Dragon___Scorching Surrender

 

Scorching Surrender

Kenji

 

Hiroko stepped forward. "He's deep in subspace."

Nyomi's fingers were still pressed to my neck.

"His heartbeat is stable, so we're fine. But I need you to understand what's happening inside his brain right now." Hiroko lowered her voice, but I still heard it—broken, warped, arriving in pieces like a radio signal through water. "Right now, his prefrontal cortex is shutting down."

 

Cherry blossoms. I could smell them. Pink petals drifting through warm air and landing on dark water.

 

"That's the part of his brain that plans, judges, monitors, and controls. It's the part that makes him the Dragon. The part that runs an empire, determines threats, and keeps him ten steps ahead of everyone in every room he enters."

 

My mother's garden. The koi pond. I was small. My hand in hers. She was humming.

 

"That part of his brain has gone quiet."

 

Warm. So warm. Her kimono smelled like jasmine and she was humming a song I hadn't heard in thirty years.

 

Hiroko continued. "What's left is the limbic system—the oldest part of the brain. Pure sensation, pure emotion, pure present tense. There’s no past nor future. No titles nor responsibilities. Only nerve endings and trust."

 

Nyomi stood in sunlight I couldn't find the source of. Her belly was round and her hand rested on it and she was smiling at me the way my mother used to smile at my father before the blood, before all the women he would fuck in his library at night. Choking them.

 

"His body is flooded with endorphins, oxytocin, and endocannabinoids all at once. It's the same chemical cocktail the brain produces during a runner's high, an orgasm, and deep meditation—combined."

 

Children. I could hear children laughing somewhere beyond the cherry blossoms. Small feet on grass. A little girl with Nyomi's eyes. A boy with my jaw and eyes.

 

"This is the highest natural high the human body can produce, and you put him there, Nyomi. With fire."

 

The boy turned and a shadow stretched behind him. Long, scaled, winged. It rippled across the grass and the little girl laughed and chased it.

"But here is my warning." Hiroko's voice sharpened just enough to cut through the haze. "A man this deep can't protect himself. He will say yes to anything. He will beg for more when his body needs less. His pain receptors are buried under so much neurochemistry that he won't feel damage until it's already done."

 

The garden flickered. The children's laughter dimmed.

 

"You are his safety now, Nyomi. You are the prefrontal cortex he no longer has. Every decision about this scene—when to push, when to pause, when to stop—is yours. He has surrendered that to you, whether he knows it or not."

 

Nyomi. Just Nyomi. Standing in the garden with petals in her hair and her hand on her belly and my children playing in the shadow of a dragon that didn't scare them because it was their father.

 

"Do you understand?"

"Yes." Nyomi's fingers were still on my neck, counting beats.

"Good." Hiroko signaled to one of her assistants. "He needs fabric. Cover him."

The assistant appeared with dark silk and gave it to Nyomi.

I surfaced just enough to feel her hands on me.

My eyes watered. “No, Tora. Don’t cover my cock with that. Cover it with your mouth. Suck it.”

Nyomi draped the silk across my hips and cock. Slowly, she smoothed the fabric over the torn leather and over the hard length straining underneath.

“Yes, Tora. There we go.”

Then, the wicked woman spread her fingers wide across my lower stomach and adjusted the silk there.

“Tora, suck my cock.” I shivered. “Please. What do you want? I’ll give you anything.”

She looked down at me. “Silence.”

I arched my eyebrows.

“Be my good little Dragon.” Then she dragged her palm across the full length, right through the silk.

One long, slow pass.

“Mmm!” I arched off the stone. My cock kicked against her palm. A thick pulse of pre-cum soaked through the silk and she felt it. I knew she felt it because her hand paused, right over the head where the fabric must have been the wettest.

“Are you going to be good?” She pressed down and let me feel the weight of her palm. The warmth. The fact that she could end me right here if she chose. “Are you?”

“Y-yes.” I was shaking.

Full-body tremors that started in my chest and radiated outward. The sensation of her hand—that deliberate, possessive touch—had taken whatever was left of the Dragon and buried it.

There was no Dragon on this slab.

There was only a man.

Trembling.

Leaking.

Desperate.

Hers.

My bottom lip quivered. “Marry me.”

She blinked.

“Marry me, Tora. Let me give you my name. Let me give you the empire. Let me give you everything I've ever built and watch you set it on fire if that's what you want.”

