“How did you get so rich?”

“My great-great-great-great—let’s see, five greats—one more—great-grandfather was Lord Baltimore. He owned Maryland.”

“That’ll do it. But I still want my gun back.”

“When you leave.”

For a moment, he looked, she thought, kind of like a wild animal. He was hair-trigger; she knew that. Up close like this, he seemed even more dangerous.

She stretched, lying half in his lap and half on the bed. When she stopped, the edge of her hand was lying against his erection. She said, “Uh-oh.” Then, “Can I be a bad girl?”

“Be a bad girl.”

Very lightly, she touched it. Then she snatched her hand away. “Oh, it’s huge!”

He swallowed. He was trembling a little.

She felt more intimately. “It can’t be as big as it feels.” “Have a look,” he whispered.

“Shall I?”

He was too big around the waist for the pants, so they were only three-quarters zipped. She opened them. He came out, bobbing, the glans gleaming in the soft light.

He was huge. She pressed into the tender glans with a fingernail, then held the enormous thing in both of her hands. She drew off the pants. He shuffled out of the shirt.

She had not seen a male so beautiful in years. His muscles were fabulous, his skin lustrous. His face was purest masculine poetry, chiseled and hard, but with the complex, haunted eyes of somebody who had led a dangerous and uncertain life.

Whatever, he was a lovely specimen and he was going to make a sumptuous meal. She was actually a little jealous of Leo. What a great first supper!

A few minutes before he was brought in, she had gone down and checked the furnace next door. All was in order. Under the bed was the black overnight case that she would carry his remnant in.

But all that was for later. Until Sarah returned, she would continue to play with him. She needed that book. If Sarah did not find it, then this creature would discover that Foggy Bottom could be used for more than just games. There were some very serious implements there, and she knew just exactly how to apply them.

She stroked his chest, made a ring around one of his nipples with her finger. She touched the puckered wound on his shoulder. “This hurt?”

“A little. It’s healing.”

She remembered how good it had felt, seeing that knife dig in. If there had been a little more room for her backhand, she would have sliced the arm off.

“What happened?”

“A client became upset.”

“Very upset.”

“Very.”

She kissed the corner of his mouth, but drew aside when he tried to kiss her back.