Page 196 of The Dragon 2

The macaroni still coated my tongue, heavy and warm. But that one sentence Nyomi had said—We need a safe word—had cracked something open in me I didn’t even know I’d sealed.

A safe word.

That meant exactly what I thought it meant. She wasn’t teasing anymore. This wasn’t a kiss. Or even the taste of her pussy. This was surrender and reckoning.

This would be deeper.

Bigger.

I stared at her across the table, the golden glow of candlelight flickering over her collarbones. Her red leather gown clung to her like it’d been poured on, and her curls framed her face like a halo.

She was not only the fucking end of me but the beginning too.

She was ready to wear the crown and sit beside me on the throne.

She just had no fucking idea.

My cock throbbed again—more exhausted than hard—but still pulsing like it needed her to understand. Like it had one last prayer.

My body had already been humming from the meal, from the scent of her skin—black amber and ripe plum—and from the way her voice dipped every time she teased me.

But now there was something else curling behind my ribs.

Fear.

I’d fantasized about BDSM before. Plenty of times. Ever since I walked in on my father choking his mistress in his study while she came all over his hand. She’d looked like she was flying, shaking, and sobbing with bliss.

And my father—so cold, so cruel—had looked proud. Like he owned every sound in that room.

Years later, there was Lya in that villa in Spain. Older than me. Sexually merciless. Silk in her hands, rope around my throat, riding me like I was hers to break. She straddled me and rode me slowly with the rope around my neck, pressing just slightly more with every movement.

I hadn’t cum from the friction of her pussy. I came because she thoroughly owned me.

Lya left a mark, not on my skin, but on the part of me I’d kept sealed—soft, hidden, and starving.

I’d buried that part of myself for years. I became the Dragon. I learned to dominate, to control.

But now, staring at Nyomi, I felt it again.

That hunger.

That ache to beowned.

She might be the first woman I ever wanted to kneel for. To let devour me. And somehow, the only one I wanted to build a life with. To give not just my body—but my fucking heart.

A safe word. Mmmm.

Nyomi lifted her glass and sipped her water like she hadn’t just changed my entire fucking life.

“Tora. . .” I forced myself to cut another bite of oxtail. “Are you going to tell me what the surprise is?”

“I’m not.”

I ate the oxtail and swallowed. “I am going insane over here. At least give me a hint.”

“I already did.”

“A safe word isn’t a hint. It’s a warning.”