“This is the first time I’ve seen you laugh, Gabrielle. You’re even more beautiful when you laugh. I hadn’t thought it possible.”

Her laughter died abruptly and she jerked away from him. But it was too late, his hands had already left their fiery imprint on her body, like a heated, erotic brand. “Don’t flatter me. Don’t be nice to me,” she gritted. “And do not do any more of my work for me.”

“I was merely trying to help. You looked so weary last night.”

“As if you care. Stay out of my life.”

“I can’t do that.”

“Because I refuse to sacrifice my whole world just to help you regain yours,” she snapped bitterly.

“No,” he said evenly, eyes narrowing. “Because I don’t like your boss. I don’t like the way he looks at you. I don’t like the way he treats you. I don’t bloody like a bloody frigging thing about the prick. And when I’m myself again, I will rectify the situation.”

Gabby went still. Adam Black looked and sounded angry. Genuinely angry. About how she was being treated. His face was dark and thunderous, his eyes snapping with golden sparks.

Oh, that was deadly. That was cruel. Acting like he had feelings. Like he gave a damn. Especially when she really didn’t have anybody else in her life that did. Clearly he would do anything in order to seduce her to his aim—even mimic emotion and pretend concern. After all, wasn’t that why it was called seduction? Because the victim was lulled into a feeling of false safety and well-being? And how could that be engendered except through the pretense of caring?

No soul. No heart. Ergo, no emotions, she reminded herself.

Snatching up her purse, she flipped off her computer and stomped out of her cubicle.

They’d even been really good contentions, she was still brooding irritably, an hour and a half later, as she dumped the laundry basket on her bed and began sorting her clothes into loads. Immersing herself in routine helped her pretend the sin siriche du himself wasn’t currently downstairs in her kitchen, drinking single-malt scotch straight from the bottle (fifty-year-old Macallan, no less) and typing away on her laptop, surfing the Net.

By the time she’d gotten home, he’d already been there, with the stage lavishly set for his next seduction. Five-star dinner spread out on her dining room table, a vase of long-stemmed roses perfuming the air, drapes drawn and candles lit. Fine crystal sparkled on the table, crystal she knew she didn’t own. Silverware she’d never seen before, fine china too.

She’d tipped her nose skyward and started to stalk past him toward the stairs. He’d moved into her path, brushing his body against hers. Then caught her by one arm.

He’d turned her to face him and just stared down at her in silence for the longest time before finally releasing her. She’d said nothing, not about to give an inch. Not even when he’d dropped his dark chiseled face forward until his lips had been a mere breath from hers, using his blatant masculinity in an attempt to cow her. Stoically resisting the overpowering temptation to wet her lips in a timeless invitation, she’d stood her ground, levelly meeting that dark gaze, refusing to believe that there might be anything other than cold-blooded calculation in his eyes. And if, for a moment, she’d thought she’d seen a hint of humanity, of male frustration, of genuine desire, of tempered impatience in their gold-sparked depths, it had been a trick of the flickering candlelight.

Nothing more.

His legal briefs had been better than anything she’d ever written. Brilliant, charismatically persuasive, incisive. She had no doubt she’d win every arbitration he’d written. She’d been envious reading them, wishing she’d thought of that argument or seen that subtle, keen twist. Two of the cases he’d argued were ones where she knew the person she was representing bore negligence in excess of fifty-one percent (they were being filed because they were “friends of friends,” and her smarmy boss owed a few people favors—probably in exchange for golf privileges at some fancy club), yet after reading Adam’s argument, even she would have decided in favor of her guilty client.

He was that good.

I’ve been alive for thousands of years, he’d said. She shivered. Ancient. Adam Black was ancient. And had probably done everything there was to do, at least once. Why should it surprise her that he could do her job so well? He was a being that could travel through time and space. Maybe he had no soul and no heart, but there had to be a pretty damned formidable intellect behind those dark, shimmering, intensely alive eyes.

She sorted her wash automatically, hands moving, brain whirring away. Whites. Lights. Darks. Darks. Darks. Lights. Darks. Whites—wait!