Chapter One

I sweep my gaze around the main bar of Pat O’Brien’s one last time, half hoping and half dreading I’ll find a woman with a body made for slaking my lust. A one-night stand in New Orleans will hardly become the highlight of my first visit to America. The idea of studying this country’s legal system had aroused my intellectual passion a few days ago when I’d suggested it to my mate, who’s a lawyer here in New Orleans, and the trip had been my excuse to escape from my life. But none of the women I’ve come across in the past week aroused my sexual passions. Maybe I’ve grown jaded about sex, the way I have about love. My third and final fling, thirteen months ago, had put me off one-night stands. Sex without names, without sharing a bed for more than an hour, has lost its appeal.

What do I need? Or want? Got no bloody clue, MacTaggart, do you?

Swigging the last of my whisky, I pull a face at the subpar quality of the drink. American single malts can’t compare to the genuine Scottish variety. I set down my glass and stride out of the main bar into the carriageway between the sections of Pat O’Brien’s. A small group of people rushes past me, their laughter a bit too loud and their smiles a bit too exuberant. Buckled, they are. If I’d gotten intoxicated, maybe I would enjoy this night more.

Not likely.

The group ambles off down the carriageway, and I glimpse the doorway on the other side. Soft lighting and soft piano music emanate from the adjoining section of this establishment. I consider walking into the piano bar, but I’ve lost my enthusiasm for…everything. My thoughts travel back to Scotland, to my home in the Highlands and my family there, brothers and sisters, parents and uncles, cousins too. A pang aches in my chest. I should go back to my hotel room and ring the pilot to inform him to get my jet ready so we can head home tonight.

I start to turn away from the door, but movement snares my attention.

A blonde woman perches on a wooden stool, her curvaceous body twisting and turning as she strives for the perfect posture for a self-portrait. She holds a mobile above her head at arm’s length, rotating and tipping the device until she seems satisfied with the angle. A broad, brilliant smile lights up her stunning face.

Have I found an angel in disguise? No, I’m not that fortunate.

No room in my life for an angel, anyway. No room for any woman, for longer than a night.

The blonde snaps a picture, then stuffs the mobile in the back pocket of her jeans.

I stare at the angel, frozen in my fascination with that lush body bound in jeans and a short-sleeve shirt.

She bites her lower lip and glances around the bar. Satisfied with whatever she sees or doesn’t see, the lass shoves a hand inside her shirt to root about in her bra.

My lips begin to kink into a slight smile, but I flatten it out. Tilting my head to the side, I absorb the sight of this beautiful woman and her bizarre task. She peeks inside her shirt, where her hand remains lodged inside her bra, and then whisks her hand free. She pats her chest and clasps her delicate hands around a tall, curved glass that holds red liquid. The bonnie lass gulps down a long draft of the beverage.

A wistful smile curls her delicate mouth.

I march into the piano bar, headed straight for her.

What force compels me to move, I have no idea. Something about this woman lures me to her, inexorably, inescapably. Her pensive expression a moment ago seems a contradiction to her usual demeanor—or rather, the way she’d behaved for all but two seconds of the time since I first saw her. The lass possesses an inner light that streams out of her in every smile and glance, in the way she moves and in her complete disregard for decorum.

I’ve become mired in a need to control my emotions, my expressions, my behavior. And all for what? I want what this woman exudes from every pore of her enticing body. I want freedom.

For one night only. Aye, one night.

Perhaps if I bury myself inside that lithe body, I might absorb a hint of her…essence.

Ridiculous. I should walk out the door and head home as I’d planned. I shouldn’t keep striding toward this woman. And I absolutely should not speak to her.

She has closed her eyes, relishing her drink. Her lips part slightly, and her head slants back a wee bit, accentuating her slender neck.

Turn around, man. Leave now.

I stop behind the empty stool adjacent to hers. “May I take this seat?”

The lass jumps, snapping upright, her eyes wide and blinking furiously. She raises a hand as if to touch her hair, then clamps both palms around the glass.

