A time filled with naught but the faint sound of his brother’s breathing.

“Och . . . brother . . . come home.” Pause. Softly, “Please.”

Click.

5

Dageus was perilously close to losing control.

“That means ‘bridge,’ not ‘adjoining walkway,’” she was saying, peering over his shoulder and pointing at what he’d just scribbled in the notes he was taking. Some of her hair tumbled over his shoulder and spilled down his chest. It was all he could do not to slip his hand into it and tug her lips to his.

He should never have untied her this morn. But it wasn’t as if she could escape him, and it bordered on barbaric to keep her tied to the bed. Besides, the mere thought of her tied to the bed was obsessing a dark part of his mind. Still, it was no better having her flitting about, examining everything, pestering him with incessant questions and comments.

Each time he looked at her, a silent growl rose in his throat, scarce repressed hunger, need to touch her and taste her and—

“Doona be hanging over my shoulder, lass.” Her scent was filling his nostrils, inciting a lustful stupor. Scent of lush woman and innocence. Christ, didn’t she sense that he was dangerous? Mayhap not overtly, but in the way a mouse took one look at a cat and kept wisely to the shadowy corners of a room? Apparently not, for she chattered on.

“I’m just curious,” she said peevishly. “And you’re getting it wrong. That says, ‘When the man from the mounts, high where the yellow eagles soar, takes the low . . . er, path or journey . . . on the bridge that cheats death’—how curious, the bridge that cheats death?—‘the Draghar will return’ Who are the Draghar? I’ve never heard of them. What is that? The Midhe Codex? I’ve never heard of that either. May I see it? Where did you get it?”

Dageus shook his head. She was irrepressible. “Sit lass, or I’ll tie you up again.”

She glared at him. “I’m only trying to be helpful—”

“And why is that? I’m a thief, remember? A barbarian Visigoth, as you put it.”

She scowled. “You’re right. I don’t know what got into me.” A long pause. Then, “It’s just that I thought if you really were going to return them”—she gave him a searingly skeptical look—“the sooner you finished with them, the sooner they’d go back. So I’d be helping for a good cause.” She nodded pertly, looking inordinately pleased with her rationalization.

He snorted and motioned her to sit down. ’Twas evident the lass was obsessed with antiquities and curious as the day was long. Her fingers actually curled absently whenever she looked at the Codex, as if she was aching to touch it.

He’d like to see her aching to touch him like that. Worldly women all but pushed him into bed. He’d never seduced an innocent before. He sensed she would resist. . . . The thought both amused and aroused him.