Dragon Fall: Masters of the Flame 3 (Mating Fever) by Elsa Jade

Author:Elsa Jade [Jade, Elsa]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Red Circle Ink
Published: 2016-04-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

And to think she’d giggled at the thought of Bale sneaking through the Keep in just his cape, yet here she was doing the same thing.

Payback was a bitch.

Happy hour, she texted her friends. On me.

She was almost done with her third drink by the time Piper and Anjali sauntered into the Badlands bar ten minutes later.

Anjali eyed the level in the glass. “Are we sure this is happy?”

“I will be in another five minutes,” Esme groused.

Piper slid into the chair across from her. “Spill, girlfriend.” When Esme knocked back the rest of the drink, Piper grimaced. “Uh, I didn’t mean spill it that way.”

Esme touched the cool rim of the glass to her lip. It reminded her of the edge if a scale… “I only wanted to experience what every other woman has.”

“To be fair,” Anjali said, “not exactly every woman has had sex with a dragon-shifter.”

“Shh.” Esme glanced around anxiously. “Someone might overhear.”

“Let’s have a code word,” Piper suggested. “Instead of saying dragon” —she lifted her eyebrows when Esme hissed at her—“we’ll say… Uh, something with serpents?”

Anjali snickered. “How about trouser snake?”

“He said I could be his solarys,” Esme blurted.

Her friends were silent while the server brought the next round of drinks: martini for her, rum for Anjali, daiquiri for Piper.

“Would that be so bad?” Piper asked at last.

Esme goggled at her. “Yeesss.”

“Why?” Instead of knocking it back as she usually did, Anjali sipped at her drink. “You were born to be a queen.”

“That’s just it.” Esme clutched her glass. If she broke it, it would be exactly like a dragon’s cutting scale. “I was born to it, it’s what I was meant for, and…I still wasn’t good enough. Bale thinks he needs me to save his life, save the dragonkin. That’s the only reason I’d be his solarys.”

Anjali took another sip and said something that sounded very much like “Only? Boo hoo” into her glass.

Usually Esme let her friends’ eye-rolling pass, feeling ashamed to complain. But not this time. “Why do you think my eating was so disordered back in school?”

“Because of our impossible cultural standards of beauty?” Anjali mused.

Esme shook her head. “Because I used to think if I was thin enough, maybe I could slip out of my cage.”

“You almost died on us,” Piper said quietly. “Twice.”

“Maybe that would’ve been my escape.” Esme looked down at her candy apple martini with the swizzle-sticked cherry. “Living with you two finally made me realize there was more to live for. And when I started writing grants I felt like I was actually making a difference. But then…” She pushed the drink away. “Then I let a warlock spellbind me. And now I’m letting a dragon lord do the same, just in a different way. But I failed Lars—”

“Good for you,” Anjali interjected.

The alcohol made Esme wobbly inside, and she closed her eyes as if that would help. “But what if I fail the dragons too? I’m supposed to be Bale’s true mate, but what if I’m

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