Chapter 2
Chapter two
Smoke and Memories
Kenji
Hiro lit the joint with a silver lighter.
The flame leapt toward the joint’s twisted end. The red paper glowed and then blackened.
Once fully lit, he snapped the lighter shut.
The flame died.
As he held in the smoke, all tension left his jaw. His shoulders dropped half an inch. His muscular chest expanded. His eyes went half-lidded and still.
When he finally exhaled, two slow gray columns of smoke spiraled from his nostrils and then dissolved into the air above him.
I smiled.
He shook his head slowly like he was clearing it. "This is good shit."
I quirked my brows. “Is it?”
“Yeah.” He looked at the joint with new respect. "Who knew Hiroko had a good connect?"
I thought of Hiroko in heaven watching us smoke this joint and my smile widened.
The scent of marijuana layered itself over everything. Over the cedar incense. Over my Tiger’s black amber and plum. It was earthy, sweet, and slightly floral.
Hiro turned toward Nyomi. "Come here, Tora."
Nyomi sat up and left my chest, taking away the warmth of her body.
I reached out and ran my finger along a braid that hung down her back.
Hiro eyed her. “Do you know what a shotgun is?”
“Of course.”
Hiro placed the joint to his lips and pulled from it again. The tip brightened. He held the smoke in his lungs and leaned toward her.
Nyomi turned her face to his.
He brought his mouth close to hers.
The distance between their mouths was nothing.
A few breaths away.
An almost kiss.
He exhaled slowly and lines of twisting, gray smoke moved from his lips into hers in a thin, warm current.
She received it—her chest rising, her lashes dropping—and for one suspended moment their faces stayed close.
His mouth nearly at hers.
The smoke the only thing passing between them.
My thumb stopped moving along her braid.
She closed her eyes and released the smoke toward the ceiling in one long silver thread.
Hiro pulled back.
The distance returned.
And in the half second before it fully did—in that suspended instance where their faces were still close and the smoke still hung between them—a vision seared through me like lightning.
Nyomi's braids wrapped tight around my trembling fists, her slick naked body arching as she rode my cock, her hips grinding down in devastating strokes.
Her head thrown back against my shoulder, exposing the vulnerable column of her throat. Nipples hard peaks against my palms. Her pussy’s inner walls clenching around my cock.
Her lips parted on that particular moan that always undid me completely. The broken delicious sound that always made me want to bite her.
And behind her—Hiro. His powerful hands gripping her glistening waist, hard enough to bruise. His muscled chest pressed against her spine, his teeth sinking into her shoulder as he pumped his cock into her ass, making her body vibrate against me. His head gleaming with sweat.
His eyes locked with mine over her writhing body, dark with desire and deeper, more dangerous emotions.
Ones that said mine, yours, and ours all at once.
The three of us, tangled, devouring, and desperate, boundaries dissolving in the heat and evaporating away like smoke.
I blinked.
Gone.
I sat with what remained—a heat low in my stomach that I didn't entirely want to examine and a cold thread underneath it that I wanted to examine even less.
Because the heat I understood.
It was the cold that troubled me.
These were the two people I loved most in the world and my body had not done the math that my mind had easily solved. The fact that I wasn't sure any of us would survive an arrangement like that.
No. I’m too possessive.
"Careful." I ran my thumb along her braid and that one word was doing heavy lifting. It was a reminder to all three of us.
They both looked at me.
Hiro tilted his head to the side. “No more shotguns with our Tora?”
I swallowed. “No more unless you want me to get a shotgun and put a hole in your chest.”
Both of them laughed, telling me the marijuana was doing exactly what it was supposed to do. And the lust along with the heaviness in the air disappeared.
“Party pooper.” Hiro passed the joint to her. “Here. Take another hit.”
“No way. This is pretty strong.” She turned around and brought the joint to my lips. “Here, baby.”
I closed my mouth around the tip and pulled slowly. The paper was warm from her fingers. From Hiro's lips before that. From Hiroko's slave rolling it in a room she never made it back to. Three people's warmth in one small thing.
I drew the smoke down.
It hit the back of my throat first—earthy, sweet, faintly floral—and then the smoke kept going.
Down into my chest.
Into the space below my sternum where I kept everything I couldn't show anyone.
The smoke found it all.
Settled into my soul. Yet, didn't fix it.
Just sat with it the way Hiro sat with us tonight.
Fuck. . .I didn’t know I needed this. . .
I held it in.
The room changed.
The edges softened first. The curved glass walls lost their sharpness. The moonlight on the tatami spread wider and warmer than it had any right to. The koto notes I'd stopped consciously hearing came back and each one landed on my skin like a lover’s fingertips.
