The dream started as so many others have—with a drowsy sense of presence, Drake’s presence, which seeped into the core of my very being and roused my awareness gently, but insistently.

I was disoriented as I always am in Drake’s dreamscapes—I was in warm silky water, in a large black pool, ringed with candles whose flames sputtered and danced in the heated air. Shadows stretched behind them in inky infinity, the light dappling only the water of the pool in which I sat.

“Mmm. This is a new one—frankincense and myrrh?” I asked as I cupped my hand and allowed the oiled water to pour from between my fingers. “I like it. It’s very dragon. This is awfully sweet of you, to send me a dream just because you had to go to Paris to get those blasted Tools, Drake, but it’s not necessary. I could have waited until tomorrow when you got home.”

“I, on the other hand, could not wait.” His voice slid across my damp skin like velvet, sending little skitters of anticipation rippling down my spine. I turned to look behind me, where his voice had originated, but there was nothing to be seen in the dense shadows.

“Oooh, are you going to be dominant and bossy in this dream?” I scooped up another handful of water and tilted my head back, letting it pour down my neck to my chest.

“I am always dominant. I am wyvern. You are my mate. It is the natural order of things.”

Movement flickered to my left. I peered into the darkness but could make out nothing but the slightest whisper of cloth as it dropped to the floor. I smiled to myself and heaved a mock sigh. “You live in your own little world, don’t you?”

“Yes.” A little breeze tickled my back. I spun around, but no one was there. “It consists of you and me, and nothing else of importance. Love me, mate.”

His lips were warm on the nape of my neck. I arched my back as his hands slid around my oiled skin, cupping my breasts as he nibbled several highly erogenous spots behind my ear.

“Oh-ho, it’s going to be an ‘all about Drake’ night, is it?” I asked, teasing him with more than just my words.

“Yes. Tonight I will take my pleasure of you. And when I am done, if you are worthy, perhaps I will allow you a little enjoyment, as well.”

I laughed, pinching the skin of his thigh. “In your dreams, buster. Oh, wait, this is your dream.”

“Are you so sure it is only a dream?” he asked, his hands gentle but demanding on my sensitive breasts.

“Oh, yes. If it was my dream, you’d be spread-eagled on the bed, and I’d be licking warm chocolate off you.”

“We will leave that for an ‘all about Aisling’ night.”

“Deal. Mmm. We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” I leaned back into him, my hands finding the long length of muscles in his thighs. He was warm, and slick, and absolutely wonderful to the touch. “I much prefer you in the flesh, not that these dreams aren’t pleasant. But there’s something to be said for in-person attendance at these events.”

“I agree completely.”

I turned on his lap, examining his face, wondering how I could ever have thought I could live without him. He was arrogant, he was bossy, he did what he thought best regardless of my wishes—most of the time, although he was getting better about that—in short, he was the most exasperating man I’d ever met or ever would meet, and yet I loved him with every morsel of my heart and soul. “I used to think that love meant just wanting to be with someone. But it’s more than that. It’s all the frustrations and irritations and gloriously wondrous times all wrapped together in one magical being that has become so ingrained in me, I don’t think we could ever be separated into our original parts.”

His lips caressed mine, a familiar heat building within me that was echoed in him. “You are my life, Aisling. I knew that the first moment you strolled into the G&T. I will never forget the way you sauntered across the bar and challenged me without even knowing who or what I was. I did not wish to admit it, but even then you had captured my heart.”

I laughed into his mouth even as a tear rolled down my cheek. “You drove me mad then, you know that, right? You were so bossy, so mysterious, never answering any question, but somehow, always there when I needed you.”

“You have never needed me,” he said, cutting off my objections with a kiss so hot, it set the water ablaze. “You have not needed me to achieve what you wanted, kincsem. You were strong even if you did not yet recognize the full extent of your powers. It is a strength that will continue, even in times of darkness.”

I closed my eyes for a moment, acknowledging the sad, dark little corner of my soul. Giving up my Guardianship was the hardest thing I’d ever had to do. It was as much a part of me as Drake had become, and refusing that part of myself, refuting it and denying it, felt like something had been amputated from my life. But I would survive the loss of it, whereas I could not survive the loss of the man I held in my arms, the man who was kissing every last little bit of sadness from me. “We will overcome this, too, mate. You must have faith that all will be well.”

“I have faith in you,” I whispered.

His tongue twined around mine as I kissed him, opened myself to his fire, accepted it, reveled in it, gloried in the fact that I could share it again, then returned it to him. The muscles of his back bunched under my questing fingers as he lifted me back onto the seat from which I’d slipped. Water lapped at the underside of my breasts as he knelt between my legs, his hands sliding up my thighs, parting them to dance a silky line upward.

