Love Burns Read Online Free

with annoyance. “I told you to wait outside. This is between me and my daughter. If I’d known you were going to do that, I wouldn’t have let you come.”
    Nora shrugged. “You couldn’t exactly stop me.”
    Quinton’s eyes glowed blue and the pupils narrowed to black vertical slits. “I am your Dominus,” he growled. Most dragons belonged to clans, and the Dominus was the leader of the clan.
    Nora met his gaze fearlessly, but she inclined her head in a brief nod to his authority. “And she is my niece. And the mayor of North Lyndvale, whether you like it or not. Having her sit in a jail cell is an embarrassment for our family and our town.”
    As Nora walked over to the counter to pay Olivia’s bail, Quinton turned his attention back to his daughter. Now that he had lost the ability to threaten her with jail, his tone turned wheedling.
    “I’m just trying to do what’s best for you,” he said to her, and the whine in his voice was like nails on a chalkboard. “Being mayor is stressful, and you don’t need to work for a living.” He was talking about the offer from Ichabod Tremaine, the wealthy old dragon shifter who wanted to marry her.
    She felt a surge of disgust well up inside her. She’d just gotten back to town, hadn’t seen her father in twenty years, and he’d immediately started trying to pimp her out. Of course he wanted her to marry Ichabod; under the medieval laws that governed dragon shifters, he’d collect an extremely generous dowry for marrying off a fertile female from his clan.
    “I enjoy working, I’ve always worked, and I know I can do a lot of good for our town. Given the unanimous vote to elect me, it seems as if they were really eager for some fresh blood.” She met her father’s gaze challengingly as she said that.
    Quinton knew that the town council would love to see him out the door too. He was such a bully that even his former allies were sick of him.
    “Listen, you ungrateful…” He grabbed her arm, and unfortunately he grabbed it right where she’d been attacked. Weird, random dragon attack that had happened several days ago when she’d gone on a day trip to Oregon.
    She’d flown up to a mountaintop there for a little mini-vacation, and a fire dragon had chased her as she flew and blasted her with flames. Luckily, she was a fast flyer. She’d reported it to the state police, but the dragon had flown off and nobody really had anything to go on. She had no enemies – she hadn’t even been mayor at that point. There was a long standing hatred between fire and ice dragons, though, so she might have just run into an extremist who’d tried to take advantage of the fact that she’d been alone.
    She hadn’t told her father or anyone in town about the attack, because she didn’t want to stir up problems between the two species.
    She winced in pain when her father grabbed her arm, and in an instant Calder was covered with red scales. He barreled forward, and her father quickly let go of her arm and stepped back.
    “What happened to your arm? Is it sore?” he said with a shrewd look of calculation. “Did someone attack you?” He glanced at Calder. “Did he do that to you?”
    “Are you all right?” Calder asked her.
    “I’m fine,” she said, resisting the urge to rub her arm. “And no, Calder didn’t hurt me.” She was pissed off at Calder, sure, but she wasn’t going to lie to get him into trouble.
    Then she fixed her father with an ice-cold gaze. “And by the way, don’t ever lay your hands on me again, Dad, or I will press charges – just like Mom should have. And I don’t think that will be very good for your career.” And with that, she turned and walked out the front door.
    She probably shouldn’t have said that in fire dragon territory, and especially not in front of the fire dragon Principe. But she needed to lay down the law where her father was concerned – because she knew his history with women. Frankly, she couldn’t believe that her