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.
