My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This was a poignant, volatile bodyguard romance set against the backdrop of Yakuza power and personal exile. River is a loyal, emotionally restrained outsider who has spent years at the side of Akira Hebikawa, the reckless heir to Japan’s most powerful crime family. Their bond began in battle and calcified into something deeper: devotion, dependence, and unspoken love. But River is a gaijin, forever marked as other. Akira is a prince with a legacy carved in stone—until a sudden desire to “experiment” cracks the surface of their dynamic. What follows is a dangerous dance of lust, longing, and heartbreak, as River grapples with being wanted physically but never fully claimed. As Akira meets potential brides and enemies close in, River’s buried feelings erupt into desperation. The return of someone from his past threatens to unravel everything. And through it all, one question burns: can you lose something you never truly had?
I loved this dark story of forbidden desire, emotional repression, and the aching hope that love might transcend legacy, loyalty, and the brutal lines drawn between belonging and exile. I enjoyed that River's identity as a gaijin—a foreigner—cast a long shadow over every interaction. He’s loyal, embedded in the Yakuza world, and intimately tied to Akira, yet never truly accepted. That meant he was a man who protects, who obeys, who stays close, but who never truly belongs. And that makes his love all the more devastating. Akira was chaos incarnate—volatile, reckless, magnetic. But beneath the bravado lies a man shaped by legacy and expectation. Their dynamic was shaped by this imbalance: Akira holds the power, but River holds the emotional truth. And when Akira begins to shift—when he starts to see—the story pivots from repression to possibility. This was full of passion, emotions and feelings. This was an MM story with mature content.
** Please read the trigger warnings.
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