Total pages in book: 104
Estimated words: 104141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 104141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 521(@200wpm)___ 417(@250wpm)___ 347(@300wpm)
“Okay.” I bit my lip.
A DNA test. Holy shit. We’ll know sooner.
He watched me. “Do you feel better?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Then, that is what we will do.”
I exhaled.
The Dragon had been ready to commit murder seconds ago, and now he was offering me cheek swabs, lab work, and a piece of paper.
This was why I could still remain with him, even though he was a murderous beast. Because even though all that deadly violence existed, the man outside the beast could choose something else when his woman asked him to.
The dragon-shadow began to fade, and the cold golden shimmer in his eyes dulled. His sharp angles softened as the darkness of his shadows lightened and his presence that had clouded the room and threatened to consume me, slowly dissipated too.
I exhaled again.
Slowly, Kenji rolled back onto the bed and brought me with him. A second later, I was back against his chest and gathered in his huge arms.
Holy fuck that was close.
Kiko was sitting in her villa off on the other side of the island and was clueless to the fact that I had held her life in my hands.
The bedroom let out its own breath, or maybe it was me again.
The birds’ chirping had gone, yet the faint sound of the ocean remained.
A residual tremor ran through my body.
He felt it and held me tighter.
Fuck. . .
Chapter twenty-one
Magic
Nyomi
For a long while we held still.
His chest rose under my cheek.
Fell.
Rose again.
The ocean's hush returned to the open window. The drapes lifted in a slow breath of breeze. Somewhere down the hall, a soft footstep passed and faded.
The mansion was settling back into morning around us, and the staff was surely cleaning everything up from the party.
I wonder if Hiro actually slept under that claw last night.
I made a note to ask him.
Kenji adjusted his hold on me. Those muscular arms closed around me again, slow and unhurried. One curling under my neck. The other heavy across my waist. His thigh slid between mine. His hand at my hip traced a slow circle.
Over and over.
Anchoring me.
I was inside him again and it was a cocoon of passion and protection, warm, healing love and deadly obsession.
I shut my eyes and let the heat of him soak into my skin.
For some foolish reason, I saw a slow, soft-bodied caterpillar in my mind, disappearing into a cocoon it had spun out of itself.
And the cocoon sealed shut.
And inside, its old body came apart in the dark so something else could be built from the same material.
I had read about that once. Caterpillars didn't simply grow wings. They dissolved themselves first. The whole time the cocoon kept them safe while everything they used to be turned into a soup of cells. And then, inside that warm darkness, the new body began to assemble.
Wings.
Antennae.
A tongue made for nectar instead of leaves.
A creature that could no longer crawl.
A creature that had to fly.
Maybe, I was still tipsy from the party last night.
Still a bit. . .intoxicated.
But I still felt like I was changing and Kenji was holding me through my dissolving.
I was the caterpillar.
He was the cocoon.
And what would come out the other side of this. . .I didn't know yet.
My fingers came up and found the dragon tattoo on his chest. I moved my fingertips along its inked spine.
His heartbeat was slowing.
Mine was slowing with it.
Several silent minutes passed.
I tilted my face away from his chest, turned my eyes to the ceiling.
The dragon-shadow was completely gone. The ceiling was just plaster and the soft morning shadows from the drapes again. The corners of the room were corners again. The wings that had stretched along the walls had folded back into wherever they had come from. The gold eyes had closed. The obsidian tail had withdrawn from the foot of the bed.
The whole beast had returned to Kenji.
I stared at the empty space above us for a long moment.
Kenji's voice rumbled under my cheek. "What do you see, Tora?"
I turned to him.
He was watching me. His head was tilted slightly against the pillow so he could see my face. His brown eyes—Kenji's eyes again, not the Dragon's—were patient, loving, and curious.
"Your dragon-shadow was here. He was above us when we were talking."
His brow lifted. "Only when we were talking about Kiko?”
"Yes. It's gone now. Back inside you, I guess. But it was there."
“Why do you think it came out?”
“From what I’m seeing. . .he comes out when you have intense emotion. Anger. Grief. Serious horniness.” I glanced up again at the ceiling, then back at him. "I don’t know. I’m still figuring this out, but this morning. . .he was fucking huge."
The slow grin started at one corner of his mouth and spread. "Huge?"
"Yes."
His chest puffed under my cheek. Just slightly. Enough that I could feel how pleased he was. "How huge?"