The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(53)

He hadn’t seen her. He couldn’t have done. Not from that distance, surely.

But he’d looked.

She sucked in moist, cool sea air and willed her boiling blood to cool, painfully aware of the slick sensation present each time her thighs rubbed together.

Not him. She guiltily shook her head. She didn’t desire him. An unfeeling, hedonistic pirate with no blood, nobility, or conscience to speak of. Nothing could be more absurd.

It was merely the act that had fascinated her. The witnessing of it. The illicitness of it.

The unveiling of the truth.

A woman could claim pleasure, if a man was willing to give it.

Which posed another question What manner of man would pay a prostitute for her time in order to provide the lady her pleasure?

His behavior certainly made no sense.

And why had he looked at her room when another woman climaxed into his mouth?

Another slim, mahogany-haired woman.

With green eyes.

Oh, dear God, had he been spying on her through that glass all this time? Had he watched her sleep? Eat? Wash?

Her hands flew to her burning cheeks as different sounds drifted to her now.

Rhythmic, masculine ones.

Veronica blinked back toward the spyglass, invisible in the wall from this distance. Was he coupling with the woman now? Would the muscles in his neck and shoulders strain with his own pleasure? Would his eyes go dark with need? With danger. With violence.

Just as Mortimer’s had.

She wanted to see. Wanted to know.

Should she look again? Perhaps this act wouldn’t disgust her if she witnessed it performed properly. Would the pirate’s oddly hard, magnificent body bunch and cord as he found his—

The bolt to her door slammed aside seconds before the door, itself, crashed into the wall.

The Rook’s black void of a gaze swept the dim room until he found her huddling in her corner. An icy chill instantly swept away the heat accumulated in Veronica’s body. His was a gaze you hoped never found you.

Veronica dumbly tried to recover from the terrific and terrible sight of him in only hastily donned trousers and nothing else.

He reached her in four monstrous strides, and hauled her toward the door by her arm. “She won’t wake up,” he snarled.

“What?” Drat. Her blood didn’t seem to reside in her head anymore.

“Lorelai—she fell. She won’t wake up.”

“She fell?” Fully present now, Veronica picked up her skirts and kept his frantic pace down the hallway, her breath already short and labored. “Did you push her? Or strike her?”

“I didn’t fucking hurt her,” he said from between clenched teeth. “She just—fainted.”

Crossing the threshold, Veronica rushed to her dearest friend, carefully arranged on top of the counterpane, still in her wedding skirts and the pilfered flannel.

Lorelai’s mussed, unbound curls spilled in a waterfall of gold down the side of the bed, as her lashes fluttered softly against cheeks bereft of color.

“Lorelai?” Veronica searched her face for swelling, or redness, for the early signs of a blow, and surprisingly found none. Lord knew they both had suffered plenty. What if he’d hit her where it wouldn’t leave a mark? Her stomach, maybe? Her back? Maybe she’d hit her head.

With gentle fingers, Veronica checked for bumps, again finding none.

“Is she still fucking breathing?” The Rook almost shoved her aside to press his ear to Lorelai’s chest, which rose and fell with the gentle rhythm of a sleeping child. “I’ll get the doctor.”

“There’s no need.” Veronica sighed out a hitching breath of relief.

“What do you mean?” the Rook demanded, seizing at her wrists in a crushing grip. “What’s happening to her? Has it happened before? What is to be done?”

It occurred to Veronica to be frightened, but an odd sense of wonder replaced her panic at a man’s aggressive touch. The Rook, the terror of the high seas and their ruthless, devilish captor, was … worried.

She gaped at him. “I-it’s just a faint, she does this sometimes.”

“This is more than a fucking faint. I’ve knocked men to sleep with my bare fists who’ve come around faster. I tried smelling salts, ammonia, even loud noises and shaking her. It’s been minutes.”

“Sometimes a cold washcloth helps,” she ventured. “Or some ice.”

“Ice. I can get ice.” He released her, and stalked to the door. “Ice will wake her? It’ll bring her back?”

Veronica smoothed a hand over Lorelai’s clammy forehead. “In time.”

“How long?” he demanded.

She shrugged and shook her head, unable to venture a guess.

He took a threatening step toward her. “How. Long.”

“Hours, maybe.” Veronica stood her ground. “Once she was gone for an entire day. Thirteen hours in all.” That had been a good day to leave, she remembered sourly. A good time to miss one of Mortimer’s drunken rages.

The Rook stilled, his black gaze smoothing over every inch of Lorelai’s prone form. His entire lean, predatory body rippled with tension and strain. “Gone?” he echoed.

“The doctors all said it’s hysteria,” she explained, taking Lorelai’s limp, clammy hand in her own. “That it’s how her body reacts to trauma.”