The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(19)

Perhaps more so.

“I know we don’t often speak of it, but do you ever wonder what meaning this dragon had for you?”

“A bit,” he answered cryptically. The only ideas he could come up with were not palatable. An army regiment? A gang, perhaps, or a guild of thieves or criminals. The missing words perplexed him the most. Above the dragon, the letters R-A-E, and below the dragon U-A-E finished words mostly eaten away by the lye.

Attempting to make sense of it threatened to drive him mad, and so, like everything else, he left the tattoo in the past, where it belonged.

“Don’t you wonder what sort of work you did before … Before I found you, I mean?”

“Often,” he answered, though he honestly spent more time pondering what enemy might have beaten him to death than what he’d done for wages.

“You might have worked underground,” she posited. “You’re too pale to have seen much sun, but your … physique suggests a great deal of physical labor.”

“Does that offend you?”

“Decidedly not. You’re perfect.” She pressed her hand to peach-tinged cheeks, hiding a shy smile. “I mean—I think your strength helped to see you through your ordeal. And for that, I am most grateful.”

He allowed her compliment to warm him, but didn’t dare comment on it. “As am I. For a moment there, I feared that I’d never rise from that bed.”

“As I always say, a lot can happen between now and never.”

“Indeed.” He counted on it.

A briny mist crept in from the bay just as they found their way back onto the expansive lawns at Southbourne Grove. It impeded their view of the stately white columns of the manor.

Unexpectedly, Lorelai stopped, tugging him around until he faced her. A troubled wrinkle creased her sun-kissed brow, and rather than smooth it away, as Ash yearned to do, he tucked a few wisps of curls behind her ear. The unruly tendrils sprang right back to frame her temple.

“Ash, what if you don’t like it at the foundry or in the mines? Do you think you’ll—go, now that you’re able?”

“Go?” He puzzled. “Where would I go?”

“If you can walk, that means you can run. And if you can do that … then … then you can leave whenever you like. Escape Mortimer.”

“I run from no one.” Least of all Mortimer Weatherstoke. “My home is here.” With you, he added silently.

She rushed on, as though she hadn’t heard the ardent finality of his words. “Suppose you want to look for your past? For your family?”

“I don’t know. I have a feeling there’s nothing in my past worth finding. Perhaps I’d only uncover a reason for you to not…” He swallowed, unable to lend voice to a fear that had been eating at him for a while now.

“To not what?” She stepped into the circle of his arms, running her hands across the muscles of his back and resting her cheek against his chest.

Ash had become accustomed to her abrupt gestures of affection. As innocent as they were socially inappropriate, he’d come to crave them. In fact, hers was the only touch that didn’t repel him.

“To not hold me … in your esteem, that is.” He enfolded her in the shelter of his arms, resting his chin on her crown. “I have the distinct feeling that whoever I might have been, was not anyone worth knowing.”

“You are worth knowing now. You’re worth everything.”

Ash did his best not to crush her to him. To keep his hold gentle, reverent. This could be heaven, this place in the mist. Clouds were tossed about them in playful swirls by errant winds. Perhaps time did not exist in this enchanted moment. Nor did any of the thousand reasons he should not love her. But he did.

He loved her enough to kill for her.

“I’ll miss you.” She blinked up at him, her eyes azure orbs of affection. Her pretty lips pursed in a pensive frown.

His every muscle seemed to melt against her, their embrace warming from innocent to … something else.

“Lorelai. Have you ever been kissed?”

Her expression slid from pensive to perplexed. “No. Have you?”

“… I don’t know.” He didn’t care to know.

She winced. “Of course. Of course you don’t know. What a stupid question. I’m incessantly ridiculous—”

He banished her tirade with the pressure of his lips against hers.

His mouth lingered rather than demanded. Brushed and tasted. Savored. He dared not use his tongue, or his teeth, or any other part of him that hungered for her.

He held in his arms the girl he loved. And thus was the cause for his caution.

Lorelai was just that.

A girl.

He was no longer a boy. The feelings he had, the desires. The hunger. The heat. They belonged to a man, a man who would slake them with a woman.

Not a girl.

She clutched at him, her artless sigh giving him breath. Her response both shy and lush. The promise of something more.

This could not be that. This was only a kiss of creation. A promise of something blooming between them. The overture to a symphony of longing he’d compose over time.

I love you. The confession danced behind his lips, and so they remained pressed to hers. This he could not say, not until his evil deed was done. Not until her grief for her brother, such as it was, had finally passed.