Excerpt
The Dark Highlander
Chapter 1
Dageus MacKeltar walked like a man and talked like a man, but in bed he was pure animal.
Criminal attorney Katherine O'Malley called a spade a spade, and the man was raw Sex with a capital S. Now that she'd slept with him she was ruined for other men.
It wasn't just what he looked like, with his sculpted body,skin poured like gold velvet over steel, chiseled features, and silky black hair. Or that lazy, utterly arrogant smile that promised a woman paradise. And delivered. One hundred percent satisfaction guaranteed.
It wasn't even the exotic golden eyes fringed by thick black lashes beneath slanted brows.
It was what he did to her.
He was sex like she'd never had in her life, and Katherine had been having sex for seventeen years. She thought she'd seen it all. But when Dageus MacKeltar touched her, she came apart at the seams. Aloof, his every movement smoothly controlled, when he stripped off his clothing he stripped off every ounce of that rigid discipline and turned into an untamed barbarian. He f***ed with the single-minded intensity of a man on death row, execution at dawn.
Just thinking about him made places low in her belly clench. Made her skin felt stretched too tight across her bones. Made her breath come short and sharp.
Now, standing in the anteroom outside the enameled French doors of his exquisite Manhattan penthouse overlooking Central Park that fit him like a second skin-starkly elegant, black, white, chrome, and hard-she felt intensely alive, every nerve wired. Drawing a deep breath, she turned the handle and pushed open the door.
It was never locked. As if he feared nothing, forty-three floors above the flash and razor edges of the city. As if he'd seen the worst the Big Apple had to offer and found it all mildly amusing. As if the city might be big and bad, but he was bigger and badder.
She stepped inside, inhaling the rich scent of sandalwood and roses. Classical music spilled through the luxurious rooms-Mozart's Requiem-but she knew that later he might play Nine Inch Nails, and stretch her naked body against the wall of windows that overlooked the conservatory water, driving into her until she screamed her release to the bright city lights below.
Sixty feet of coveted Fifth Avenue frontage in the East 70s-and she had no idea what he did for a living. Most of the time she wasn't certain she wanted to know.
She pushed the doors shut behind her and allowed the buttery-soft folds of her leather coat to spill to the floor, revealing black lace-topped thigh-highs, matching panties, and a sheer push-up bra that presented her full breasts to perfection. She caught a glimpse of her reflection in the darkened windows and smiled. At thirty-three, Katherine O'Malley looked good. She should look good, she thought, arching a brow, as much exercise as she'd been getting in his bed. Or on the floor. Sprawled across the leather sofa. In his black marble Jacuzzi...
A wave of lust made her dizzy, and she breathed deeply to slow her pounding heart. Around him, she felt insatiable. A time or two, she'd briefly entertained the outrageous thought that he might not be human. That maybe he was some mythical sex-god, perhaps Priapus beckoned by the needy inhabitants of the city that never slept. Or some creature of long-forgotten lore, a Sidhe that had the ability to heighten pleasure to extremes mortals weren't meant to taste.
"Katie-lass." His voice floated down from the top floor of, the fifteen-room duplex, dark and rich, his Scottish accent making her think of peat-smoke, ancient stones, and aged whisky.
Only Dageus MacKeltar could get away with calling Katherine O'Malley "Katie-lass."
As he descended the curving staircase and entered the thirty-foot living room with its vaulted ceilings, marble fireplace, and panoramic view of the park, she remained motionless, drinking him in. He wore black linen trousers, and she knew there would be nothing beneath them but the most perfect male body she'd ever seen. Her gaze drifted over his wide shoulders, down his hard chest and his rippling abs, lingering on the twin ropes of muscle that cut his lower stomach and disappeared into his pants, beckoning the eye to follow.
"Good enough to eat?" His golden eyes glittered as they raked her body. "Come." He extended his hand. "Lass, you take my breath away. Your wish is my command this eve. You have only to tell me."
His long midnight hair, so black it seemed as blue-black as his shadow beard in the amber glow of recessed lights, spilled over one muscled shoulder, falling to his waist, and she sucked in a quick breath. She knew the feel of it sweeping her bare breasts, abrading her nipples, falling lower, across her thighs as he brought her to peak after shuddering peak.
"As if I need to say anything. You know what I want before I know myself." She heard the edge in her voice, knew he heard it too. It unnerved her, how well he understood her. Before she knew what she wanted, he was giving it to her.
It made him dangerously addictive.
He smiled, but it didn't quite reach his eyes. She wasn't certain she'd ever seen it reach his eyes. They never changed, merely observed and waited. Like a tiger's golden eyes, his were watchful yet aloof, amused yet detached. Hungry eyes. Predator eyes. More than once she'd wanted to ask what those tiger-eyes saw. What judgment they passed, what the hell he seemed to be waiting for, but in the bliss of his hard body against hers she forgot time and again, until she was back at work and it was too late to ask.
She'd been sleeping with him for two months, and knew no more about him now than the day she'd met him in Starbucks, across the street from O'Leary Banks and O'Malley, where she was a partner, thanks partly to her father, the senior O'Malley, and partly to her own ruthlessness. One look at the six-foot-four, darkly seductive man over the rim of her café au lait, and she'd known she had to have him. It might have had something to do with the way he'd locked eyes with her as he'd lazily licked whipped cream off his mocha, making her imagine that sexy tongue doing far more intimate things. It might have had something to do with the pure sexual heat he gave off. She knew it had a great deal to do with the danger that rolled off him. Some days she wondered if she'd be defending him as one of her controversial high-profile clients in the months or years to come.
That same day they'd met, they'd rolled across his white Berber carpet, from fireplace to windows, wrestling silently for the supreme position, until she'd no longer cared how he'd taken her, so long as he had.
With a reputation for a razor-sharp tongue and the mind to back it up, she'd never once turned it on him. She had no idea how he maintained his lavish lifestyle, how he afforded his obscenely expensive collections of art and ancient weapons. She didn't know where he'd been born, or even when his birthday was.
At work, she'd mentally prepare her interrogatory but inevitably the probing questions stalled on her tongue the moment she saw him. She, the merciless interrogator in a courtroom, tongue-tied in his bedroom. On occasion, tied in infinitely more pleasurable ways. The man was a true master of the erotic.
"Woolgatherin', lass? Or merely deciding how you want me?" he purred.
Katherine wet her lips. How she wanted him?
She wanted him out of her system. Kept hoping the next time she slept with him, the sex might not be so mindblowing. The man was far too dangerous to get involved with emotionally. Just yesterday she'd lingered at Mass, praying that she would get over her addiction to him-please, God, soon. Yes, he heated her blood, but there was something about him that chilled her soul.
In the meantime-hopelessly fascinated as she was-she knew exactly how she would have him. A strong woman, she was aroused by the strength of a dominant man. She would end the night sprawled over his leather sofa. He would fist his hand in her long hair, drive into her from behind. He would bite the nape of her neck when she came.
She inhaled sharply, took one step forward, and he was on her, dragging her down to the thick carpet. Firm lips, sensual, with a hint of cruelty, dosed over hers as he kissed her, golden eyes narrowing.
There was something about him that bordered on terrifying, she thought as he pinned her hands to the floor and rose over her, too beautiful, rife with dark secrets she suspected no woman should ever know-and it made the sex so much more exquisite, that fine edge of danger.
It was her last coherent thought for a long, long time.
