“I’m not. Or at worst, we don’t know that for certain.”

“So?” His face was buried in my neck, nibbling all my little shivery spots. I arched against him, trying desperately to hang on to some sort of coherent thought.

“I’m not ready to deal with parenthood now. And I don’t have any birth control pills with me, so it’s going to be up to you until I get set up.”

Drake pulled back a fraction to look at me with glittering eyes. He opened his mouth to say something. I bit his lip. “Please?”

He grunted something I took to be agreement, his head dipping back down as his tongue flicked over my lips, wordlessly asking for entrance. As his mouth took possession of mine, he breathed fire again, filling me with the heady, powerful rush of dragon fire. I welcomed it, embraced it, then turned it back on him, my body celebrating the act with a wanton little shimmy against his hard body.

“I want to do that,” I said, moaning as he bit my shoulder, one hand sliding up to caress a breast, the other pulling my hips tighter against him. “I want to breathe fire.”

“I will teach you,” he rumbled, his lips demanding and mine answering. His kisses were so fiery, so potent, so filled with passion and desire, my legs melted away underneath me. Luckily, the bed was right behind me.

Drake pulled away for a moment, looking at me sprawled across his mammoth bed. I expected a slow, seductive strip, which was Drake’s preference, but rather than him peeling my clothing off item by item, there was a flurry of hands and cloth, the sound of a heated growl, and suddenly the chilled air was teasing my exposed flesh.

All of it.

“No,” I said, putting up a hand when he ripped off the remainder of his clothing, obviously intending to pounce on me.

His eyes spat green flame at me. “What?”

“Not until you hold by your part of the deal. I want to know what you’re thinking, Drake. I want to know what you’re feeling. You know what you do to me—lord knows I tell you everything, but I need to hear this. I need to know that I’m more to you than just a convenient body. I want to know what you really feel about me.”

He looked down at his erection. “You don’t know what I’m thinking?”

“Well, I know what that’s thinking—it’s the rest of you I want to hear about.”

“You infuriate me,” he said, sliding down until his mouth was poised over one extremely anticipatory breast.

“I know that,” I said, hissing as he licked my breast with fire, capturing my nipple and gently swirling his tongue over it. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I need you,” he said, switching to the second breast. “You are my mate. You are necessary to me.”

“No, tell me what you feel,” I groaned, scraping my nails up his back. He moaned in pleasure, nudging my knees aside.

“Condom,” I reminded him. “Please? It would make me feel better.”

His eyes were bright with desire tinged with annoyance, but that melted into sheer passion as he applied the condom and rolled back onto me. “You matter to me, Aisling. A great deal.”

“More than all your treasure?” I asked, teasing him as he sucked my belly button.

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation, astonishing me. A treasure was all to a dragon. “You are beyond price. You are my mate. There is no other like you and there never will be.”

“Oh, Drake,” I said, squirming against him, trying to pull him down onto me where he belonged. “That’s just about the nicest thing you’ve ever said. More!”

“I cannot wait, kincsem. I have missed you greatly these past weeks. You fill my thoughts. I crave your presence. I am not happy unless you are near me, around me, annoying and infuriating and fascinating me. I want to bury myself in your body and never leave.” He pulled my hips up to meet his thrust.

I couldn’t help the little yelp of surprise as he plunged into me, but it wasn’t his actions that brought tears of love to my eyes ... it was what he said. I knew that Drake was not a man who discussed his emotions easily, so for him, the admission that he needed me was tantamount to a declaration of love.

“I love you, too,” I told him, my hands dancing down his sides. Our bodies moved together in a rhythm that was familiar and unknown at the same time. “Make me burn, Drake. Make us both burn.”

The molten core of heat that had never left me since Drake kissed me the first time flared to life, answering his call. Flames erupted on the bed, dancing and leaping around us as Drake drove me to the point where I knew I would lose all control. My body tightened around him as his back arched, his head snapped back, the long, beautiful line of his neck and chest etched permanently into my brain. The fire between us exploded when he shouted his ecstasy to the heavens, flames licking along his back as his hips flexed twice. He thrust hard a third time before collapsing on me.

I opened my mouth to tell him what I felt at that moment, to tell him how much I loved him, and needed him, and how horrible our separation was, but the words that echoed in the big room were not mine.

“Drakeling, what are you doing in London? I thought you hated this city. Madre de dios! Who is that woman?”

It took a few seconds for the words—spoken by a strange woman—to sink into my sated, Drake-bemused mind, but in that time Drake rolled himself off me, yanking the side of the blanket up so it covered most of me. I lay like a stupefied log and stared at the well-dressed, gorgeous, dark-haired woman who glared at me from the doorway.

“You have the worst timing of anyone I know, Mother,” Drake said with a sigh.

Mother?

11

“Yes. I understand.”

“No, you don’t. You say you do, but you can’t possibly imagine the embarrassment I felt. Feel. Will continue to feel to the end of my days.”

Drake’s hand was warm on my hip as we walked down the hallway to the staircase that split midway down into two curving arms ending at the marble-floored entry way, which looked as big as a football field to my overwhelmed eyes. “You’re being overly sensitive. I was covering you. All my mother could see was that I was lying on you in an intimate manner.”

“Leaving aside the fact that anyone saw that, it was your mother! Why didn’t you tell me you had a mother?”

Drake shot me an exasperated look. “I did.”