No Ordinary Love (24 page)

“I don't know how.”

“I bet you do. You're too smart. You just need me to say it. Then you can point to me when things get bad and say it was all her fault.”

“T-That's not true.”

Anger lingered in the corners of her eyes. “Why would you let something like this continue? This isn't you. At least … I hope this isn't.”

“This is all my father.”

“No.” She shook her head. “No. This is all you now. You accepted these horrors when you decided to retire from soccer and be … the head of all of this. This is you now.”

“It's not.” I filled with rage. “It's him.”

“If you want me to judge, then you have to be ready to listen and accept it. Tonight, this place right here, for me, it's all you. I can't judge your dad, because he's not here.”

“He's in a hospital.”

“All the more reason why I blame you.”

My heart broke right there into little pieces. Here, I thought that my father would sit on trial. Instead, she'd placed me right there. And I couldn't think of any way to jump up from the seat and remain clean.

As if she heard my thoughts, she whispered, “This blood is all on your hands. Every time someone is killed here, it's your fault. Who else has the power to end this?”

“I-I don't know. So maybe I'm the one that is to be judged.”

She waited for a few seconds in silence and then said, “And what happens after I make the judgment?”

So smart. She doesn't even ask why she would have to make it in the first place. She just continues to work things out in her head in a smooth logic.

“Kenji?”

“I guess that's when I show you how to use the rope on my neck, and then we'll let the universe decide what my punishment is.”

Chapter 24

NYOMI

In that moment, it all came to me. Why I allowed myself to get so close even though I understood how dangerous he was. Why I continued to place myself in situations that were hazardous to my health. His odd confession hit too close to home, deep within, where even I was too scared to journey.

We're alike in some ways. We are both running from our fathers and challenging God the whole time.

I put myself out there in life a lot more than I should have. I took on the articles that many women feared because a part of me was testing the man upstairs. This God above me who'd permitted so much crap in the world, but for some reason continued to save me. Maybe I was even bitter with God over my dad, this man who would never really show me that he loved me, and then confirmed his lack of compassion for me over and over years later. Maybe I was even angry.

I took in Kenji's chiseled face. He was gorgeous—flesh encased in beauty. Any woman would be happy to sit next to him and smile, no matter how god-awful the place was. But he chose me.

He chose me.

This man who walked around his city like a stranger, hiding within the image of danger. Due to his dragon reputation, I bet many kept their distance and the ones that swarmed to him were probably just as crazy as the lunatics that sat in this lounge right now, perusing the twisted services of madmen.

So why did he choose to bring me into this sick world? To judge, he said. Interesting and odd.

I had no connection to his culture and traditions so maybe that meant something, too.

Maybe he no longer has faith in them himself. Maybe he's lost, just like me.

“I sit at this table once a week and go over the kill orders,” he whispered.

“Kill orders?”

“Who my father wants dead for that week.”

I cleared my throat. “Why here? Why not your office or home?”

“Because then it wouldn't be fair to those who will miss the ones that die. Why should I be relaxed and in a comfortable environment when I make the decision? This place is what you Americans would call hell on earth.”

I chewed on the inside of my cheek and stopped. This was madness. The more Kenji talked, the stranger it became. It was like he was unraveling right before my eyes, slowly peeling away the flesh to show me the real man within.

“Have you ever used any of these services here?” I couldn't even touch the menu again or look into his eyes. Instead, I focused all of my energy on not pissing myself, screaming, and running away.

Where would I run? How could I get out?

“When I was a kid, my father brought me here.”

I tensed. “Your father brought you to this place? How old were you?”

“Fifteen. He'd been telling me stories all my life of how he liked to choke his women and bring them to orgasm.”

It seems we both had a rough teenage life. Except yours beats mine by a goddamn landslide.

The confession was too much on too many levels. His dragon mask hid way more than his distaste for his life, he'd managed to camouflage trauma with pain.

“These were stories that I was never to tell anyone.” Kenji placed his fists on the table. “At night, he would come to my room, sit on the edge of my bed, and describe how he'd made love to a woman and surrounded her neck with his hands until she'd lost her breath. Sometimes these stories didn't end well for the women. Sometimes they did.”

“Oh my God,” I muttered. Part of me yearned to hold his hand or hug him. The other screamed to get away. I'd always been the type of person who believed that people couldn't be fixed by just anyone, and it was just best to leave it to the doctors. If what Kenji said was true, then he was more broken than any man I'd ever been with.

I have to get away from him.

“Then, when I turned fifteen, he woke me up out of bed. He was drunk and loud. Mom had woken up and asked him to let me go back to sleep. He yelled and told her that he wanted to take me somewhere. Back then, I'd still been a virgin. My father's stories had scared me so much that I'd chosen to stay away from sex. But he changed everything that night.”

A new woman brought over our drinks and placed them on the table. She was dark-skinned with a bald head. Silver bead piercings outlined both of her eyebrows and the corners of her mouth. “Would you like anything else?”

My voice came out hoarse. “No.”

When she walked away, I turned to Kenji. “What happened when you and your father got here?”

“We went into a room. A young girl lay on the bed. Her hands and ankles were tied up. Her mouth was covered with a black cloth. A black rope dangled around her neck.” He stopped right there as if saying another word would bring him back into that situation again.

I didn't rush him. For whatever reason, he needed this, and I had to let him go through the motions. I'd been cornered in situations like this off in foreign lands where I had no one and nothing but my brain and mouth to get me out of danger. The one rule I always followed was to be as nice as possible to my captor. Kenji wasn’t forcing me to be here, but I didn't necessarily have the sense that I could just jump up and run off.

And do I really want to go? Do I really believe he would hurt me? I don't think he would kill me. I guess. Fuck. That's not exactly comforting.

