The warm glow of the firelight highlighted chestnut strands in her raven curls he’d not seen before, and kissed her creamy skin with a brush of gold.

It was all he could do to keep his hands off her, but he knew that if he pushed her too far this night, he’d not be able to have her on the morrow, and the next and the next. He had to pace himself with her, though it was killing him. His palms itched with the need to caress her lush, sweet curves, to take her beneath him again and again.

He stretched out his legs and leaned back on his hands, keeping them well behind him, forcing himself to be contented for a time just savoring the exquisite vision before him.

Jessica St. James: half-nude, all woman, and glowing from his bedplay.

He’d known the moment he’d first glimpsed her that it would come to this. That he would have her this way. As certain as his vengeance, she’d been his destiny.

After they’d slipped beneath the desk and drowsed for a time, he’d stirred, roused her, and scooped her into his arms. He’d carried her here, before the fire, laid her back on the plush creamy sheepskin, and made love to her. Slowly, gently, showing her that he was more than a great big territorial brute, that there was tenderness in him too. He wanted her to know all the facets of him: ninth-century war-laird and sorcerer, and simple man and Druid.

They’d drowsed again, then stirred again, and begun talking lazily of small things, lover’s things: favorite colors and seasons, foods, and places and people.

But suddenly her gaze turned serious and she leaned forward. “How did it happen, Cian? How did you end up in the mirror?”

He leaned forward, too, unable to resist the full, soft breasts swaying toward him with her movement. He ran the pad of his finger beneath the lush curve of one beautiful, silken-skinned mound. “Och, woman,” he said softly, “you show me Heaven and ask me to revisit Hell? Not now, sweet Jessica. Now is for us. No grim thoughts. Only us.”

Cupping her breasts with his big hands, he ducked his head and slicked his tongue across one of those rosy nipples before catching it in his mouth with a husky, sensual purr. It hardened instantly against his tongue. He teased it lightly with his teeth, scraping it across the edge, then pressed it with his tongue against his palate, suckling deeply.

“Us,” she repeated breathlessly, clutching his dark head to her.

It was the most incredible night of Jessi’s life. It surpassed all she’d ever imagined that special night would be. It was searing. It was intimate. It was filled with sounds of passion that she was sure must have rung out from the stone walls, echoing sharply down the winding corridors of the vast, ancient castle. It was hushed and conspiratorial. It was raw. It was tender. It was perfection.

He’d taken her wildly, roughly on the desk, calling out to and laying claim upon the kindred wildness within her.

He’d made sweet, painstakingly slow love to her before the fire, cupping her face with his hands, staring into her eyes, caressing her so tenderly and seemingly reverently that she’d had to turn her face away from him to hide an inexplicable burn of tears. As he’d moved, sure and deep inside her, she’d felt as if he’d been making love to her soul.

He’d rolled over onto his back and raised her high above him, muscles bunching and rippling in those powerful, tattooed arms, then lowered her, inch by delicious inch, onto his hard, straining erection.

He was a phenomenal lover! He never went completely soft. Even after he came he was still hard. Once she’d rued his being Terminator-tough. But she wasn’t about to waste a single breath complaining about him being an unstoppable sexual machine. (Though, come morning, she might waste a few breaths complaining if, as she suspected was going to be the case, she could hardly walk!)

After their third intense, erotic bout, stretched on a velvety chaise, with her riding both of them to a brain-melting, panting orgasm, he bundled them up in soft woolen throws collected from various chairs, and they slipped out through the French doors of the library and onto a stone terrace beneath the pearly radiance of a half-full moon.

He stood behind her and pulled her back into his embrace, resting his chin on the top of her head. She was cocooned by the spicy, erotic man-scent of him. Mixed with that scent was a subtler one: the smell they made together. It was intoxicating to her—the scent of their lovemaking—sweat and kisses and come.

He held her like that in silence for a long time, staring out at the night, gazing at the mountains beyond.

And she watched the sky, brilliantly splashed with sparkling stars, marveling.

College was a lifetime away.