“You’ll notice I’m losing my waist. I’m getting thick. Jim hid the scale, saying he was afraid of what would happen when I saw my weight.” My breath sucked in as his head dipped and he took one aching nipple into the fiery inferno of his mouth. I squirmed on the warm, slick seat of the tub as his fingers danced in my most private of places, the fire he’d started there burning up to where my breast was being laved by his tongue. “Are you one of those men who finds pregnant women sexy?”

He pulled his mouth from my breast, trailing flames as he licked a path to my other nipple. “No.”

I pinched his shoulder.

He flashed one of his heart-stopping grins at me, his eyes alight with amused passion. “Unless the woman happens to be you, in which case, yes.”

“I’m going to have to deduct five points from your total score for your delay in answering correctly,” I told him, presenting my poor, ignored breast for his attention.

He blew a little ring of fire onto it. “I will find you arousing even when these delectable breasts have lost their tone and lie limp along your chest.”

“Hey!” I said, indignation filling me. “I’m immortal! Doesn’t that mean I won’t get saggy boobs and gray hair? Because if it doesn’t mean that, I want a refund—”

The rich, deep sound of his laughter filled my heart. He bent down to nuzzle my waiting breast before cupping his hands under my behind, lifting me slightly off the seat. “You give me joy, Aisling. No other woman has ever done that.”

He pushed into my body, a hundred little nerve endings suddenly sitting up and paying attention, the burn of his body in mine echoed in the sensation of his fire shared between us. I wrapped my legs around him, welcoming the heat, feeling myself unfurling in the glow of his love, every moment in my life coming to culmination of that moment in time. I clutched the slick skin of his back as my orgasm burst upon me with shattering brilliance, wave after wave of ecstasy causing my muscles to tighten around him even as he cried out hoarsely against my neck. I watched for the exact moment when his body shifted, when the smooth skin of his chest and arms morphed into iridescent green and yellow scales. The back I was clutching changed in form as well, sharp spines bursting to life beneath my fingers. I had a glimpse of familiar emerald eyes smoky with rapture tilting slightly and elongating, long, powerful neck muscles straining upward as Drake flung back his head and roared.

It was the last thing I saw, the last thing I was aware of for a long, long time, until slowly, consciousness returned to me. My heartbeat pounded so loudly in my ears, I could scarcely hear over it. I melted in Drake’s arms, allowing him to pull me onto his lap where he had collapsed next to me.

He was back to normal, to all appearances a man, but I knew better. Beneath that gorgeous manflesh lay the heart of a dragon.

And it was all mine.

“I thought this was supposed to be all about you,” I murmured into his ear, giving his earlobe a little nibble just to show it I loved it.

“It is. I am well satisfied,” he answered, his eyes closed, his head resting against the edge of the tub.

I slid my hand along the wet planes of his chest, smiling to myself at the feeling of his heart beating fast beneath my hand. I was so relaxed, so sated, I felt utterly boneless, drifting along in a world that was made up solely of the wet man beneath me. “We need to have more Drake nights.”

“Amen.”

The pounding in my heart didn’t disappear. In fact, I noted with a frown as I lifted my head from where I’d been resting it against him, it seemed to get louder.

Drake gave a little start as he evidently heard the noise as well. “What?” he said in a loud voice, frowning into the shadows.

A crack of light appeared in the midst of the blackness, growing until it revealed the outline of a door. A hand shoved itself through the opening, the owner thankfully not following. The hand waggled a cell phone at us.

“It is Pál. He wishes to speak with you.”

I squinted at the door. “That sounds like István. What’s he doing in our dream?”

“What does he want?”

“He is following Kostya, as you asked. He says your brother has taken the phylactery…and Pál believes he is on his way to Gabriel.”

“No, no, no, no,” I said, frowning at the hand with the cell phone. “I am a tolerant woman, but I refuse to have István enter into our lovely erotic dreams. And I especially do not want any of this dragon politics stuff in my dreams. Make it go away, sweetie.”

The sight of Drake’s naked backside as he jerked open the door wide enough to take the phone made several things clear.

The light from beyond the door lit up the interior of the mysterious dream room. My face, shadowed and startled, stared back at me from a mirror. Familiar counters came into view…along with Jim’s dog bed (thankfully empty), a heated towel rack, and the negligee I’d worn when I went to bed earlier that night.

“This isn’t a dream,” I said, realization dawning with full horror in my mind.

“No. We came back early. I did not wish to spend an other night without you,” Drake said before speaking a Hungarian word into the phone.

“Oh, god. Then Kostya…”

Drake snarled a couple of words that I recognized as being not nice at all, slamming shut the phone. He hit the light switch in the bathroom, grabbing the pants he’d laid across a brass bench. “Kostya has gone to confront Gabriel.”

“Fires of Abaddon,” I said, appropriating Jim’s favorite oath as I scrambled out of the now-familiar black marble tub after him.

Drake paused at the door long enough to toss me my bathrobe. I gasped at the look of fury on his face. “He’s going to wish he was in Abaddon by the time I get through with him. Brother be damned, he has gone too far this time. This is tantamount to war.”