The Dark Highlander (Highlander, #5)

by Karen Marie Moning

Dageus MacKeltar walked like a man and talked like a man, but in bed he was pure animal.

He fucked with the single-minded intensity of a man on death row, execution at dawn.

The man was a true master of the erotic.

The man was beautiful. Impossibly so. Terrifyingly so. She’d never seen a man like him before. He was her every darkest fantasy sprung to life. Scottish blood was stamped all over his chiseled features.

“Life isn’t always fair, lass, but that doesn’t mean it can’t still be sweet.”

He’d never seduced an innocent before. He sensed she would resist. … The thought both amused and aroused him.

When a Druid offered his favored weapon, his Selvar, the one he wore against his skin, to a woman, he offered his protection. His guardianship. Forever.

She was curiosity and wonder; he was cynicism and despair. She was bursting with dreams; he was carved out and hollow inside. Her heart was young and true; his was iced with disillusion, scarce beating enough to keep him alive.

He could sense, with the unerring instincts of a sexual predator, that Chloe was wanton at heart. That the man she chose to grant liberties to, would be granted them unconditionally. Sexually aggressive, dominant to the bone, he recognized in her his perfect bedmate.

“What if I told you, lass, that I’m a Druid from a time long past?”

“What if I told you that when you kiss me, lass, I doona feel cursed? That mayhap your kisses could save me. Would you?”

“Oh, what are you?” she breathed disbelievingly. “The devil himself, come to tempt me?” “Do I, lass? Do I tempt you?”

Devil and Angel: he, seduced by her lightness; she, tempted by his darkness. Each drawn to what they lacked.

She was keeper of his Selvar. His life was now her shield.

“There will be no takin’ this back, lass. Doona even think to be tellin’ me later that you willna hae me. You will hae me.”

“You know I’m no’ a good man,” he said, his voice deceptively gentle, belying the steel beneath it. “I’ve made no excuses. I’ve given you no pretty lies. You came with me anyway. Doona pretend you doona know what I want and doona think to deny me. Twice now you’ve tried to go back. There is no going back with me, Chloe-lass.” He hissed the last words, his lips drawing away from his teeth. “You know what I want and you want it too. You want it just the way I’m about to give it to you.”

“I’m going to love you now, slow and sweet, but when you come, I’m going to fuck you the way I need to. The way I’ve been dreaming about since the moment I saw you.”

“If aught must be lost, ’twill be my honor for yours. If one must be forsaken, ’twill be my soul for yours. Should death come anon, ’twill be my life for yours.”

He’d been right in thinking that with her, lovemaking might yield some indefinable result he’d not before experienced. Sex had always calmed and soothed him, easing his muscles, relaxing his mental tension, but now, when he fell sated, holding Chloe close, his heart was also at ease.