Page 5 of Licking Fire

She swallowed hard, staring at the door before her as if it were a gateway to hell. Maybe it was. Maybe it was just a gateway to the crazy farm if she was wrong. There had to be someone who would believe her. Someone who knew monsters were real.

Impulse had led her there, but now she wasn’t sure it was a good idea.

She was about to turn to leave…when the strongest urge to remain in place came over her. She’d spent weeks living in fear, and she should have been downright terrified to meet Rayer Drackos face to face, but the idea of leaving without seeing him seemed to scare her more.

“You can do this,” she said, trying to muster the additional courage. It didn’t quite work, but she didn’t run, so she considered it a win.

She was out of options.

She had nowhere left to go.

The mayor and local organized crime members had already made attempts on her life. When they’d failed to make her vanish by way of cement shoes in the river, they’d resorted to other means. They’d gotten her fired from her job at the paper, were in the process of getting her evicted, had frozen her financials, and they’d discredited her publically, making her accusations against them nothing more than running jokes around the city. They weren’t men to be toyed with, and she’d learned as much after her story broke.

She’d learned they weren’t really men at all.

Rayer Drackos would either take one look at her and decide she needed his help, or he’d hand her over to those wanting to harm her.

Then there was always the third option: he’d call the authorities to report a crazy woman was in his home, ranting about the impossible and full of conspiracy theories.

She’d be locked up for sure then.

She didn’t have firm proof Rayer Drackos was the one person the mayor feared, but everything continued to point back to the eccentric billionaire, and she was out of money and time. Besides, if he was who she thought he might be, then he actually could help her.

The mayor wasn’t human—and if she was right, neither was Mr. Drackos.

She needed help on that matter and possible clarity on another. She touched her bag. The journal her grandfather had left her was tucked safely inside. She’d kept it with her, fearful of leaving it out of her sight, especially since her apartment had been broken into four times since she’d brought forth claims of corruption at the city government level. She had more than one journal, but had always been told to keep them hidden separately from one another in the event they were discovered. She’d listened. The other two were hidden in the city, and as far as she knew, they were still safe.

The accusations in her article that had run online and in the local paper had caused a firestorm. From there, she’d had threats leveled against her before an outright attempt on her life had been made.

Alondra swallowed hard, gently rubbing her bandaged upper right arm. She’d been doing her best to keep the wound clean. Her body was battered and bruised as well. She was exhausted, hungry, and injured. She needed rest, some food, and medical attention, but she couldn’t go to a hospital. The mayor would have people looking for her there.

No.

For now, she’d need to hope for help of a different kind. She needed to hope legends and fantasy were real. If not, there was a very real chance she’d not live to see Christmas, let alone have to worry about spending it by herself.

Her fingers skimmed her grandfather’s journal. If what he had written was true, Rayer Drackos was a man of honor and great power.

Closing her eyes tight, she wished with all she had that the words in the journal were true, even if it meant everything she thought she knew about the world was wrong.

That men who could change into dragons were real.

And possibly, one of those men could protect her from the mayor and his men, who were anything but human.

“Please be real,” she whispered, lifting her hand to knock on the door.

The door opened—and she froze.

There, filling the doorframe, seeming impossibly large, was a man who looked nearly identical to sketches her grandfather had done in his journal. A journal he’d written when he was in his early twenties—some fifty years ago.

Her breath caught as she soaked in the sight of the man before her. All the excitement, all the planning and endless rehearsing on what she’d say when she was finally before him, went out the window.

Rayer Drackos was gorgeous.

And he’d not aged in the slightest, from the sketches to now.

Long, slightly curly black hair hung to his chin, partially eclipsing one side of his incredibly handsome face. He had strong features, and nothing on him appeared anything less than chiseled. The red of his shirt looked stunning against his tawny skin. The top three buttons were undone, showing off his hairless chest. She had to rip her gaze upward again to keep from being obvious.

When she reached his turquoise eyes, she gasped. She’d never seen anything like them before. They were so intense and so locked on her that she felt weak in the knees. The sketches were in black and white, so she’d not been prepared for just how much seeing him in living color would affect her.

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