A short blond man with a fuzzy upper lip strolled by as I was passing a clutch of peach-colored chairs grouped in a conversation nook, pausing just long enough to send me a bland look before he continued past. "You will trip and fall."

"Huh?" I asked, peering backward at the man as he headed out the front door. "Rene, did you hear that man? He said I would—"

Jim stopped suddenly in front of me. I tripped. I fell. With a loud squawk that seemed to echo to every corner of the elegant lobby.

"My back! My liver! My spleen! You've killed me!" Jim wailed from where it lay beneath me.

"You're a demon. You can't be killed. And shut up! Someone will hear you," I hissed, mortified to the tips of my toes as I tried to gather my sprawled limbs. People all over the lobby stopped chatting, mingling, sipping cool drinks, checking in, and doing all the various other things people did in fancy hotel lobbies, and turned en masse to look at where Jim and I lay in a tangled heap.

A hand came into view, offering assistance. I grabbed it, allowing Rene to help me to my feet.

As I stood, I realized the hand didn't belong to Rene.

Jim looked up at the hand. "Drake, would you tell my demon lord that while it's true I can't be killed, this extremely handsome form can be damaged, and she's probably broken every rib in my body? Man, someone needs to drop a few pounds, and I can tell you one thing—it ain't me!"

I gritted my teeth both at the sight of Drake's amused green eyes and at Jim's demon lord reference. I hated when it called me that. Technically the title was true, because Jim had been cast out of its previous lord's legions when I summoned it (thus binding the demon to me until F could figure out how to release it), but I resented being called a demon lord. Everyone knew demon lords were pure evil.

Whereas I was merely clumsy. Or cursed. Or probably both.

"Mate, your demon wishes me to inform you—"

I raised my hand to stop Drake. "Point one, I'm not your mate. Point two ... er ... OK, there is no point two. So, thank you for helping me up, oh stranger who parades around with gorgeous women who evidently shop at the Madonna Pointy Breast Bustier Boutique. Now you may be on your merry little way and leave us mortals to go about our lives without the addition of an annoying, fire-breathing lizard in a human suit."

Drake leaned forward, his eyes going dark with emotion. "You have never seen me breathe fire, mate. You might enjoy it."

Heat swept through me at his words, a familiar heat that flared into the inferno that was his dragon's fire. I fought it for a few seconds, knowing that if I didn't accept it, it would consume me where I stood, leaving nothing but a few charred ashes to mark what I had been. Smoke began to rise from my hair as Drake's fire flashed through me, setting every cell in my body alight. My mind screamed a warning that I was seconds away from total combustion and death, Drake's glittering eyes holding mine as I fought his heat, fought the connection we had, fought the fact that despite my wishes to the contrary I was one of the rare people who were able to withstand the test of a true wyvern's mate. With a grow of futility against the inevitable, I opened the door in my mind that allowed me access to newly discovered powers, embracing the dragon flame as it consumed and renewed me, a fiery rebirth that I reveled in for a few seconds before turning it back on Drake.

I wanted to say something witty and caustic to prove to Drake that nothing he did or said mattered to me, but all I did was pant a little at the effect of channeling so much of his heat. Triumph glowed in his eyes for a moment before he banked his fire. Without another word to me, he turned and strolled back to where the VIP and her gang of three were waiting impatiently.

"I am so over my head with him," I moaned softly to myself, unable to keep from watching Drake's derriere as he walked away. Say what you will about dragons (and I had a number of things I wanted to say), they really knew how to move when they chose to appear in human form.

"Yes, yes, you are. Don't you think she is, Rene?"

"Very much, yes. He looks at her, she looks at him, and foof! Sparks, they fly. Look, her hair is still on fire."

I stopped ogling Drake and slapped a few errant curls that were smoldering with the aftereffects of my run-in with dragon boy. "All right, enough of the wiseass comments. The show's over. It was just a little fire exchange, nothing more. Nothing to get excited over. Now perhaps I can get on with things. Important things. Like life without you-know-who."

Pal and Istvan, two redheaded men who were part of Drake's sept (and served as his bodyguards), stood watching impassively as Drake returned to the Asian woman's side. Pal lifted his hand toward me in friendly greeting. Istvin glowered, first at me, then at Jim.

"Looks like Istvan hasn't forgiven you for almost neutering him," Jim commented.

"That was an accident and you know it. Besides, I've sworn never to play darts again, so he has nothing to be surly about." I gritted out a smile at both men, gave Pal a little wave in return, and ignoring the stares and whispered comments from everyone in the lobby, made my way to the front desk.

"Here is my cousin Bela's mobile number." When I was finished checking in, Rene pressed into my hand a postcard with a phone number scrawled across the back. "You will call me when you are ready to find the hermit, yes? I do not like to think of what trouble will find you if you were to go off on your own. Did you learn any language for this trip?"

"Language? Oh, Hungarian. Yeah. There was this guy I ran into in a chat room when I was online looking up information on the hotel, and he gave me a couple of phrases to say. Let's see ... uh ... szeretnelek latni ruha nelkul."

Rene's eyes widened as he choked. "What... eh ... what is it you think you just said?"

I frowned. "What do you mean what do I think I said? I said, 'It's a lovely day out.'"

He shook his head. Jim snickered.

I thinned my lips at them both. "Well, I'm sorry, my pronunciation is probably a little off. I'm new to this learning foreign languages thing, as you both very well know. What did I say wrong?"

Jim licked its leg with strange absorption, A faint smile tugged at the corners of Rene's lips. "This once, your pronunciation was good. Not excellent, as is mine, but good enough to be understood."

"Oh," I said, pleased by his praise. Rene had tried to teach me some useful French a month ago (useful if you want to say things like "I have frogs in my bidet") and previously had only scathing things to say about rny pronunciation. Clearly French was not going to be iny forte, but Hungarian was obviously another thing altogether. Maybe I'd turn out to be a linguist after all. "So what was wrong with what I said?"