I took a sip of my wine.

“I don't even know if the girl wanted to be there or not.” For the first time, he undid his fists and let his fingers fall flat to the surface. “My father told me to sit next to the bed and watch.” He looked at me. “And that's what I did. I sat there the whole time, as he had sex with her and then choked this … p-poor woman until there was no breath left.”

“You said you liked erotic asphyxiation.”

“I do,” he whispered. “But tonight I had to tell you why.”

“And that's why?”

“I think it's where it all started. Due to that night, I remained a virgin for a long time. I had nightmares. Then I started to … think about ropes around women’s necks and get hard.” He turned away from me. “When I finally had sex, I spent a lot of time imagining that I was choking the person I was with while we had sex. Other times I would get rough with the ones who enjoyed it.”

“When did you really start choking someone during sex?” I asked.

“Once I became the Dragon and that was only with two women who specialized in it and worked for me.”

“H-Have you ever had anyone die while you did it?” I asked.

“No. Never. And I've only done it twice. Three times now with you.”

“Has anyone ever done it to you?”

“Just those two times. I'd watched these women come to ecstasy and felt a little jealous that they got to experience what I'd yearned to try. As you can probably guess, no logical woman wants to put a rope around my neck. If I accidentally died, she would have a lot to explain and no one to hear her pleas. She'd die, without any questions or investigations, just because she was the last person to see me and her hands were on the rope.”

All the information was too much—the confession, the revelation, and his need for me to do exactly what he said others would be afraid to do.

“I couldn't take your breath away during sex.” I raked shivering fingers through my curls. “It doesn't matter who you are, Dragon or not. I could never agree to do anything that could cause someone’s death.”

“You let me do it.”

“And I'm still trying to figure out why.”

“Because you like to dance with death, just like me.”

“No I don't.”

He smirked. “Then why are you here?”

“I didn't have a choice.”

“Oh, I forgot. The book. Never forget that.”

“We’re off topic.” I held my hand in front of him. “I won’t choke you, and I’m not going to let you do that to me again.”

“Fine.”

“Just fine?” I asked.

“Yes. Even more than fine.”

“Why?”

“You’re the first woman I’ve had sex with in the past five years who, once my dick entered you, I didn’t need to imagine choking you.”

“But you ended up choking me.”

“Only because you asked, but … you’re different. I don’t know, but … with you I wouldn’t need the rope.”

“But you still want it?”

“Maybe. Or perhaps these two weeks will heal whatever makes me need it.”

“It could just be your kink.”

“Or my trauma.”

“Anyone ever tell you that you’re a pretty dark person?”

“My cousins say it all the time.”

I thought of his father and what he’d done to Kenji. Anger bubbled in my veins, but I ignored the emotion. “As far as your … confession about your father. I don't know what I should say.”

“Me either.” He drank his glass of water. “You're the only person I've ever told.”

What?

I gulped my wine.

But why me?

Here was a man who had people listening to him night and day. I'm sure many thought twice about threatening him. Others probably fled. And here I came, upon our first meeting, ramming my knee into his groin and then giving him my panties the next day when he somewhat behaved. What an odd pair we were. We'd been tug and push from the very beginning. Each time he overstepped, I backed away.

How many women have ever backed away from him?

“What did you think when I kneed you the first time we met?” I asked.

“That you would be the one to break me.” He grinned. It appeared odd in such a creepy setting.

“So in your life women don't knee you much?”

“No. Women tend to say yes way more than they say no. Sometimes it's because they're afraid of me.”

“And maybe other times they’re infatuated with you.”

“That happened a lot during my soccer career. I was able to hide my connections with my father when I left Tokyo. There were always rumors, but most women ignored them to enjoy the kind of life that my athletic career offered.”

I snorted. “Parties, shopping, and the glamor of being with someone famous.”

“Yes.”

“And once they met Kenji, the great Japanese soccer player, you had to live up to it, you couldn't be … ”

“What?” He targeted me with his eyes.

I bit my lip and just blurted it all out. “You couldn't show them how damaged you were.”

“No, I couldn't.”

“And when this shooting happened with your family and you had to take on your father's … work responsibilities, you couldn't meet a woman and show her that, either.”

“No, because now I'm the Dragon and creatures like that don't hide in their caves and cry.”

“I bet there's some legend where a dragon has cried.”

“I've found none.”

We sat there in silence. Every now and then people got up from their tables and walked off to their rooms. I tried not to imagine what they did behind closed doors or even who would be alive to get up and walk away. The whole place made my skin crawl. It itched with anxiety, prickling and tightening at the slightest noise.

And Kenji comes here every week to torture himself because he has to hurt someone else. How much does he hate himself?

I finished my glass of wine. “Kenji, you might have done a lot of bad things in your life. This could've been due to your father destroying the bond that a father has with his son or perhaps it was the trauma of seeing this woman die at your father's hands.” I set the glass back down on the table. “However, you have to promise me something.”

He raised his eyebrows. “What, Tora?”

The way he said Tora warmed my chest. It was like saying that word, the name he'd given me, somehow caused him pain when he sat in here.
Maybe I'm over thinking this all.
Regardless, I ached to hear him say my name that way.

“Promise me that you won't come back to this place again, unless you absolutely have to.”

He looked down at his lap. “Okay.”

“And promise me that if you ever can, you will get rid of this place. I don't know how high you are or if any of the newspapers or rumors are true, but if this place is everything you're against, then it's time to start cleaning your district up. There has to be a way to change this.”

“A lot of people would have to be gone from this world in order for me to clean it up.”

I considered the women who would be dead from this menu. “Then maybe
they're
the ones that need to die, not the people being served to these sick individuals.”