“You are seriously the most annoying man I’ve ever met. Also the sexiest, but the annoying is threatening to win out,” I warned him.

He gave a little exaggerated sigh and gently bit my shoulder. “Do you think I would even consider intimacy with any woman who was not extraordinary?”

I smiled into his neck, arching my back when his hands slid around my hips and back up to my breasts. “Extraordinary. That’s a start.”

“You are also stubborn, do not appreciate the importance of my position, and are likely to drive me to the brink of my sanity, but I can’t resist you. I must have you, Aoife.”

I didn’t know if he meant just in the sense of immediate sex or as a permanent fixture in his life. I curled my fingers into his chest hair, scraping him lightly with my fingernails. “Is this your way of saying that you think we have something serious going on?”

“I am always serious,” he said, kissing a hot path across my collarbone. “You are the only woman I would consider doing this with, if that is what you are asking. I do not desire a woman in my life, but if I must have one, then you are the one I choose.”

My toes curled into the plush bath mat at his words. I kissed his jaw and whispered, “I want to ease the darkness inside of you, Kostya. I want to show you what it is to be cherished. I want to bring you peace.”

He froze for a moment, slowly lifting his head to look deep into my eyes. “You do not think I am at peace?”

“Are you?” I countered.

Silence wrapped around us for the count of twenty. “I wasn’t,” he finally said, his hands sliding up to take possession of my breasts just as his mouth closed upon mine.

Just the feel of my skin against his had sent my brain into overdrive. I danced my tongue around his, feeling the pull of his fire and wanting to bathe in it.

I pulled back, afraid I’d set the plane on fire, my breath ragged.

“Tell me,” he growled. His head dipped as he lathed fire across my breasts.

“Oh, Lord, it’s a good thing I’m not a spy, because at this moment, I’d tell you anything,” I answered, moaning and doing a little dance of delight at the feel of his fire sinking into my flesh.

“Say that you want me.” His tongue was as hot as his fire as it tormented my right breast.

“Holy Odin and all the little cherubs, I thought I’d made that pretty clear by now. Yes, yes, I want you. Now do the left one.”

“Tell me you accept what I am.” He obliged by turning his attention to my left breast. I stood on tiptoes and thought seriously that I might just expire at the sensation of his mouth on my aching breast.

“A dragon, you mean?” I wiggled my hips against him, dragging my nails gently up his sides and back. “So long as you don’t expect me to have sex with you when you’re in your other form, then yes, I accept that you’re really a dragon in a super-hot man package. And speaking of package…”

He pried my hands off his genitals, saying as he did so, “If you touch me now, I will not be able to last, and I would like to look at your thighs and hips and legs and all the rest of you, and then taste you, and finally, claim you.” His eyes were like deep pools of water with light glinting off the surface. Heat emanated from him—his dragon fire—leaving me wanting to dance in the inferno that only Kostya could create.

“C’mon,” I said, backing up toward the shower, pulling him with me. “Let’s take a fast shower, and then we can address the issue of my hips and thighs and all of your really marvelous parts that I desperately want to touch and taste and possibly rub myself on.”

Just as I reached the shower door, he asked, “Why do you wish to take a shower now? I want to make love to you.”

“Well,” I said, waggling my eyebrows just a little, “who’s to say we can’t accomplish both things at the same time?” I entered the shower and turned on the tap, adjusting the water until it was warm but not too hot. I expected Kostya to heat things up.

He stood outside the shower, frowning as I grabbed the complimentary body shampoo and spread it across my breasts, lathering them up with a thoroughness I’d never before thought necessary. “It is more comfortable on the bed.”

“Yeah, but way more slick in here.” I soaped up one leg and cocked an eyebrow at him. “Why don’t you come and soap up my other leg, hmm? Then I’ll return the favor.”

He hesitated, an amusing array of expressions crossing his face. First lust danced past, followed by regret, desire, and uncertainty.

I stopped doing my version of an enticing “come shower with me” dance and faced him dead-on. “All right, what’s going on? Even with the flabby lack of muscles and few extra pounds, I shouldn’t disgust you to the point where you don’t want to take a shower with me, especially since you keep looking at me like I’m a bit of roast beef and you’re a starving dragon.”

He made a face and said slowly, “Water is not… Black dragons do not like it. It is not our element.”

“Your what?”

“Each sept has an element with which they are sympathetic. The green dragons like water—we do not.”

I turned off the water and reached for a towel. “Are you saying you don’t ever bathe?”

A look of distaste flitted across his face. “Of course we bathe—we are not animals! It is a necessary evil, one that must be borne so that we are clean. But we do not enjoy the experience, and we do not linger in water.”

“That’s a shame, because there’s nothing I like more than a good long soak in a bath, but I guess that means I just get all the hot water to myself. All right, you win, the bed it is, although I want to point out that it’s more romantic to romp in the shower than the plain ole everyday bed.”

“No,” he said, wrapping an arm around my waist as I was about to leave. “Not the bed. I have changed my mind. We will remain in this room.”

“It’s… uh… not terribly suited to such activities.”

“Nonetheless, it has one benefit to the other room.” His head dipped, and he took the tip of one of my breasts in his mouth, his hands sliding down my back to dig into my behind. I clutched his shoulders and saw stars for a moment, relishing the flash of heat as it swept through my body.

“What… sweet sweating sailors, I’m never going to get tired of that… what benefit?”