Author:
Cindy Spencer Pape firmly believes in happily-ever-after and brings that to her writing. A multiple award-winning author, she has published almost sixty novels and stories. When not hard at work writing, she can be found restoring her 1870 house, dressing up for steampunk parties and Renaissance fairs, or with her nose buried in a book. Visit her website: www.cindyspencerpape.com.

Computer science professor Eric Gordon has to find the hacker responsible for a virus on campus. When his investigations show some sort of reptile may be living in the steam tunnels under campus, he turns to biology professor Lori Tremain for help. 

Lori’s life is crazy with her tenure review looming, but she’s too curious and way too attracted to turn down Eric’s request.  Together, Lori and Eric uncover things that their scientific minds can barely imagine, along with a passion they never expected.  She doesn’t have time for love or dragons, but adventure and romance find her anyway.

Dragon in the System

Eric's teasing Lori over her arachnophobia earned him a light punch in the solar plexus. "You okay now?"


He kissed her again, this time on the mouth. "Don't sweat it. We all have our nightmares." He turned her to face him, holding the flashlight straight up, so that it was indirectly lighting both of their faces. "I'm not going to let anything hurt you, you know," he said sincerely. In fact, the surge of protectiveness he had felt when Lori screamed had astonished him. He'd never felt such a primitive urge to defend anything in his life. Lori, it seemed, was constantly teaching him new things about himself.


"I know," she answered simply. "I trust you, Eric." Her words seemed to encompass more than just defending her from spiders and Eric's heart swelled. Was she finally ready to move forward with their relationship? If so, then he'd picked a really bad time for a tunnel-crawl. Where was a bed when you needed one?


Chapter 30