Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93267 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93267 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
“Oh, hell no. Man was promptly fired. Then sent to the hospital for treatment. No one trusted him afterward. I understand he had a hard time getting hired again.”
“What, no one wanted to risk him blowing them up?”
“Hard to imagine, right?”
Salem snickered and sipped his wine. “It’s damn lucky they hired you, above anyone else. You were able to put the fire out, after all. A human expert would have struggled to keep people safe.”
“I am a favorite for them to hire for this reason.”
“I bet.”
He really did look entertained by this. In fact, this was the most relaxed Gregori had ever seen him. It made him want to capitalize on the whole situation.
“I’ve got the movie saved on my cloud drive, if you want to watch it.”
“Wait, did they actually use the footage in the movie?”
“They did. Director said no sense in wasting it.”
“Ha! That’s hilarious.” Salem paused, glass in hand, his expression one of temptation. “I don’t understand Portuguese, though.”
“I can turn on English subtitles.”
“Oh, in that case, you’re on.”
Looked like his home date was going swimmingly. Gregori hid a smile behind his pizza. See? Pushing Salem was not the right choice. If he kept laying out breadcrumbs for the man, though, Salem would come to him in no time.
Gregori would bet on that.
Stuck in rush hour traffic, Salem let his mind roam. He didn’t need many brain cells to switch from gas to brake and back again. It had been almost two weeks since he and Gregori had struck the “roommates with benefits” deal, and honestly? Salem hadn’t expected Gregori to last the two weeks. No one ever did. It was actually a little alarming how well things were going. Gregori seemed happy to feed him, and of course they were having sex on the regular because, well, obvious reasons. Gregori had stopped pushing about the mate thing and now they were just hanging out. Salem had been surprised by how much he’d come to genuinely like the dragon. He was a very interesting man who was competent at a lot of things—something of a weakness of Salem’s; he adored the competent—and his brand of humor was so akin to Salem’s, he’d gotten Salem to laugh quite a few times. When Salem did get snarky, he snarked right back.
It would be far too easy to fall for him.
And that was very much a problem.
Salem gave his cheek a light slap and muttered, “Focus, you. Focus. Do not fall for his charm. You know you don’t do relationships.”
Sadly, his dating history made Sam’s look like textbook perfection. At least before Dimitri, Sam had managed several long-term relationships. Dimitri, of course, being the finisher, as he would let Sam go over Dimitri’s own rotting corpse. Salem’s longest relationship had lasted three months. And half of the time had been spent in blistering screaming matches. Salem was not easy to love—he knew this about himself—and he would avoid dragging someone into a toxic relationship like he would avoid poison. It was far better to be a serial dater. One date, two, everyone got off and they could part ways amicably. No heartbreak.
The whole pep talk to himself only succeeded in depressing Salem. He dragged more than walked into work, irritated the workday was only beginning. He had several post-op check-ins, one surgery for a routine tonsil removal, plus probably something else he was forgetting off the top of his head.
He used his ID card to open the back door, headed up via elevator, and stepped off at the children’s wing, all purely on autopilot. He walked along, messenger bag over his shoulder, thoughts only on getting to his office and checking the schedule.
Then he heard it.
No, surely not, he was just hearing things—
A bright, deep laugh echoed through the hallway.
Salem turned his head, much like the scary mannequin head in a haunted house, absolutely aghast to hear that laugh in his workplace.
What the hell was Gregori doing here?!
Salem abruptly spun on his toes and jogged along the hallway. He had a suspicion of where the laugh came from. There weren’t many places people off the street could go unless patient or staff, so for Gregori to have weaseled his way in, he was likely—bingo.
The children’s wing had an absolutely huge outdoor deck that took up most of the courtyard space. It was fully encased in glass to protect against the winter elements, with large sliding glass doors that could be opened in good weather—a protected way to get all the kids some Sunny D and somewhere to go other than their depressing hospital rooms.
Salem had passed by this place thousands of times. On a few rare occasions he’d stepped in to speak with a patient or family, but never had he just stopped and watched. He’d also never realized how big this courtyard was because he’d never expected it to be able to hold a fully transformed dragon.