“Adrienne.” Hawk groaned, gazing down at the pale cascade of hair that shielded her face from him. “Look at me.” He reached for her chin, but she turned away.

“Stop it.”

“Look at me,” he repeated relentlessly.

“Don’t,” she pleaded. But he didn’t listen. He gripped her waist and pulled her against the hard, male length of him.

Adrienne looked up, despite her best intentions, into eyes of midnight and the chiseled face of a warrior. His bronzed, hard Viking’s body promised cataclysmic passion.

“Lass, tell me it’s not him. Say it. Give me the words. Even if you can’t feel for me yet, tell me you have no real feeling for him and I will overlook all that has transpired.” Groaning, he dropped his silky dark head forward against her, as if reveling in simply being close.

The clean, spicy scent of his hair, black as sin, stirred her senses in ways she couldn’t comprehend.

“I feel for Adam.” Her tongue felt thick. Even her body tried to defy her around this man. She forced herself to say cruel words to hurt him, and it hurt her to do it.

“Where did you get this cape?” he asked evenly, his hands sliding over the rippling fabric.

“Adam.” Perhaps he hadn’t heard her. He hadn’t even so much as flinched.

Deftly, he unfastened the silver brooch at her neck with steady hands. No, she mused, he definitely hadn’t heard her. Maybe she’d mumbled inaudibly.

Easily he slid the cape from her body. Gracefully, even.

She stood frozen in shock as his strong, bronzed hands shredded the cape into tatters. The expression on his face was hard and cold. Oh, he’d definitely heard her. How could she remain untouched by the barbaric and beautiful maelstrom of masculine fury that he was in his … jealousy?

Yes, jealousy.

Same as she’d felt about Olivia.

Dear God, what was happening to her?

CHAPTER 16

“WHY DID YOU DO THAT?” SHE GASPED WHEN SHE WAS ABLE to speak.

Hawk placed a finger beneath her chin and tilted her head back, forcing her to meet his flinty gaze.

“I will tear from you anything Adam gives you. Remember that. If I find his body draped over yours, he will suffer the same fate.” His eyes drifted meaningfully over a scrap of crimson silk stuck on the bark of tree, flapping like a dead thing in the breeze.

“Why?”

“Because I want you.”

“You don’t even know me!”

His mouth curved in a beautiful smile. “Oh, sweet lass, I know everything about you. I know you’re a complex woman, full of dualities; you’re innocent, yet tough; intelligent”—He cocked a teasing brow—“but lacking a smidge of common sense.”

“I am not!” Adrienne scowled her protest.

He laughed huskily. “You have a wonderful sense of humor and you laugh often, but sometimes you’re melancholy.” He crowded her with his body and gazed down at her with heavy, hooded eyes. Adrienne tossed her head, trying vainly to dislodge his finger from beneath her chin and escape his penetrating gaze.

He cupped her face firmly with both hands. “You’re a willful woman, and I’d like to be the focus of such a willful woman’s desire. I’d like to have you yield your trust and loyalty to me as steadfastly as you withhold it. I’m a mature man, Adrienne. I will be patient while I woo you—but woo you, I will.”

Adrienne swallowed hard. Damn him for his words!

Not only will I woo you, lass—I will win you completely, the Hawk added in the privacy of his heart. But he couldn’t say that aloud, not yet. Not when she was staring at him, her lower lip trembling ever so slightly, but enough. Enough to give him hope. “I’m going to teach you that one lifetime isn’t long enough for all the pleasure I can bring you, lass,” he promised.

Adrienne closed her eyes, willing the image of him to hell and beyond. “Where’s Olivia?” she asked, eyes closed.

“Fallen over a cliff, if the gods are smiling,” Hawk replied dryly.

Adrienne opened her eyes and crinkled her nose, peering at him. Did she see the hint of a smile in his dark gaze? A passionate Hawk was deadly, but she was on guard against passion. A teasing Hawk might slip right through her defenses.

“Or if I’m really lucky and the gods are forgiving, she wandered into Adam’s arms and he’s been struck by the same thunderbolt that hit me when I saw you. Wouldn’t that solve my problems?”

The corner of her mouth twitched.

“Oh, nay. I have it. She wandered into the forest and the fae mistook her for one of their own—the wicked banshee—and she is never to return.”