The Dragon 5 (Tokyo Empire #5)

Prologue

Burning

Nyomi

What does it mean to burn?

To truly light up in a blaze of heat and fire.

Waking up wrapped in the inferno of Kenji, consumed by a heat so complete I couldn't tell where my body ended and his began—that was burning.

That was fire.

His scent and essence were everywhere.

Around me.

Behind me.

Over me.

His arm draped across my waist, heavy with muscle even in sleep. His chest pressed against my back like a wall of living flame, radiating warmth that seeped past my skin and into my bones until my blood slowed, thickened, turned molten.

I was cocooned.

Pinned.

Held in place by the sheer mass of this sexy, dangerous man.

Fuck.

Was I going to wake up like this every morning?

Wrapped in him.

Claimed by heat before I even opened my eyes?

I kept my eyes closed, afraid that if I looked, the spell might break. I wanted to stay right here—floating in sensation, suspended between sleep and waking, between safety and surrender.

His breath stirred my hair in a slow, steady rhythm. Every time he exhaled, I felt the expansion of his ribs against my spine.

In.

Out.

It was the cadence of safety.

It anchored me.

His huge hand splayed across my stomach. Those fingers were spread wide like he was claiming me in his dreams.

The heat of his palm burned through the thin silk of my nightgown.

Branding me.

I could feel the calluses on his fingers, the roughness that contradicted the gentleness of his touch.

My neck throbbed with a different kind of heat. The bite marks he'd left there last night—teeth sinking into the curve where my shoulder met my throat.

Marking me.

Dominating me.

All of it made me feel like I was lying beside an ancient, primal, and unstoppable beast that had decided, for now, not to devour me.

The bruises from his teeth pulsed now with their own warmth, tender and swollen, and even that ache felt like burning love.

Even that pain felt like belonging.

This is everything.

I let myself savor this moment. The weight of his arm. The furnace of his chest. The way his thigh wedged between mine, solid as an oak, anchoring me to him even in sleep.

I pressed back against him, letting his heat soak through me, letting myself dissolve into the comfort of his body.

With my eyes still closed, I moved my hand and guided my fingertips to the bite marks on my neck.

Damn, Kenji.

I traced the indentations his teeth had left behind.

One day, you’re going to fully consume me.

And those bite marks weren’t warm.

They were burning.

Throbbing like a slow-burning brand.

Had his teeth written themselves into my skin in a language my body understood before my mind did?

What else were his teeth saying to my body, besides mine?

I was still tracing the echo of his teeth when something else threaded into my awareness. It was a faint scent at first, barely there. It curled through the room, mixing with Kenji’s heat.

Mmmm. What’s that?

I sniffed.

Roasting meat. Delicious.

The soothing aroma drifted through the room.

Rich.

Fatty.

Savory.

My stomach growled.

I breathed it in.

It smells like. . .Christmas ham slow-roasting over heat. Is the chef cooking up a big breakfast feast for this morning?

A wave of hunger washed over me, twining with my desire for Kenji like two serpents in a dance. Tearing my attention away from the pulsing marks on my neck.

I blinked my eyes open, taking in the pale light from the window.

And that was when I saw it.

What? No way.

Beyond the glass, white flakes drifted past.

Oh my God. Snow.

My heart warmed.

So beautiful.

White flakes twirled in the early light, floating and swirling.

Delicate as lace.

Breathtaking.

I watched them drift past the window, completely mesmerized.

Snow on the island? But. . .

It had been warm yesterday. Kenji and I had been swimming in the water, enjoying his private island.

How could it be suddenly snowing now?

The snowflakes continued to lazily spin through the air. Some rose on invisible currents. Others simply floated.

And behind them, through the glass, an orange glow pulsed like a heartbeat.

Huh? What’s that?

I moved Kenji's arms and slowly began to get up.

He stirred instantly, brought his arm back, and tightened his hold.

I moved the heavy arm again.

A low, dark growl left him. “Tora?”

I smirked and pushed his arm away again. “I’m just going to the window.”

“Why?”

"Because it's snowing." I was already moving toward the edge of the bed and sliding out from under the covers.

“Snowing?”

“Yes.”

He yawned. “It shouldn’t be snowing.”

“I know.”

“It’s not winter.”

“I know, but it’s snowing.” My feet hit the cold floor as I rose from the bed. The loss of his heat hit me like grief, sudden and sharp.

The smell began to get stronger as I headed to the window. That roasting meat scent started to coat the back of my throat.

“Tora. . .wait—”

“I’ll be right back.”

Worry laced his voice. "No. Tora, come back now."

