And all he could think was …
… when he took her, he would strip the clothing from her body, baring every inch of her to his immense hunger.
He would stretch himself atop her, forearms flush to the bed on either side of her head, pinning her long hair beneath his weight. He would kiss her …
He was kissing her and she was drowning in the heat and sensuality of the man. Her hands tied to the bedposts, her body naked, she was lying in his bed, on fire. His for the taking.
He didn’t just kiss, he claimed ownership. Took her mouth with urgency, as if his life depended on his kissing her. Licked and nipped and tasted, sucking her lower lip, catching it with his teeth. His hands were on her breasts and her skin ached with need where he touched. He kissed her long and deep and slow, then kissed her hard and punishing and fast. …
. . . like fine china, delicate china, then he would punish her with hard kisses for being so perfect, for being everything he didn’t deserve. For the wonder she still had, the wonder she made him remember once feeling.
Being a man, he would have to know that she needed him. So he would kiss every inch of her silken skin, dragging his tongue over the peaks of her nipples. Rasping them with his unshaven jaw, till they budded hard and tight for him, teeth nipping, then he would move those kisses to the sweet feminine heat between her legs, where he would taste that taut aching bud. Slow long strokes of his tongue there.
Ever-so-delicate nips.
Then more strong strokes, faster and faster until she writhed beneath him.
But still, she wouldn’t be wild enough for him.
So he would slip his finger inside her. Find that spot, one of several special ones, that drove a woman wild. Feel her tighten convulsively around him. Feel her hunger. Then withdraw and taste her with his tongue again. Lapping. Lapping. Drowning in the sweet taste of her.
Then two fingers. Then his tongue. Until she …
“Please!” Chloe cried, arching her back, arching up and up, begging for his touch.
Dageus loomed above her, his hard body gilded by firelight, a sheen of sweat glistening on his skin.
“What do you want, Chloe?” His glittering gaze challenged her, dared her to want, dared her to speak of those things she’d never said aloud. Secret fantasies she sheltered in her woman’s heart. Fantasies she knew he’d be only too willing to fulfill; one and all.
“Please!” she cried, not knowing how to put it into words. “Everything!”
His nostrils flared and he inhaled sharply, and she suddenly wondered if she’d said something far more dangerous than she knew.
“Everything?” he purred. “Everything I might want? Everything I might dream of doing to you? Do you mean to gift me your innocence—without condition?”
A heartbeat passed, then two.
… would say that she needed him. Was willing to relinquish everything. He would turn his years of mastery—all those years he’d made heated love with a cold heart to women who’d wanted nothing from him but his body—to Chloe’s lush curves, the backs of her knees, the inside of her thighs, laving every inch with his tongue. He would untie her, roll her onto her stomach. Stretch her hands above her head, catch them in one of his, nipping the nape of her neck. He would drag his tongue down her spine, lavishing attention on his favorite spot, the slender, delicate arch where a woman’s back met her bottom, then kiss every inch of her sweet ass.
Kneeling above her, straddling her, he would nudge her soft curves with his hard cock. Feel her buck up and back …
“Dageus!” Chloe cried. He was behind her, hot and silky and hard against her bottom, and she felt so damned empty inside that it hurt.
“What, lass?”
“Make love to me,” she gasped.
“Why?” He stretched flat atop her, skin to skin from her head to her toes, his palms to the backs of her hands, pressing them against the bed, letting her feel the full weight of him, making it hard for her to breathe. He nudged her thighs apart with his knee. He thrust his hips, pushing against her, but not inside her. Deliberately teasing her.
“I want you.”
“Want is no’ enough. You must feel like you can’t breathe wi’out me inside you. Do you need me? No matter the cost? Though I’ve warned you I’m no’ a good man?”
“Yes! God, yes!”
“Say it.”
“I need you!”
“Say my name.”
“Dageus!”
Chloe snapped awake with a violent start, sweating and breathing hard, and so intensely aroused that she hurt from head to toe. “Wh-what . . .” she trailed off, remembering the dream. Oh, God, she thought, appalled. Shaking her head, she suddenly realized she wasn’t alone.
He was in the room with her.
Sitting not two feet away from her in a chair beside the bed, watching her with those glittering tiger-eyes.
Their gazes collided.
And she had the most awful feeling that he somehow knew. Knew that she’d been dreaming of him. In his smoldering gaze was a strange satisfaction.
A hot flush suffused her from head to toe. She glanced frantically down. Thank God, she was still fully clothed. It had been but a dream.
He couldn’t possibly know.
She tugged the covers up to her chin. The air in the room was positively frigid.
“You sounded restless,” he purred, his voice dark as the shadowy room. “I came to check on you and thought I’d sit nearby till you calmed.”
“I’m calm now,” she lied blatantly. Her heart was hammering and she turned away so she wouldn’t betray something with her eyes.
She sneaked a quick peek at him. Beautiful man. Sitting half-gilded by the dying firelight. One side of his face golden, the other in shadows. She was nearly panting. Bit her lip to quiet herself.
“Then I should go?”
“You should go.”
“You doona … need … anything, Chloe-lass?”
