The Dark Highlander by Karen Marie Moning Page A

brushed her teeth with his toothbrush because there was no way she was
not
going to brush her teeth. She’d felt strange using it. She’d never used a man’s toothbrush before. But after all, she’d rationalized, they’d eaten from the same fork. And she’d nearly had his tongue in her mouth. Honestly would have rather
liked
his tongue in her mouth, so long as she had a firm guarantee it would stop there. (She wasn’t
about
to become the next pair of panties beneath his bed, not that she had any to leave.)
    She drowned in his clothes, but at least when he’d retied her to the bed, she hadn’t had to worry about her skirt riding up. The sweats were drawstring—the only saving grace—rolled up about ten times, the shirt fell to her knees. No panties was a bit disconcerting.
    He’d tucked her beneath the coverlet. Tested the bonds. Lengthened them slightly so she might sleep more comfortably.
    Then he’d stood at the edge of the bed a moment, gazing down at her with an unfathomable expression in his exotic golden eyes. Unnerved, she’d broken eye contact first and rolled—inasmuch as she was able—onto her side away from him.
    Sheesh,
she thought, blinking heavy-lidded, sleepy eyes. She smelled like him. It was all over her.
    She was falling asleep. She couldn’t believe it. In the midst of such dreadful, stressful circumstances, she was falling asleep.
    Well, she told herself, she needed her sleep so her wits would be sharp tomorrow. Tomorrow she would escape.
    He hadn’t tried to kiss her again, was her final, slightly wistful, and utterly ridiculous thought before she drifted off.
     
    Several hours later, too restless to sleep, Dageus was in the living room, listening to the rain pattering against the windows and poring over the Midhe Codex, a collection of mostly nonsensical myths and vague prophecies (“a massive muddling mess of medieval miscellany,” one renowned scholar had called it, and Dageus was inclined to agree), when the phone rang. He glanced at it warily, but did not rise to answer it.
    A long pause, a beep, then “Dageus, ’tis Drustan.”
    Silence.
    “You know how I hate talking to machines. Dageus.”
    Long silence, a heavy sigh.
    Dageus fisted his hands, unfisted them, then massaged his temples with the heels of his palms.
    “Gwen’s in the hospital—”
    Dageus’s head whipped toward the answering machine, he half-rose, but stopped.
    “She had untimely contractions.”
    Worry in his twin brother’s voice. It knifed straight to Dageus’s heart. Gwen was six-and-a-half-months pregnant with twins. He held his breath, listening. He’d not sacrificed so much to bring his brother and his brother’s wife together in the twenty-first century, only to have something happen to Gwen now.
    “But she’s fine now.”
    Dageus breathed again and sank back down to the sofa.
    “The doctors said sometimes it happens in the last trimester, and so long as she doesn’t have further contractions, they’ll consider releasing her on the morrow.”
    A time filled with naught but the faint sound of his brother’s breathing.
    “Och . . . brother . . . come home.” Pause. Softly, “Please.”
    Click.

5
    Dageus was perilously close to losing control.
    “That means ‘bridge,’ not ‘adjoining walkway,’” she was saying, peering over his shoulder and pointing at what he’d just scribbled in the notes he was taking. Some of her hair tumbled over his shoulder and spilled down his chest. It was all he could do not to slip his hand into it and tug her lips to his.
    He should never have untied her this morn. But it wasn’t as if she could escape him, and it bordered on barbaric to keep her tied to the bed. Besides, the mere thought of her tied to the bed was obsessing a dark part of his mind. Still, it was no better having her flitting about, examining everything, pestering him with incessant questions and comments.
    Each time he looked at her, a silent growl rose in his throat, scarce