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dragon.
    “She’s out of options. You’ll find Jase before she does, and when that happens The Ogre will have her.” Inila sauntered into the hall.
    “Who?”
    “Local mob boss and real, live, slobbering pig of an ogre. Never liked eating ogres. They’re too greasy and taste like moldy, rotted sweat socks.”
    What the hell had his idiot relative dragged Rhiannon into? No way Jase wasn’t to blame for this mess. “What did Jase do?”
    “What does Jase always do?”
    “Oh hell.” Kit couldn’t show emotion. “How much?”
    “More than you probably have. Convince her to take a deal from me. I could buy out her debt to Mancini, but she’d never forgive me. It’s the only way you both get out of this alive.”
    “So fucking complicated.” He wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. There was nothing simple about Rhiannon. Never had been. That was part of what had attracted him to her in the first place. The whole complicated mess of her and her rigid, close minded father. “Leave her alone, dragon. I’ll get the money.”
    Starting down the hall, Kit scrubbed his palm across the nape of his neck. “Dragons. I’d rather swallow a day old fur ball scraped off the bottom of my boot than spend even another minute with a gold hoarding, scaly assed, dragon.”
    “I heard that. I should have eaten you,” Inila shouted. The crackle of burning carpet fibers rose. Moments later the shriek of the smoke alarm started, and water poured from the sprinklers in a deluge. “Better get your ass down to the elevators. Rhiannon’s stuck a few floors down.”
    “I’ll shove my claws up your ass, dragon.”
    Faint female screams sliced the air, and left bloody rents in the fabric of space.
    “Rhiannon,” he breathed. Why was she so scared? Nothing too terrible could happen in an elevator.
    Right?

Chapter Four
    “I ’m not going to puke, I’m not going to scream...anymore...I’m going to try not to let my knees shake and I won’t crawl up this wall....” Rhiannon whisper sang, half under her breath. She did her damnedest to watch the creature across from her without making eye contact.
    The man had thrown himself into the corner when the fire alarms started blaring and the elevator came to a shuddering halt. Not long after, his eyes rolled back in his head and water poured from him.
    From everywhere.
    Skin, eyes, nose, ears, fingers—water ran in a speedy, continuous flow. The liquid itself was frigid and briny and creeping up her legs. Pretty soon it’d be flowing over her thighs.
    Rhiannon checked the control panel’s weight limit stamp—one thousand eight hundred fifty pounds.
    How many gallons was that? How much did a gallon of water weigh? Why hadn’t she paid better attention in physics class?
    “Because physics sucked and there was that super cute boy that sat in front of me. Denny or Danny or something and oh-my-God he smelled so good, like like like manliness. I should have had sex with him that time he took me out on a—”A scream shot from her throat with the force of an air cannon. “Don’t eat me. Please, please don’t eat me.”
    She scrabbled and tried to climb up on the tiny railing that ran around three walls. Anything to get away from the man shifting a few feet away into a huge, toothy, blue-black eyed shark.
    “No, no, no! Stop it. Stop it right now. This is not going to be a clip on Shark Week . Someone get me the hell out of here now! Help me damn you!” The shifter convulsed, trapped between forms. With arms and hands shortening into fins, and his face elongating, triangular notched teeth protruding from his lipless mouth, he flopped around, tangled in his clothing.
    She clawed at the elevator doors, trying to force them open. Surely the water should leak out through the seams. If even a small amount was escaping, it wasn’t fast enough to relieve the rising magical tide around her.
    The man choked, hurled himself at the walls, Rhiannon screamed, and the entire