Dragon Fall: Masters of the Flame 3 (Mating Fever) Read Online Free PDF

that worry you, since you are the clan’s enforcer? Rave thinks she will be my death.”
    “Rave is a mother hen—a big, scaly mother hen,” Torch said. “And maybe right. But I think there are worse fates to fear than death.” With the bluntness that had always been his way, he added, “She could be your solarys.”
    “I would not wish that on her,” Bale growled. “Look at me.”
    Torch’s jaw clenched. “Let her look at you. Let her choose.”
    “In the old days, there was no choosing. The dragonkin took.”
    After another clench of his jaws, Torch abruptly grinned. “Yeah, let me know how that works out for you. And welcome to the club.” He spun on his heel back toward the elevator.
    If the virgin sacrifices now ruled the dragonlords… Bale smashed another century of stone out of the column. Perhaps it was best if he let himself be taken by the blight.
    That would be far too easy, though. Dragons flew into storms and they mined for treasure, but they never took the easy path. He’d thought death from the petralys was inevitable. Until…he saw her. And touched her.
    “Who’s the dragon?” he growled out. “You’re the dragon. Time you remembered that.” No matter how much time he had left.
    But first, he’d find his might’ve-been solarys and send her back to bed.
     
    ***
     
    She was up by a thousand dollars. Woo-hoo! And it was hers, all hers.
    Good thing she’d found that twenty in her purse since the slots here only took large denomination tokens. She’d turned that first twenty into a bunch of tokens and kept feeding them into the bright, cheerfully jangly machine. If she lost, she didn’t know what she’d do. She couldn’t use her credit cards for fear of being tracked down, and she was relying on Anj’s buff dragon boyfriend to make sure no one whisked her away in the middle of the night.
    Unless she decided she wanted to be whisked, because, day-um, she was feeling lucky tonight.
    Had she ever been lucky? Other than being born with an engraved platinum spoon in her mouth?
    Poor little rich girl. She wanted to kick herself for the self-pity but then she’d just have to feel bad about that too because it’d probably be a wimpy kick. Better to watch the whirling cherries and sling back the free drinks, which weren’t super strong but they all came with a real, ripe, red cherry on a swizzle stick so they had that going for them.
    Okay, maybe she was a little drunk even on the not-strong drinks. A silver lining of almost dying of alchemical warlock magic? But she’d always been a lightweight, in more ways than one.
    She pushed the button on the machine again. So much less phallic than yanking on the lever, but it kind of made her wistful too—why didn’t she have anyone to push her button? She stared fiercely at the spinning symbols.
    “C’mon, cherries,” she muttered. “Cuuuuum on.”
    The machine dinged happily and spit out more tokens.
    “Hoo-yeah! I am sooo friggin’ lucky tonight…” One of the tokens bounced away, and she sloshed vodka out of the glass onto her hand as she bent to chase it.
    And found herself staring down at the gilt-edged token between a pair of awesome-looking male shoes. Like high-end designer Italian loafers, except no brand she’d ever seen, and with a unique medieval bent. She tilted her head to follow the dark, fitted trousers—bespoke, for sure, considering the fine detailing of the two vertical rows of buttons to either side of…
    Uh… Oh.
    She snapped her gaze all, all, all the way up, past a broad chest encased in fine, black linen, to enigmatic eyes as black as the obsidian cabochon in her ring. Sharp cheekbones flanked a strong, aquiline nose above a masculine mouth as sculpted and burnished as the gryphon in the Amber Suite bathroom.
    The drunk part of her wanted to rub him. Alllll of him.
    The rest of her—drunk or not—wanted to sink her hands into the waves of dark hair falling over his forehead and hold tight.
    Except…she