“Just for you to let me go,” she said stiffly.
Never, Dageus thought, pulling the door firmly closed.
When she’d wakened, he’d been stunned to realize that somehow his thoughts, the painfully intense seduction he’d been imagining, had crept into her dreams.
Power. There was power inside him and he dare not forget that. Somehow that power had made her share his fantasy.
A dangerous thing.
Apparently, he’d used magic yet again, without even realizing it.
A muscle leaped in his jaw. ’Twas getting damned hard to see where the ancient ones began and he ended.
He had work yet to do this eve, he reminded himself, shaking himself sharply, resisting the darkness that stretched and flexed within him. The darkness that tried to convince him he was a god, and aught he wished was his due.
Tugging on his boots and donning his coat, he cast a last glance in the direction of the bedchamber before he slipped from the penthouse. She was securely bound, would never know he was gone. It would be but for a few hours.
Before he left, he turned the thermostat up. It was cold in the penthouse.
• 7 •
He had to use magic again, the féth fiada, the Druid spell that made the user difficult for the human eye to see, and by the time Dageus returned to the penthouse, he was too tightly strung to sleep. He’d not known such a spell existed before the dark ones had claimed him that fateful eve. Now their knowledge was his knowledge, and although he tried to pretend he was unaware of the full extent of the power within him, sometimes when he was doing something, he’d suddenly know a spell to make it easier, as if he’d known it all his life.
Some of the spells he now “simply knew” were horrific. The ancient ones within him had been judge, jury, and executioner on many occasions.
It was getting dangerous, he was growing more detached. Perched at the edge of the abyss, and the abyss was looking back, with feral, crimson eyes.
He needed. A woman’s body, a woman’s tender touch. A woman’s de
sire to make him feel like a man not a beast.
He could go to Katherine; it wouldn’t matter the hour. She would welcome him with open arms and he could lose himself in her, shove her ankles above her head, and drive himself into her until he felt human again.
He didn’t want Katherine. He wanted the woman upstairs in his bed.
He could all too easily see himself taking the stairs three at a time, stripping as he went, stretching atop her helpless, tied form, teasing her until she was animal with need, until she begged him to take her. He knew he could make her give herself to him. Och, mayhap she’d not be willing at first, but he knew ways of touching that could drive a woman wild.
His breathing was ragged.
He was headed for the stairs, tugging his sweater over his head when he caught himself.
Deep breaths. Focus, Keltar.
If he went to her now, he would hurt her. He was too raw, too hungry. Gritting his teeth, he yanked his sweater back on and whirled about, stared sightlessly out the window for a time.
Two more times he caught himself heading up the stairs. Two more times he forced himself back down. He dropped to the floor and did push-ups until his body ran with sweat. Then crunches, and more push-ups. He recited bits of history, counted backward in Latin, then Greek, then in the more obscure, difficult languages.
Eventually, he regained control. Or as much control as he was going to get without sex.
She was going to shower today, he decided, suddenly chafed by her lack of faith in him, if he had to lock her in the bathroom all day.
As if he might break in on her when she was in the shower.
He’d just proved that he was in control. Verily, he was all about control where she was concerned. Had she any idea what he was battling, and how difficult it had been thus far—yet he’d prevailed—then she’d shower.
Ha. Then she’d, like as not, fling herself from my terrace forty-three floors up merely to escape me, he thought, getting up and propping one of the terrace doors slightly ajar.
He stared out over the quiet city—as quiet as Manhattan ever got, still humming, even at four in the morning. Fickle March weather, the clime had been fluctuating for days, rising and dropping as much as thirty degrees in a few hours. Now it was temperate again, but the light rain could well turn to snow by midmorn. Spring was trying to beat back winter and failing, rather mirroring his bleak internal landscape.
Blowing out a gusty breath, he sat down to immerse himself in the third Book of Manannán. This final tome, then he would go. Not on the morrow, but the next day. He’d done all he could here. He doubted what he wanted was in the tome anyway. There’d once been five Books of Manannán, but only three were extant. He’d already read the first two; they’d dealt with the legends of Ireland’s gods before the arrival of the Tuatha Dé Danaan. This third volume continued the tales of the gods, and their encounters with the first wave of settlers to invade Ireland. As slowly as the historical timeline was moving, Dageus suspected the arrival of the race of creatures he was interested in would not be addressed until the fifth volume. Which no longer existed except mayhap in one place: the Keltar library.
Whether he liked it or not, he was going to have to go home. Face his brother so he could search the Keltar collection. He’d wasted many months trying to find a solution on his own, and time was running out. If he waited much longer … well, he dare not wait longer.
And what of the lass? his honor roused.
He was too weary to bother lying to himself.
Mine.
He would endeavor to seduce her with her own desires first, make it easier for her, but should she resist, one way or another, she was going with him.
Chloe stood in the hot spray of seven jetting shower heads—three on each side, one above—sighing with pleasure. She’d been feeling like the poster child for grunge. The door was locked and the chair Dageus had brought her to prop beneath the handle was propped snugly beneath the handle.