“Why?” I wrapped my arms around myself and kept moving toward the window. I heard the bed shift behind me, heard him sitting up. “I’ll be quick, Kenji. I just love when it snows—”

“Tora, that’s not snow—”

“What do you mean?” Confused, I reached the window.

Wait. What the fuck is this?

The heat hit me first—feverish rays branching through the glass and pressing against my face, my bare arms. My skin tightened.

I pulled back the curtain further to truly get a better look.

Horror slammed into me next.

What? No. . .this. . .can’t be real. . .

My brain short-circuited on the grotesque view, refusing to process what was in front of me.

No. . .God no. . .

A mountain of fire was twenty feet from our window. Monstrous flames clawed toward the sky, orange devouring red, yellow riding a terrible blue at the base. Murderous tongues writhing, roaring, and alive.

My stomach damn near collapsed onto itself because. . .within the inferno. . .

No. This can’t be real.

It was all bodies.

Tons of them.

No. No. No.

Men and women.

Piled on top of each other.

Stacked like firewood.

Over a hundred of them—arms jerking as tendons contracted in the obscene heat, legs fused together by melting flesh, torsos split open to reveal organs cooking inside, heads with mouths frozen in eternal screams, contorting in agony. Skin bubbling, splitting, and blackening.

Oh God.

Acid surged up my throat.

No. . .

My lungs locked.

I could barely breathe and I damned sure couldn’t look away.

Off in the distance, Kenji’s voice sounded. “Tora. . .”

I continued to take in this mountain of burning bodies.

Kenji’s men circled the base. One of them lifted a jerry can and the liquid caught the light as it arced through the air.

Gasoline. That’s what he’s pouring.

The flames roared higher, hungrier, and another man threw wood onto the pile like he was stoking a fucking campfire.

Why the fuck are they burning people outside?

And that was when I realized that the white flakes were not snow. . .they were ash.

Now trembling, I looked up at the flakes, still drifting past the window, still dancing on the heat, still so delicate and beautiful, and my stomach turned to ice.

Ash. Human ash.

I froze.

I'm going to be sick.

I dragged my eyes back to the flames. I didn't want to look, yet I couldn't stop.

I spotted a man’s face in the mountain. His mouth was frozen open like he’d been screaming when he died. Then, his skin bubbled, split, and peeled back.

Stop. Don’t look. Turn away.

Still, I watched the fire eat through his face. . .to the red, wet muscle underneath.

A hand was poked out of the pile. Possibly a woman's hand. Those slender fingers curled into claws like she was trying to crawl free and escape.

Oh fuck.

The flesh slid off the bone.

Just slid off.

Wet.

Glistening.

Peeling away in sheets while the fire crackled and popped due to moisture escaping the bodies.

Fat rendering.

Human fat.

It liquefied and dripped down through the pile, sizzling within the flames, and that smell.

No. . .that fucking smell. . .

I gagged on hot air.

That wasn’t Christmas ham. It’s fucking. . .bodies burning.

I looked at one body in the middle. The long hair ignited. A halo of flame around a skull—there and gone in seconds—and the body slumped, shifted, moved like it was still alive, but it wasn't alive, it was just the fire eating through the structure, the muscles burning away, making the dead dance.

Stop. Make it stop. I can't—

Beyond the pyre, people stood there, watching. Men and women with sad, shocked expressions. They just watched with hollow eyes while the flames lit their faces orange.

And the most terrifying reality crashed into me.

If they’re burning a mountain of people then. . .Kenji knew. . .probably ordered it.

My stomach finally heaved.

I doubled over, hand flying to my mouth, bile surging up my throat. My body tried to reject it—all of it—what I was seeing, what I had smelled, what I had breathed.

My knees buckled and I grabbed the windowsill, fingernails scraping wood, and my body convulsed again, trying to purge.

Nothing came up.

Just bile burning the back of my throat. Just that fucking smell filling every breath I tried to take.

I was shaking.

Couldn't stop.

My whole body trembling, teeth chattering, vision blurring with tears I didn't remember starting to cry. The heat from the window pressed against my face like a hand.

Then, Kenji’s hand reached past me and yanked the curtain shut.

Why would they do that? Why?

The fabric fell back into place and cut off the sight, but not the heat. Not the smell. Those weren't going anywhere.

"Don't look." His voice was low. Controlled. Like this was a problem to be managed.

Don't look? What the fuck?

Still gagging on nothing, I stumbled away from the window.

Away from him.

Don’t look. Is he insane?!

My legs barely worked but I made them move me across the room, putting distance between myself and the curtain, the glass, the fire, him.

“Tora. . .”

My breathing came in ragged gasps.

The air still tasted like death.

“W-wait.” I hit the far wall, pressed my back against it, and wrapped my arms around myself, trying to hold my body together because it felt like I was falling apart.

“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?