She is…exquisite. Her shirt clings to her full breasts and highlights the curve of her waist, drawing my gaze lower to her hips and those shapely legs. I can’t see her erse, since she’s sitting down, but I know it will be as delectable as the rest of her. When I finally settle my gaze on her face, I freeze. She looks so young. Should I, a man approaching forty, proposition a bairn? What if she’s underage?

Dimly, I notice the words printed on her shirt—ComicCon. Whatever that means, I don’t give a shit.

As she admires my body with unabashed interest, my cock pulses.

I want her with a scorching lust, but I need to make certain. “How old are you?”

She tears her focus away from my lower body. Her lips tick up at the corners. “You must not get lucky very often if you ask women that question.”

A feisty one. I like it. Feisty women make the best lovers.

“You look young,” I say, tilting my head left and right to appraise her, “but your manner is mature.”

“Oh, I get it. You’re worried I’m jailbait. Relax, I’m thirty-four.” She lifts her glass. “Ask the bartender. He carded me.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

My cock won’t let me wait for the bartender’s confirmation or think about the ramifications of what I intend to do with this woman. To her. For as long as it takes to satiate this need for her incredible body. I’ve never reacted to a woman this fiercely in my entire life. It’s more than her body, though, more than those breasts I long to knead and suckle or those hips I hunger to grasp and lift as I plunge inside her wet sheath. She has an indefinable air about her, one I can’t understand or describe. Her pale hair shimmers in the muted lighting, like a halo around her beautiful face, and her hazel eyes spark with an inner fire whenever she smiles.

I ease between her stool and the vacant one. “Well, would you mind having me?”

Her eyes have gone soft, her pupils blown, and her breasts lift with every breath. Her voice grows breathless when she murmurs, “Have you?”

“As a neighbor,” I explain, since she seems confused. Patting the empty stool, I give her the smile I reserve for seduction. “May I?”

“This is a free country. Be my guest.”

I settle onto the stool, sliding in until my erse bumps the back, and lay an arm atop the copper bar. “Being the guest of a bonnie lass appeals to me.”

Everything about her appeals to me. Once I’ve fed my lust with her pleasure, I can leave her without looking back. I’ll have gotten her out of my system.

She tips her head to the side, studying me with keen interest, even as desire ignites in her eyes. “Are you Scottish?”

I rarely smile these days, except to seduce a woman into my bed, but her straightforward question coaxes another smile from me. “What gave me away?”

“Can’t fool a college graduate.” She leans forward to wrap her hands around her drink again. A natural blush tints her cheeks as she gives me a teasing smile. “You have a kilt and an accent. Even if I were stoned, I could’ve figured that one out.”

My God, she is enthralling.

I slant forward a touch, my body seeming to crave her proximity. “College graduate, eh? I found an intellectual woman to bide my time with. What was your field of study?”

Stop asking stupid bloody questions. You don’t need to read the woman’s CV before you fuck her.

The American angel fixes me with an assessing look, then sits up straight and slaps her hands on her thighs. “Computer programming.”

“Ah,” I purr, captivated by her pale, golden eyes. “You expect me to be less than impressed.”

“My occupation isn’t the stuff of men’s wet dreams, now is it?”

To my surprise, a throaty chuckle rumbles out of me. When was the last time a woman made me laugh? She’s bonnie, aye, but also full of a fire I long to devour, even if it burns me to ash. “I prefer professional women. And anyway”—I bend closer to her, so close her breaths whisper over my lips—”you’ll be featured in all my dreams tonight.”

Her tongue slides across her lower lip, and her eyes turn glossy.

My mouth waters. I need to taste her, to ravish her with a kiss of raw, animal hunger. I need to strip her naked and consume her. I need to possess her.

She stares at my mouth, her lips parted, her tongue whisking along the bottoms of her top teeth.

Bod an Donais. All the blood in my body rushes to my groin.

“Tell me,” I say, “what is a beautiful, intelligent woman doing all alone in a bar? You should have a horde of men slavering to do your bidding.”

“I got into town this evening. Haven’t had a chance to drum up a horde.” She wiggles her lovely erse on her seat, swiveling toward me. Then she crosses her legs and drapes an arm on the bar while her other hand rests on her thigh. “Would you do my bidding?”

