Light Dragons 02 - The Unbearable Lightness of Dragons

have.
    “I imagine you’ve seen Thala?” I asked, pretending for all I was worth that nothing whatsoever was the matter. “Is she awake?”
    “Barely. It appears she has been drugged heavily. She is also handcuffed.” He breathed loudly through his nose for a few seconds. “She demanded I remove you from the house immediately. I refused. What is that demon doing here, why is it in human form, and what the hell have you done to Thala?”
    “Jim came with me to help with Thala. I couldn’t carry her by myself. Would you like some breakfast? Pavel made scones earlier, but if you’d prefer something with more substance, I can whip up—”
    “Mate!” Baltic bellowed again, effectively squashing my attempt at innocence.
    I sighed and stood up, wrapping my arms around his waist before kissing his chin. “Jim is in human form because my magic is still wonky. Thala is drugged and handcuffed because she got nasty about us rescuing her once she found out she had to come with me—something I don’t quite understand—and I lost the key to the handcuffs, so I couldn’t undo them before you got up this morning. Pavel, we owe you for a pair of handcuffs, too.”
    Baltic glared down at me for a few moments, then hoisted me upward, and kissed the breath right out of my body, filling me with his dragon fire. By the time he set me back on my feet, I was a bit dazed with both his action and the ferocity of the kiss. “You are jealous,” he said, looking very pleased. “It does not surprise me, since you were always so.”
    “I’m not at all—”
    “You need not fear that Thala holds my affection as you do. She is the one who resurrected me, and thus I owe her a debt of gratitude. That is all.”
    “I didn’t drug her because of—”
    “She helped me reacquaint myself with the world, and find Pavel, and for both I am grateful, but not to the extent that you must keep her drugged and handcuffed to satisfy your need to separate us.” Baltic gave my behind a little squeeze. “I am bound to you, mate, and no other female can change that.”
    “Yes, I’m aware of that, but—”
    “Excellent. You will cease being jealous of her now that you understand that my affections do not waver. Pavel, do you have an extra key? Good. Let us go release Thala, and then she can tell us what the wyverns questioned her about.”
    Baltic marched off with Pavel in tow, the latter grinning at me as he passed.
    “I am not jealous!” I yelled after the two men. “I never was! Oh, for the love of the saints, sometimes that man drives me bonkers.”
    “Yeah, but the makeup sex is always good, huh?”
    I shot Jim a quelling look. “It was bad enough when you said things like that while in dog form. Now it’s just creepy. We have to pick up Brom in three hours—that gives us a bit of time to work on changing you back. If you could call Aisling and tell her that we’ll leave you with May and Gabriel, I’ll go make sure that Baltic got Thala unlocked and then meet you out in the side garden.”
    “Why the garden?” it asked as I headed for the stairs.
    “I think best around plants. And . . . er . . . there’s nothing to break if my magic goes weird again.”
    “Nothing except me,” Jim said forlornly, but it obediently rose and went to the phone.
    “Hmm. I wonder . . .” I marched up the stairs puzzling over the thought that something other than the interdiction could be seriously wrong with my magic, which would explain why the summoning of the First Dragon didn’t work. “It worked before, though. What’s changed since the sárkány ?”
    The sight of Baltic and Pavel holding up a still muzzy-headed Thala between them drove that thought out of my brain. Despite Baltic’s smug look (which I decided was more tolerable than a pissed-off look), I helped them get her downstairs and into the kitchen, and when I left them, Baltic was trying to pour milky coffee down her gullet while Pavel was likewise shoving in bite-sized bits of scone.
    “Thank god she’s not mortal and can’t choke to death,” I said to myself as Thala sputtered out bits of coffee-laden scone.
    I found Jim contemplating a lovely yellow rosebush.
    “Don’t even think about it!” I warned.
    It sighed, its shoulders slumped. “I wouldn’t. There’s no fun in peeing on things with a human package. It’s just so ordinary.”
    “Moving past that, let’s get this over with before Baltic gets Thala awake enough that she can talk without spewing