‘‘Now we will mate like humans,’’ he said, lifting his head from the valley between my breasts. His gaze scorched along my flesh, leaving me trembling with need. ‘‘But this time, we will take it slowly. I will pleasure you at length, giving you the time you need to—’’

I grabbed his head, wrapping my fingers in the thin, soft dreadlocks, pulling his mouth down to mine at the same time I wrapped my legs around his hips. ‘‘Now,’’ I yelled into his mouth, biting his lower lip.

He laughed even as he shifted his hips, thrusting into my waiting flesh. ‘‘My demanding little bird.’’

‘‘You have no idea,’’ I groaned, thrusting my hips up to meet him, my tongue twining around his in an erotic dance that begged for more. ‘‘Give me your fire. Please.’’

He didn’t say anything more, just released his dragon fire until it consumed us, sending me soaring once again into a world that consisted only of Gabriel and me, and the blaze that we built between us.

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

‘‘Let me see if I have this straight.’’

I rubbed my forehead and wished for the fiftieth time in the last ten minutes that a portal would suddenly open up next to me to take me a thousand miles from this spot.

‘‘Despite the fact that you had just finished explaining to me why you could not get involved with any man—’’

Cyrene’s voice was drowned out for a moment by the arrival of another fire engine.

‘‘—to the wind and slept with Gabriel? Oh, Mayling, really!’’

In the blissful silence that followed the siren being silenced, Cyrene’s voice was clearly audible.

I closed my eyes and wondered what would be the worst thing that would happen if I was to suddenly shadow in front of the twenty or so people who now turned interested faces upon us. Luckily, the crowd gathered had other things to capture their attention, and turned away from us almost immediately. All but one person, a tall, wiry man who examined Cyrene and me with speculation I found almost offensive.

‘‘I don’t think everyone in the entire country heard you,’’ I said in a low, dangerous voice, giving the man a thin-lipped look. He blinked a couple of times, then moved off.

Cyrene rolled her eyes. ‘‘The point is that despite everything you had just told me, you slept with Gabriel, and had such incredibly wild sex that the bed was set on fire. Am I correct in that summation of the evening’s events?’’

I grabbed her arm and pulled her as far away from our audience as was possible, my cheeks hot with embarrassment. We were standing a block away from the hotel, huddled with other guests in various states of undress as the fire department put out the blaze that had damaged part of the floor my room was on. ‘‘It wasn’t like that!’’