The Dark Highlander

Page 7

Some days Dageus felt as ancient as the evil within him.
As he hailed a cab to take him to The Cloisters to pick up a copy of one of the last tomes in New York that he needed to check, he didn’t notice the fascinated glances women walking down the sidewalk turned his way. Didn’t realize that, even in a metropolis that teemed with diversity, he stood out. It was nothing he said or did; to all appearances he was but another wealthy, sinfully gorgeous man. It was simply the essence of the man. The way he moved. His every gesture exuded power, something dark and … forbidden. He was sexual in a way that made women think of deeply repressed fantasies therapists and feminists alike would cringe to hear tell of.
But he realized none of that. His thoughts were far away, still mulling over the nonsense penned in the Book of Leinster.
Och, what he wouldn’t give for his da’s library.
In lieu of it, he’d been systematically obtaining what manuscripts still existed, exhausting his present possibilities before pursuing riskier ones. Risky, like setting foot on the isles of his ancestors again, a thing fast seeming inevitable.
Thinking of risk, he made a mental note to return some of the volumes he’d “borrowed” from private collections when bribes had failed. It wouldn’t do to have them lying about too long.
He glanced up at the clock above the bank. Twelve forty-five. The cocurator of The Cloisters had assured him he would have the text delivered first thing that morn, but it hadn’t arrived and Dageus was weary of waiting.
He needed information, accurate information about the Keltar’s ancient benefactors, the Tuatha Dé Danaan, those “gods and not gods,” as the Book of the Dun Cow called them. They were the ones who had originally imprisoned the dark Druids in the in-between, hence it followed that there was a way to reimprison them.
It was imperative he find that way.
As he eased into the cab—a torturous fit for a man of his height and breadth—his attention was caught by a lass who was stepping from a car at the curb in front of them.
She was different, and it was that difference that drew his eye. She had none of the city’s polish and was all the lovelier for it. Refreshingly tousled, delightfully free of the artifice with which modern women enhanced their faces, she was a vision.
“Wait,” he growled at the driver, watching her hungrily.
His every sense heightened painfully. His hands fisted as desire, never sated, flooded him.
Somewhere in her ancestry the lass had Scots blood. It was there in the curly waves of copper-and-blond hair that tumbled about a delicate face with a surprisingly strong jaw. It was there in the peaches-and-cream complexion and the huge aquamarine eyes—eyes that still regarded the world with wonder, he noticed with a faintly mocking smile. It was there in a fire that simmered just beneath the surface of her flawless skin. Wee, lusciously plump where it counted, with a trim waist and shapely legs hugged by a snug skirt, the lass was an exiled Highlander’s dream.
He wet his lips and stared, making a noise deep in his throat that was more animal than human.
When she leaned back in through the open window of the car to say something to the driver, the back of her skirt rode up a few inches. He inhaled sharply, envisioning himself behind her. His entire body went tight with lust.
Christ, she was lovely. Lush curves that could make a dead man stir.
She leaned forward a smidgen, showing more of that sweet curve of the back of her thigh.
His mouth went ferociously dry.
No’ for me, he warned himself, gritting his teeth and shifting to lessen the pressure on his suddenly, painfully hard cock. He took only experienced lasses to his bed. Lasses far older in both mind and body. Not reeking, as she did, of innocence. Of bright dreams and a bonny future.
Sleek and worldly, with jaded palates and cynical hearts—they were the ones a man could tumble and leave with a bauble in the morn, no worse for the wear.
She was the kind a man kept.
“Go,” he murmured to the driver, forcing his gaze away.
Chloe tapped her foot impatiently, leaning against the wall beside the call-desk. The blasted man wasn’t there. She’d been waiting fifteen minutes, hoping he might appear. A few moments ago she’d finally told Bill to go on without her, that she’d catch a cab back to The Cloisters and expense it to the department.
She drummed her fingers impatiently on the counter. She just wanted to deliver her parcel and go. The sooner she got rid of it, the sooner she could forget her part in the whole sordid affair.
It occurred to her that unless she could find an alternative, she was probably going to end up wasting the rest of her day. A man who lived in the East 70s in such affluence was a man accustomed to having others await his convenience.