There was a definite grim note in my voice that I regretted but was unable to eliminate. Gabriel cast another sidelong glance toward me, his eyes bright even in the dimming light.

Suddenly the most overwhelming emotion filled me. I looked at him and saw not just an incredibly handsome man, but my man, my mate, silver eyed, velvet throated, and as sexy as hell. He was mine, and I was filled with the most incredible cocktail of need, lust, desire, want—it all swirled around in a blaze within me, building until I thought my skin would burst into flame.

‘‘Stop the car,’’ I said in a low voice that I barely recognized as mine. ‘‘Stop now.’’

He shot me a startled look as I lunged for him. Luckily, he got the car stopped before I got my hand down the side of the seat, finding the lever that moved the seat back. ‘‘Mayling? What—’’

I jerked the lever upward. The seat back crashed downward, Gabriel falling with it. I was over him in a flash, writhing with the sensation of his body between my legs. ‘‘So hot,’’ I murmured, ripping off the thin cotton shirt I wore. ‘‘Your fire burns me, Gabriel. It makes me want to do things to you. Wicked things. With my tongue.’’

‘‘I can see that,’’ he said, his gaze molten, but not nearly as hot as the fire that raged within me. ‘‘I have no objection to putting out your fire, little bird, but I’m not sure this is the best place for such an act.’’

‘‘Too much talking,’’ I said, leaning down over him and licking his lips with fire. ‘‘Too many clothes, as well.’’

‘‘Definitely too many clothes,’’ he agreed as I rose off him, doing an intricate dance to extricate myself from the khaki pants I’d donned just a few hours before, when we’d landed in Australia.

The fire and need continued to build within me as I struggled to contort myself in a way that would allow me to remove my clothing. It was impossible to do so while remaining in a position that straddled him, a fact that made me whimper in frustration, until I simply started shredding my clothing off my body.

Gabriel’s eyes widened at the sight. I followed his gaze to my hands, which had changed shape somehow, covered in the same iridescent silver scales that I’d seen on him, my fingertips now bloodred claws.

A fresh wave of desire swept over me. I shivered, but not with cold. I tore the last of my clothing off and looked upward, panting as if I’d been running a race. ‘‘I need you, Gabriel. Right now. Sooner.’’

He burst into flames as I yanked the shirt off of his marvelous chest, dipping my head to lick one pert little brown nipple. The taste of him almost pushed me over the edge into an orgasm, driving the strange, overwhelming need even higher.

‘‘Please,’’ I said on a half whisper, my mouth finding his. I poured the fire that roared within me into him, taking back his own in return. He didn’t answer me with words, simply managed to free himself from his pants, his hands urging me onward. The skin of my belly rubbed against his, my breasts, aching and heavy, brushing against the soft hair of his chest. The touch of his flesh against mine caused the most incredible sensations to roil around inside me. I stared down at him in surprise, unable to sort out what was happening to me. ‘‘It’s as if I’m one big erogenous zone,’’ I murmured, closing my eyes in bliss as I rubbed against his chest again, my back arching as flames burst up around us.

‘‘It’s the shard,’’ he said, his voice rubbing against me in an orgasmic rush matched only by the sensation of his hands on my breasts, teasing and tormenting me until I wanted to scream with both pleasure and frustration. ‘‘It’s part of the dragon heart, the essence of all dragonkin. You’re sharing some of the sensations we feel.’’

‘‘Then the gods be thanked that I’m a doppelganger, because I don’t think I could survive this,’’ I gasped as he took one of my nipples in his mouth, bathing it with a heat hotter than the sun. I saw stars—I literally saw stars as I slid my hands up his sides, my scarlet claws leaving little trails of fire on his skin.

‘‘You will survive this and much more,’’ he said into my breast before turning his attention to its mate. I groaned as he bit gently on the nipple, my body tightening as he pulled me downward again, claiming my mouth once more.

The fire burned around us, but it was nothing to what was consuming me from within. I writhed against his body, my tongue dancing around his as it swept into my mouth, tension mounting deep inside me until I knew I was going to climax.

A burning brand bit into my hip as he dug his fingers . . . claws . . . into my flesh before trailing even lower, down over my hips and behind, parting sensitive flesh. I suckled his tongue hard as his finger dipped inside me, a thousand little muscles tightening, the intrusion as hot as molten steel. It pushed me over the edge, and I went flying in a way I’d never done before, time holding its breath for a moment as I changed, shifted into a form that was different, yet familiar. I was bathed in fire and light, and I threw back my head to roar my rapture to the heavens, but the voice crying aloud was not my own.

‘‘Do not fear the change, little bird,’’ Gabriel said as I returned to myself. His eyes shone like lights in the gathering darkness, and despite an instinct of self-preservation that told me to get away from him, get away from what was happening to me, I was comforted. ‘‘I will not let harm come to you.’’

‘‘I never thought you would,’’ I said, bending over him to brush his lips with my own, but the second my breasts touched his chest, the need rooted deep inside returned, and my hands changed to claws, and my senses went back into overdrive, and I suddenly wanted him, all of him, inside me and around me. I wanted to submerge myself in him until he blotted out everything in life that wasn’t the two of us.

I screamed when he shifted my hips and plunged me down onto his penis, a high, reedy sound, startling me when I realized that it came from me, but that concern was short-lived when he moved within me, and I was once again sent spinning into a state of being that went far, far beyond mere sexual climax.

Time held no meaning for me as we made love out there in the bush, enveloped in darkness, filled with fire, surrounded by nothing but sky and earth. I suspect that little time passed, simply because Gabriel’s fuse was notoriously short—as was my own—but it seemed to me, as I lay gasping back on my own seat, that eons had passed. I lifted a hand, relieved to see in the dim light of the car that the hand held familiar fingers, somewhat stubby, but my own.