His expression was unreadable. “You were touching my face. I was simply stopping you.”

“You are so messed up, Slick. Must have been that smack on the head that did it, because you’re supposed to be encouraging hot babes like Aoife to touch you, not stop them. Although it was better earlier today when she had her hands on your ass, and you were grabbing booby—Hey! Ow! Make it stop, make it stop!”

Kostya set fire to Jim’s tail with just a flicker of his eyes. Jim ran around in a circle for a few seconds before plopping down on his butt, extinguishing the fire. He glared at Kostya, who had turned back to me. “Man! Some people are just so sensitive.”

“Do you not like to be touched?” I asked Kostya, wondering if he had a personal space issue that I hadn’t picked up on before.

“What did Aisling say to you?”

“Ah, we’re back to that game, are we? Let’s see… I think I counter with why did someone hold you prisoner for seven years?”

“Did she say what the green dragons were doing? Why did you not show her the ring?”

“Why don’t you ever answer a question?”

“I’m a dragon,” he said with a little shrug. “We dislike answering questions, although I would point out I have just done so. Thus it is your turn. Why will you not answer my questions?”

“Kiss me,” I demanded, deciding that I would start resisting him later, when I wasn’t so confused about everything.

“Now that’s what I’m talking about,” Jim said, tipping his head to the side. “Don’t mind me, I’m just sitting here. Boy, I wish I had a camera.”

I didn’t have a chance to tell Jim to stop watching us before Kostya, evidently deciding the questioning game wasn’t going to go anywhere, obliged me by kissing all thoughts right out of my brain.

Instantly, my body was full of demands. My breasts wanted Kostya’s hands and mouth on them, my fingers wanted to skim every reachable part of him, my hips wanted to rock against his, and that whole area in my body devoted to reproductive activities was evidently having a block party and insisted that Kostya join the fun.

I tried to quell my libido, but it was having none of it. Not while my body was all but mugging his, my hands entangled in his hair, his hands on my butt pulling me even closer, and between us, an inferno that grew hotter and hotter with each stroke of his tongue. Heat swamped me, his dragon fire, setting every atom inside me alight with need and desire and a wanting so great, it scared me. How could I have this sort of a reaction to a man I’d known for a day?

“You taste so good,” he groaned into my mouth, moving me backward until I was pressed against the side of the hangar before he pulled me upward in order to delve deeper into my mouth. “You are spicy, like mulled wine, and just as heady.”

“Too much talking, not enough kissing,” I murmured before wrapping my legs around his hips, wanting to press him against all the needy parts of me—which was basically my entire body. Flames licked along my flesh, the heat inside building to the point where I was sure I couldn’t stand it anymore, my body forced to cope with Kostya’s fire or combust into an inferno.

Panic hit me hard for a moment, swamping me with a sudden desire to flee. But that would mean leaving Kostya, never seeing him again, never laughing at his scowls or soothing his hurts, never holding him tight, trying to ease the darkness inside him.

I couldn’t do it. I knew I was making a choice in my life that I could never undo, but I just couldn’t walk away from Kostya and everything he represented. He needed me, and I gloried in that, basked in the knowledge that I could help him, ease his pain, and along the way, perhaps find just what it was I was supposed to do with my life.

And at that moment, just when I was sure I was going to burn away to nothing, I accepted everything that had happened to me since that fateful day two years ago.

It was as if someone had flipped a switch, because suddenly the fire that threatened to consume me became part of me. I let it whip around me for a few seconds, enjoying the power and heat and thrilling in the fact that I could control it. I tugged on Kostya’s hair, wordlessly asking for more, promising to give him everything I could.

Just what I expected him to do while we were standing outside, in clear view of anyone who happened to pass, I didn’t know. I just wanted… more. I wanted Kostya and his fire and everything those two things comprised. I didn’t care about convention or that it wasn’t wise to leap into any relationship, let alone one with a man who was so obviously emotionally scarred. At that moment, I didn’t even care that red dragons had destroyed my home and tried to kill us all.

I accepted that the world was a place where dragons were people, and Kostya was one of them.

I accepted the idea that there were demon lords and demons, and one of the latter was now bound to me.

I accepted that I was put on the earth to be paired up with Kostya and that I had suffered through two years of hell so I could help him overcome the pain he had lived through. More importantly, I understood that I was meant to bring his life back on track and surround us with the happiness that we both deserved, and with those epiphanies, my mind was free.

He jerked backward when I spun his fire around us both, then directed it back to him, pouring it into him with a joy that I hadn’t felt since I was a child.

“What did you just do?” he asked, his eyes wonderfully misty with passion.

“That pole dance move? Looked to me like a cross between trying to dry hump you and climbing a rope, but I can’t see much from this angle,” came an answer from Jim’s direction.

“Jim, hush,” I said, wanting to laugh with the sheer pleasure of my sudden insight. I was a dragon’s mate! Me, boring old Aoife, who thought the most exciting thing in her life would be the time she went to a circus and became deranged. “You mean the fire thing? Aisling told me to give you your fire back, so I did just that. Still want to deny that I’m your mate? Because I’ve just realized that what she said was absolutely true, and it explains a whole lot about why I’m so attracted to you.”

“You’re attracted to me because all women are,” he said in an offhand, dismissive manner that made me want to smack him.

So I did. Right on the chest. “Look, Buster Brown—”

“My name is Kostya.”

“—you may think that you’re the only one who’s gone through hell in your life, but you’re dead wrong, so you can take that God’s-gift-to-women attitude and stuff it where the sun don’t shine!”