"Yes." She nodded. "That pyre told me that the chances of the Dragon being victorious against the Fox are high. Higher than I ever thought."
Damn. You were right again, Hiro.
She folded her hands in her lap. "It made me much more confident that this war will end faster than we all expected."
I watched her profile in the fading light. The sharp line of her jaw. The stillness of her expression. "Interesting."
Hiroko glanced at me. "Why?"
"I was just wondering." I turned back to face the path ahead. "That's all."
Just learning about this new world.
The silence stretched between us.
The cart hummed.
The trees thickened.
Hiroko spoke, "What's going on with these marks on your neck?"
My hand flew up instinctively. Touched the tender skin, and actually. . .relished in the sting of it.
"What happened?" Hiroko leaned closer and studied the wounds in the fading light. "Who bit you?"
"Kenji."
Hiroko’s face remained composed and unreadable, but I saw her hands fold tighter in her lap. Saw the slight tension in her shoulders. "I see."
The golf cart continued through the darkening trees. The sunset bled into purple and blue as the first stars began to emerge.
"Biting." Hiroko let out a long breath. "It is what we call edge play."
I looked at her.
"It sits on the border between pleasure andrealdanger. There are levels. Gentle bites—teasing, playful. They leave temporary marks that fade in hours. Then there are harder bites. Bruising bites. Those last days." She paused. "And then there are bites that break skin."
Her eyes moved to my neck again. "He broke your skin."
“He did.”
"When someone bites hard enough to draw blood, they've crossed into. . .”
“What?”
“Primal territory." Hiroko's voice remained steady. "It's not about pain or pleasure anymore. It's about marking. Claiming. Making you his in a way everyone can see."
The wordclaimingsettled into my chest.
"The neck and shoulders are the most common places for this kind of. . .claiming bite. Visible. Undeniable." She exhaled slowly. "A brand."
Brand.
The word burned through me. And I didn't hate it. That scared me more than anything Hiroko had said so far.
I thought of Kenji’s teeth sinking into my flesh. The pain that twisted into pleasure. The blood running down my skin in the shower spray.
"In BDSM, we call the desire for biting odaxelagnia. The arousal from biting or being bitten. It releases endorphins for both people—the one biting and the one being bitten. It can create a high unlike anything else."
