Love Burns by Georgette St. Clair Read Free Book Online

minutes if he hadn’t got it out.
    She could hear a sizzling sound coming from the wound, and he shouted out curses in a foreign accent that she didn’t recognize. Still cursing, he ran for the door, crouched over. She fired again and missed, and then he was out the front door.
    Once outside, he shifted, and his enormous form spread out across her front lawn. He thrust his snaky neck forward so his head was almost through the doorway, and sent a blast of flame into the living room. She was able to dodge it, but her sofa and coffee table burst into flames. She responded with an ice blast, quickly extinguishing her furniture.
    Outside her house, she heard a loud shout. The dragon must have woken her neighbors when he shifted. He quickly flapped his wings and flew off, slicing through the night and disappearing into the treeline.
    She groaned. She lived next door to Ermengarde.
    Olivia wouldn’t have called 9-1-1, because she was in her father’s jurisdiction and she didn’t want him to know about it, but Ermengarde definitely would.
    She sank down on her doorstep to wait.
    So, another dragon attack. Were they related? The first dragon that attacked her hadn’t even been in Nevada. She’d assumed at the time that it was a random attack. But she had told a lot of people where she was going, so in theory someone could have sent the dragon to find her. But why? She had no money, nobody would inherit anything, and she hadn’t been mayor at the time of the first attack, so it couldn’t be political.
    Now that she was mayor, another dragon had broken into her house. Could he have simply been a burglar? And where the hell was he from? What was that accent?
    She saw Ermengarde hurrying over, in her pajamas…carrying a frying pan. Ermengarde was a heavy-set human woman in her sixties, a widow, and she was wearing pink pajamas and fluffy bunny slippers with ears.
    “No need to run, Ermengarde, I’m fine,” Olivia called out. “The burglar is gone now.”
    “Sorry I couldn’t get here faster,” Ermengarde panted, slowing down. “I had to call the centurions first. And then I had to find my slippers. And arm myself.”
    “What were you planning on doing with that frying pan?” Olivia asked skeptically. “Were you going to make him breakfast?”
    “Of course not. I would never make breakfast for a burglar. I was going to bash his head in,” Ermengarde said, waving the frying pan around.
    Of course, the dragon would have fried her where she stood, but at least Ermengarde meant well. She sank down on the front steps next to Olivia, to wait for the centurions to arrive. Far off in the distance, sirens wailed.
    To Olivia’s surprise, she saw a giant fire dragon flapping through the sky in her direction – and she could tell by the size and shape that it wasn’t the one that had just tried to roast her. Its wings sliced the air, creating buffeting downdrafts that whipped up dust from Olivia’s tiny front yard and ruffled her hair. It hovered for a moment, swinging its massive head on its serpentlike neck to take in the scene laid out below it. Then it folded its wings, swooping towards the earth frighteningly fast before suddenly unfurling its wings again and landing in her front yard with a loud thud.
    Its scales were a gorgeous, polished crimson, except on its head and tail and claws, where they tapered away to the matte black of cinders. Its wings were rich membranes of shot silk, their scarlet seeming the black-red of blood in the silvery light.
    The dragon shimmered and then turned into Calder – stark naked in the moonlight. He was broad-chested and had the thighs of a Greek god. His thick cock dangled from a nest of dark curls, and Olivia had to struggle to tear her gaze away from him.
    “Oh, my,” Ermengarde whispered.
    “Yeah, yeah, I’ve seen better,” Olivia muttered.
    Ermengarde stared at her. “You have? When?”
    “Okay, never,” Olivia sighed as Calder hurried over.
    She stood up as he hurried up