After dreaming about him and waking in the middle of the night to find him watching her with virtually the same look he’d worn in her dream, she’d hardly been able to meet his gaze when he’d untied her this morning. Just thinking about the dream made her feel flushed and shaky.
I’m no’ a good man, he’d said. He was right. He wasn’t. He was a man who lived by his own rules. He stole other people’s personal property—though he insisted he was “borrowing” and, oddly, left more valuable items. He held her captive—though he cooked scrumptious meals and, frankly, she’d agreed to cooperate for a bribe. Criminal at worst, at best he existed on the fringes of civilized society.
Then again, since she’d accepted his bribe, she supposed she was on those fringes now too.
Still, she mused, a truly bad man wouldn’t bother warning a woman that he wasn’t a good man. A truly bad man wouldn’t stop kissing a woman when she said stop.
What an enigma he was, and so strangely anachronistic! Though his penthouse was modern, his demeanor was distinctly old-world. His speech also was modern, yet he lapsed, at times, into an infrequent, curious formality, splashed with old Gaelic colloquialisms. There was something more to him than she was seeing. She could feel it dancing just at the edge of her comprehension, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t bring it into focus. And there was definitely something about his eyes …
She might not be as worldly as New York women, but she wasn’t completely naïve; she could feel danger in him—a woman would have to be dead not to. It dripped from him as liberally as testosterone oozed from his pores. Still, he tempered it with discipline and restraint. He had her at his complete mercy, and he’d not taken advantage of it.
She shook her head. Maybe for him, she thought, as easily as women must fall for him, it was the chase he enjoyed most.
Well, she thought, bristling, he could chase all he wanted. She might be on the fringes, but that didn’t mean she was just going to up and fall in bed with him, no matter how much she might secretly long to be initiated into the exotic, erotic, mysterious Dageus MacKeltar club. Salient word there being “club”—as in, with lots of members.
With that resolved, she shampooed her hair twice (she’d never gone without a shower for two days straight before) and stood under the pulsing spray until she felt squeaky clean. And then a bit longer. Those massaging shower heads were to die for.
Wrapping herself in a luxurious towel, she dislodged the chair and unlocked the door.
When she opened it, she gaped. Half her wardrobe was piled neatly on the bed. She blinked. Yup, there it was. In tidy piles. Panties (uh-hmm, and those were staying firmly on her butt), bras, dresses, sweaters, jeans, a lacy little nightie, socks, boots, shoes, the works. They were stacked in “outfit” piles, she noted, bemused. He’d not just grabbed clothing, but had matched things together as if envisioning her wearing them.
He’d even brought some of her books, she noticed, wandering over to the bed.
Three romance novels, the dastardly man. Scottish romance novels. What had he done? Poked through all her stuff while he was there? Right on top was The Highlander’s Touch, one of her favorite novels about an immortal Highlander.
She snorted. The man was incorrigible. Bringing her steamy, sexy things to read. As if she needed any help thinking steamy thoughts around him.
She could hear him downstairs, talking quietly on the phone. She could smell the scent of fresh-brewed coffee.
And though she knew she should be offended that he’d broken into her apartment and rummaged through her drawers, he’d put much thought into his selections, and she was oddly charmed.
He hardly spoke to her all day. He was in a downright brooding mood. Controlled and remote. Perfectly polite, perfectly disciplined. Utterly self-contained. His eyes were … strange again, and she wondered if maybe they took on varying hues under different lighting, like hazel sometimes went from greenish-blue to greenish-brown. Not amber, they were the dull shade of copper just before it blackened.
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She’d perched on the counter and watched him cook breakfast—kippers, tatties, toast, and porridge with cream and blueberries—eyeing him while his back was to her. For the first time she’d noticed his hair. She’d known it was long; she hadn’t realized how long because he wore it pulled back. But now that she was behind him, she could see that he’d folded it up several times before binding it in a leather wrap.
She decided it must fall to his waist when it was free. The thought of his sleek black hair sweeping his naked muscled back drove her crazy.
She wondered if he ever wore it down. It seemed so in keeping with his character that it would be long and wild, but meticulously restrained unless he chose to free it.
She tried to make small talk, but he didn’t rise to any of the bait she cast. Fishing, trying to pick his brain, getting nothing but grunts and incoherent murmurs.
They sat together in silence for hours that afternoon, with Chloe delicately turning the pages of the Midhe Codex with tissues, and sneaking peeks at Dageus while he worked with the Book of Manannán, scribbling notes as he translated.
At five o’clock, she got up and turned the news on, wondering if there might be some small mention of her disappearance. As if, she thought wryly. One little girl gone missing in the wormy Big Apple? Both police and newscasters had better things to do.
He looked at her then, a hint of smugness playing about his lips.
She arched a questioning brow, but he said nothing. She listened absently while she read, then suddenly her attention was riveted to the screen.
“The Gaulish Ghost struck again last night, or so the police believe. Baffled might be the best way to describe New York’s finest. At an unknown time, early this morning, all the artifacts previously stolen by the Gaulish Ghost were left at the front desk of the police station. Once again, no one saw a thing, which makes one wonder just what our police . . .”
There was more, but Chloe didn’t hear it.
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