"Does he have his hand on your boob?" Jim asked, watching us avidly. "Is he copping a grope? 'Cause that's what it looks like from here."

"Go away!" I frowned over Drake's shoulder at Jim. It shot me a sour look but lay down and rested its head on its paws. "Drake, why did youreally let me in?"

"Questions," he said, nuzzling my collarbone. My spine went all boneless as the cool silk of his hair brushed against my jaw. What is it about men's hair that makes it so sexy? "You always have questions."

"That's because you won't give me the answers, al-though you were almost a chatty Cathy last night before we…"

I stiffened the second the words left my lips, and not just because Drake's right hand slid around to my derriere. I hadn't meant to mention the dream, not since I was still confused over what was real and what wasn't. Although that nightgown was awfully real this morn-ing-

"I will always answer questions if you present me with an inducement to do so," he said, kissing a hot, wet path down toward my chest.

"An inducement?" 1 asked, my blood starting to sim-mer. He hadn't acknowledged the dream had been real, causing that tiny little part of my mind that worried it had been reality to sigh with relief. "What sort of induce-ment? Like money?"

"Mmm," he said, taking little nibbling bites that had me arching against him. His fingers slid down the line of buttons on the front of the tunic, his tongue snaking into the valley between my breasts. My knees gave out com-pletely. "That's not what you offered last night."

"Last night? Oh, my god, it was real? When we— uh—that was real?" Embarrassment filled me at the thought of the things I had done with him, but that faded quickly as his mouth moved over me. My mind warred between the desire to give myself over to the burn he was generating within me and the almost desperate need to es-cape the desire he represented.

His tongue touched the spot on my collarbone where he had burned me in the dream. "Do you really doubt it was real?"

My mind decided it didn't want to cope with the fact that I had jumped the bones of the first handsome dragon I met a day after meeting him, focusing instead on what Drake was doing to me now. "You mean that's all it would take to get you to answer my questions—sex? Hot, steamy dragon sex? Hoo, you're not going to—Are you going to—?"

"I told you that after the first time we would make love as humans do," Drake answered, his tongue a brand on my quivering flesh.

"Wow!" Jim said. "Wish I had a camera. The black-mail potential of this is enough to keep me in burgers for the next millennia."

"Jim!" I squawked as Drake's hand slipped inside my bra.

"Yo! Right here. Wow. I can't believe he's doing that in front of me. This is better than cable TV."

"Can't you make him go to sleep, too?" I asked Drake.

"He is your demon to command," Drake murmured against the swell of my breast.

My mind kept telling me I was stupid lo just stand there and let him seduce me. My body overruled my mind with a majority vote. "Oh, yeah. I forgot that. Jim, I command you to close your eyes. And turn around. And don't listen to us."

"Party pooper." Jim grumbled.

My breast heaved a couple of times in Drake's hand as his long fingers stroked the swollen flesh, his mouth kiss-ing a line over to the nipple that was screaming for his touch. I waited until Jim obeyed me before I looked at Drake.

His eyes glittered with arousal and want and leashed power, and I knew that if I did not stop him, things would go much further than I anticipated. The dream might have been shared between us, but what we were about to do was indisputably real, with very real repercussions… repercussions I wasn't sure I wanted to face. "This mate business … How do we know if I really am your… male?"

"Only a true mate can survive a dragon's fire," he said as his teeth closed gently over my nipple. I clutched his hair and arched upward, my body and soul on fire, but it was a wonderful sensation, one that left me craving more.

"That's it?" I gasped, part of my brain surprised I could still form words. The other part was busy directing the fingers of my left hand as they unbuttoned Drake's shirt.

"That is what a dragon's mate must do…. A wyvern's mate must also prove herself to the sept."

"Uh … prove herself how?" I slid my hand inside his shirt, my fingers tingling with the heat of his skin. His muscles rippled as I mapped out the wonderful terrain of his chest and abdomen.

"A challenge is set. The mate must triumph over it or be rejected." He kissed a burning path over to my other breast, tugging my bra down so he could tease that breast with long strokes of his tongue. His voice was harsh, rough like crushed velvet. "You taste of my fire. You taste of desire. You taste the way a mate should taste. Come to me, Aisling. Give yourself to me again. Mate with me as mortals do."

His words were blunt, but they sent a shiver of pure arousal down my spine. After the things we'd done in my dream, I had no right to become suddenly prudish, but Drake was completely different from any man I had known. It wasn't just his power; it was the way he made me feel totally and completely feminine. He might be a dragon in human form, but he was the most masculine person I'd ever met.

His tongue burned me as it flicked over my hardened nipple, and I almost said yes, I almost threw caution to the wind and agreed to be whatever he wanted me to be just to taste again the promised fire in his eyes, but this was more than just a fantasy—there was something missing that I just couldn't ignore. There was arousal in his eyes, there was desire and the knowledge that we would bring each other ecstasy, but there was no affec-tion.

"You don't like me," I whispered into his hair, a tear sliding down my cheek. Surprise flashed across his face. "And to be honest, although I really enjoyed the dream, and want to do lots and lots of things to you, many of which involve my tongue, I'm not… I don't… I'm not in love with you."

His emerald gaze didn't waver, but his eyes opened wider, the disbelief in them almost enough to make me laugh. "You do not sleep with men unless you are in love with them?"

"You don't have to say the word like it's something dirty."