I was possessed with a yearning to touch him, to run my hands along the warm lines of his body. My body continued to flee, but my mind was busy with the thought of stroking him, of the feel of the warm skin covering steely muscles. I imagined my fingers tracing out the lines of his chest, and heard the answering moan of pleasure from his mind. I remembered what it was like to taste him, how silky his skin was as I slid my hands lower, along his flanks.

He growled in my mind, a warning that I was pushing his arousal hard and fast, and that he would not hold back when he found me. I ran down the stairs, the mental seduction almost too much for me to bear.

His voice spoke in my mind, words that held no meaning for me, but I knew that it was a mating chant, binding one dragon to another, part of the intricate dance we were even now conducting.

I flung myself down a final set of stairs, bursting out into the hotel lobby, seeing nothing, feeling only Gabriel as he set off in pursuit of me. His emotions were mine, a shared whirlpool fueled by the most primitive part of dragons—the need to chase, to conquer, and most of all, to possess.

But I was not a dragon.

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

“Is this going to become a habit, Mayling?”

I struggled up from where I was floating mindlessly, wrapped in an onyx cushion that blotted out all thought. I frowned. The voice that spoke was familiar, all too familiar. I was mildly annoyed that Cyrene would pull me out of such a lovely dream, for such I assumed it was.

“Is what going to become a habit?” I heard another voice ask, and was surprised to find it belonged to me.

“Burning down hotels.”

I opened my eyes at that, my memory returning with her words. “The phylactery,” I gasped, immediately reaching for the chain that hung around my neck.

There was no chain. I stared in stark horror at Cyrene as she sat in a chair next to me, my mind madly twirling as it tried to piece together the last confused moments before I’d lost consciousness.

“It’s gone,” Cyrene said placidly, setting down a magazine as I immediately began to search the bed upon which I was lying. “Evidently it just—poof !—blew up. Along with the entire top floor of the hotel, I might add. Honestly, Mayling, I don’t think you had to go to quite such dramatic lengths to clear out those bastard dragons who were attacking us.”

I pulled myself up to lean against the headboard of the bed. I was back in Aisling and Drake’s Parisian house, but how I got there was a blank. “I blew up the hotel? I don’t think so, Cy. I never do anything that would draw attention to me.”