“The Bible,” she said hesitantly, then forged ahead. “Is that your family’s?”
Lucas eyed her silently for so long that she thought he wasn’t going to answer. She was ready to apologize and withdraw back to her corner of the couch when he said abruptly, “It is. The Bible and the castle, both.”
Kathryn swallowed, not daring to ask, but oh she really wanted to know where Lucas fit in.
His mouth curved in a lopsided smile. “The castle is mine now. I bought it . . . a long time ago and had it refurbished.”
“Do you live there?”
“No, I live here,” he said distinctly, as if explaining the obvious.
“Yes, but, do you, I don’t know, vacation there or anything?”
“Vacation,” he repeated, then seemed to think about it. “No. I visit once a year, if I’m lucky, and only for a few days. Sometimes less, depending.”
“On what? If I owned something like that, I’d visit all the time,” Kathryn said enthusiastically.
“Would you? Those old castles can be drafty, not to mention the bad plumbing.”
Kathryn tilted her head thoughtfully. “No. You said you refurbished. I bet it’s been completely modernized. It might look like a castle from the outside, but I bet the inside looks more like this.” She waved to indicate the tastefully decorated room around them. “You enjoy your comforts, Lord Donlon.”
Lucas dipped his head noncommittally, but Kathryn knew she was right. Feeling bold, she decided to take advantage of his seeming willingness to talk.
“So who owned the castle before you?” she asked, thinking it must have been some distant uncle or cousin, because Lucas had already told her about growing up poor. Whoever owned that castle wasn’t poor.
“My grandfather owned it.”
Kathryn frowned. “Your grandfather,” she repeated, then gave him a dirty look. “I thought your grandfather was a poor dirt farmer with a broken-down plow horse?”
“I may have understated his position somewhat,” he said, flashing a playful grin that didn’t quite make it to his eyes.
“Somewhat? That’s a fucking castle! Did you grow up there?”
“No,” he said curtly. The playfulness fled his expression, and she knew she’d touched on a sensitive subject. “I told you the truth of that,” he continued. “I visited the old man once, although visit might be an exaggeration. My mother took me there when I was no more than six years old. The two of us were living on the streets, starving and cold most of the time, and that bitter old man turned her away. He wouldn’t even let his own daughter sleep in the barn. We left and never went back.”
“I’m sorry,” Kathryn murmured, hearing the pain in his voice.
“It happened a very long time ago.”
“How did you come to own it then?”
“I bought it. Land and titles both. I had the greater claim, certainly better than the cousins who ran it into ruin. But they wouldn’t have seen it that way, even if they’d known who I was, what with me being a bastard and all. On the rare occasions I sleep there now, I feel the ghost of my grandfather howling in the eaves because the bastard’s taken over his precious castle. Gives me sweet dreams every time.”
“And your mother?”
Lucas nodded at a small, oval frame to his left, almost eye-level with where Kathryn was standing. “My mother,” he said quietly. “She died when I was seven.”
Kathryn leaned in close. The frame held a delicate watercolor of a young woman with long, curling black hair that tumbled over her shoulders. The pose was meant to be serious, but the artist had captured the slight up tilt of her full, red lips, the laughter in her eyes that were so much like Lucas’s.
“She was beautiful,” Kathryn said honestly.
“She was.”
“How did she die?”
Lucas turned toward her almost angrily. “How does a young woman die on the streets of Dublin? She was sixteen and pregnant when her father cast her out for the sin of being unwed. Barely twenty-four when she died. Of cold, hunger, disease? Who knows? I was too young to know such details. I only knew she was dead.”
“I’m sorry,” Kathryn said again. “I don’t know why I’m prying into this. It’s none of my business.”
Lucas reached toward her without warning. Kathryn flinched, but all he did was tuck a wayward strand of hair behind her ear from where it had escaped her ponytail.
“You can ask me anything you’d like,” he said, arching an elegant eyebrow. He took a sip of his whiskey, maintaining eye contact over the rim of his crystal tumbler.
Kathryn recognized his attempt to shove back painful memories, to reassert his devil-may-care mask. She remembered what it was like to pretend everything was all right when it never would be again. So, she played along, returning his look with a teasing half-smile. “All right,” she began, and then almost chickened out, blurting in a rush the one thing she really wanted to know. “When did you become a vampire?”
