Her blush deepened. “I was just snooping, okay? But if I’d had any idea what I was going to find, I wouldn’t have.”

He smiled, a slow seductive smile, and Chloe caught her breath.

“Take a sip of port and let it lie upon your tongue a moment.”

Chloe sipped.

“Now the cigar.”

She puffed lightly. Sweet and smoky, a fascinating combination. Another sip, another puff. She laughed. She felt silly puffing on the fat cigar. She felt warm and alive. She turned her head to tell him what she thought, but he’d dropped beside her on the sofa and she ran into his lips.

Smack into that decadent, full, sinful mouth, and the minute they made contact, Chloe sizzled. Heat lanced through her from head to toe; a kind of wild heat she’d never felt before. A heat that she instinctively understood could burn her beyond recognition. He’d not smoked his cigar, and he tasted of malt, then his hot tongue slipped inside her mouth and her entire world upended. She scarcely noticed when he deftly slid the cigar and glass from her hands, depositing them elsewhere. He might have dropped them on the floor for all she cared.

“Chloe-lass. I need to taste you. Open more. Give me.”

He buried his hands in her hair, kissing her, and suddenly it was utterly insignificant that he stole artifacts, that he’d taken her captive, that he lived outside the law. She cared only that his tongue was in her mouth, and how it made her feel. The world ceased to exist beyond that.

Slow, deep kisses, erotic nips with his teeth, his mouth gliding, slipping and sliding over hers. He caught her lower lip and tugged lazily away, returned to catch it again, then slanted his mouth firmly over hers, plundering. He nibbled, he sucked, he consumed. The man didn’t simply kiss, he made love to a woman’s mouth, made it feel all hot and swollen and achy. Made her make funny noises and feel shaky all over. Made her feel like she might—

I’m dying without you. Call me. It’s Katherine.

—totally lose herself and fall for him like countless women undoubtedly had. A woman he’d not called back. And unlike what she’d heard in the sophisticated purr of Katherine’s voice, Chloe didn’t possess the proper worldliness, the necessary defenses. If she were foolish enough to let him, the man would use her and discard her. And there’d be no one to blame but herself. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know, going in, what kind of man he was. Definitely the love-’em-and-leave-’em type. And how would she feel, knowing she’d been just another hit-and-run? Used, that was how.

“S-stop,” she breathed.

He didn’t. His hands dropped from her hair to her breasts, moving possessively over them, cupping and plumping. His thumbs glided over her nipples, and they peaked instantly. She felt like she was drowning. The man was too overwhelmingly male and sexual, and Chloe knew that she had to stop him, because in a few more moments, she wouldn’t be able to remember why she should.

“Please,” she cried. “Stop!”

He held her lower lip hostage for a long, erotic moment, then, with a ragged growl, he broke the kiss. He rested his forehead against hers, his breathing shallow and fast. When had it gotten so cold in the room? she wondered dimly. There must be a window open somewhere, letting in an icy breeze. She shivered. Her skin was hot, flushed from his passion, yet the fine hair all over her body had puckered into goose bumps.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, his voice low and urgent.

Maybe not physically, she thought, but there are other kinds of pain. In twenty-four hours she’d become hopelessly infatuated with a thief. Mesmerized by a stranger who dripped “forbidden” and “secrets” and “criminal.” She shook her head, straining to pull away from him. Accepting a bribe was one thing, losing herself was another. And she had no doubt that she could get lost in such a man. They simply weren’t in the same league.

His hands went back up to her hair and he clutched tightly, his head down, and for a moment she thought he would refuse to let her go. Then he raised his head and looked at her, his gaze dark and intense.

“I want you, lass.”

“You hardly even know me,” she retorted shakily. She suspected that when Dageus MacKeltar told a woman he wanted her in such a voice, he didn’t hear “no” often, if ever.

“I wanted you the moment I saw you on the street.”

“On the street?” He’d seen her on the street? When? Where? The thought that he’d noticed her before they’d met in his bedroom made her feel breathless.

“You were arriving when I was leaving. I was in the cab behind you. I saw you and I—” he broke off abruptly.