And as long as he held himself remote—no emotion, just uncomplicated lust—then he could take what he wanted. He wouldn’t let himself drown in her. Yet he would offer her wild, hot, mindnumbing sex in return.

The duchess wouldn’t like being used that way, he suspected, but he wouldn’t give her reason to complain. He would have his fill of her, until the blazing heat in his body was sated. He would have her whenever and however he wanted. But he’d make damn certain she enjoyed it.

Anticipation and arousal riding him hard, he returned home in the mood to wrestle grizzlies. Heather was at work fixing Janna’s supper, but looked up as Sloan entered the kitchen. His hat was pulled down low over his eyes when his gaze locked with hers.

An invisible skein of lightning wrapped around them, catching them fast.

The spell was broken when Janna threw her spoon on the floor in a rare fit of impatience.

“I didn’t expect you so early,” Heather murmured, trying to quell her rapid pulse.

With a shrug, Sloan rescued his daughter’s spoon and picked her up in his arms.

“Are you hungry?” Heather asked him.

“I could eat,” he prevaricated.

He took Janna with him when he went to wash up for supper, while Heather finished cooking. When they returned, Sloan’s tawny hair was still damp, with curling tendrils falling over his ears and shirt collar, making him look younger, less forbidding. The angles and planes of his face, however, were set in their usual rigid lines. Any tenderness or regard she’d evoked in him had gone the way of the storm, Heather suspected.

And despite the presence of his daughter, there was a new tension in the air, along with a sense of heightened danger. Sloan’s brooding sensuality was as potent as a bonfire. When she moved close enough to serve his supper, she could feel the heat emanating from his body, smell the warm musky male scent of his skin.

It was all Heather could do to take her place at the table and act normally, as if her heart was not racing a mile a minute.

“You haven’t yet asked how Caitlin fared last night,” she managed to remark. “You have a new niece.”

“I know. I rode over at first light. Cat and the baby are doing fine,” Sloan answered at her inquiring look. “I gave Jake hell for letting you go out in the storm.”

“He wasn’t to blame, I was. I didn’t think it necessary to have an escort.”

Sloan sent her a hard look that clearly conveyed what he thought of such foolishness. Heather fell silent and applied herself to her supper, barely tasting what she ate.

“Leave the dishes,” he murmured when she started to clear the table.