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.
