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“Yes, I do,” she snapped.
    He stopped so suddenly that she ran into the back of him, striking her cheekbone on the handle of his ax. Although she couldn’t see him, she felt him turn, smelled the spicy male scent of his skin, then his hands were on her shoulders.
    “Where have you fire? Here?” He sifted his fingers through her long hair. “Nay, perhaps here.” His hand brushed her lips in the dark, and if she hadn’t clamped them shut he would have slipped the tip of his finger between them. The man was positively outrageous, hell-bent on seduction with a single-mindedness that made her fear for her resolve. “Ah, here,” he purred, sliding his hand over her derriere, then yanking her against him. He was still erect.
Unbelievable
, she thought dazedly. He laughed, a husky, confident sound. “I doona doubt you have fire, but ’tis naught that might help us escape this cave, though it would undoubtedly make it vastly more amenable.”
    Oh, definitely mocking now.
She twisted away from his liberty-taking hands. “You are
so
arrogant. Have all those steroids eaten away your brain cells?”
    He was silent a moment, and his lack of response unnerved her. She couldn’t see him and wondered what he was thinking. Was he preparing to pounce on her again? Finally he said slowly, “I doona understand your question, lass.”
    “Forget it. Just let go of me so I can get something out of my pack,” she said stiffly. She slipped it off her shoulder and thrust it at him. “Hold this a minute.” While she’d been willing to discard her cigarettes, throwing away a perfectly good lighter had seemed wasteful. Besides, she’d quit before, and then when she started again, she had to buy a new lighter every time. Rummaging in one of the external pockets, she sighed with relief when her fingers closed on the silver Bic. When she pressed the little button, he roared and leaped back. His heavy-lidded eyes, glittering with banked sensuality, widened in amazement.
    “You
do
have fire—”
    “I have a lighter,” she interrupted defensively. “But I don’t smoke,” she hastened to add, not in the mood to entertain the disdain of a man who was clearly an athlete of some kind. She’d taken up smoking two years ago during the Great Fit of Rebellion, right after she and her parents had quit speaking permanently, and then she’d ended up addicted. Now, for the third time, she’d quit, and by God she was going to be successful this time.
    His fingers closed over the lighter, and he assumed possession of it. As she stood beside him in the darkness, as he took her lighter away and the flame flickered out, she sensed that he would do the same with anything he wanted. Casually assume possession. Wrap his strong hand around it and claim it.
    She was surprised when he fumbled for several moments before he managed to press the little button that released the flame. How could he not know how to use a lighter? Even a health fanatic would have seen someone light a cigar or a pipe, if only on TV or in a movie. She suffered another attack of the shivers. When he resumed the pace, she followed him—the only alternative to remain by herself in the dark, and that was no alternative at all.
    “English?” he said softly.
    “Why do you call me that?”
    “You haven’t given me your name.”
    “I don’t call you Scotty, do I?” she said irritably. Irritated by his strength, his arrogance, his blatant sexuality.
    He laughed, but it didn’t sound like his heart was in it. “English, what is the month?”
    Oh, boy, here we go,
she thought.
I
did
fall down one of Alice’s rabbit holes.

          3          
 
    Drustan MacKeltar was worried. Although there was nothing he could put his finger on—apart from the remarkable fire she possessed, her shameless attire, and her unusual manner of speaking—he couldn’t shake the feeling that an even more significant fact was eluding him. Initially, he’d thought mayhap he was