"What is it about the dragon septs that they all take their colors so seriously?" I asked Jim, crossing my arms over my chest as Fiat waved his two blue-suited bullyboys toward the elevator before making a beeline for me. The man himself was dressed in a midnight blue shirt embroidered with an opulent pattern of gold, open almost to his navel, and black linen pants that probably cost more than my entire travel wardrobe. "Would it destroy the whole social structure of the septs if Fiat wore something red and Drake stopped wearing those beautiful Italian green raw-silk shirts?"

Jim lay down and put a big furry paw over its eyes. "Dragons tend to be very literal, if you haven't noticed."

"I had," I said, then summoned up a polite smile for Fiat as he stopped before me, making one of those bows all the dragon boys seemed to know how to pull off without looking like a hammy actor. "Hi, Fiat. Fancy meeting you here."

He took my hand in his, pressing a kiss to my knuckles, his fingers oddly cool around mine. Jim had told me once that the blue dragons' element was air, which left them feeling cooler to the touch than the other dragons. "Aisling, it is my extreme pleasure to see you again. Might I hope you have changed your mind about that rude Drake and have decided to join your considerable talents with mine? You know I would welcome such a union."

Like the other wyverns, Fiat had a beautiful voice, his with a mesmerizing Italian cadence. I remembered just in time that one of Fiat's skills was in mind reading and quickly imagined myself in a thick-walled tower with shutters clamped tightly shut. Fiat's smile turned a little brittle as I closed him out of my mind. "Are you offering to fight Drake for me, Fiat? You going to challenge him draco ex draco!"

He froze for a moment, then touched a cool finger to the mark on my collarbone. "I do not seek a mate, Aisling. What I am offering requires less commitment on your part, which, I believe, is something you find attractive. Join with me, and I will see to it that all your desires are fulfilled."

I gave him a wry smile. "You know, that would sound a whole lot more impressive if your nose wasn't twitching like mad at the gold on my dragon talisman. It's not me you want, Fiat—it's what I represent. So thanks, but I'm going to pass on your generous offer."

His eyes, a dark blue, glittered at me as he tried to push his way through my mental barriers. Menace, always an undertone of emotion around Fiat, swept off him and over me like I was a marshmallow trying to stop a steamroller. "You would be wise to think most strenuously about your decision to ally yourself with Drake, cam. I have much power. In the days to come I will grow stronger, and I would hate for you to find yourself on the wrong side of that which cannot be avoided."

"Hyperbole and mystic aggrandizement, you mean?"

His eyes narrowed slightly as I smiled a perky smile at him. "Your levity in moments of seriousness is known to me. I accept that you do not believe that of which I have spoken. Yet. I can only hope that you accept the truth in time, lest you, too, be destroyed in the coming battle."

"I thought you guys were here to discuss a peace accord," I said, a little shiver running down my back at the darkness within his eyes.

"Peace is a foolish hope held by your mate. He is blind to the truth, but he, too, will learn how dangerous it is to underestimate me. I wish you a pleasant evening, Aisling .. . and hope it will not be the last of its kind."

I rubbed my arms as Fiat moved off to rejoin his men, more disturbed by his vague threats and innuendos than I wanted to admit. "I'm going to have to tell Drake what he said about a battle."

"Drake?" Jim asked, sitting up to give my hand a reassuring snuffle. I patted the demon's head. "The same Drake that only a few minutes ago you were muttering about decapitating and disemboweling? That Drake?"

"Just because I want to kill him doesn't mean I want to see him destroyed."

Jim just looked at me.

"Oh, right, yes, I know." I answered the look with a wave of my hand "That doesn't make any sense. Stop picking on me. I'm tired, and I'm going to bed. That last double-shot latte didn't do me any good"

The lobby was empty as we made OUT way up to the room on the twelfth floor. In fact, we didn't see anyone but a couple of maids skittering around bringing extra pillows and towels and such. I knew from speaking with the people I'd met at dinner that the bar in the basement of the hotel was the place to go to meet and greet, but the jet lag had caught up with me, and even though it was early evening, I decided to hunt Guardian mentors tomorrow, when I wasn't babbling like an idiot and clearly out of control of my emotions.

"If Drake thinks he's going to come to me in a dream tonight, he's insane," I remarked to Jim as I crawled into the double bed. "I'm wearing the dragon talisman. That ought to keep him at bay."

Jim snorted on the bed of blankets I'd made it next to the open window. "Like that's worked in the past."

"I haven't been this pissed before," I answered, clutching both the dragon talisman and the amulet which two attempted thefts had left me deciding was safer around my neck where no one knew where it was. "He'd just better watch out. I'm not in a mood where I want any man in my bed, especially a sexed-up stud."

I woke up two hours later to find a man in my bed, murmuring sexed-up studly sweet nothings in my ear.

"Dammit, Drake, you just can't take no for an answer, can you?" I mumbled groggily as I struggled to extricate myself from both the sheets that had twisted around my legs and the embrace of the man who leaned over me. I was about to punch him where I knew it would really hurt when something filtered through my sleepy anger. This man didn't smell right. I knew Drake's part woodsy, part spicy scent, and this wasn't it. Which meant. .. "Jiiiiiiii-iim! Rape! Help! Demon, I command thee to attack this man and rip his balls right off and—"

"That's not a man, Aisling."

Jim's voice, also sleepy, came from the other side of the bed. The man rolled off me as I freed a hand and clicked on the bedside lamp. I looked at him. He was a stranger, a nice-looking man with aubum hair and a cleft in his chin, but still, a stranger. A naked stranger. A naked, aroused stranger. In bed with me.

The man smiled as he stretched. All of him.

"Uh ... Jim, I may not have been around a lot, but I know a naked man when I see one, and I'm seeing one. Just who the hel... Abaddon are you, and what the devil do you think you're doing here?" The last question was addressed to the naked man. His smile wasn't the only thing that got bigger as I clutched the sheet to my chest and scooted over to the edge of the bed, wishing like the dickens that international security regulations hadn't required me to leave my pepper spray at home,