Shock hit her face, but she recovered quickly. “How about we discuss that at another time.”

“Now.”

“Silence.”

I pressed my lips together.

Yes, Queen.

Nyomi picked up a fresh wand, dipped it, lit it, and she didn't look at Hiroko.

She chose my stomach next.

“Oh!”

The flame traced the grooves between my abs like a tongue—slow, wet, and greedy for every inch of my skin. Down the center line. Along the ridges of muscle. Over the katana tattoo that pointed toward my cock.

 

The garden came again. But darker now. The cherry blossoms were falling faster and each petal caught fire before it hit the water. The koi surfaced, mouths open, swallowing flame.

 

The heat pooled in the hollows of my body—the dip of my navel, the crease of my hip bones—and it sat there. Warm, heavy, intimate. The way a lover's breath sits on your skin right before they kiss you in the place you need it most.

She lifted the flame, watched me disintegrate into a blissful, ruined mess, and then placed the flame lower.

Past the katana's blade.

Past my navel.

Toward the silk.

“Oh fuck!”

The flame stopped at the edge of the fabric. Right where silk met skin. Close enough that the heat bled through and kissed the base of my cock.

I choked and surged off the stone.

The restraints caught me.

I throbbed beneath the silk, and each throb pumped a fresh wave of blood into the shaft until I was so swollen, so full, so hard that the ache became its own heartbeat—separate from the one in my chest, louder, more demanding, pulsing in a rhythm that matched the flame's heat.

“Careful, Nyomi. He’s already far gone. Don’t push him anymore or he’s going to be trouble.”

My Tiger pulled the flame away. "I like trouble."

Sweat dripped down my face.

“But I’ll be good.” Nyomi moved to my thighs.

I whimpered.

The flame came to my left thigh and it was a long stroke over my quadricep.

This was different from the arms.

Different from the chest.

My thighs were closer to my cock. The nerves there ran in the same highways, traveled the same roads, reported to the same desperate, aching center between my legs.

When the heat sank into the tissue, it didn't stay in my thigh. It traveled. Crawled upward through the muscle, tendon, and the blood until it reached the base of my cock and fed the ache already living there.

I trembled so hard my teeth chattered.

“Hmmm.” She went back to my chest.

Over the dragon again.

But this time she didn't just trace the tattoo. She followed the dragon's body the way you'd run your hands over a lover in bed—learning the dips and rises, the soft places and the hard ones.

She traced the curve of the dragon's neck across my collarbone. Drew the flame down through the coils on my left pec, around the swell of the muscle, and underneath where the skin was thinner and more tender.

I gasped.

She heard that.

Noted it.

Came back to the same spot. The underside of my pec. The soft crescent of skin where muscle met rib. She dragged the flame across it again.

A sound left me that I would deny for the rest of my life.

High.

Thin.

The sound of a man who had discovered a nerve ending he didn't know he had and a woman who was already exploiting it.

And then I stopped tracking time.

Minutes.

Hours.

The candles might have burned down by inches.

The room existed outside of clocks.

The only measurement was her—where she stood, where the flame went, how long the pauses lasted.

And the pauses.

God, the pauses.

She stood beside the slab with the wand burning at her side and she didn't bring the flame back.

She just watched me.

“T-tora. . .” I writhed on the stone, rolled my hips against nothing, and strained my arms against the restraints until the leather bit into my wrists.

My chest heaved. My cock strained beneath the silk, leaking a steady stream that left the fabric dark and clinging to the head like a second skin.

She watched all of it.

For ten seconds.

Maybe thirty.

Or it could have been minutes.

“T-Tora!” My body screamed for the flame. Every nerve ending she'd touched was still alive, still vibrating, still reaching toward her like flowers turning toward the sun. “P-please. . .”

The air felt cold now.

Empty.

Wrong.

My skin ached for the heat the way a junkie's veins ache for the needle.

 

The garden was back, but now empty. The children were gone. The cherry blossoms had stopped falling. I stood alone by the koi pond and the water was black, still, and cold. No fire. No warmth. Nothing.

 

She let me suffer. And when my breathing started to slow—when the desperation peaked and my body began to accept that the flame wasn't coming back—she brought the fire to my ribs.

Oh God!!!

The heat hit three times harder on sensitized skin.

I screamed through my teeth. My back bowed off the stone. My abs locked so hard they cramped. The sensation crashed through me in waves—each one taller than the last, each one pulling me further from the shore of anything I recognized as myself.

