Another predatory step toward her.

She didn’t even think about it, she just yielded to the instinct: her feet spun her about and she broke into a run. As if she could outrun him. As if she could outrun what she’d been trying to outrun since she’d met him—the reckless, terrifying intensity of her desire for him. As if she even wanted to. She wanted him more than was wise, more than was rational, more than was controllable.

Still, she ran, a final symbolic resistance and—a part of her knew—she ran because she wanted him to chase her. Thrilled with the knowledge that Dageus MacKeltar was running after her and when he caught her he was going to teach her all those things his eyes had been promising. All those things she wanted so desperately to know. She sped through the tall, thick grass and he actually let her run for a time, as if he, too, were enjoying the chase. Then he was on her, taking her down to the ground on her stomach beneath him. Laughing as he took her down.

His laughter turned into a rough growl as he stretched his big hard body the full length of hers, his erection an iron bar prodding her behind through the fabric of her gown. She wriggled, panicked by the feel of how large he was, yet he gave no quarter, wrapping his arms tightly around her, pinning hers to her sides. He rubbed himself back and forth between the cleft of her bottom, growling in a language she couldn’t understand.

Banding her arms with one of his, he slid a hand between her body and the ground and cupped the vee of her thighs. She cried out at the shatteringly intimate touch. Every nerve in her body awakened brutally to a sharp, hungry emptiness. Muscles deep inside her bore down on nothing, aching to be filled and soothed. His strange temper, his roughness, fed a desire in her she’d not known she had. To be taken, consumed by the man. Hard and fast and without words. Every bit as animal as she’d known he was the day she’d met him.

She liked the danger in him, she realized then. It stirred a reckless part of her she’d long denied, been a little afraid of it. The part of her that sometimes dreamed she was in The Cloisters at night and the alarm systems had failed, leaving all those glorious artifacts unprotected.