The two wyverns stood silent in the doorway, both staring with apparent surprise at Perdita's body as it slowly turned.

"Who?" Ophelia shrieked, pushing me back as she got to her feet. She pointed a finger at Drake, huge tears rolling down her cheeks as she stabbed the air in front of him. "It's him! He killed Perdy! He killed her just as he killed the others! He killed my … my …" She dissolved into heart-wrenching sobs, her hands covering her face.

I helped her to a chair, glancing back at the two men who blocked the doorway. "Unless you want everyone in the club to troop in here and have a look, I suggest you set your men as guards at the end of

the hall and close the door."

Drake nodded at his men, who immediately left. Fiat was slower to send his men off. but eventually he did. The door closed with a soft click that was the only sound in the room. Ophelia was sobbing silently into her hands, her body shaking as she wept. I squatted next to her, of-fering what comfort I could.

Drake circled Perdita's body, his bright green eyes not-ing everything, I was sure. Fiat leaned back against the door as if keeping intruders out, but his eyes gave him away. They were coolly speculative … the eyes of someone truly surprised by what he saw before him.

I cleared my throat, the noise unusually loud in the close confines of the room. "Drake, you've been accused of murdering Perdita. Did you do it?"

His gaze met mine over the slowly rotating body. "No more than I killed Aurora or the Venediger."

I smiled a sad little smile. Why had I expected I would get a straight answer out of him? I turned to Fiat. "You haven't been accused, but you were here when Ophelia and 1 arrived, so you had opportunity. Did you kill her?"

"I do not kill women," Fiat said stiffly. His shoulders made an odd sort of jerky motion of denial. "Well, not often do I kill them."

"How reassuring that is. Can I ask another question?"

"If it would please you," Fiat answered.

I stood up and yelled at the top of my lungs, "WHY CAN'T ANY OF YOU DRAGONS ANSWER A SIM-PLE QUESTION WHEN IT'S ASKED?"

I'll be the first one to admit that I might have been showing a wee bit of stress what with people trying to kidnap me, and arrest me for murder, and steal things from me, but is that any reason for Drake to march over and slap me as if I were hysterical?

"Oh! You are going to be so sorry you did that," I snarled, making a fist and swinging it. Fiat plucked me off Drake, but not before I got in a really solid right jab to Drake's nose. "No one hits me, no one!" I yelled as Fiat dragged me backwards. Drake gingerly touched his nose, staring in patent surprise at the blood smeared across his fingertips.

"If I were you," Fiat said softly in my ear, "I would run."

Drake's roar of anger shattered the only two windows in the office. It also summoned both his and Fiat's men, all four of whom burst into the room just as Drake started toward me.

I didn't wait around to debate the issue. I ran. Straight through the men at the door, across the hall, and into the Venediger's office, trailing bits of crime scene tape be-hind me as I whirled around and locked the door a hair-breadth before Drake reached it.

It took him all of five seconds to kick it open. I backed away as he stalked into the room, pausing only to close the door behind him.

"Look," I said, my hands up in self-protection stance number seven. "I know you're a bit pissed right

now, but—"

He was on me before I could even scream. One second he was at the door; the next he was fifteen feet across the room, dragging me up against his chest. For one brilliant, crystalline moment in time, I stared deep into Drake's eyes and beheld the dragon within.

My resistance melted into a river of passion.

I opened my mouth to remind him that he couldn't kill me without killing himself, but it wasn't death Drake had on his mind. He slammed his mouth against mine, his tongue not waiting for an invitation to come visiting; it just shoved its way into my mouth and took immediate possession, stroking, teasing, tasting every last square inch of my mouth, forcing me to submit. I fought him, not because I wasn't suddenly just as aroused and filled with desire as he was, but because I wanted him to know right from the start I would never again submit.

"You can woo me," I said against his lips as I grabbed the front of his dark green shirt, literally ripping it right off his body. "You can court me, you can seduce me, but you willnever force me into submission again. What happened in the dream was a fantasy, a figment of our imaginations. This is real, and onmy terms."

He growled into my mouth as he grabbed my thighs,

hauling me up until I locked my legs around his waist. I grabbed his hair, pulling on it as I gave him a taste of his own treatment, plundering his mouth as he had plundered mine. He tasted spicy, hot, like he had been drinking Dragon's Blood. He lunged to the wall behind me, smashing me between his body and the cool wooden pan-eling, his teeth nipping at my tender flesh as he buried his face in my breasts.

"Gold," he breathed as he licked the rise of one breast. I had just enough presence of mind to remember the Eye tucked into the lining of my bra.

"No! Not here!" I cried as his head dipped to the val-ley between my breasts. He brought his head up, the dragon talisman clenched between his teeth. I took it back, replacing it with an offering of my lips as I tucked the jade back into my bra, shivering at the look of molten desire in his eyes.

He jerked my dress up, his fingers hot and hard on my thighs as he shredded my underwear. I flexed my legs around his hips, squirming when his fingers parted me, testing me, teasing me, absorbing the burn his touch had started and building it to an inferno of desire, arousal, and consuming need. I dragged my nails across his back as he tormented me with his body.

"You're mine," he ground out through clenched teeth, the heated tip of him edging into me.

"Not even close.You, however are mine, mine, mine." I grabbed his hair and arched myself against him, desper-ate to feel him within me, desperate for his heat, his fire, his hunger. My soul burned for the touch of his; my body wept tears of passion that only he could stop.

"Mne," he snarled as he lunged, pinning me against the wall as his body became the invader, spreading me, impaling me, touching me in a way that no mortal man could. His fire swept through me as I moved against him, reveling in the feeling of his body moving in mine, em-bracing the conflagration of our souls, riding great waves of fire that spiraled around us, fusing us, firing us, bind-ing us together until we exploded together in a million dancing sparks. Drake's eyes opened wide as ecstacy overtook him, and for a moment, for the breathless, end-less length of time it takes to pass from one second to an-other, his form shimmered between Drake the man and Drake the dragon. His lips closed on my collarbone, and I jerked against him as a fire hotter than anything I'd felt yet burned the skin beneath his mouth. I moved against him, spun into another orgasm, my body tightening around his until he arched his back and roared his triumph to the heavens.