Total pages in book: 160
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 161615 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 808(@200wpm)___ 646(@250wpm)___ 539(@300wpm)
“What’s there?”
“Tons of boxes of supplies, canvases, fallen brushes with dried paint, more drop cloths.”
“Even messier?”
“Scary messy.” I rose from the floor. “How long have they been on the island?”
“Less than a week. As long as us.”
“And underneath the bed already looks like that? Her room back in Tokyo might have vermin under it.” I went to the top of the bed and wondered if Mami hid things like Yuki.
Would there be another dragon-shaped vibrator under the pillow?
I checked the four large pillows and found nothing. Then, I nudged one of the cherry pillows aside, more to see if anything had been shoved under them than out of suspicion.
A corner of something black peeked out.
What’s that?
I slid my fingers under the pillow and tugged out a sketchbook.
It was thick with a paint-stained cover. The corners were softened from use.
I looked down at it. “Why put this sketchbook here, when all the others are over by the canvases?”
Hiro moved closer and stood at my side. “This might be the naughty one.”
“Or where she will have written, ‘I’m the spy and these are the people I’m working for.’”
Hiro chuckled.
“Wishful thinking.” I laid the sketchbook on the bed and opened it.
The first pages were exactly what I expected: charcoal studies of hands, faces, the twins sparring, Hiro's profile in harsh light, and Kenji's hand holding a glass of whiskey.
On the next page, Mami had rendered Kenji in stark charcoal, standing at the center of an inferno he'd created. His legs were braced wide, his stance unmovable—a god planted in the middle of his own apocalypse.
In his hands, he gripped Totoro.
She'd drawn the flamethrower with obsessive precision—the sleek black barrel, the custom grip molded to his fingers, the fuel line snaking back toward the tank mounted against his hip.
The weapon looked like an extension of him.
Like it had grown from his bones.
And from its mouth—fire.
A twenty-five-foot river of flame roared across the page, rendered in layers of white and gray charcoal against the black.
She'd somehow captured the way fire moves—liquid and alive, hungry and reaching. The flames licked outward in violent tendrils, consuming everything in their path.
Men burned before him.
She'd drawn them mid-scream, their bodies twisting as the fire devoured them. Some were still standing—arms thrown up in useless defense, mouths wrenched open in silent agony. Others had already fallen, their forms reduced to charred silhouettes against the blazing ground.
One man crawled toward the edge of the page, flames still clinging to his back. His fingers clawed at nothing.
He wasn't going to make it.
None of them were.
And Kenji?
He wasn't even looking at them.
His face was tilted slightly upward, eyes half-lidded, expression almost serene.
Peaceful.
Like the screams were music.
Like the smell of burning flesh was incense.
Like this was meditation.
The flames reflected in his dark eyes—twin points of white that Mami had left unpigmented, letting the paper glow through. It made him look inhuman. Elemental.
Erased.
I stared at the image. “Has Kenji done this before?”
Hiro didn’t even look up. “You know the answer to that question.”
“Has Mami seen him do it?”
“I doubt it, but surely she’d have imagined it.”
Mami had imagined it so vividly. She'd turned his deadly violence into something beautiful.
Something sacred.
“She loves him the most like this.” I swallowed. “Not gentle. Not sleeping, but destroying. Killing.”
With my fingers slightly unsteady, I flipped to the next page, and then froze. “Oh shit.”
I was not prepared for this.
Chapter thirty-nine
Red-Hot Desire
Nyomi
Damn.
Kenji was nude and sprawled across the page like a fallen god—every inch of him captured in stark charcoal with a level of detail that made my throat tighten.
Mami had drawn him sleeping.
His head was turned slightly to the side, resting against what looked like a pillow, dark hair spilling across his forehead in messy strands. His eyes were closed, lashes fanning against his cheekbones.
His lips were parted just enough to suggest breath—soft, unguarded, vulnerable in a way I'd never seen him in waking life.
She'd caught him defenseless.
And she'd worshipped every inch of that defenselessness.
The heavy muscle of his shoulders anchored the composition, broad and powerful even in rest.
She'd traced the slope of them down to that narrow waist with obsessive precision—every ridge of muscle, every shadow between his ribs rendered in loving detail.
His abdomen was a study in contrasts: hard planes softened by sleep, the ridged terrain of his stomach rising and falling with imagined breath.
The tattoos.
God, the tattoos were exact in placement and detail.
She must have spent hours on them. I could tell by the layering, the way she'd built up the dark ink with careful crosshatching until the dragons pulsed against his skin.
And she’d also captured the sharp cut of his hip bones, the trail of dark hair descending from his navel, and there, between his powerful thighs, she'd drawn his beautiful cock, half-hard. The rose piercing glinted even in charcoal, a small circle of negative space she'd left white against the dark shading of his cock.