He lifted his head, his eyes like molten onyx, if there was such a thing, a little smile making the corners of his mouth curl. “It has lots of marble, and marble does not burn. You, however, will.”

“Oooh,” I said, wiggling my hips against him in blatant invitation. I was a bit shocked at my behavior, but the sane part of my mind got shouted down by the rest of me, which said that I was exactly where I was supposed to be—in Kostya’s arms. I bit his lower lip, sucking on it to take the sting away before saying, “We should probably be responsible and discuss things like disease and birth control before we get carried away.”

“I am a dragon,” he murmured, kissing a hot trail down my neck to my chest, and thankfully attending to my second (and very needy) breast. “We do not have human diseases.”

“Oh good. I’m not on birth control right now, because there was just no need for it at the crazy castle, and frankly, if I had to stop right now in order to find you a condom, I think I’d die of sexual frustration. I take it that it’s not possible for dragons and humans to have a baby?”

“It is possible,” he murmured against my breastbone as he dropped to his knees. He proceeded to kiss along my belly, stopping to nibble on my hips. “But the conception rate is much lower than it is for dragons.”

I thought for a moment. “It’s been three days since… yeah, I should be okay. But if we’re going to go on like this, one or both of us is going to have to take precautions. Not that I don’t like kids and all, and I’d like to have them someday, but I’d rather not be surprised. Oh my God, you aren’t going to do what I think you’re going to do, are you?” I looked down at his head. He had slid his hands up my thighs, shifting my feet wider. A little whiff of smoke drifted out of his nose as he glanced up at me, the corners of his lips curling even more.

“I am going to blow fire on your woman’s part.”

“Yes, please,” I said, my fingers clutching his shoulders hard without any consideration for his previous injury. I yelped when he breathed fire on me, but it wasn’t from pain. The heat sank into me, making my own personal inferno go into overdrive. But when he put his mouth on me, his fingers doing a fiery little dance of their own, I knew I was a goner. “Herregud, Kostya! I’m not going to be able to last if you do that again.”

He pulled me down to the floor, his mouth literally trailing fire across my flesh. “I like how you taste, Aoife. You are spicy and sweet, and you inflame my senses.” He buried his nose in my neck and breathed deeply. “Your scent intoxicates me. It drives me insane with the need to possess you and to claim you for my own. I must mate with you now.”

“I hope so, because I really am going to die of frustration if you don’t.” I tried pulling him down onto me, but he hesitated, his face twisted for a moment with pain.

“I must… I cannot—” With a low growl, he flipped me over onto my belly, one arm beneath me pulling me upward. “You are mine now, Aoife. Tell me you understand.”

“I understand. Honestly, I don’t give a damn what position we do it in, just so we do it right now!” I yelled, clutching the bath mat that was beneath me.

He moved, and suddenly I was invaded, but oh, what a welcome invasion it was. He was as hard and hot as I imagined he would be, moving within me with a rhythm that, impossibly, made the fire inside me burn even hotter. And then his dragon fire was there, inside me, around me, coating us in a cocoon of want and need and sexual ecstasy manifested in fiery form. I caught at it with my mind, twisting it around first me, then Kostya, my back arching when an orgasm claimed me. The fire slid out of my control for a moment, but even as Kostya growled his own climax, I spun the fire back into him.

Pain blossomed to life for a moment on my hip, hot and searing, but just as that sensation registered in my brain, it was gone, leaving me with a warm, tingling spot. I fell forward, gasping for air that apparently was consumed by Kostya’s fire, my intimate muscles still clutching Kostya in a grip that surprised even me. I shook with little tremors of pleasure and wondered, with the tiny part of my brain that was still working after the orgasm to end all orgasms, just how I was going to survive sex with Kostya on a regular basis.

He rolled off me, his broad chest heaving as he attempted to get air into his lungs, his eyes closed, one hand flung over his head. His skin was damp and shiny with the effort, and after observing him for a moment—which was really an excuse for me to try to get my brain working again—I leaned over and bit his arm.

The look he gave me was filled with disbelief.

“Now you have to take a shower,” I said with a grin.

He made a face, then to my utter delight, answered my smile with a rueful one of his own. “It was worth such a sacrifice.”

“Oh, definitely.” I rolled over onto my side, intending on saying more, but a little pinch of pain had me sitting up and examining my hip. “What did you do to me? I’ve got some sort of a burn.”

I touched the shape that was high on my left hip. It looked like a faded henna tattoo of a vaguely phoenix-like dark tan beast with wings curving overhead and a barbed tail.

Kostya looked away, but I could see that his scowl was back in place. “I don’t know what you are speaking of.”

“Like hell you don’t.” I slid my fingers across it. It was smooth, just like a tattoo. “I felt you do it. My hip was all hurty for a couple of seconds; then it faded away.”

His jaw worked for a moment; then he shook his head. “The mark is unimportant. Do not speak of it to others.”

“Unimportant? You burn a mark onto my hip and act like I did something wrong—no, sir! I told you that I’m not a doormat, and I’m not going to let you get away with that. Nor am I going to let you spoil what was a wonderful—if incredibly intense—intimate experience. Okay, so you suck at pillow talk, but that doesn’t mean you have to snap my head off when I point out that making love to you left me physically scarred.”

“It is not a scar. It is a mark of the black dragons.” He got to his feet and stepped into the shower, quickly and efficiently cleansing himself before taking a towel and going to the bedroom.

“Really?” I looked at it again. “Is that going to happen every time we have sex?”

“It will not happen again.”