The Dark Highlander

The answer came with swift certainty: There was something about him that was far more Spike than Angel, a tortured duality, a driving, underlying darkness.

His grip was tight on her waist, almost painful, his body rigid behind hers. The sheer size of him was daunting, being clutched between his powerful thighs, held tightly to his broad chest, made her feel delicate and overwhelmed. He seemed different in his own century, and she wondered how he’d ever passed as a twenty-first century man. He was all warrior and imperious command. His was regal Celtic blood, hot and passionate. He was man enough to swing the massive claymores that decorated the walls in The Cloisters. Man enough to survive, even thrive in such a rugged, untamed land.

She’d hardly noticed his silence when they’d first rode out, too fascinated by the vista, but now it was a chill wind behind her making her skin prickle.

“Why are we stopping here?” she asked nervously when he slowed the horse to a trot near a copse of rowan trees.

His reply was a soft, biting laugh as he shifted in the saddle so the hard thickness of him rubbed briefly against her bottom. Despite how nervous he was making her, lust filled her to a dizzying degree. There were questions, zillions of questions she should ask, and suddenly she couldn’t recall a single one. Her mind had blanked alarmingly when he’d rubbed against her.

He reined in the stallion, dropped to the ground, and dragged her from its back. Off balance, she fell into his arms and he crushed her mouth with a hot, savage kiss.

Then he shoved her away, leaving her gasping for breath and clutching at air. She stood, watching with wide eyes as he grabbed a folded length of plaid from behind the saddle. Without a word he dropped it to the ground, spreading it with the toe of his boot. He slapped the stallion lightly on the rump, driving it away.

“I thought you told Silvan you were taking me to see a medieval village. What are you doing, Dageus?” she managed. She knew what he was doing. She could practically smell it on him—sex and lust and ruthless determination.

No matter that she was ready for him, she backed away a few steps. Couldn’t help it. Then a few more. Tiny breaths slammed into each other, clotting in her throat. That danger she’d sensed in him so many times before had escalated to an extreme pitch.

His gaze was mocking. A strange flash of temper and impatience whipped through his eyes. “You had your hand wrapped around my cock last eve, Chloe, and you want to know what I’m doing? What do you think I’m doing?” he purred with a baring of teeth that only a fool would term a smile.

Nostrils flaring, he stalked toward her and paced a slow circle around her. Stripping the thong from his hair, he raked his hands through the braid, freeing it. It spilled in waves of midnight around his body. The beast is loose, Chloe thought with a bone-melting surge of excitement. She pivoted slowly to keep pace with him. She was too nervous to allow him at her back.

He fisted a hand in his shirt behind his neck, yanked it over his head and flung it to the ground.

The air left her lungs in a great whoosh of breath. Dressed in nothing but black leather trews, hair falling about his savage face, he was forbiddingly beautiful. When he bent and stripped off his boots, the muscles in his powerful back and wide shoulders rippled, reminding her that he was twice her size, his arms were bands of steel, his body a meticulously honed machine.

Something about him is different. …

It took her a few moments to understand what it was. For the first time, she was seeing him without his eternal reserve and icy control. His gestures were no longer smoothly executed. Standing there, legs splayed, he was pure male aggression, insolent and unleashed.

She was startled to realize she was panting softly. That big, rock-hard aggressive man who was coming unraveled was going to make love to her.

He paced two more silent circles around her—oh, yes, there was a reckless masculine swagger in his walk—then closed in on her, his hand working at the laces of his trews. He was regarding her with mocking, possessive amusement as if he sensed she verged on fleeing, knew he could outrun her, and rather hoped she’d try.

As his big hand undid the laces, her gaze was drawn there, down his rippling stomach to the bulge in his pants that was … quite large. And soon to be inside her.

“M-maybe we should do this really slow,” she stammered. “Dageus, I think—”

“Hush,” he snapped, as he freed himself from his trews.

Chloe closed her mouth, staring. The sight of him in leather pants half-undone, legs spread, hard body glistening gold in the sunlight, with his thick erection pushing hungrily up would be engraved in her memory until the end of time. She couldn’t breathe, she couldn’t even swallow. She sure as hell wasn’t going to blink and miss a minute of it. Nearly six and a half feet of raw, pulsing man was standing there, his hot gaze raking her, as if he were contemplating which part of her to taste first. She simply stared, her heart hammering.