Chapter thirteen
Rising from the Flames
Nyomi
What is Kenji's surprise going to be?
The question circled my mind as we walked down the hallway together.
After this morning—the pyre, the ash, the way I'd shattered in the kitchen and been held together by his brother's ocean-calm arms—I had no idea what to expect.
Yet, with every step, Kenji's heat began to surround me.
Not all at once.
Sensually slow.
It was a fever rebuilding after the cool cloth had been pulled away.
Hiro's calm had been an ocean—vast and exactly what I'd needed to breathe again. That steady coolness had settled overmy skin, quieted my pulse, and brought me back from the edge of the fire.
But now?
Strolling beside Kenji with his heated hand around mine, I could feel that ocean evaporating.
Searing off.
Steam rising from the surface of me.
And his heat didn't ask permission.
It never did.
It just arrived.
Scorching hot and rolling off his body in currents that pressed against my side, my neck, the thin skin behind my ear where my pulse lived.
And I didn't pull away.
I leaned into it.
Because here was the terrifying, beautiful truth about this man—Hiro could cool me down, could bring me back to reason, could hold me together with steady hands and a calm voice.
But I didn't want calm for too long. I wanted the thing that undid me. The furnace of my Dragon.
The way his proximity alone could make my thighs tighten and my breathing go shallow. The way his thumb caressed my palm—one slow stroke—and sent a current straight through my belly and lower. Into that hot, liquid place that only he had access to.
I glanced at him.
His jaw.
The column of his throat.
The way his shirt pulled across his chest with every breath.
I wanted to put my mouth right at the base of his neck where his pulse beat slow and steady while mine raced.
This man had burned a hundred bodies this morning.
