Page 221 of The Dragon 2
Chapter forty-three
To Serve, To Kneel, To Burn
Nyomi
His body. . .it was about to ruin my whole calm position.
The more I undid his shirt the more skin, the more muscle, the more ink. Deep black lines. Dark red. Fascinated; I kept on unbuttoning that shirt just to see it all. The fabric parted wider.
Dragons coiled across his chest—massive, vicious, royal. Their scales shimmered with dark red detail, so lifelike they looked wet.
Alive.
Hungry.
Their claws dug into flesh that stretched over solid muscle and their mouths opened in eternal snarls.
The red ink bled into the black, bold and visceral like it had been drawn straight from the veins of his enemies.
There were more than dragons. A hydra was wrapped around his ribs. A full-bodied oni demon writhed on one shoulder. A katana inked into the side of his abs, positioned so that it pointed downward to his groin like a secret threat.
Each told a story of what it took to earn the title of Dragon.
Goddamn.
I didn’t know if I should run screaming out of that room or just start fucking him.
I swallowed hard.
Yeah. I’m not going back to New York.
Not in a week.
Not in a month.
Probably not ever.
The realization didn’t strike like lightning—it dripped in slow, molten certainty, thickening the air in my lungs until I could barely breathe around it.
It wasn’t fear exactly.
But it wasn’t comfort either.
It was surrender that I hadn’t agreed to out loud but my body already had.
My pussy already had.
My pride already had.
And the worst part?
I’d been the last to know.
Zo had hinted at it in his anxious, chaotic, way.
Hiroko hadn’t even bothered pretending. She’d just laughed. Full-throated. All-knowing. Like I was the wide-eyed lamb showing up to a dragon’s den with nothing but attitude and lip gloss, thinking I’d get out with my soul intact.
And Kenji?
