It took but a moment to get past the sound of her pounding heart. And then she felt his torment. He was weak from the battle, his body savagely cut, and he was in pain. He could not even sit up. She had to find him. He needed her. He needed to be deep inside her, taking power from her.
Claire tensed as heat flared between them. He had heard her. He knew she was coming and he was waiting for her.
She looked up at the ceiling. Aidan had told Royce to take Malcolm to a tower. There were four towers, one on each corner of the curtain walls of the castle. Both gatehouses had towers, too, but she was certain he was directly above her. Claire jerked on the neckline of her leine, the linen sticking to her wet skin. It did not become easier to breathe.
She ripped the offending gown from her body, panting hard, clad only in her denim skirt and T-shirt. Where are you?
Claire. Upstairs. Above ye. ’Tis the East Gatehouse.
She smiled, her heart pounding with renewed urgency. I am coming. Claire tried the doorknob and realized it was locked. She was instantly enraged. They had locked her in the chamber!
Hurry, lass.
Claire inhaled and caught his scent. She could smell sex. His lust filled the room from the ceiling above. Frenzied, she pulled on the old-fashioned door handle. Her fear had given her superhuman strength, because the door blew in, the lock snapping.
Panting, she peered into the corridor and saw that it was empty, a single torch burning in one wall sconce. Barefoot, she soundlessly ran up the narrow, winding stone staircase. Her flesh felt as if it might explode from her body if she did not leap into his arms soon.
Another landing faced her, one torch burning in the hall. Claire didn’t stop. She went to the next level, where she found a small round antechamber instead of a corridor. A heavy wood door faced her, bolted from the outside, an iron padlock on it.
A throbbing tension filled the anteroom. Malcolm’s.
He was on the other side of that door, hard and hot, promising her a universe of ecstasy. Claire now knew she would eagerly die for his touch.
Claire moaned and found her dagger stuck into the waistband of her skirt, jamming it into the padlock. In New York City, she would have never been able to pick such a lock. But now she viciously thrust the dagger into the lock and it sprang open. Moisture began to trickle down her legs. Claire flung the bolt aside and yanked the door open.
His silver gaze slammed into hers.
Malcolm lay naked on his back on a pallet at the far wall, a pale linen bandage glaring in contrast against his swarthy skin. His head was turned toward her and he was watching her carefully. He was fully erect. Claire understood; he had become the hunter lying in wait for her. She was eager to be his prey.
Claire wanted to run to him, but at the sight of so much beauty and the anticipation of so much pleasure, she simply could not move.
A smile began as he sat up slowly, grunting with pain. The bandage was stained with red blood. “Come t’ me, Claire.”
Claire stumbled forward as he carefully stood, clearly weak from the battle and loss of blood. She caught him, wrapping her arms around him, and when his entire naked body came into contact with hers, tears of desire began.
“Lass,” he gasped, holding her in a viselike grasp. He flung his head back and his power fell over her like a huge cloak. Claire was cocooned in warmth that began an invasion from the outside, in. She was acutely aware of a soft, sweet draining sensation—and as aware of Malcolm, groaning uncontrollably, head flung even farther back. Suddenly she felt his terrible pleasure begin.
He cried out thickly. “Aye, Claire!”
She met his gaze as he seized her arms and she saw the triumphant lust there. He smiled savagely, spread her thighs, his mouth against hers. He thrust deep, gasping. “Ye taste good.”
A huge wave broke and Claire wept in more pleasure than she had dreamed, but Malcolm moved now, draining her and coming at the same time, and the wave kept breaking. Lightning comprehension shocked her as the universe became solidly black and filled with exploding stars, each one another one of her climaxes. This time she would be lost in this galaxy of endless pleasure, she was never coming out and she didn’t want to. Every climax was more violent, more brutal and better than the one before. It didn’t matter. This was how she wanted to die, giving Malcolm her life, while riding his huge hardness into eternity.
His seed streamed and burned. He roared his pleasure as he took her, the sound that of a beast, not a man.
Claire wept and begged for more, and more always came. She somehow knew she could not withstand this, but she wanted it anyway. Another terrible wave broke, crushing her with ecstasy.
Suddenly Malcolm roared a final time—and thrust himself away from her.
Claire wanted to protest but she couldn’t. She was in a vortex of pleasure and pain and spinning away so rapidly now that she realized she was really dying. She could feel the last essence of her life spinning out of her, faster and faster, like a whirling top about to keel over…
Claire began to settle, limp and empty, fading away. She looked down on her nearly naked body, sprawled out on the stone floor, and saw Malcolm standing by the window, staring at her in horror. Aidan and Royce bent over her now. And suddenly the tower was filled with blinding light. Suddenly she saw the Ancients faintly outlined and crowding into the room…
“Is she alive?” Malcolm cried.
CHAPTER ONE
The Present
CLAIRE WAS AFRAID of the dark.
It was dark now—and something had just thudded downstairs.
She stood absolutely still in the bedroom that was above her bookstore. Claire sold old and rare books and manuscripts, as well as the occasional used but rare tome, and because of the quarter-of-a-million-dollar inventory she kept downstairs, she had a state-of-the-art security system, a Taser and a gun. She knew she hadn’t left a window open, as it was sweltering in the city in July, and she would never leave a window open anyway. It was too dangerous. Crime was out of control in the city. Last month, her neighbor, a wannabe model, had been murdered, and although the police weren’t saying so, she suspected it had been a pleasure crime. She strained to hear, debating getting her Beretta from her bedside drawer.
But she heard nothing now. As she stood there, clad in a pair of cotton candy-striped boxers and a thin ribbed tank top, her bedroom looking as if a tornado had cycled through it, the stray cat that had appeared earlier that day wandered in from the hall outside. She was flooded with relief. The cat had knocked something over! She shouldn’t have suspected the worst—after all, her motion-detection sensors hadn’t gone off—but even after all these years, she hated being alone at night.
Terrified, the child crouched by the door, as a dark, deathly shadow drifted by.
Claire scowled at the handsome black cat, refusing to allow a single thought of her mother’s long-ago murder to invade her consciousness now. “You! I shouldn’t have fed you, now, should I?”
Purring, the cat slithered between her ankles, rubbing sensually there.
Claire scooped him up, the first time she had done so, holding him tightly to her chest. “Rascal,” she whispered. “I need a dog, not a cat, but if I didn’t know that someone was missing you, I’d keep you.”
The cheeky creature actually licked her face.
Claire wiped her chin, dropping the cat to the floor, knowing she’d have to post some Found notices in her Tribeca neighborhood before she left for the airport tomorrow. She was in the