"We are sick people," I said later, after breath had re-turned to my lungs and reason to my mind. I unlocked my legs and slid down his thighs, various and sundry parts of me making me aware that Drake liked to play harder than I was used to.

"Sick?"

I straightened my poppy dress before managing to gather enough courage to look him in the eye. "What else would you call having this sort of a reaction to finding a dead body?"

His eyes were hot, remnants of his dragon fire still vis-ible as his gaze licked down my body. "I would call it fated. It was inevitable that we would mate again."

I fussed with brushing out the newly made wrinkles in my dress. "Yeah, well, I have another word for it, but as it's not complimentary to either of us, I'll keep it to my-self"

He retrieved the shirt I had torn off him, giving it an odd look. Luckily only a few of the buttons were ripped off. "I take it this means you love me."

I goggled at him, a good old-fashioned "What the hell are you talking about?" goggle. "Not even close, dragon boy!"

One ebony eyebrow rose as he turned to retrieve his tie. I flinched when I saw the scoring my nails had left on his back.

"You said you engage in sex only with men you love. You refused me in the last dream. Thus, you must now be in love with me."

My face flushed as I adjusted my upper story, which had been dislodged in his quest for gold. "What happened a few minutes ago was an exception to the rule. It was purely a physical reaction to the stress of finding Perdita's body. Life asserting itself in the face of death and all that. I'm sure psychiatrists have a name for it."

Drake slipped into his shirt. "So do I—desire. It had nothing to do with Perdita and everything to do with our bond."

I turned to look in the other direction, unable to face the knowing (read: smug male) look in his eyes. "Ow! What the devil?" I touched the side area on my collar-bone he had kissed. It was the same spot he had burned in my first dream. The skin was tender, very tender. I tried to look down at myself, but the sore spot was up too high to see. I glared at him as he tucked his shirt into his pants. "What did you do to me, bite me? Are you part vampire, too?"

He buckled his belt, giving me a look that went a long way to cooling the still-burning fires deep within me. "We mated. I marked you. It wasn't a bite."

"You marked me?" I said in disbelief, spinning around to see if the Venediger had a mirror anywhere. He did, I discovered after a few moments of searching in his top-most desk drawer. "You marked me like I

was your laun-dry? Or a cow you'd brand? That sort of a mark? Oh, my God, you did mark me! Ow! It hurts!"

He took the mirror from me, gently touching the burn that stood out on the right side of my collarbone. It was curved-edged triangle with a line twisted around the three sides, a symbol that bore an enormous resemblance to the curved dragon's tail on my aquamanile. "It will heal."

I pushed away from him. "That's all you're going to say, it'll heal? I'm going to be left with a big ole herkin' burned hickey on my collarbone, and all you can say is it'll heal? Thanks a whole heck of a lot, Drake. If you don't mind, I think I'd like to return to the room across the hall where everyone is probably wondering what hap-pened to us."

"They aren't wondering," Drake said with an arrogant look that my palm itched to remove from his handsome face. He grabbed me as I stormed through the door, keep-ing me from plowing into Istvan and one of Fiat's men, who were standing in the hall. Istvan started to grin, but looked away when I glared at him. Fiat's man outright smirked. Behind him, in the open doorway of Perdita's room, Ophelia stood clutching a box of tissues as Fiat and Renaldo lowered Perdita's body to a blanket on her desk. Drake's voice growled into my ear. "Aisling, much as it distresses me to say this, we must talk."

I jerked my arm out of his grasp. "What we just did changes nothing, dragonNothing! There will be no talk-ing," I said loudly, turning to stomp into the other room. I went to Ophelia and put my arm around her. "You OK?"

Her cheeks were still wet, and her chin quivered, but she managed a nod. She plucked at my sleeve, her eyes filled with pain. "Please, Aisling, don't let him get away with this. Don't let him kill anyone else."

"Don't worry," I said, leveling a look at Drake that would give him something to chew over for a couple of days. "The person who killed Perdita will be punished. I swear that."

'Thank you," she whispered, and went to pieces again. I led her back to her chair and let her sob out her agony.

"We will not, of course, inform the police of this mat-ter," Fiat said as Renaldo covered Perdita's body. "This will be taken care of by those in theI'au-dela"

"Agreed," Drake said.

"Notagreed," I said, marching over to where the two of them were warily watching each other. "We can't keep a murder from the police—they'll have to know about it. I just want to wait a day, until I have the proof to convict the person who killed her and the Venediger and poor Mme. Deauxville. Then we'll contact the police and tell them everything." I fingered the burn mark on my collar-bone. "Well, almost everything."

Fiat froze as his eyes followed my hand's movement. His eyes narrowed. "You mated with him just now?"

I fisted my hands to keep from punching out his lights. I'm not normally a violent person, but the last few days were enough to make a sinner out of even the purest of saints. "I don't thinkeveryone in the club heard you. Maybe if you used a microphone, then the whole of the Otherworld could know the intimate details of my sex life."

Fiat's lips quirked. Drake looked bored.

"You mistake me," Fiat said. "I am not surprised that you were in the other room mating with Drake—it is the way of dragons to seek their mate in times of strong emo-tions. I am merely surprised that you had not done so before this. If I had known that you had not yet mated with him when you were in my apartment, I would have been doubly careful that you not escape me."

"You were in his apartment?" Drake asked in a velvety soft rumble. It sent shivers of apprehension down my spine. "When was this?"

"None of your business. The question is, what are we going to do with Perdita until tomorrow?"