Page 6 of Flame it Up

Pyrus unbuttoned his jacket and shook his head as she offered him a glass. “Perhaps we should save the celebration for later,” he said with a charming wink.

Gerri gave him an equally charming grin back and then nodded with approval.

“This isn’t my first rodeo,” Gerri said, leaning the glass on her leg. “I have known shifters like you before … rich, a bit lonely, a bit cynical. And I never fail to find them the one thing that makes them whole.”

A smirk grew slowly like ivy on an old house on Pyrus’s lips. “And what is that?”

Gerri frowned, amused. “Well, love, of course,” she smirked.

“Love,” Pyrus said, gazing out the window. “Of course.”

“You’ve heard the term?” Gerri quipped.

Pyrus shrugged. “I have heard it, yes,” he said, feeling far away. “I am a dragon shifter, after all. I’ve just never experienced it, I suppose.”

Pyrus always wondered why he was so quick to divulge personal information to Gerri. He thought maybe that was her power. She sat opposite him with a nonjudgmental stare, a look that said, “tell me everything.”

“Never been in love?” Gerri said.

Pyrus shook his head. “I put it in the category of unicorns and vampires,” Pyrus said. “Maybe it exists, but probably not for me.”

Gerri nodded, a smug smile on her face. “I will certainly enjoy proving you wrong.”

Pyrus hoped she was right, though, on the surface, he didn’t want to admit that he was holding out that kind of hope. If it hadn’t happened in his five hundred years of living, why on Earth would it happen now?

The sanctuary was a fair distance from the main city, so Pyrus and Gerri chatted between comfortable silences where only the hum of the air conditioning could be heard between them. As a billionaire entrepreneur, Pyrus had learned the art of chitchat and could probably teach a Harvard class on it for up-and-coming creative minds.

A few minutes away from the event, Gerri received a call. She removed her phone from her clutch and placed it on her leg, letting it speak aloud within the car. “Gerri speaking,” she said with a sip of her drink.

A frantic voice on the other end of the line severed the serenity of the cool car ride. “Ms. Wilder,” the voice said, “we have a situation going on here … the influencers arrived early, and they are … they’re disrupting everything.”

Gerri’s calm demeanor remained as she leaned toward the phone. “Tell me everything,” she said firmly. “Breathe in and out slowly and tell me what’s going on.”

It seemed that the woman on the phone did just that, and Pyrus could hear the sounds of jovial, immature laughter echoing behind her.

“They’re harassing the women, knocking over tables. I don’t know what to do.”

Pyrus’s ease had been shattered too. He squeezed his fists, the nails digging into his palm sharply.

“Where is security?” Gerri demanded.

“I … I don’t know,” the woman said, her voice about to crack with fear.

There was nothing Pyrus hated more than the innocent people being bothered. He widened his eyes at Gerri and spoke over the person on the phone. “How far out are we?”

Gerri looked at the time, then shifted her gray, thoughtful eyes back at him. “About fifteen minutes.”

Pyrus’s dragon rumbled. “I really like this suit,” he said, removing the jacket and folding it neatly beside him.

“We will be there soon, Megan. Don’t you worry,” Gerri said before hanging up.

She did not question what Pyrus was about to do. She had really meant it when she said she’d met shifters like him before.

“Stop the car,” Pyrus said, removing his dress shirt and unbuckling his pants.

Gerri ordered the driver to stop, and by that time, Pyrus was just in his underwear. Gerri was looking at him with gratitude but not objectification. Her eyes glimmered with some kind of knowing Pyrus couldn’t quite put his finger on.

“Take me on a date first before you get naked,” Gerri said, smirking over her glass.

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