She was dozing again, and Dageus was paging through the third Book of Manannán.

Or trying to.

He was concentrating as well as any man in acute sexual agony could be expected to.

Not at all.

He kept seeing Chloe’s flushed face: her lips swollen from his kisses, the skin around her mouth chafed from whisker burn, her eyes sleepy-sexy with desire as she reached her woman’s peak and shuddered against him. Twice. Clung to him—as if she’d needed him. He’d held her heavy breasts in his hands. He’d touched her between her thighs.

He’d needed her so desperately that he’d nearly cast a Druid spell to fog the minds of the passengers, and pushed as far as she would go. Had contemplated taking her to the bathroom with him. Only her maiden state had stopped him. He’d not spill Chloe’s virgin blood like some barbarian, in a two-by-two room with cardboard walls.

She’d have gone farther, had he pressed. Might have permitted his hand inside her trews, but had he gone that far, there would have been no stopping. So he’d kept his hand safely outside her trews and settled for releasing one of them.

He’d never felt such lust before. Though tooping took the edge off, it was wont to leave him strangely wanting. Touching Chloe made him think there might be some eventual satisfaction he’d never before achieved.

In the meantime, he was rock-hard and in pain.

Still, he brooded, he supposed it was a fair trade-off, for though he was in an agony of sexual need, their intimacy had mellowed the fury within him. Where earlier in the penthouse he’d been afraid of what he might do, her kisses had given him back a measure of control. Not much, but enough to work with.

In the past, he’d always needed to complete the sexual act to gain respite, but not with Chloe. Merely kissing her, touching her, bringing her pleasure had calmed him, had cleared his mind a bit. He made no pretense to understand the how or why of it. It had worked.

He would accept that—that Chloe would tie him in knots, but preserve some measure of his sanity. What a boon her kisses would be on Scottish soil.

Och, the woman had something he needed. His instincts had been right when they’d said “mine.”

And that started a whole new train of possessive thoughts. Thoughts he could do naught about at the moment, so he took slow deep breaths and forced his thoughts to the pressing issues at hand.

What was to come anon would require all his wits and will. Once he was in Scotland, he knew the changes would speed up again. Changes he had to find a way to stop.

And to do so, he had to face his brother.