Since the eve he’d broken his oath and turned dark, Dageus had not once worn the colors of his clan, though a scrap of well-worn Keltar plaid was tucked beneath his pillow. Some evenings, after he’d seen whichever woman it was into a cab (though he tooped many, he shared his bed with none), he would close his hand around it, shut his eyes and pretend he was in the Highlands again. A simple man, naught more.

All he wanted was to find a way to fix the problem, to get rid of the dark ones himself. Then he would regain his honor. Then he could proudly face his brother and reclaim his heritage.

If you wait much longer, that nagging voice warned, you may no longer care to reclaim it. You may no longer even understand what it means.

He forced his thoughts away from such an unpleasant bent, and they drifted with alarming intensity straight back to the lass tied to his bed. Tied vulnerably and helplessly to his bed.

Dangerous thought, that. Seemed all he ever had anymore were dangerous thoughts.

Raking a hand through his hair, he forced his attention to the text she’d left on the coffee table, refusing to dwell on the disconcerting fact that a part of him had taken one look at the lass in such proximity to his bed and said simply: Mine.

As if from the moment he’d seen her, that he would claim her had been as certain as the morrow’s dawn.

Several hours later, Chloe’s volatile emotions had run the gamut. She’d pretty much exhausted fear, plunged with effusive glee, for a time, into outrage at her captor, and was now thoroughly disgusted at herself for her impetuous curiosity.

Curious as a wee kitten, you are, but a cat has nine lives, Chloe, Grandda used to say. You have but one. Beware where it leads you.

You can say that again, she thought, listening intently to see if she could hear the thief moving around out there. His penthouse had one of those music systems that was piped into every room and, after an initial painfully loud blast of a bass-heavy song that sounded suspiciously like that Nine Inch Nail’s song that had been banned from airplay a few years ago, he’d put on classical music. She’d been treated to a medley of violin concertos for the past few hours. If it was intended to soothe her, it was failing.

It didn’t help that her nose itched and the only way she could scratch it was to bury her face in his pillows and bob her head.

She wondered how much time would have to pass before Bill and Tom would start to wonder where she’d gotten off to. Surely they would come looking for her, wouldn’t they?

Not.

Though both would say, “but Chloe never deviates from routine,” neither would question or accuse Dageus MacKeltar. After all, who in their right mind would believe the man anything but a wealthy art collector? If asked, her captor would simply say, “No, she dropped it off and left, and I have no idea where she went.” And Tom would believe, and no one would push, because men like Dageus MacKeltar weren’t the kind one questioned or pushed. No one would ever imagine him a kidnapper and a thief. She was the only one who knew differently, and only because she’d gotten all foolishly infatuated with his artifacts and gone snooping through his bedroom.

No, although Tom might send Bill around this afternoon, or more likely tomorrow, asking when Chloe had left, it would end there. In a day or two, she imagined Tom would really start to worry, call her at home, stop by, even report her missing to the police, but there were oodles of unexplained disappearances in New York all the time.

Deep shit, indeed.

With a sigh, she puffed a ticklish strand of hair out of her face and did the nose-in-pillow thing again. He smelled good, the dirty rotten scoundrel. Womanizing, bullying, amoral, larcenous, vilest-of-the-vile, debaucher of innocent texts.

“Thief,” she muttered with a little scowl.

She inhaled, then caught herself. She was not going to appreciate his scent. She was not going to appreciate a darned thing about him.

Sighing, she wriggled her way up the bed until she was leaning, in a mostly upright position, against the headboard.

She was tied to a strange man’s bed. A criminal to boot.

“Chloe Zanders, you’ve got all kinds of problems,” she murmured, testing the silken bonds for the hundredth time. A little play, no give. The man knew how to tie knots.

Why hadn’t he hurt her? she wondered. And since he hadn’t, just what did he plan to do with her? The facts were pretty simple and quite horrifying; she’d managed to stumble into the lair of an expert, slick, thoroughly top-notch thief. Not a petty thief or a bank robber, but a master thief who broke into impossible places and stole fabulous treasures.

This was not small-time stuff.