Chapter 10: Bathhouse Claim
The buzzing phone became a persistent insect in the silence. It echoed off the black marble, a jarring, modern sound against the ancient hum of the jade. Taichi lay still in the cradle of Ryuu’s arms, the warmth in his lower belly a low, insistent thrum. A clock. A timer.
Ryuu’s hand splayed wider over his stomach, as if reading his thoughts. “Ignore it.”
“It’s Hana,” Taichi said, his voice hoarse. “She’s probably at my apartment. She saw… she saw something. In your eyes. At the office.”
“Let her worry.” Ryuu’s tone held no malice, only a vast, unshakable indifference. The concerns of a mortal woman were less than dust.
But the buzzing was a splinter in Taichi’s mind. It was the last thread tethering him to a life that already felt like a story he’d read once, faint and unreal. He needed it gone. He needed to sever it himself.
He moved, pushing himself up from the sweat-damp furs. His body felt profoundly different—loose, aching, used. A faint tremor ran through his thighs. Ryuu’s arm tightened for a second, a question in the grip, before releasing him.
Taichi didn’t look back. He walked naked across the cool floor, following the sound. He found his pants, dug the phone from the pocket. The screen showed seventeen missed calls and a cascade of frantic texts.
Hana: Taichi, answer me.
Hana: That was NOT normal. What the hell was that?
Hana: Your boss’s eyes GLOWED.
Hana: I’m at your place. Where are you?
Hana: Taichi, I’m scared. Call me.
He powered the phone off. The screen went black, swallowing Hana’s fear, her humanity. The silence that followed was immense and filled only with the crackle of the eternal fire and the sound of Ryuu rising from the bed behind him.
“Good,” Ryuu said, a low approval in the word.
Taichi turned. Ryuu was standing, a silhouette of power against the glow of the city. He was still magnificently naked, utterly unselfconscious. The evidence of their coupling glistened on his thighs. The sight sent a fresh, shocking bolt of need through Taichi’s exhaustion. It was a filthy, hungry urge, rooted in the new heat inside him. It demanded connection, confirmation, more.
“I feel dirty,” Taichi said, the statement simple and true.
A faint smile touched Ryuu’s mouth. He gestured with his chin toward an arched opening to the left of the fireplace. “Clean yourself, then.”
The bathroom was a cavern of black marble veined with gold. Steam curled from a vast, clawfoot tub already full of water so hot it made the air shimmer. The scent of sandalwood was stronger here, undercut by that strange, clean odor of ozone and hot stone. A single, massive handprint was smeared across the fogged mirror.
Ryuu stepped into the water first, sinking down with a low sigh of pleasure. The water sloshed near the rim. He leaned back, his arms resting on the edges, his head tipped back. He looked like a king in a sunken court. He opened his eyes, watching Taichi from across the room.
The invitation was silent.
Taichi walked to the tub’s edge. The water was clear, revealing Ryuu’s powerful body beneath the surface, the dark thatch of hair, the heavy cock already half-hard again, resting against his thigh. The dragon’s recuperative power was inhuman.
Without a word, without hesitation, Taichi climbed in. The water was scalding, perfect. He didn’t sink to the opposite end. He moved directly to Ryuu, straddling his thighs, his knees sinking into the silken slickness of the tub’s bottom. The water rose, spilling over the marble edge in a warm cascade.
Ryuu’s hands came up to grip Taichi’s hips, steadying him. His eyes were dark, intent. “What are you doing?”
Taichi reached between them, under the water. His fingers found Ryuu’s cock, thick and hardening rapidly in his grasp. He guided it, notching the broad head against his entrance, which was still loose, slick from within and without. He looked directly into Ryuu’s eyes, seeing the gold begin to kindle deep within the brown.
“I’m filthy on the inside,” Taichi whispered, his voice trembling only slightly. “Only you can clean that out. Breed me again.”
He sank down.
The water displaced around them, a hot wave. The stretch was immediate and breathtaking, a glorious, burning fullness. Taichi threw his head back with a guttural moan as he took Ryuu to the hilt, his own body opening for him with a shocking, wanton ease. He was made for this. The thought was not a fear anymore. It was a fact.
“Fucking greedy thing,” Ryuu snarled, but his hands were clutching Taichi’s ass, digging into the flesh, pulling him down harder. “Riding me like a common whore.”
“I’m your whore,” Taichi panted, already beginning to move, lifting himself with trembling thighs before slamming back down. The water splashed violently with each movement. “Your breeding whore. Isn’t that right?”
Ryuu answered by surging up, crushing Taichi’s mouth in a searing kiss. It was all teeth and dominion. He took over the rhythm, his hips driving up into Taichi’s downward plunges, meeting him with jarring force. The water churned around them, a storm in a tub.
Taichi rode him with a desperate, clumsy intensity. He was chasing the feeling of being unmade, the obliterating pleasure-pain that erased everything else. Each brutal upward thrust punched a choked sound from his throat. He could feel Ryuu’s cock thickening, the distinctive ridge of his knot beginning to swell at the base, a promise of being locked, filled, sealed.
“Feel it,” Ryuu gasped against his mouth, his breath steam-hot. “Feel what you’re milking from me, you desperate cunt. You want that knot? You want me to pump another load into that fertile hole?”
“Yes! God, yes, fuck, give it to me!” Taichi was babbling, nails scratching down Ryuu’s chest. He was close, his own cock trapped between their stomachs, leaking madly into the hot water. The sensation of Ryuu swelling inside him, the brutal drag of those fleshy ridges, was too much. “Breed me full. Make it take. I want it—I want your fucking dragon spawn—”
Ryuu’s control shattered. A roar tore from him, not fully human, echoing off the marble. His wings burst forth in a spray of water and steam, dark membranes flaring to fill the room, hitting the walls with a wet slap. His claws gripped Taichi’s hips hard enough to bruise, anchoring him.
He slammed up, once, twice, a third time, and the knot, huge and insistent, forced its way past Taichi’s strained rim.
Taichi screamed as he came, his body convulsing, his cock spurting uselessly into the water between them. The locking sensation was even more intense than in the nest—the water providing no leverage, making him a helpless weight fully impaled.
Ryuu ground up into him, a deep, rolling series of thrusts as he emptied himself. Taichi could feel every hot, liquid pulse, a second claiming, a reinforcement. It seemed to go on forever, filling the deep, receptive ache Ryuu had carved inside him.
Slowly, the world returned. The lapping of water. Their ragged breaths. The gradual softening of the knot that still held them joined. Ryuu’s wings sagged, then retracted, melting away into the steam.
He leaned forward, forehead resting against Taichi’s shoulder. His breaths were long and deep. One hand slid from Taichi’s ass to press, once more, over his lower belly.
“Mine,” Ryuu murmured, the word a prayer and a verdict.
Outside the penthouse, in the world of streetlights and buzzing phones and concerned friends, a storm was gathering. Clouds choked the sky, and the first fat drops of rain began to hit the panoramic windows. But inside, in the steam and the silence, there was only the heat of the water, the slow drip from the marble edge, and the profound, impregnable weight of what was now growing in Taichi’s core. The thread was cut. The nest was occupied. The only world that mattered was here, in this water, locked on his dragon’s cock.