The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(49)

It was too much to ask of anyone, he knew that. And so he didn’t. He truly expected none of that from her. He just wanted her to fucking …

“Touch me,” he said as evenly as he could through clenched teeth.

He stepped out of the tub and onto the plush rug beside it, but advanced no further, even when she retreated a step back.

“I—I’m not sure if I—or how to—”

“There is no right or wrong way of it,” he pressed. “Just do what you want.”

She did everything she could not to look at him, and why he found that charming, the Rook would never know. It was as though she desired to preserve his modesty, rather than hers.

Was there such a thing, he idly wondered, as a modest pirate?

“But … you’re all wet,” she protested.

That word, on her lips, nearly drove him mad.

Wet.

Yes. He was, indeed, wet. And if he had his way, she would be, too. But only in that sweet, hidden place.

And only for him.

He glanced down at his chilly, decorated body. “If you wish me dry, you may help.” He gestured to a plush towel hanging from an ornate banister at her elbow.

Her delicate throat worked over a difficult swallow before she dragged the towel away from its perch and attempted a cautious approach.

She still wouldn’t look at him, he noticed. For the most fleeting of seconds, her gaze would drift toward his body, land, and then dart away, like a hummingbird testing a flower.

Settling her hands—covered safely with the towel—on his shoulders, she tentatively soaked up the bathwater with soft little drags.

He watched her as she did this. Delighting in her shyness. In her artless, gentle caresses. When one dried themselves, it was usually with firm, decisive strokes, but her touch barely deserved the designation.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Lorelai was here. In his cabin. Touching him.

Sort of.

“W-where did you sleep?” she queried.

It was something she did, he remembered, when she was anxious. She tried to fill a fraught silence with polite conversation.

“I didn’t, really. I stayed awake to watch the tempest.” He obediently lifted his arms toward her as she pulled the towel down each one, revealing his colorful, permanent sleeves.

“Don’t sea gales ever frighten you?” she asked, running the cloth down the ripples of his ribs.

“No.”

She paused at his waist, unwilling to go further, and circled around to his back, drying his shoulders. “Why not?”

Because I tasted your lips on every rainstorm.

“Because fear is dangerous,” he answered aloud. “Fear gets people killed.”

She left that response alone. “What about my kittens?”

Something in his lust-clouded brain stalled. Kittens? Who could be thinking of fluffy, noisy little beasts at a time like this? “What about them?”

“Why go through the trouble of bringing them on the ship?”

Why, indeed? he wondered. “The crew can be superstitious. I figured, like the whores, the kittens would appease them. It’s considered bad luck to have women on board at sea, you know. But quite good luck to have cats.”

Her brow wrinkled. “But … if women are bad luck … why bring—er—other ladies onto the ship?”

“The bad luck doesn’t apply if we are anchored.”

“I see,” she murmured, as though she didn’t see at all. “Why are cats considered good luck on a ship?”

“It’s been thus for as long as men have taken to the sea,” he answered almost irritably. Was it her aim to torture him? To explore the sensitive columns of muscle beside his spine as they discussed maritime superstitions and accursed felines? “They kill mice and rats. Which was helpful in times of plague, I imagine.”

“Oh…” His ears perked to a disenchanted tone in her voice. He realized, belatedly, that in this case the truth might better serve them both. He took a deep breath, willing himself to try. “Barnaby mentioned that the beasts in the menagerie would be all right without you for a time, but without constant care, the young kittens would die. Their deaths would have … distressed you.”

“Oh.” This time, her voice seemed a bit brighter, and he wished that she was not behind him so he could see her face. Had he pleased her?

Not that it mattered. It didn’t. A delighted sort of warmth spread up his neck, taunting him for a liar.

“It has not been apparent that my distress is of great concern to you,” she remarked dryly.

He scowled, his pulse elevating. “Were that the case, I’d have fucked you a dozen times by now. I’d have spent the night in here, instead of in the rain. I’d have pulled you into that bath with me and washed the sweat and leavings of our sex off of and out of you before supping on your slick flesh. So be careful of tossing about accusations, Lorelai, or I might decide to live up to them.”

He clamped his lips shut, then. How distressing that she continued to goad him into speaking without careful estimation. A dangerous influence of hers, that.

The tickle of her short, shocked breaths against his back distracted him from his ire and spread chill bumps across his entire body.

She must have noticed, because she silently resumed her hesitant ministrations with the towel. When it dipped below his waistline, his hips, and he felt her fingers trail below his ass, he had to close his eyes against a wave of desire so exquisite, it threatened to buckle his knees.