She’d done her laundry tonight; he’d heard her.
But there’d been no explosion. No shouting, no insistence that it would be a cold day in hell before she washed his clothes. Not that he’d intended her to. He discarded clothing once he wore it and took new.
Stepping deeper into her room, he silently slid open a dresser drawer. Then another. And another. Until there it was. His T-shirt. Neatly folded in her bottom drawer, hidden beneath a pair of sweats.
A smile curved his lips.
He closed the drawer and walked over to her closet, opened it, and glanced down at her laundry basket. As he’d thought, she’d not washed what she’d been wearing today. A pair of panties disappeared into his pocket. “Quid pro quo, ka-lyrra,” he murmured softly. “You get a piece of me; I get a piece of you.”
He shut the closet door and stared down at her again. His body was strung tight with lust so intense that the mere wanting of her was a thing to savor. All his senses were inflamed, and he was suddenly feeling things that, if ever he’d once felt, he’d long ago forgotten.
By Danu, he thought, inhaling sharply, he felt alive. Vibrantly, acutely, perhaps one might say . . . passionately alive. The simplest of experiences were suddenly so savory, so rich in nuance and complexity. Merely choosing his clothing each morning at Saks held new fascination for him, as he selected them with an eye toward her reaction, learning what she liked to see on him. What made her eyes widen, her pupils dilate, her lips part just a bit.
Leather. She definitely liked leather.
He knew what he would see on her, once he’d smoothed that bristly spine of hers.
Nothing.
Her nipples hard and wet, glistening from his tongue. Her bare ass cupped in his hands as he raised her to his mouth. That same ass flipped over and raised for—
A low growl built in his throat. Clenching his teeth, he forced himself to step away from her bed. Not yet.
She would soon come to understand that he was not what she thought of him. That there was much more to Adam Black than the bloody, blasphemous, idiotic Book of the Sin Siriche Du downstairs alleged. He’d spent several hours today rewriting it, crossing out entire sections, simply ripping out other pages and inserting new ones.
It occurred to him as he slipped from her room that, supposing Circenn never came back, seducing Gabrielle O’Callaghan might not be a half-bad way to pass a mortal life.
At least until Aoibheal returned for him and made him immortal again.
Before he left, he turned off her alarm clock. He had no intention of letting her go to work tomorrow.
9
“Stay away! Don’t touch me!”
Gabby woke hard, in a full panic, scrambling up and back, plastering herself against the headboard of her bed, eyes wild.
Adam stood a few feet away, one dark brow arched, a tray balanced on one hand. “Easy, ka-lyrra, I but brought you breakfast. I was about to put it on the edge of your bed and shake you awake.”
Gabby pressed a hand to her chest, trying to slow the pounding of her heart. “You scared me! Don’t sneak up on me like that. What are you doing in my bedroom? Get out of my bedroom.”
“I didn’t ‘sneak.’ I said ‘good morning’ three times. Louder each time. I practically bellowed it at the last. You sleep like the dead, Irish. Be easy. How many times do I have to tell you that I’m not going to hurt you? If I’d wanted to, I would have done my worst by now.” He placed the tray on the edge of the bed and picked up a cup, offering it to her. “Double-shot espresso. I’ve noticed you like to kick yourself awake in the morning.” He smiled lazily. Sexily.
Gabby blinked slowly. Life was so not fair. Her heart had begun to slow but was now speeding back up all over again, for entirely different reasons.
There Adam Black stood, nearly six and a half feet of sleek hard body, wearing nothing but a pair of faded jeans slung low on his hips, gold armbands, and a torque. The jeans lent him the air of a modern man, but the arm cuffs and neckpiece, coupled with his strange dual-colored eyes, reminded her that he was a being whose origins predated Christ. Probably by thousands of years. He probably even predated Newgrange. For that matter, maybe he’d built it.
And, oh, but he took her breath away. His wide shoulders and hard chest were sinfully sculpted, his abs rippled and lean. He had those twin ropes of muscle ripping the sides of a six-pack that led straight down to his groin, disappearing into those low-slung jeans, advertising the fact that he could no doubt move said groin for hours without stopping and in ways that could make a woman whimper in ecstasy.
And all of it was covered with that luscious gold-velvet fairy skin. She curled her hands into little fists, battling the overwhelming impulse to cop that eternally denied fairy-feel.