“Chloe-lass, I’m going to keep you.”

“Keep me, my ass,” she snapped. “I don’t agree to being kept.”

“Forever,” he said, with a chilling smile. “And you will.”

“Argh! Can’t I just not dream about that man one freaking night?” Chloe cried, rolling over in bed and pulling the pillow over her head.

He was on her mind incessantly when she was awake. She didn’t think it was so much to ask to be able to escape him in her dreams. She’d even dreamed about him when she’d dozed on the airplane! And all the dreams had been so intensely detailed that they’d seemed almost real. In this one, she’d been able to smell the spicy man-scent of him, to feel his warm breath fanning her face when he’d informed her he was going to keep her.

As if!

What did her dream Dageus think? she brooded irritably. That such a barbaric, utterly Teutonic declaration would melt her to her toes?

Wait a minute, she thought, backtracking mentally—it had been her dream, which meant that it wasn’t what he thought, but apparently what she was subconsciously thinking about.

Oh, Zanders, you are so not politically correct, she thought dismally.

It had melted her. She’d love to hear such words from him. One teeny declaration of that sort and she’d be stuck on him like superglue.

She sat up and flung the pillow across the room in frustration. The Gaulish Ghost in New York had been fascinating enough, but the glimpse of emotion she’d seen last night when he’d been reunited with his brother had made him even more dangerously intriguing.

It had been one thing to think of him as a womanizer, a man not capable of love.

But she couldn’t think that anymore, because she’d seen love in his eyes. Love that she wanted to know more about. She’d glimpsed depths to him that she’d convinced herself he didn’t have. What had happened between the two brothers to make them so estranged? What had happened to Dageus MacKeltar to make him so tightly guard his emotions?

She was doing it—wanting to be the woman who got inside him. Dangerous want, that.

She hugged her knees and rested her chin atop them, brooding.

A significant part of the blame for her dream, she thought peevishly, could be attributed to Gwen. Last night, after Chloe had finished showering, Gwen had brought a dinner tray to her room. She’d stayed while Chloe had eaten, and the talk had turned, as it was wont to do when women got together, to men.

Specifically to Keltar men.

Facts that Chloe had known about Dageus prior to Gwen’s little visit: He was irresistibly seductive; he had a fantastic body—she’d seen it when he’d dropped his towel; he wore condoms for the “Extra-Large Man.”