Light caress.
Then gone.
Light teasing stroke.
Then nothing again.
I held the smoke longer and turned to the cherry blossom tree in its black stone planter. The form blurred slightly at the edges and then sharpened. Every petal became distinct on the branches.
Pressure built in my lungs.
I exhaled.
The smoke left me, slowly unraveling from my nostrils in thin gray wisps that rose up to the ceiling and turned silver before dissolving.
Yes. They’re right. This is strong.
A numbing sensation moved warm through my bloodstream. My hands felt heavy in the best way. The sort of heavy that meant they were finally resting after months of gripping things—weapons, knives, the world.
I looked at the ceiling.
And Hiroko was there.
Not visibly.
But present still.
She was in the cedar smell. She was in the joint itself. She was in Hiro's laugh from minutes ago and in the way Nyomi had fed my soldiers tonight without being asked.
Perhaps, Hiroko had known what she was doing when she told her slave to give Hiro that joint. Maybe, she knew we would need it if she didn’t return.
I don’t want to think about her anymore. I just want to be okay.
The grief wouldn't leave, but the weed had done what the sake couldn't manage. It removed the heaviness and let me breathe around the sorrow.
For now.
For tonight.
We continued to smoke and the koto played through me.
I closed my eyes. “The weed makes the music deeper.”
Hiro chuckled.
“Don’t laugh. It’s true. The shakuhachi sounds like it is coming from inside the walls. From inside the floor. From somewhere beneath the island itself.”
“Alright. No more joint for my brother.”
Nyomi chuckled. “I thought I was bugging but. . .yeah it sounds like the music is playing on my skin.”
“And no more joint for the Tiger either.”
We laughed together.
I opened my eyes and put my view back on the cherry blossom and watched a single petal detach from a low branch and drift to the tatami.
There and then gone.
Hiro spoke, "Do you remember the Korean meeting, brother?"
“I do.”
"Do you think Reo took that cheese?"
I sank in utter comfort. "No one can prove it."
"Nyomi, you should have been there. At the end of the meeting, we all stood next to the table. The entire cheese wheel was there. Then it wasn't. Reo was the last one near the table."
"He was greeting the delegation."
"He was stealing cheese."
Nyomi looked at me. "How fast would he have had to move?"
“Pretty fast, Tora.”
Hiro dotted the air with the joint, making the smoke rise in waves. "That's what I'm saying. An entire wheel of cheese vanished in the time it took Kim to turn around and bow. Reo is either the fastest man alive or he has a portal to a cheese dimension. Either way, I want answers."
Nyomi chuckled. “I love his obsession with cheese. It’s everything.”
Hiro passed the joint to her. “That missing cheese wheel almost started a war between us and the Jeonha."
Nyomi took a drag, exhaled, and gave it to me. "What’s the Jeonha?"
Hiro replied, "South Korean syndicate, but not the kind you're thinking. Most syndicates want money, territory, and power."
"What do they want?"
"Punishment." I exhaled smoke at the ceiling. "They were founded on a specific ideology. The wealthy destroyed their families. So they sought to destroy the wealthy back. Ritually."
Nyomi went still. "What does ritualistic mean in that context."
Hiro and I exchanged a glance.
"It means they don't just kill their enemies." I looked at the joint. "They consume them."
Her lips parted. "Consume? Like. . .they eat them?"
"Exactly.”
The koto played three notes into the silence.
She widened her eyes. "They're cannibals."
Hiro grinned. "They were. We ended them a few years ago, but that’s not the point.”
Nyomi blinked. “I think a cannibal syndicate is a very important point one should make right at the beginning of any story.”
I snickered.
Hiro continued, “What I’m saying is that Kim—the head—brought that wheel of aged gouda as a gift to our meeting. Imported from the Netherlands. Pretty expensive and a gesture of good faith toward our new alliance."
Nyomi looked between us slowly. "And Reo stole the symbol of good faith from people who eat their enemies."
I held up one finger. "Allegedly."
"He absolutely stole it." Hiro grabbed the joint from me. “Reo doesn’t do anything by chance. He hated that syndicate and he loved the idea of eating that cheese.”
“Yeah. He probably did it.” I looked at the cherry blossom and another petal fell to the tatami.
The koto played on.
Hiro spoke and this time a deep sadness laced his words. “Brother. . .thank you for starting this war.”
I turned to him.
A serious expression covered his face. “You didn’t have to.”
“I did. Our father hurt you, so we hurt him.”