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“Emmie, hand me your files?” Once Claire held them in her hands, she glared at them and nodded once, eliminating one from the pile. It was starting to look as if she was right.

Eliane’s curiosity settled over Claire like a blanket. Claire knew the other woman was staring at the files Claire was laying out in a row on the ottoman.

“Do you see it?” Claire projected. Let me be wrong, she thought to herself, not wanting Eliane to hear how shaken she was. Let me be wrong. Eliane peered at the files, the smiling faces of each of the missing husbands looking up from the pages. Her nod was hesitant the first time, and definite before she’d looked at the fourth photo. She laid her own files down, and two more men joined the pattern.

“They all look alike,” Emmie whispered, a chill running down Claire’s spine with the words.

Claire threw down the papers and sighed her utter disgust. “They all look alike,” she repeated. Then she gave Dell a sardonic grin. “At least I know one thing, Dell. Braed’n definitely could not have done this job. You, however, fit the pattern perfectly.”

Dell leaned forward, grabbed three of the files, and flipped through them. “There’s a resemblance, I guess, but it’s not like any of these guys could be brothers.”

Claire sighed. “I didn’t say that.” They could, in fact, but she knew from experience that with Dell, it was easier to choose her battles. “But there is a similarity in their builds, facial features. And you fit right in.” Now she felt manipulated into doing this job with him, and it chafed.

Dell shrugged, and she knew he was fighting the urge to argue with her for argument’s sake. “I already knew I was the right man for this job, Claire.” His voice was silk seduction, his indefinable accent thick with promise so her name came out “Clayah”.

As her stomach tingled and sent a heat radiating outward and down, she bit her lip to fight it. The air seemed to thicken with a lust-filled fog despite her efforts. Damnit! The thought was desperate.

“Great, so you’re Mr. Right,” Emmie said, her sarcasm-laced voice cutting through the tension. “That still doesn’t explain why The Aeval are snagging a bunch of look-alike men.”

Dell shrugged and dropped the papers on the ottoman. “Maybe we’re just dealing with one renegade Aeval. And she happens to have a taste for a certain type of man.”

“How would one Aeval restrain ten different men, Dell?” Claire forced the sarcasm from her tone. Confrontation wasn’t the way to handle this one.

“You said it yourself, lovely. Restraints.” There was a bit of a leer in his expression, and it sent shivers up Claire’s spine. Not that she was a tie-me-up kind of girl. Not normally, anyway. But the promise and desire heating Dell’s copper eyes made her willing to consider it, and he was looking at her as if he knew what she was thinking—

“You think she’s tying them up?” Emmie, bless her little soul, interrupted the by-play yet again. “That’s ever so kinky.”

His gaze held Claire captive as he answered, and she decided maybe it might not be that hard for The Aeval to ensnare the men they’d captured. Not if they had an arsenal of heat-filled expressions like that one. “It’s a thought, anyway.”

“The other option is that they’re writhing in pleasure, unwilling to leave their captors behind. Because they’re feeling a passion they’ve never known.” Claire’s eyes widened as she recognised the voice as her own. Where had that come from? Dell’s gaze was caressing, suggesting he was capable of giving her that same kind of mind-numbing pleasure. The moment lasted. And lasted. Then his gaze simply dropped away. Claire gasped when the contact was broken, and covered it with a fake cough.

“So, to sum up our situation then,” she said when her “coughing fit” had passed. “We’re going up against a religious cult of nymphomaniacs who’ve captured somewhere in the neighbourhood of ten men for purposes we can only guess are sexual?” Everyone nodded, and she realised her sarcasm had been wasted on them. “Do we have a plan?” she asked, with very little hope of a positive answer.

“Sure we do, lovely.” Dell rose and reached out his hand for her. After a short hesitation, she placed her hand in his, and he lifted her from the sofa. His gaze pinned her, and the rest of the world seemed to drift away as he spoke. Heat built inside her again with his words. “We’re going to bed.” His thumb rubbed against the back of her hand, a slow movement that suggested far more sensual activities. When she thought about pulling her hand away, his grip tightened as if he’d read her mind. “Come on.” He tugged on her hand and she followed him.

Once they were in her room, he kept hold of her hand and turned to face her. The look he turned on her was full of heat. His restrained ferocity reminded her of a tiger pacing its cage. Lethal. Primal. She gasped under the intensity of it. “You’re enjoying this,” she accused him. One side of his mouth curled in acknowledgement, but he said nothing.

“I’m tired.” She was all too aware of her hand still wrapped in his, his thumb moving just enough to keep her aware of it.

“Then we should definitely go to bed,” he whispered, that damned half-leer still on his lips. It frustrated her it looked so good on him.

“What happens when we’re in bed?” she asked, not realising how it sounded even after the words left her mouth.

He sighed and pulled her closer, barely breathing the words into her ear, “I’ll begin to show you what we could be together.”

She cursed her reacting body. Her breasts ached, her nipples tight as though reaching toward him. Heat spread from the pit of her stomach down, tingling with an aching need. Her head spun, and her skin all but screamed for his touch.

“I’ll feather your skin with kisses, lavishing your body with attention. I’ll bring you moaning to the pinnacle of desire, so you’ll feel as though a single touch could make you shatter.”

Damnit, Dell! The words rested on her lips, which burned for his. His head tilted down to hers, and she closed her eyes. When he was close, yet still not touching her, he whispered into her half-open mouth. “And when you’re as close as you can get to imploding with want and need and satisfaction, I’ll stop.”

He moved away from her, just far enough that his face filled her field of vision. “And then you’ll plead your case of a dissatisfying husband with The Aeval.”

Bastard.