She whimpered, and the sound tore through me dousing gasoline over flame.
Groaning, I dragged my mouth down her neck, stopping at the place where her pulse leapt, frantic and beautiful.
My teeth grazed the spot, and she tilted her head back in surrender.
Her pulse beat against my lips.
“Careful, Tora.”
“Am I not safe with you?”
“You’re not.” I whispered against her pulse, letting the sharp edge of my canine scrape the tender spot. “You are in absolute danger.”
“Who will save me?”
“No one.” I bit at the space under her pulse.
Not soft.
Not gentle.
Hard enough to make her cry out.
Hard enough that a tiny drop of blood stained my tongue. The copper tang filled my mouth, and I groaned into her skin, hips jerking forward against her thigh.
Her body bucked beneath me, a shiver racked her spine as pleasure and pain must have intermingled.
I lapped at the little beads of blood on her skin and bit again.
Her blood hit my tongue and the world tilted.
Oh fuck. I’m getting addicted to this.