Page 17 of His Temptation

Daragh’s blue eyes flashed with something dangerous, something that sent a shiver through her.

“That’s where you’re wrong, kitten.”

Siobhan’s pulse skipped, but she refused to break eye contact. “I can pay you.”

A deep, low chuckle rolled from his chest, like she had just told the most amusing joke in the world.

“You think I need your money?” Daragh’s voice was pure arrogance, but it wasn’t the typical male bravado she was used to dealing with. This was something deeper, more primal, like he was indulging her, letting her pretend she had any control over this situation.

Siobhan forced herself to stay calm, to think instead of react. “There has to be another deal we can make. One that doesn’t involve me being some kind of…”

She stopped herself before she could say mate or possession.

Daragh, however, didn’t need her to finish. He took a single step forward, the air between them shifting, growing thick with something dangerous.

“There is no other deal,” he murmured.

His voice sent a slow, unwanted heat through her, and her panther stirred beneath her skin, sharp, restless, hungry. Siobhan swallowed, forcing it back down.

Not now. Not here.

She had trained herself to keep control, to never let the beast inside her override her logic. But right now, logic was slipping through her fingers like sand. Daragh was too close, his presence too big, too consuming, and her traitorous body recognized him as something else entirely.

Not a threat, a challenge.

She hated the way her panther responded to him, the way her instincts screamed at her to turn her back on him, to expose the nape of her neck, to submit—a biological reaction she had spent her whole life fighting against.

Siobhan lifted her chin. “I don’t belong to anyone.”

Daragh didn’t flinch, didn’t react. He simply watched her with those impossible blue eyes, his presence pressing against her like a vice.

“You will,” he said. “One way or another.”

A rush of heat and fury exploded in her chest. Siobhan moved without thinking, lunging at him fast, deadly, aiming for the knife holstered at his hip. She almost got it. But Daragh had been waiting for her to strike.

He caught her wrist before she could wrap her fingers around the hilt, spinning so that she was now bent over the end of the desk, Daragh pressing against her, allowing her to feel the length and strength of his erection.

Her pulse spiked, her body caught between fury and something far more dangerous. Daragh’s grip tightened, his body a solid wall against hers, his dominance bleeding into every inch of the space between them. Siobhan tried to ignore the sharp ache blooming deep inside her—the one that made her want to yowl in response to his dominance. She hated the way her body betrayed her.

Daragh tilted his head slightly, his voice a low growl of amusement. “That the best you’ve got, kitten?”

Her breath hitched, and she hated herself for it. “I hate you,” she snapped, struggling against his grip.

Daragh’s lips curved—not into a smile, never that, but something sharper, something full of wicked certainty. “No, you don’t.”

Her body betrayed her all over again, the heat between them shifting from fury to something far, far worse. Arousal. The kind that burned, the kind that made her panther pace, confused and restless.

Daragh must have sensed it, because his grip loosened just slightly, his breath brushing against the shell of her ear. “You feel it, don’t you?” His voice was a low rasp, nothing more than a whisper of heat against her skin.

Siobhan wanted to tell him no. Wanted to say she felt nothing, but although she thought of herself as a consummateliar, she was finding it difficult to lie to him. Daragh O’Neill was too damn perceptive. She clenched her jaw, refusing to answer, refusing to give him that power.

Daragh’s grip tightened again, his presence overwhelming, his body pressed against hers in a way that made it impossible to ignore just how strong he was, just how easily he could take what he wanted, but he didn’t. No, he wanted her to choose to submit.

Instead, he leaned in, his voice dropping dangerously low as he caressed her backside. “Keep fighting it, kitten. Makes no difference to me. One way or another, you will be mine.”

“So I never really had a choice at all…”

“None whatsoever.”

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