The Dark Highlander

Page 40

“On drugs,” she said, nodding. “His eyes were weird. Like he was some kind of fanatic. I really thought he was going to kill me.” A pause, then she said. “I fought back. I didn’t just collapse.”
She looked both shocked by and proud of that fact, and well she should be, he thought. How difficult it must have been for her, as wee as she was, to face a man so much larger than she, who’d been wielding a weapon with the intent to kill. It was one thing for a man of his size and girth, not to mention training, to enter battle, but her? The lass had courage.
“You did well, Chloe. You’re an extraordinary woman.” Dageus tucked a stray, damp curl behind her ear. He was beginning to lose the struggle to keep his gaze from hungrily roving her body, knowing she was nearly naked beneath the soft throw. A peculiar icy heat was flooding his veins. Dark and demanding. Need that cared not that she had been traumatized, need that endeavored to convince him that sex would make her feel better.
The tatters of his honor did not agree. But they were tatters and he needed to get her away from him. Fast.
“Are your feet better?”
She slid them from his lap to the floor, then stood, testing them.
He glanced out the window hastily, fisting his hands to keep from reaching for her. He knew if he touched her now, he would drop her, spread her and push himself inside her. His thought patterns were changing, the way they did when it had been too long. Becoming primitive, animal.
“Yes,” she said, sounding surprised. “Whatever that salve is, it’s amazing.”
“Why doona you go up and finish packing your things?” His voice sounded thick and guttural, even to his own ears. He rose swiftly and moved toward the kitchen.
“But what about the police? Shouldn’t we call the police?”
He paused, but kept his back to her. “They’re already out there, lass.” Go, he willed silently, desperately.
“But shouldn’t we talk to them?”
“I’ll take care of everything, Chloe.” He used a brush of compulsion that time and told her to forget about the police. Just enough magic to ease her mind, to help her trust that he would handle things. To make her not wonder later why she’d not been questioned. So far as the police would be concerned, the man hadn’t fallen from his terrace, but she need not know that.
He’d just entered the kitchen when she came up behind him and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Dageus?”
He stiffened and closed his eyes. He didn’t turn around. Christ, lass, please. I doona want to rape you.
“Hey, turn around,” she said, sounding mildly peeved.
Teeth clenched, he turned.
“Even though it’s not like you did it on purpose, thank you for forgetting the key,” she said, then cupped his face in her wee hands, stood on her tiptoes and pulled him down to plant a soft kiss on his lips. “You probably saved my life.”
He could feel muscles leaping in his jaw. Leaping in his entire body. Had to unclench his teeth to manage a thick, “Probably?”
“I was putting up a good fight,” she pointed out. “And I’d gotten to the claymore.”
A wan but cheeky smile, then, blessedly, she moved toward the stairs.
At the foot of them, she glanced back. “I know you probably don’t care, because we’re leaving, but you should tell the building manager that this penthouse has some serious heating problems. Would you mind turning it up a bit?” She rubbed her arms through the coverlet and, without waiting for an answer, hurried up the steps.
Five minutes later, he was still leaning against the wall, shaking from the battle he’d almost lost when she’d so innocently touched her lips to his. She’d kissed him as if he were honorable, in control. Safe.
As if he weren’t the man who’d been about to take her virginity by force. As if he weren’t dark and dangerous. Once, he’d gone to Katherine when he’d been in nearly as bad a state. He’d seen the fear mixed with the excitement in her eyes when he’d taken her roughly, without speaking a word, in her kitchen where he’d found her. Had known she’d sensed it in him, the darkness. Had known it had turned her on.
But not Chloe. She’d kissed him gently. Beast and all.
Trevor watched Dageus MacKeltar and his companion from a distance as they exited the building onto Fifth Avenue. The police had been crawling all over the place for hours, removing Giles’s body, and questioning witnesses, but by midafternoon, had moved on, leaving two grizzled and grouchy detectives in their wake.
He felt no grief for Giles; his death had been swift, and death was not a thing they feared, as the Druid sect of the Draghar believed in the transmigration of the soul. Giles would live again in some other body, some other time.