“Ah, lass,” I say, fingering a lock of her hair. Our faces linger tantalizingly near each other, and her feminine scent drugs me. “For you, I’d go down on my knees and do whatever is necessary to make certain you feel nothing but satisfaction.”

She aims her luminous eyes at me, her mouth open just far enough I could plunge my tongue between her lips.

I groan at the thought, shifting my mouth to her ear, that silky hair brushing my mouth. “I love your eyes. They sparkle like topaz dusted with emerald flecks. A man could drown in those eyes of yours, and he’d never want to come up for air.”

When I slide my hand onto the back of her stool, she freezes.

Take her, have her, for one night only.

The scent of her hair and the way it grazes my skin drives me mad with a reckless hunger for her. “Let’s go somewhere more…intimate.”

“I’m not that easy.” Her voice is low and sultry, decadent beyond belief.

And I chuckle, again. “I am.”

“Telling me you’re a man-whore is supposed to turn me on?”

“You are aroused,” I say, my own voice turning husky. “I can see it. We’re adults, and I willnae do anything without your consent.”

“Damn straight you won’t.”

She can’t see my smile. I have no power to contain it, faced with this fiery, sensual lass. In the back of my mind, a voice whispers to me. You can have her for more than a night, for more than a week, for a lifetime.

I do not want that.

Even if I do, in some deeply buried part of myself, I have no right to drag this sweet and sexy woman into the tangled web of my life.

One night only.

I nuzzle her throat, just below her ear, savoring the way her breaths quicken. “I want to kiss you.”

She hesitates, swallowing visibly. “I’d like that.”

“Good.”

A ridiculous sort of relief floods through me. I need a good shag, that’s all. This is nothing more than relief that my cock will soon be sated and cease throbbing every time I inhale this woman’s scent. I skim my lips along her jaw, then drag them across her cheek to the corner of her mouth. My tongue flicks out to sample her skin.

She sucks in a sharp breath.

While I fight to keep my breaths even, I explore the seam of her lips with my tongue and then reposition my mouth over hers. I keep the barest distance between our lips, not quite touching her, though I’m desperate to claim her mouth and brand her with my kiss. Her lips ease apart, begging me to take her, and her body sags toward me. Her palms float up to my chest. The light pressure of her hands, the whispers of her breaths, all of it spins me down and down into a black hole of lust, and I am helpless to resist the gravity of her.

I skate my lips over hers.

She lets out a breathless moan.

A need seizes me, an irresistible impulse to take her moan into me. I press my mouth to hers, those lips soft and yielding.

She clenches my shirt in her fingers, opening her mouth as if pleading for more.

I lick at her tongue in delicate, teasing laps until I have the lass dissolving into me, our bodies stretched across the distance between our stools and our knees grazing each other. My free hand finds the elegant curve of her back and glides upward until my palm lands on her nape. A shudder ripples through her body. I push my fingers into her hair to cradle the back of her head.

No turning back. I will have her tonight, for hours and hours, until we’ve both satisfied our thirst for each other completely.

I plunge my tongue inside her mouth. The brazen lass meets my every thrust with matching swipes, our tongues tangling like we can’t bear to sever the contact. When she moans into my mouth, I thrust my tongue harder and deeper. My balls pull back into my groin, a sign I’m far too aroused for a public venue. If I don’t unhand this woman, right this instant, I’ll caith right here in the middle of a crowded bar. I need to spirit her away to my hotel so I can come inside her body instead of all over my kilt.

I break the kiss, my gaze pinned to hers, my chest heaving. “How much have ye had to drink?”

“What? Two sips and one gulp of this one drink. Why?”

“Yer still thinking clearly, then.” Thank heaven for that. I couldn’t survive walking away from her now. Decision made, I ghost the backs of my fingers over her cheek. “Come with me to my hotel. Stay the night.”

Her mouth falls open, tempting me to devour her again.

She meets my gaze head-on and sighs one word. “Yes.”

A thrill shoots through me, electric and shocking. Aye, tonight I will have her.

Tomorrow…I’ll be gone before the morning comes.