Page 113 of The Dragon 1
Exposed.
Beautifully surrendering.
Tied not by force—but by choice.
And then I looked up—and saw it.
His pupils.
Dilated.
His jaw was relaxed but something dark and hungry pulsed beneath it.
The quiet thrum of want.
He wanted it too.
He wanted me to imagine it.
In fact, helikedthat I was imagining it.
Then it struck me hard. He hadn’t put this performance in front of me, so I would get excited about being tied up.
He wanted me to accept the idea of tyinghim.
Holy fucking shit.
I could bind him?
Direct him?
Tell him how, when, andwhereto ache?
I could tether him tome—to my body, my scent, my commands?
And he would give himself willingly?
He wouldrelishit?
The idea lit a fuse inside me. Not the frantic kind of heat I’d felt with men in the past—the sort that flared and vanished.
This wasslow fire.
It burned down in my belly and licked up my spine. It gathered in my chest, blooming with a power I hadn’t felt in years—maybeever.
Beneath that heat, beneath the rush of arousal was something quieter.
A deep hum of. . .permission.
To want this.
To hold someone else’s vulnerability and still be safe in my own.
To rewrite what bondage could mean.
A Black woman tying a dragon to the earth, knot by knot and hearing himpurrfor it.
Wow.
