The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(44)

He reached for the ever-present curls at her temple, and she flinched as he caressed them, and twirled them about his finger. “Indulge me,” he purred in that voice as thick and sonorous as torn velvet. “Pretend we are not on a pirate ship. That I am not the Rook. Imagine I walked into your little estuary yesterday and called your name. And we now stand in the same place, in the same mist surrounding us the day we were parted. What would you say to Ash?” He leaned closer, his warm breath smelling of whisky and desire as his head dipped low. His mouth a threat hovering over hers. “What would you do to him, after all this time?”

Without forethought, her hand whipped up and slapped his cheek with such force, her palm stung with it. “You promised to come for me!” she cried. “I prayed for your return, and then I begged. I pleaded with God to protect you, to send you back to me. When he didn’t, I mourned you. For years I mourned you like a beloved who’d died tragically. Mortimer told me you remembered who you were. I thought you’d gone back to your life. And as much as it pained me, I could have forgiven you for that. But you left me alone for twenty sodding years to become this?” She gestured at him in all his dark glory. “This heartless, violent, deviant man? If you are not Ash, then you are not he who promised to come for me! You are not who I wanted.”

“Yet I am what you get.” His eyes glittered dangerously as he straightened. “My condolences. But it doesn’t change anything. You still belong to me, and you will from this day on. It’ll be better if you just resign yourself to the inevitability of it.”

“Just how do you expect me to do that?” she demanded. “You would have me simply roll over for you? Swoon and submit gratefully to you? A stranger? To the most violent and deadly criminal the world has lately known?”

After a protracted moment, he said, “Well. Yes.” He turned his back to her then, and walked to the sideboard, pouring himself a drink. “You would have done so for that fat slab of rotten blubber. Don’t tell me you’d have rather been Mrs. Sylvester Gooch. That you’d prefer to spread your legs for that gibface mutton wank over me.”

She flinched. “I was trying to save my family from ruin. Without my marrying Mr. Gooch, we’d have been homeless.”

“I know.” He knocked back his whisky.

It occurred to Lorelai that he might have been angry with her. That most men would have slapped her back, or worse. He might have attacked her with the sexual frenzy of the prior night, full of masculine indignation over her physical challenge.

But the Rook treated her outburst as though it were nothing. In fact, he didn’t even flinch as her slap had collided with his face. Hard. He’d reacted to it like it had no more consequence than a fly landing on his cheek.

And yet, for a man who claimed to be so emotionless, Lorelai swore she glimpsed moments of the maelstrom churning beneath the smooth surface.

He went to the bath and adjusted the knobs so the water flow ceased before turning to regard her. “Why are you so thin?”

The question couldn’t have surprised her more. “I have been too distraught of late to eat much,” she answered honestly. Might she have seen a flicker of regret in his dark eyes before he hid them from her?

He motioned to the breakfast, cooling on the table. “Eat now.”

“I’m not hungry.” Her stomach made a rude noise, which she stubbornly refused to acknowledge.

He took a threatening step toward her. “I will feed you from my hand, if I must.”

“You cannot just force me to do something every time I refuse you.”

“Actually, I can. And I will. Now. Eat.” He gestured to the table. “Buttered croissants and apricot marmalade are your favorite.”

She glowered at him. “How do you know that after all this time my tastes haven’t changed?”

“Have they?”

“… No,” she admitted glumly.

He lifted a challenging eyebrow.

“Not in pastries anyhow,” she amended.

His lip twitched in an almost charming semblance of a smile. “You eat. I’ll bathe. How perfectly civilized we’ll be.”

“Oh yes,” she mockingly agreed. “It’ll be breakfast, a bath, and then a bit of rape before tea.”

He cast her another one of his scalding looks. One that made her wonder if as much steam rose from her skin as did from his bath. Turning from her, he peeled his shirt off unnecessarily wide, smooth shoulders before announcing, “One cannot rape one’s wife.”

Lorelai really did desire to summon a rejoinder, but the salaciousness of his statement coupled with the sight of his skin struck her completely dumb.

She couldn’t say why it pleased her to discover that she’d been right about the tattoo on his back. Fanned over mounds and mounds of sculpted muscle, a black-winged tattoo flexed and flowed with astounding artistry, leaving no expanse of flesh uncovered. If she were anything other than a practical—some would say cynical—woman of a certain age, she’d truly believe he could spread those dusky wings and take to the skies.

Her disobedient fingers itched to stroke the designs. To splay against the smooth flesh beneath and discover— Oh heavens! He’d dropped his trousers.

Gasping, Lorelai spun around, but not before she caught sight of his lean hips and a backside that had once not been so thick.