Free Dragon's Flame by Jory Strong Page B

Gaige’s head shake and Crew’s eye roll said they weren’t fooled.
    “I’m good,” Saffron said, an edge in her voice as she stepped to the side, freeing herself from his grip.
    He suppressed a growl. Glowered at Gaige and Crew. Inhaled.
    The scent of his mate’s earlier arousal lingered. But it didn’t seem to be intensifying.
    That was acceptable. He wasn’t lavishing amorous attention on her at the moment. And appearances mattered to her. According to her, they were supposed to be acting professional.
    His sanguinity lasted all of a heartbeat.
    “Catch up to you in a minute,” she said, angling away from him and toward an older Hispanic man.
    Her light steps and hurried pace had smoke working its way into Taine’s nostrils. He sucked it back into his lungs and forced himself to join Gaige and Crew rather than chase after his troublesome mate.
    They didn’t hide their amusement at watching him watch Saffron.
    The hand she offered the human turned into a quick hug and a small tendril of smoke accompanied Taine’s growl.
    Gaige shook his head. “Walk away my friend. Even if the two of you bond, love means that you will never again be in control.”
    “I am in control of the situation,” he said without glancing away from Saffron.
    Crew laughed. “The delusion continues.”
    “Comes with the territory,” Gaige said. “Do me a favor, if I ever look at a woman the way Taine is looking at his human, lock me in a cell until I come to my senses.”
    “If you’ll do the same for me.”
    “Agreed.”
    Taine ignored them. Fought the urge to join Saffron as she spoke to the human.
    An unbearable time—measured in minutes by his companions but by agonized self-restraint for him—passed before Saffron returned to his side.
    Taine struggled not to pull her into his arms and smother the traces of the other man’s scent with his own. His control held primarily because she didn’t smell of lust.
    When he was sure it wouldn’t come out as a growl, he asked, “Who is he?”
    “Miguel Gutierrez. He’s an arson investigator.”
    Crew’s eyes glittered with amusement. He offered a hand and introduced himself to her. Gaige did the same, then tilted his head in Kristof’s direction and said, “That’s Kristof. He’ll tell you himself, he’s IRE’s best sorcerer.”
    The sorcerer was too absorbed in studying the area around him to acknowledge the introduction. Crew asked Saffron, “Did Gutierrez tell you anything?”
    “He thinks the house was completely empty of furnishings. He was more interested in what you knew.”
    “Right now, that’s nothing.” Crew glanced at Kristof then at Taine, leaving it up to him how much to reveal.
    Taine lightly curled his hand around his mate’s forearm, earning a smirk from Crew. “This was a major working. A complex spell can spread across a large area and require that nothing be touching the lines, which explains the empty house. This won’t be where the sorcerer lived.”
    “So spells are written? Not spoken?”
    “It depends on the spell,” Kristof said, drawing their attention to him.
    He pulled what looked like fine, white netting from a yellow knapsack with a black multi-circle hazard symbol stitched onto the front. Completely liberated, the woven magic was circular, some twenty feet in diameter, and a costly use of power. But given that there were humans other than Saffron on site, the netting would allow Kristof to reveal pieces of the spent spell while allowing observers to see something they could understand and label advanced, even alien, technology.
    IRE wasn’t charged with the goal of increasing human awareness of the supernatural. Though as a division of Supernatural Operations, their work sometimes had that effect.
    In moderation, revelations were acceptable. Anything beyond moderation would earn an ass-kicking, maybe all the way back to the offender’s home world.
    “This working had a focal point,” Kristof told Saffron, his gaze lingering a