Daring and the Duke (The Bareknuckle Bastards #3)(90)

She’d carried him with her.

Because there, on her shoulder, three inches down and six in, was his mark, the M his father had carved into his own flesh, turned ninety degrees.

No longer an M for Marwick.

Now an E.

For Ewan.

His breath caught in his chest, heart pounding, and he couldn’t find the words to speak—the heavy weight of that mark suddenly proving that everything he had done, everything he had been, everything he had sacrificed, had been worth it, because she hadn’t forgotten him. She had carried him with her.

He reached for the mark, and she turned her head, to watch as he stroked his fingers over it, smooth on her perfect, soft skin. He covered it with his palm. “Did it hurt?” His words came out ragged, like his thoughts.

“Yes.”

He looked to her. “You don’t mean the tattoo.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“No masks,” he whispered.

“It hurt,” she said. “Everything hurt. For days and weeks.” He closed his eyes, his chest tightening at the words as she went on. “I missed you like air. I would wake up, in the dark, in the dank, in the rain, in the cold. And I missed you. And I climbed those fucking buildings in Mayfair, and counted the fucking chimneys, and imagined that one day you would leave him. And leave that place. And leave your title, and come back to us.”

Her eyes were full of tears, glistening in the candlelight. “No. Not us. Me. I imagined you would come back to me.” One tear spilled over, dropping on the hand he held over her tattoo. Searing him. “And you didn’t.”

I wanted to.

Every fucking night. He’d lain in his bed in that godforsaken house in the middle of nowhere and he calculated the exact path he would take to get to them.

“I hoped the tattoo would ease the pain. Like drawing out the poison.”

Christ, he hated being poison to her. “Did it?”

She met his eyes then, holding his gaze for a long moment, so he could see the truth when she said, softly, “No.”

The word was a weapon. A needle, inking his heart. “Grace.”

“God, I hated that name,” she said, the words coming more freely now. “I hated the way it invoked you every time Devil or Whit used it.”

“I have had the same curse—to be haunted by you every time a bowing servant or mincing dandy or matchmaking mama addressed me as Your Grace, I ached with fury. It was a constant reminder that my Grace was nowhere to be found.”

She looked to him. “And is that what I was? Your Grace?”

“It is all I have ever wanted.”

“Tonight?” she said.

“Always,” he replied. “Forever.”

He lifted his palm from where her skin seared him, leaning down to brush a kiss over the mark there, before finding her eyes again. Reaching up, he covered her hand, on his own shoulder, with his, and he said, “You told me that my mark made me his forever.”

She went soft at the words, as though she wished to take them back.

“No.” He didn’t want her regret. There was enough of it between them for both their lifetimes. He shook his head. “If that is true,” he said, “does your mark make you mine?”

She slid her hands into his hair then, pulling him down to her. And in the heartbeat before she set her lips to his, she whispered, “Yes.”

And with that single word, she set him free. He levered himself up, over her, letting her command the kiss, letting her explore him thoroughly. And then he was exploring her, sliding his bare leg between her own as she wrapped her arms around his neck and lifted herself to meet him, and gave herself up to him.

He growled at the feel of her against him, so warm and soft, the strong muscles of her thighs coming around his waist as the kiss turned rough and carnal, as though she had been waiting for it for as long as he had. Grace matched his desire; lifting against him, pulling him closer, opening for him, giving him everything he asked for. And then, as if that weren’t enough, she broke the kiss with a little sigh, and said, “Make me yours.”

On more than one occasion over the last years, Ewan had thought it possible that he was going mad. But that moment, when she whispered those words, delivering herself to him, he was the closest he’d ever been to it. Mad with desire. Mad with hope. Mad with need.

He tore his lips from her, giving her scant space to breathe. “If I do that . . . if you allow it . . . it’s not just tonight.”

She stilled, her beautiful brown eyes on his. “I know.”

Did she? He didn’t dare hope.

“It’s not just this week, or this year, Grace.” He took her face in his hands. She had to understand that. Had to make her own decision. “I want to start again.”

She nodded. “I know.”

“I want to be everything you desire.”

She smiled, and he nearly stopped breathing at her beauty. “I thought you wished to be everything I needed.”

“That, too,” he said, kissing her. “That, too.”

“In that case,” she said, her gaze going dark and languid as she lifted her hips against him, pushing the hard length of him against her softness once, twice, until they both groaned. “Make me yours.”

Mine.

His control snapped with the single word and they were both moving, hands and mouths exploring, his hands on her skin, her fingers raking through his hair as he made his way down her body from her lips, down the column of her neck, worshipping again at the tattoo on her shoulder, and then over her breasts, giving each pretty brown tip a lingering suck until she was arching up to him.