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 kind of clothing she wore, what lingerie got the bliss of cupping her breasts and slipping between the curves of her bottom, what soap and scents caressed her silken skin. He’d examined photographs, opened her luggage, and studied what things she’d deemed too precious to leave behind when she’d packed to run. And each discovery had made him want her all the more; she was shiny and bright and ripe with mortal hopes and dreams.

The Books of the Fae had been a laugh. Well, except for the volume that so grievously maligned him. But he’d been rectifying that.

The slender tome had made him out to be the foulest of the Fae. It had portrayed him as a consummate liar, a trickster and deceiver, a cold-blooded, arrogant seducer who cared for nothing but his pleasure in the moment.

It was no wonder she’d fought him so fiercely, no wonder she’d so swiftly dismissed his word. The Devil himself hadn’t fared worse in literary history.

Still, he could do without words; he would speak to his Sidhe-seer through his actions—select, carefully chosen ones. He’d learned long ago that it was the tiniest of details that seduced, the most delicate of touches that brought the mightiest to their knees.

Christ, he thought, staring down at her, she had to be hot in all those clothes. Her house was overly warm, even on the first floor where he’d been working online. Another thing he would do something about for her.

He’d had no luck finding anything about Circenn’s whereabouts in any of those databases humans were so fond of compiling, but he’d not truly expected to. His half-Fae son could be not only anywhere but anywhen. It was entirely possible he’d taken his wife and children back to the Highlands, to his own century and a simpler way of life, where he might stay indefinitely.

But no matter, Circenn would show up eventually.

And the day had been productive in other ways; he’d planted many seeds that were already taking root. Not the least of which was a simple shirt.