I felt his presence before I saw it, a warm glow of lightness filling me as I huddled in a dark corner of what was, in the mortal world, the hotel lobby. Faint, vague shadows passed in and around me, echoes of human reality, visible in my world, but not really tangible. Nothing was. Nothing touched me.

Until Gabriel found me.

He sat next to me, his image all that he could project into the shadow world, but even though his body remained in the mortal world, the dragon-heart shard was aware that he was close.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” he asked, his voice mild.

“The reason I ran from you, you mean?”

He shook his head. Even here, his eyes were brilliant, glittering with so much emotion, they seemed to glow. “I know why you ran. It is part of the mating ritual. Females lead; males follow. What I want to know is why you are filled with so much fear and loathing.”

I rested my chin on my knees, my arms wrapped around my legs. I didn’t need to look at him to know he was hurt by my apparent rejection. “I don’t loathe anyone. Well, perhaps Magoth, but that’s natural, given the situation.”

He was silent for a moment. “No, it is there; I can still sense it. You are afraid, desperately afraid of something, but there is also a self-loathing that completely baffles me. It was not there before. What has happened that you don’t like yourself, Mayling? What has frightened you? More importantly, why do you feel you cannot turn to me for help?”

The fabric of my jeans was rough under my cheek as I tipped my head slightly, not soft and warm, as I knew Gabriel was. I wished with every ounce of my being that it was his chest my head rested on, the soft hairs tickling me as I breathed in his wonderful scent, my lips seeking out the silken stretches of skin as I kissed a path to his ticklish ribs, smiling a little to myself as he squirmed beneath my caresses, knowing how his little intakes of breath as I kissed his belly would change to groans of arousal as I slid down his body, my hands and mouth intent on bringing him to the very edge of pleasure even as I burst into a nova of ecstasy—no!

I jerked to the side, horrified that even in the shadow world, my world, the dragon shard had such a grip on me, it could override my reason.

“You do not want me,” Gabriel said, his voice cold and lifeless. “You recoil from me.”

It took me a moment to get a grip on my rampant emotions, and in the space of that moment, Gabriel withdrew, not physically, but emotionally.