“Friend?” He lashed the word at her like a whip of rejection. “Maybe I don’t want to be friends with ye.”

“Too bad.” She tightened her arms. “You have me.”

His gaze narrowed. “Is that so?”

Uh-oh.

She might have phrased that a bit wrong.

Before she could move or think another thought, he prowled to the couch, every inch of his body tense with anger. Yet with something else too. She could sense the change in him by the way his eyes glittered with feral zeal, the way his body went fluid with carnal intensity, the hungry challenge in every line of his body.

“Iain…” She scuttled back on the couch.

“Iain,” he drawled out his name using her flat accent. “Iain, she says.”

“I think we should talk.”

“Do ye?” Chuckling, he leaned down and slammed his fists at the side of her hips, effectively closing her in. “But ye just said I have ye. And that has nothing to do with talking, donas.”

“Not like you mean.” She met his gaze with a stern stare. “You have me as a friend.”

“A friend, she says.” His voice singsonged back at her, still filled with fury. But this close, she could see the amorous look in his half-mast eyes.

He wasn’t teasing now. Not at all.

“I think I should go to bed.” As soon as the words slipped from her mouth, she realized she’d made another strategic mistake.

He smiled, showing teeth. His gaze gleamed with satisfaction like he knew she’d made a fatal error. “There’s a thought.”

“Stop it.” Sensing she had only moments to break free of the spell he was trying to cast, she braved a touch, pushing on his shoulders. His skin was silky and hot, but she forced the realization away. “Move.”

“I don’t think so,” he snarled the words, yet his wide mouth had softened into a sultry slant. “I’m thinking ye owe me something for stealing my whiskey and my guns.”

His scent enveloped her, swirling around her like an erotic cloud, the piney, clean smell now tinged with male heat and sex. She wanted to stick her nose in the crease between his neck and shoulders and suck him in. His passion and desire and need.

Friends, Lil, friends.

He leaned in closer, his mouth an inch from hers. “Tell me ye don’t want me, lovely Lilly, and I’ll let ye go.”

“I don’t—”

He sucked the lie out of her mouth in one swipe of his own. His lips pulled her straight out of her head and into her body where he lay waiting with his big, brawny muscles and his come-hither eyes. Where he lay waiting with his awful temptation.

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