Her eyes gleamed, and a smile finally tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Okay, now I am worried,” she murmured in a teasing voice. “Who is this smooth-talking, nonuptight normal person and what did you do with the real Garret?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been told I need to loosen up,” I said, and kissed her.

She made a tiny noise of surprise, and then her hands were in my hair, holding me close, and my arms were around her waist, pressing us together. I closed my eyes, feeling my stomach twist, feeling her lips against mine, eager and insistent, her arms wrapping around my neck. She tugged on my bottom lip, and a groan escaped me as I let her in, clutching her tighter. There was no disgust. No regret. I stood on this roof, openly kissing a girl who was really a dragon, and I wasn’t sorry at all.

“Ember!”

The shout cut through the quiet, and my nerves leaped in warning. I jerked back to see the rogue dragon striding across the roof toward us, a murderous gleam in his eyes.

Riley

Riley

I’m going to kill her.

I stood in the center of the casino floor, surrounded by surging, babbling, oblivious mortals, and tried to ignore the temptation to turn the whole place into an inferno. Where was she? I’d already gone upstairs and pounded on the door to her room but, as Wes had said, she was gone. She and the soldier both. I’d called the throwaway phone Wes had given her and had been sent to voice mail both times, which meant she had either left it in her room or was deliberately ignoring me.

The urge to blast something to a smoldering ash pile grew stronger, and I started moving again, scanning the throngs for bright red hair and green eyes. Normally, Ember was impossible to miss, even in a crowd. But a Vegas casino, with its blinking lights, aimlessly wandering humans and deliberately confusing floor plans, was one of the worst places to pick someone out of a crowd. That was why we’d come here, to hide from Talon and the Order, but now that ploy was working against me. Which was ironic, annoying as hell and doing a great job of pissing me off.

Dammit, Ember. Where are you?