 

The garden returned and erupted. Every tree caught fire at once. The koi pond boiled gold. The children's laughter came back louder than before and the dragon shadow spread across the sky.

I was shivering and sweating at the same time. My heart pounded in my skull. My blood ran hot, carrying fire to every part of my body. Adrenaline surged in waves, making everything sharper, brighter, louder.

Higher than any drug could take me.

And she was the one doing it.

My Tiger. My Tora. Standing over me with flame in her hand, burning me alive, and I had never loved anyone more.

She traced the hydra on my ribs. The heat followed the creature's coils and I felt it in my lungs.

In my blood.

In my marrow.

I moaned, "Tora, please."

She tilted her head. "Please what?"

I didn't know.

More fire.

More touch.

Her mouth.

Her pussy.

Her hand on me.

Her name next to mine.

Everything.

"Please," I said again. “Burn my cock next.”

She brought the flame to my stomach.

A long, slow pass. The heat bloomed and raced toward my hips. She stopped just above the silk. So close to my cock I could feel the warmth radiating through the fabric. So close I thought I might come from the anticipation alone.

She pulled the flame away.

Moved to my thighs.

I groaned.

Frustration.

Ecstasy.

Surrender.

All the same sound.

I am going to marry this woman. I am going to put the biggest ring Tokyo has ever seen on her finger. I am going to get on my knees and ask her to be mine forever. And if she says no, I'm going to bomb cities until she says yes because she can never say no.

The thoughts came fast now.

Unstoppable.

I loved her.

I wanted to keep her.

I wanted her to burn me every night for the rest of my life and I would thank her each time.

 

I reached for Nyomi in the garden but my hands found her standing over the slab. The petals in her hair were sparks from the wand. The children's laughter was my own breathing. The garden and the tea house were the same place now and she was the center, the axis of my will and desire. And I was just her slave, broken, kneeling, lost in scorching surrender—

 

“Nyomi, that’s enough.” Hiroko stepped forward.

My Tiger was about to run a flame across my chest “I still want to—”

"Our time here is done."

My Tiger frowned. “It’s not done until I say it is.”

Hiroko quirked her brows. “We’re done. He is in subspace and you are most definitely at a heightened level of domspace. This is when you put the fire wand down.”

Nyomi looked at her with the fire wand still burning in her hand.

Her chest heaved.

Sweat gleamed on her brown skin—in the hollow of her throat, between her breasts, along the flat plane of her stomach.

Her eyes were glazed. Drunk on power. The dom high had her completely—I could see it in the way she stood, the set of her jaw, the steadiness of her hand holding fire like she'd been born to it. “Fine. . .”

Hiroko let out a long breath as if she had been nervous that she was going to have to fight my Tiger for the fire wand.

Nyomi blinked. "What's next?"

Hiroko gently, yet quickly took the fire wand from Nyomi and put it out. "That's up to you two."

Next, she signaled to the men in the corners.

They filed out.

Hiroko's assistants gathered some instruments, cleared the side table, and then left.

Hiroko stared at Nyomi. “Have your fun, but do not forget the aftercare.”

She nodded.

“You did very good tonight.” And the professional mask disappeared from Hiroko’s face. Pride so fierce it could burn a hole through stone covered her face next. “Very good.”

Nyomi widened her eyes.

“Have a good night.” Hiroko bowed, headed off, and soon slid the door closed.

And we were alone with only the candles, smoke, and crackling flame.

I looked at her and ached beneath the silk. My body trembled. My wrists were raw from pulling against the restraints.

Every inch of skin she'd burned still hummed.

Still sang.

It was all a trail of heat mapping every path she'd taken like burning fingerprints pressed into my body.

When I finally spoke, my voice was rough and raw. "Take me out of these restraints. Now."

 

The garden faded. The children's voices dimmed to silence. The stone was cold beneath my back again.

 

The beast within began clawing to the surface, trying to take back control.

I expected her to comply, but instead. . .Nyomi tilted her head and looked at me.

“Tora.”

"I'm still in control."

The words landed in my chest.

In my cock.

In the place where the Dragon lived and roared.

“Tora—”

“I’m not done with you yet.” She stepped closer to the slab and even though there was no wand in her hand, I understood this one fact. . .she was the fire now.

What?

And I didn't know what she was going to do, but all I could think through the erotic bliss was that it didn’t matter.

I was willing to surrender to all her desires, even if they killed me.