“You really are going to have to get a grip on controlling dragon fire, Ash. Hiya, Drake. Come crawling back, did you? Man, you are so whipped.” Jim shambled over to give Drake a quick sniff. “I never met anyone so completely— fires of Abaddon! You don’t have to barbeque me!”

“Don’t set Nora’s bathroom on fire,” I warned as Jim raced off to put out the flames that burst into a corona around his head. I turned back to Drake, worried less about Jim’s doggie form taking harm than about Nora’s bath towels. “You get points for marksmanship but lose on effect. Roasting Jim alive won’t do anything but leave the scent of burnt dog hair hanging around the apartment.”

Drake looked thoughtful as he rubbed his chin. “Actually, I was off. I was aiming for you.”

My eyes opened wide as his words filtered through the sudden love-anger-sadness cocktail that had recently become my usual emotional state. “You wanted to burn me?”

Drake moved so fast, it didn’t even register in my brain. One minute he was standing several paces away; the next he was pushing me up against the open door, his body hard and aggressive, mine automatically answering by going all soft on him. “You cannot be under any delusion that you can simply walk away from me.”

“I know I pricked your pride by leaving you,” I said carefully, telling my body to stop mugging him and to behave itself so I could concentrate on reasoning with the most unreasonable dragon in human form that ever walked the planet. “But there is nothing more between us, Drake. It’s over.”

“It is not... over...” he growled, his lips so close to mine I could feel the heat of his mouth. The scent of him, spicy and masculine and uniquely Drake, went immediately to my head and made me giddy with want. But beneath that want there was heartache, a pain so profound, it all but crippled me for the week following our breakup. It had taken seven long days of nonstop sobbing to come to a point where I could get on with my life . .. without Drake at my side.

“Oh, man. He’s going to pork you right here in front of me, isn’t he? Jeez, and they say dogs have no shame.”

“Demon, silence. And close your eyes,” I ordered, unable to see whether Jim followed my command because Drake chose that moment to claim my mouth. He was a naturally arrogant, dominant man, and those qualities showed in his kisses. He wooed with a passion that left my knees weak and my toenails steaming. His entire body entered into the kiss he gave me, one hand sweeping up to cup my breast, the other sliding down my back to grab my butt, pulling my hips tighter against his.

Fire flamed to life in him, dragon fire, the familiar heat of it as welcome as manna as it roared through me, igniting my soul. My heart, my poor abused heart, wept with agony at the feel of us joining together in a manner that was so much more elemental than mere sex. It was as if our souls fit together, one completing the other, the two of us forming one brilliant, glorious being that would burn together for all eternity ...

“No!” I cried, pulling my mouth from his. “You are not going to seduce me again! Dammit, you broke my heart, Drake. You can’t piece it back together with glue made up of a few kisses and mind-numbingly fabulous sex! Over means over! I will honor my vow to the sept. I will present myself as your mate at the weyr and sept meetings. I will support your dragon decisions in any way I can. But I will not allow you to destroy me again!”

One of his long, sensitive fingers pushed aside my shirt to trace the rounded sept emblem that he’d branded into my flesh, marking me as a wyvern’s mate. The emerald fire in his eyes slowly banked as he spoke. “You are mine, Aisling. You are mine today, tomorrow, and five hundred years from now. You will always be mine. I do not give up my treasures, kincsem. You would do well to remember that.”

He stepped away, leaving me quivering against the door with so many emotions, I couldn’t begin to separate them. I clutched my arms around myself as he left, wanting to sob out my pain, wanting to follow him and fling myself in his arms, wanting everything to be the way it was before he had stomped all over my heart.

That’s how Nora found me a few minutes later, glued up against the door, slow, hot tears leaking from my eyes, dragon fire licking my feet.

“Hello, everyone. We’re back a bit early. The kobold attack turned out to be a false alarm—Aisling? Oh, dear, you’re on fire again.” Nora set down the dog carrier she used to transport Paco. She squinted, adjusted the bright red glasses that perched so jauntily on her nose, and touched a finger to my shirt as I stamped out the last of Drake’s fire. “Dragon scales.” Her eyes lifted to mine, considering me in the cautious, thoughtful way she had. “A dragon visited you? A green dragon?”

I swallowed back a big lump of unshed tears and pushed myself away from the door, staggering over to collapse on her couch, my pounding heart slowly returning to normal.

Nora looked from me to the door, tipping her head to the side to examine it. “Judging by the Aisling-shaped outline that appears to be scorched into the door, I’d say it was the green dragon who visited you. How is Drake?”

“As stubborn as ever. Oh, Nora. I thought I was past this!” Both Jim and Nora watched me as I slumped into a giant wad of misery. Paco, released from his confinement, ran over to wrestle with my shoelaces, as was his wont. “I am so ready to move on. Here you are, poised to start my training—oh, that reminds me, there’s something I need to tell you about that—and whammo. Two minutes with Drake and I’m a mess. How am I ever supposed to get over him?”

Nora sat down next to me, her dark eyes watchful as they peered at me out of her glasses. “Perhaps you are not meant to get over him,” she said simply.

“Huh? Not get over him? Nora, do you have any idea how crazy that man . .. dragon . . . whatever he is—do you have any idea how crazy he makes me?”

“You know, normally I just can’t get enough of you whining about Drake, or crying over Drake, or ranting about Drake, or any of the other gazillion ‘about Drake’ things you constantly do because you’re obsessed with the man but refuse to admit it, but since you insist on starving this fabulous form I’ve taken simply because I’m a few pounds over the standard Newfie weight, I just don’t have the strength for it today.” Jim turned around and marched off to the room Nora had turned over to me.

She raised an eyebrow at the retreating demon. “What’s gotten into Jim? I know you and it have a special relationship, but I’ve never heard it be outright rude before.”