Light Dragons 01 - Love in the Time of Dragons

kicked with both its back legs, loosening my hold on its mouth.
    “I’m being demon-napped!”
    “OK,” Brom said to Baltic after a moment’s thought. The two nodded, just as if that settled the matter.
    “Aisliiiing!”
    “Be quiet, you pestilent little furball!” I yelled, wrestling it to the floor of the car as Baltic, finally noticing Suzanne, who now stood with her hands on her hips calling for Jim, put his foot on the gas and shot out into traffic, pulling a U-turn that narrowly missed sideswiping a Harrods van. “You brought this on yourself! If you hadn’t been so nosy, I wouldn’t have had to do this!”
    “Aisling is going to go nutso-cuckoo on your butt when she finds out what you’re doing!” Jim said, deliberately wiping its slobbery lips on me as I got onto the seat, leaving long, slimy tendrils of drool on my arm.
    “You think so? Well, maybe your precious Aisling just needs to watch out, because I’m not some pushover, you know. I’m a mage, and mated to the baddest ass in the dragon world,” I said as I looked around for something to wipe off the slobber.
    Brom looked speculatively at Baltic. “That’s you?”
    “Yes. If you were my son, as you should have been, you, too, would have a badass.”
    “Hmm,” Brom said, still thoughtful.
    There was nothing in the back of the car, no tissue, no towel, no napkin. Nothing. I eyed the demon’s fur.
    “You wouldn’t!” it gasped.
    “If you give me any more grief, I’ll do a whole lot more than smear you with your own saliva!” I threatened, bending down to wipe my hand on the floor mat.
    It sucked in its breath. “Geez, and I thought Ash was mean! You ever want a job as a demon lord, you’d fit right in. Hey, is that your nipple?”
    I eeped and jerked upright, tucking my breast back into my shirt. Evidently it did not pass the bending-over test after all.
    “Keep your eyes to yourself, and—Baltic!” I screamed and pointed at the side of a building we were about to hit because he had turned to look back at Jim’s comment about my nipple. “Eyes on the road, mister!”
    “I specifically asked you not to bare your breasts to others,” he said gruffly, casting angry little glances at me in the rearview mirror.
    “Jim isn’t a person, and I didn’t exactly bare myself—oh, it doesn’t matter. Just keep your eyes on the road.”
    “It is difficult. These people do not drive properly,” he said, transferring his glare to a young man on a scooter who flipped him off as he zoomed past us.
    “City traffic is always bad . . . wait a minute. What do you mean they don’t know how to drive properly? You do know how to drive, don’t you?”
    “Of course I know how to drive. I am doing it now, am I not?”
    “Oh, man,” Jim said, covering its eyes with its paw. “We’re all gonna die.”
    “Yes, you are driving,” I said, “but since I’m the one who drove us into town this mor—red light!”
    Baltic slammed on the brakes, sending us fishtailing into the middle of the intersection. Luckily, the light had just changed, so the cross traffic had time to avoid hitting us.
    “Will you stop distracting me with irrelevant things?” Baltic said, irritation dripping off each syllable.
    “A red light is not irrelevant. Do you have a driver’s license?” I demanded.
    “I am eleven hundred years old,” he snarled, jerking hard on the steering wheel as he sent us spinning out of the intersection. “I don’t need a mundane license to drive!”
    “We’re doomed, I tell you, doomed!” Jim wailed.
    “That is a pedestrian crossing!” I yelped as Baltic came close to mowing down two elderly ladies and their little wheely baskets of shopping.
    “I did not strike them,” Baltic said, his tone injured. “You make too much of a few near misses, Ysolde.”
    I looked back. One of the little old ladies was staggering to the zebra crossing barrier, her hand to her chest, while the other was making an extremely rude hand gesture at us. “Right, that’s it. Pull over.”
    “Why?”
    “When my fabulous form is crushed and burned into an unrecognizable blob of goo, would you please tell Aisling so she can summon me back?” Jim asked.
    “Oh, be quiet. We’re not going to d— Baltic !”
    “What now?” he snarled, his teeth gritted and his knuckles white on the steering wheel as he drove in a serpentine fashion down the road, ignoring the blaring horns, anatomically impossible suggestions, and shrieks of horror.
    “This