What if Lucan had somehow gotten his hands on him? How would she find him? Would she have to hunt down this scary Lucan guy and steal Cian back?

What if she never saw the towering, dark, infuriatingly barbaric, sexy Highlander again?

It’s just hormones. Combustive chemistry compounded by danger, nothing more.

Whatever it was, his reaction was playing right into a fantasy she’d not even known she’d been having: that when she found him he would not merely stalk out of that mirror to save her, he would stalk out of it to claim her. Crush her against the steely, hard strength of his body, and take slick velvety possession of her with his tongue. Give her the most base, elemental affirmation that he was alive, and she was alive, and they lived to fight another day.

It was, she realized, how women throughout all of history must have felt each time their men returned from battle on their own two feet, not bound over the back of a horse, or piled, dozens deep, atop a wagon.

Desperate for every morsel of passion life had to offer.

Or, at least, for a few steamy kisses, anyway. Surely there was no harm in a few kisses . . .

Famous final words, she would think later.

She tipped her head back and wet her lips. He needed no further encouragement. Whisky eyes glittering with lust, he cupped the back of her head with a big palm and slanted his mouth over hers.

The moment their lips met this time, heat lightning crackled between them and they both went wild.

She’d seen crazy passion in movies, but had never experienced it herself. She did now.

Wriggling her backpack off her shoulders, she molded herself against him, trying to get closer. He thrust back in kind, pressing his thick, hard erection against her stomach. She tried to scramble up his body, but her impromptu climbing attempt threw him off balance. He overcorrected and they banged against the metal shelving, then bounced off it.

Careening across the aisle, they stumbled and staggered over crate debris and crashed to the concrete floor.

Yet never broke the kiss.

Clamping her face between his big hands, he claimed her with hot, deep glides of his tongue. Closing his teeth over her lower lip, he gave it a gentle tug followed by a not-so-gentle suck, before resuming his sleek, erotic slides into the slick interior of her mouth.

He teased her with slow rhythmic thrusts, plunging in and out, and she sucked frantically at his tongue, as if it were some other part of him she was trying to capture and take deep inside her. He let her suckle him for a moment, growling soft and low in his throat, then he dragged his mouth away, lightly chafing his shadow-beard across her jaw, nipping the edge of it. He trailed scorching kisses down her throat, then bit her in the hollow where her shoulder met her neck, catching the tendon with his teeth.

She sucked in a hissing breath, her back arching, straining up against him. She tipped back her head, yielding greater access.

Pushing impatiently at the collar of her jean jacket, he bared her skin and scattered tiny love-bites over her shoulder, riding the fine edge between not-enough and almost-too-much.

She had a sneaking suspicion Cian MacKeltar rode that edge a lot.

God, what was happening to her? she wondered dimly. She was going to tell him they needed to hurry and get out of there. That Stone-face was coming. That Security was no doubt on its way. Just a few more kisses and she was going to tell him all of that. Any minute now . . .

She tugged at his shirt, worked her hands beneath it, gliding them up his sexy, sculpted abdomen, slipping them around to his magnificently muscled back.

He shoved his hands beneath her sweater, subtly shifting so the hot, hard ridge of his erection was cradled snugly between her thighs.

We have to go now, she was going to tell him. “I can’t breathe,” she told him. “You’re too big. I want to be on top.”

He made a half-choking, half-laughing sound and rolled her over on top of him. She slipped into a straddling position and glanced down, eyes widening. His bulge was straining the fabric of his faded jeans and he was worrisomely large.

“Take off that damn jacket.”

But we need to go, she opened her mouth to say. Except just as she was about to form the words, he pressed the pad of his finger to her parted lips, and she ended up nipping the tip of his finger then sucking it into her mouth.

He groaned, eyes narrowing, gaze fixed heatedly on her mouth.

She shrugged the jacket from her shoulders. When he tugged at her sweater, she raised her arms above her head and yielded that too. Her breasts sprang free, jiggling, her nipples hardening into tight puckers.

Beneath her, Cian stared up, lust stringing his gut tighter than a corded bow about to shoot wildly into anything that moved.