The Dark Highlander

He said nothing, merely let his gaze drop to the stolen texts scattered around her feet amid thongs and condom wrappers.

She glanced down too. “Well, yes, you certainly do have an active love life,” she murmured vacuously. “But I won’t hold that against you.” Womanizer!

The look he gave her made the fine hair on the nape of her neck stand on end. His gaze drifted meaningfully to the tomes again.

“Oh! You mean the books. So you like books,” she said lightly. “No big.” She shrugged.

Again he said nothing, merely held her with that intense golden gaze. God, the man was stunning! Made her feel like … like that Rene Russo in The Thomas Crown Affair—ready to throw in with the thief. Run off to exotic lands. Stroll about topless on a terrace overlooking the sea. Live beyond the law. Pet his artifacts when she wasn’t petting him.

“Och, lass,” he said, shaking his head, “I’m no’ a fool, so doona insult me with lies. ’Tis plain to see you know precisely what they are. And whence they came,” he added gently.

Gentle from him was dangerous. She knew it instinctively. Gentle from this man meant he was about to do something she really really wasn’t going to like.

And he did.

Crowding her with his powerful body, he backed her toward the bed and gave her a light push that sent her sprawling backward across it.

With the grace of a tiger he followed her down, pinning her to the mattress beneath him.

“I swear,” she babbled hastily, “I won’t tell a soul. I don’t care. It’s okay with me if you have them. I have absolutely no desire to go to the police or anything like that. I don’t even like the police. Police and me have never gotten along. They gave me a ticket once for going forty-eight in a forty-five zone; how could I possibly like them after that? It doesn’t matter one whit to me if you steal half The Met’s medieval collection, I mean, really, they have six thousand pieces, so who’s going to notice a few missing? I am an excellent secret-keeper,” she practically screeched. “I definitely, most assuredly, cross-my-heart-and-hope-to … er, will not breathe the teeniest word. Mum. Mum’s the word. And you can take that to the—”

His lips took the rest of her words along with her breath.

Oh, yeah. Rene Russo here.

Those sensual lips closed over hers, brushing lightly, tasting. But not taking.

And for an absolutely insane moment, she wanted him to take. Wanted him to crush her mouth in a hard, starving, bruising kiss and help her find that red-hot button of love that had never once hit lukewarm. The man filled a woman’s head with fantasies she would have sworn she didn’t have. Her traitorous lips parted beneath his. Fear, she told herself, it was just that fear could translate swiftly into arousal. She’d heard about people facing certain death suddenly getting a sexual charge that just wouldn’t quit.

So bizarrely, intensely aroused, she didn’t even notice that he was knotting a scarf around her wrist, until he swept it tight, and it was too late and she was tied to his bed. His sinful, decadent bed. Moving with inhuman grace and suddenness, he deftly knotted her other wrist to the far post.

She opened her mouth to scream, but he caught it with one powerful hand. Lying atop her, staring dead into her eyes, he said quietly, carefully, enunciating each word, “If you scream, I will be forced to gag you. I prefer not to, lass. It bears considering that no one can hear you up here anyway. ’Tis your choice. What will it be?” He lifted his hand infinitesimally, just enough that he might hear her reply.

“D-don’t hurt me,” she whispered.

“I have no intention of hurting you, lass.”

But you are, she was about to say, then realized with a flush that that hard thing digging into her hip was not a gun, but a magnum of another sort entirely.

He must have seen something in her eyes, because he raised himself slightly.

Which meant, she concluded with a huge flood of relief, that he wasn’t going to rape her. A rapist would have shifted a few inches to the right, not raised his hips.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to keep you for a time, lass. But you’ll suffer no harm at my hands. Mind you, however, one scream, one loud noise, and you’re gagged.”

There was no mercy in his gaze. She knew he meant it. She could either be bound, or bound and gagged.

She shook her head, then nodded, befuddled by whether she was supposed to say yes or no. “Won’t scream,” she promised stiffly. No one can hear you up here anyway. God, that was probably true. On the penthouse level walls were thick, there was no one above, and the elite were given wide berth unless they requested something. She could probably scream her head off, and no one would come.