The Immortal Highlander by Karen Marie Moning Page A

persuasive, incisive. She had no doubt she’d win every arbitration he’d written. She’d been envious reading them, wishing she’d thought of that argument or seen that subtle, keen twist. Two of the cases he’d argued were ones where she
knew
the person she was representing bore negligence in excess of fifty-one percent (they were being filed because they were “friends of friends,” and her smarmy boss owed a few people favors—probably in exchange for golf privileges at some fancy club), yet after reading Adam’s argument, even
she
would have decided in favor of her guilty client.
    He was that good.
    I’ve been alive for thousands of years,
he’d said. She shivered. Ancient. Adam Black was ancient. And had probably done everything there was to do, at least once. Why should it surprise her that he could do her job so well? He was a being that could travel through time and space. Maybe he had no soul and no heart, but there had to be a pretty damned formidable intellect behind those dark, shimmering, intensely alive eyes.
    She sorted her wash automatically, hands moving, brain whirring away. Whites. Lights. Darks. Darks. Darks. Lights. Darks. Whites—wait!
    His
T-shirt
?
    He’d actually had the gall to toss his dirty shirt in her laundry basket? Wadding it up in her fist, she turned around to go tell him exactly what he could do with his dirty clothes. Then stopped.
    Then started again. Then stopped.
    Nibbling her lip, she had a brief and very heated argument with herself.
    With an exasperated sigh, she raised his shirt to her nose and inhaled deeply, closing her eyes.
    Could a man smell any more like sin?
    Hint of jasmine and sandalwood and a spray of night surf. Scent of darkness and spice and sex. Forbidden things, unholy things, things that prayers were meant to cover in that part about
deliver us from temptation and protect us from all evil
.
    He was never getting his T-shirt back.
     
    Much later, after Gabby had gone to bed, Adam ducked his head inside her turret bedroom. She was sleeping soundly. Good. The petite
ka-lyrra
worked too hard. Permitted others to push their responsibilities off on her. He would put an end to that. Life was short enough for a mortal. They shouldn’t work so much. Play more. He would teach her to play. Once he was again immortal, she would never work, want for nothing.
    All the windows were open and a fragrant night breeze was blowing in, rippling across the thin sheet beneath which she slept. Moonlight spilled across the bed, casting her long hair spun-silver, her slumbering features warm pearl.
    Fully clothed, he noticed, with a sardonic smile. Wise woman. If she’d been foolish enough to sleep nude, he’d not have contented himself with the minor mission for which he’d come. The mere thought of her nude beneath that sheet . . . ah, he was sexually obsessed with her. With her full, round breasts, the endless temptation of her soft, womanly ass, her lush carnal lips, her hair, her eyes, her hands. Her fire.
    Even her virginity turned him on. Filled him with a primal possessiveness, knowing he would be the first man to push himself inside her, to fill her up, to touch her in all those dark, heated, intimate ways. He would seduce her so thoroughly that she would no longer be able to conceive of herself apart from him; she would be his for the taking, anytime he wanted, anywhere, and in any way he chose to take her, able to deny him nothing.
    He knew she’d expected force from him. He’d seen it in her eyes when she was tied to her chair yesterday, so defiantly telling him “no.”
    How little she understood of what he had planned for her.
    Yesterday morning, after she’d gone in to work (which hadn’t surprised him; his tenacious
Sidhe
-seer would no more relinquish control of her world than he willingly would of his), he’d thoroughly acquainted himself with her home, learned everything about her he could. He’d examined what kind of books she liked to read, what