He snorted derisively. He had no life to give.

Very little left of a soul.

Not much honor, either, if one wanted to go further into the oath. Which he didn’t.

“What?” she asked, wondering why he’d snorted.

He looked down at her. She was glancing askance up at him, her head tipped back. Her short glossy black curls glistened beneath the hotel lights, her creamy skin glowed with a kiss of sun-gold—the lass liked the outdoors—and the expression in her eyes managed somehow to be curious, irritated, worried, and determined, all at the same time.

Just looking up at him like that, she took his breath away. And he wasn’t the kind of man that happened to easily. It was more than what she looked like that did it to him—it was the woman inside the lush package.

Jessica St. James was a handful of a woman; precisely the kind he’d so long ago hungered to find. Scholarly, learned, she possessed spine and sauciness and independence of will. In the ninth century it had gotten to the point where he would have positively welcomed a temper tantrum from a woman, even if it had been completely unfounded—he would have appreciated any show of backbone—but as laird of the castle since birth, and heir to the ways of Druidry, virtually all he’d gotten from the lasses from a tender age on was obedience, deference, and awe. Aye, milord. If it please you, milord. How may I serve you, milord? Is the wine to your liking, milord? May I fetch you anything—anything at all—milord? And it had only worsened as he’d aged and become a formidably powerful man, sorcerer, and warrior.

He’d found himself increasingly drawn to more mature women, like this one. He suspected she had a good quarter century to her name. In his century she would have, like as not, had three or four babes and lost a few husbands by this time in her life. He preferred women who’d lived a good bit, women whom the passage of years had deepened and made more interesting. He liked to toop—bloody hell, did he ever!—but he also liked to be able to talk when the tooping was at a temporary hiatus.

This woman was certainly interesting. Beyond his compelling. Feisty and sexy and looking up at him with an enticing sheen on her plump lower lip.

He ducked his head and tasted her.

She was soft, silky, and utterly delectable. He nipped her lower lip gently, then brushed his mouth lightly against hers, savoring the sweet friction. He didn’t push to deepen the kiss; there would be time later for scorchingly intense kisses. He contented himself for the now with a purely hedonistic, lazy taste of her. Moving soft and slow, lulling her into him. When he felt her body melting forward, he pulled away with a slow, erotic tug of her lower lip.

She stared up at him with a startled, searching expression, her lips parted, the lower one slightly puffed out.

His mouth tingled from the touch. He wondered if she felt it too. Wondered what she was thinking, feeling.

He stretched his senses and probed, suspecting deep in his bones it wouldn’t work. If Voice had no effect on her, he highly doubted deep-listening would.

Deep-listening was the Druid art of reading the minds and hearts of others, and was another of his greatest skills. Nay, that wasn’t quite right. He excelled at all Druid skills. He always had.

He was an anomaly: the only Keltar ever to have been born with the full power of all of his ancestors, combined and compounded; an abnormality of nature; an anathema in an otherwise ancient, honorable, and predictable bloodline. While his da had excelled at healing, and his granda had been adept at predicting the seasons for the sowing and reaping, and his uncle had been highly skilled in both Voice and alchemy, Cian had been born with all those talents a hundredfold, plus abilities no Keltar had ever displayed before. ’Twas much of why he’d ended up trapped in the Dark Glass.

Too much power for one man. Pull back, Cian, his mother used to say, with troubled eyes. One day you’ll go too far.

And indeed he had. He’d coveted the Dark Hallows himself, even knowing they bore the innately corruptive essence of black magyck, and that no man could own one and remain unchanged. Still, he’d hungered, just as Lucan had, for ever-greater power; but where Lucan had been perfectly willing to embrace evil, Cian’s error had been that he’d arrogantly believed himself incapable of being corrupted or defeated by either man or magyck.

How wrong he’d been.

But that was another time, a long-ago story, and one best forgotten.

She was now.

He opened himself, focusing his senses, probed gently at her.

Nothing. He probed harder. Silence. Utter and absolute.

Centering, he pounded at Jessica St. James, a battering ram at the castle gates of her mind.