His voice rubbed along my skin like silk, causing me to shiver with arousal. I opened my eyes, fully intending to tell him that I was just suffering from exhaustion, but Gabriel, drat his sensitive dragon self, instantly read the emotions that roiled around inside me.

“Little bird,” he said softly, his nearness leaving me trembling with a desperate, overwhelming, unending wanting that consumed everything I was. He took a step toward me, his eyes flashing with silver fire as he answered the silent call my body made.

The wall behind me started smoking. I squelched the fire before it could burn it, still fighting to control the emotions that swamped me. Gabriel took another step forward, his head lowered so he could look deep into my eyes.

“Hello? Excuse me, it’s very rude to just suddenly ignore someone like this. May, if you really don’t care about whether or not you exist, that’s fine by me. I’ll just go get a room at the nearest Sheraton. But I really don’t think you’ve thought the whole situation through, not that I particularly mind, although it is a shame that Gabriel will have to die, too. That’s right, isn’t it? If a dragon’s mate dies, he dies as well? I read that somewhere, although it sounds incredibly inconvenient to me.”

“Mate,” Gabriel said, the word as much a caress as his breath touching my cheek.

I closed my eyes for a second, digging my fingers into the cloth of my shirt in order to keep from touching him. I would not give in to the shard. I would not lose any more of myself.

His breath was warm on my neck. I opened my eyes and turned my head slightly, my fingers aching as I refused to give in to my untoward desires. He breathed in deeply, and I knew he was inhaling my scent, refreshing the memory of it in his mind, pulling it deeply into his body.

“Go,” he said, his lips bruising my jaw as he spoke.

I stood trembling, fighting with myself, my body racked with a terrible need that blotted everything else from my mind but him. His eyes were molten, pure silver, the pupils having elongated until they were the merest slivers of black. “Fly, little bird.”

And suddenly, I was running, racing out of the room, my blood pounding as I tore down the stairs to the lower levels of the hotel. The chase was all that filled my mind, that and the images that Gabriel shared with me of a dragon mating dance as old as time.