He twisted on his seat and grinned at the old woman. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, tipping an invisible hat to her. “Keep your panties on.”
She hit her horn again and flipped him the bird.
“I respect your feistiness, love.” He dropped her a wink and turned back toward the traffic lights, skimming his gaze over the apartment building beside him as he did so.
A woman watched him from one of the building’s windows.
Sexual hunger unlike any Ari had ever experienced before gushed through him at the sight of her. An inferno of pleasure devoured him. His body seemed to ignite with need and urgency and want.
Curves. Curves and dips and hips and breasts and thighs…
Lust raced through him anew, carnal and potent and demanding. His hands burned, branded by the mere thought of cupping and squeezing the unknown woman’s breasts and hips and arse. His cock pulsed. His mind whirled.
His dragon—the base, ancient creature—roared inside his mind, lunging for release. Craving the woman. Craving…
Curves. And hips. And…and…
He stared up at her, incapable of moving. Frozen by her existence even as his body burned with sexual want.
Their eyes clashed over the distance.
His heightened vision locked on hers, and his heart beat faster.
Green. Her eyes were green. Hazel green and framed by thick auburn lashes. Green and full of a hunger as powerful as his. Hunger and confusion and—
She jerked away from the window, gone from his sight.
His dragon roared, furious at being denied. Ari’s body reacted the same, the hungry lust burning through him growing hotter, more demanding. A rain of icy pinpricks washed over him, followed by a tsunami of heat.
Behind him, the elderly woman leaned on her horn again, longer this time.
“Fuck,” Ari muttered, flinging his Harley forward full-throttle through the intersection.
The pull on his gut, his groin, his very existence, deepened. Turned painful. His croi seemed to swell, charged with timeless magic and Fate.
Grinding his teeth, Ari scanned the busy street for a place to pull over.
He understood now, the powerful, impossible-to-deny draw to Harper Street and its reaction on his body. He knew what it meant.
Fire Mate. He’d found the woman destined by ancient magic to be his partner for the rest of his life.
There were many things a dragon shifter could control, and many things a dragon shifter could manipulate, but the power of the mating fire was not one of them.
Dragons could lose their sanity trying. Ari had more than once cleaned up the mess left by those foolish enough to believe they could deny the force of the fated mating.
When a dragon shifter finally encountered their fated mate, when the mating fire began—a twelve-hour period of intense sexual frenzy—well, trying to refuse it, ignore it, ended in pain. Sometimes insanity.
Sometimes death.
Ignoring the mating fire long enough caused a dragon shifter to transform into their dragon form regardless of where they were. If that happened, in the throes of the fire’s heat…
A shudder of cold dread rocked Ari. It threaded through the lust searing his lungs, his veins.
Mating fire. The early stages of the mating fire consumed him, claimed him.
Fuck.
He was in the mating fire and there was nothing he could do to stop it.
All he could do was find the woman and surrender to the magic and lust of their joining. Find her and make her his until neither of them had the strength to stand.
And hope to hell Colin didn’t find them while they were at it.
2
The hunk on the Harley had looked up at her.
Holy crap, the hunk on the Harley had glanced up at her and something had happened. Something…weird.
Jilly pressed her hands to her stomach, her heart wild, her breaths rapid.
What the hell was going on? The second his gaze had found her gawking at him through her living room window, she’d suddenly been hornier than she’d ever been in her life. Her whole body had seemed to be completely awash with pleasure. She’d felt flushed and tingly and breathless and…and moany and aroused all at once. And not just watching-good-porn aroused. No, nothing that sedate. She’d felt like she was in the middle of the most incredible sex of her life with a sexual maestro for a partner, about to burn up with concentrated lust.
Chewing on her bottom lip, Jilly darted her stare around the room. There needed to be an explanation. A girl didn’t just damn near orgasm because some sexy guy on a bike looked at her.
Perhaps Derek had slipped something into her tea while—
Derek didn’t go anywhere near your tea, Jilly. You didn’t go anywhere near your tea. You didn’t even finish making your tea.
A tingling rush licked over her girly parts, as if an invisible tongue stroked her flesh there.
Jilly gasped at the surreal sensation and unexpected pleasure.
Her nipples beaded. Her belly fluttered.
Pressing her thighs together, a frown pulling at her eyebrows, she ran her hand over her stomach. The need to touch herself flooded through her, potent and demanding.
She whimpered, fighting to keep her fingers away from her sex. She didn’t oppose self-gratification, but on her terms. This…thing happening to her now didn’t feel like her terms. Whatever this thing was, it felt…
Incredible. Amazing.
Freaky.
Perfect.
Swallowing at the unsettling thought, Jilly removed her hands from her body.
“Screw this,” she muttered, making her way toward her bedroom, her sex throbbing with a hunger beyond her comprehension.
Whatever was going on with her libido, she stood no chance of concentrating throughout the day until she dealt with it, and at this point in time, Mr. Rabbit was just the thing needed for dealing. She’d give her vibrator a workout and then open up her laptop to see if she could discover more on the dragon thing getting Derek all in a lather.
Although seriously, the only dragon she was interested in was tattooed on her Harley hunk’s arm.
By the time she made it to her bedroom, the flush of arousal heated her whole body and a sticky sheen of perspiration slicked her skin.
“Okay, shower instead,” she muttered,
