Page 119 of The Dragon 1

Her eyes stayed locked on mine.

I set my sake down. “Her name was Lya.”

She didn’t blink. Just tilted her head slightly, waiting.

“I met her in Spain. I was only twenty-nine. Young and cocky. I was there for a weapons deal I shouldn’t have handled personally, but I was in a reckless season. My father had just handed me power. I needed to feel the edge.”

Nyomi didn’t speak but she shifted slightly in her seat.

“Lya wasn’t part of the negotiation. She was. . . an ornament. At least that’s how the host described her. A luxury. A status symbol.”

I let out a breath and met Nyomi’s gaze again. “But she wasn’t anyone’s anything.”

She bit her lip.

“Lya was older too. Much older,” I continued. “Fifty-two, maybe fifty-three. Elegant. Mean. Wore her age like it was weaponry. She had this voice—French, deep, honeyed but dry. Like she'd seen many mafia kingdoms rise and fall and had no patience for posturing from young guys like me.”

Nyomi’s mouth parted slightly.

“Still, Lya watched me during the negotiation like I was a puzzle she could solve in one glance. She was unimpressed and for that reason alone. . .I wanted her badly.”

Nyomi was breathing harder now. Her skin looked warmer. Her brown eyes darker.

“At the end of the negotiations and with all gone, Lya didn’t ask me to follow her that night,” I swirled my sake in my cup. “She just looked at me once, crooked her finger and walked into the villa’s master suite.”

“That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“What did you do?”

“I followed.”

Nyomi swallowed. I saw the motion of her throat and knew that her legs crossed tighter beneath the table.

She widened her eyes. “What. . .happened next?”

“She told me to lie down, I did.”

Nyomi’s lips parted, the tip of her tongue slipping across the corner of her mouth before she whispered. “Damn.”

My cock was painfully hard.

“She pulled out a red silk rope—longer than the ones they used tonight. She slid it across my chest like she was measuring me. I didn’t ask her what she planned to do. I was so young and taken aback by this older woman. Then, she just. . .”

“What?”

“She looped the rope around my throat first. Not tight. Just enough to make me know it was there.” I inhaled slowly, remembering. “She said, ‘You don’t let anyone touch your neck, do you?’ I didn’t answer. She smiled and said, ‘Then I’ll be the first.’”

Nyomi squirmed in her seat.

I saw it—feltit.

Her thighs pressing tighter. Her chest rising more sharply. Her eyes shining like polished obsidian. “What. . .happened next?”

“She kept that rope around my throat and began to ride me slow. Tighter with every breath. She whispered in French, Spanish, English. Filthy things. Beautiful things. Sharp truths I didn’t know I needed to hear. She didn’t want the Dragon. She wanted the boy hiding under his ribs.”

I leaned forward slightly. “And she found him.”