Lucas raised both eyebrows in surprise. She supposed it was from her temerity in asking such a personal question. “Well, now, Kathryn,” he murmured, moving so close that she could feel the whiskey-scented moisture of his breath along her jaw. “That is a very personal question. The sort of thing one shares with very good friends . . .” He leaned even closer and put his lips next to her ear. “Or lovers.” He lowered his mouth to kiss the soft skin below her ear, and she shivered.
“Which one are you, a cuisle?” he whispered.
Kathryn’s heart was trying to break out of her chest, it was pounding so hard, making it difficult to draw a full breath. She knew she should say something clever and back away, that it was foolish to get personally involved with Lucas Donlon. But there was a part of her that rebelled against always doing the right thing, always being the dutiful daughter, the responsible sister, the perfect Bureau agent. The part that was buried so deep inside her that she forgot it existed most of the time. The part of her that wanted something more. Maybe it was the vulnerability he’d shown with his pictures on the wall, the anger that still hardened his voice when he spoke of his long-dead grandfather. But she suspected it was more than that. Lucas was like a blazing fire. You knew he was dangerous, that nothing good would come of it, but you couldn’t resist the pull, the brilliant heart of a flame you knew would heat you all the way to your marrow, even as it burned you alive.
And there was only tonight. She was leaving town tomorrow.
She reached for his whiskey glass. Locking gazes with him, she brought it to her lips and took a long drink, feeling the whiskey heat all the way down her throat to her stomach. “Which would you like me to be?” she asked quietly. “Friend or lover?”
Lucas’s eyes flared a gold that put the fire’s heart to shame. He reached for her, wrapping his arm around her waist and pulling her against the hard length of his body. “Be sure, Kathryn.”
“I’m sure.”
He took the whiskey glass from her unresisting hand and set it on the table so delicately that it made no sound at all. Kathryn watched the amber glow of the liquid, her stomach in knots even though she knew this was what she wanted, what she’d wanted from the moment she’d walked into his office and seen him for the first time. But now that it was here, now that the fantasy had become reality . . .
Lucas gripped her chin with gentle fingers and lifted her face to his. His mouth curved in a warm smile, but his eyes . . . they burned with desire. For her. The knowledge that he wanted her as much as she wanted him calmed her as nothing else could have. She curled her arms around his neck, rising up on to her tiptoes to brush her lips against his. Not a kiss, not yet. Just a feathering of her lips, back and forth, as his eyes grew hotter, his gaze more intense.
Lucas’s arm tightened around her waist, holding her in place so that she couldn’t have moved away if she’d wanted to. His other hand dropped to the curve of her butt, cupping both cheeks in his long fingers and squeezing, pressing her against the hard ridge of his arousal.
Kathryn’s eyes, still captured by his, grew wider, as Lucas thrust his hips forward, making certain she felt every inch of his erection. She did. Oh, God, she did. She fisted one hand in his silky, black hair and licked his closed lips. Once, twice, then bit down gently on his lower lip demandingly.
Lucas growled. As if a switch had been thrown, heat flared between them like a warning that everything they’d done so far was adolescent flirting. And the adults were now in the room.
Lucas crushed his mouth against hers, forcing her lips to open. He stabbed his tongue into her mouth, pumping it like a small cock, conquering with sweeps of his tongue, tasting every inch of her mouth with such shocking speed that Kathryn could only submit. She finally fought back, demanding her share in return, tangling her tongue with his as they battled for dominance.
This was no romantic first kiss in the moonlight. This was the kiss of two people who’d hungered for each other for days, wanted, waited for this moment. Their kiss was hard and full of passion, a clashing of teeth and tongue, biting and licking, mouths mashed together so that Kathryn could barely breathe.
She made a small sound of distress, and Lucas threaded his fingers in her ponytail and tugged her head back. “Breathe,” he commanded, his own breath sawing in and out.
Kathryn nodded wordlessly, her eyes never leaving his face.
“Damn it,” Lucas swore, then took his arms away long enough to rip his T-shirt over his head, before pulling her against him once more.
Kathryn’s gaze shifted to the very image of male beauty that was his body—wide shoulders thickly padded with muscle, tapering to smoothly defined pectorals lightly dusted with black hair which narrowed to a thin line over six pack abs that made her want to weep with their sheer perfection. Her eye was drawn down further to the low waist of his leather pants and the bulge that was stretching the leather so tight that it was gleaming with the strain of it.
