The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(58)

All of them ridiculous, she’d be the first to admit.

The last time she’d been in his company, his wide shoulders hadn’t been straining the seams of a fitted black shirt and vest. He’d been wearing nothing at all. That frighteningly formidable body had been pressed to hers, offering pleasure in lithe, sinewy movements and guttural, sinful words.

Words, she found, were more powerful than she realized.

And offering … was a rather tame expression for what he’d done. If she could claim that he commanded her to allow him to give her pleasure, she would. But … didn’t that sound preposterous?

His mouth, now drawn into a tight line of strain, had been hot and demanding against hers. Full, lush, and astoundingly wicked.

Not only did the memory of his mesmerizing kiss heat her cheeks, but so did another, more bewildering sense of shame.

A shame fed by the daggers of accusation flung from his narrowed eyes, ripping through her composure.

It’d been more than a year since she’d surrendered her consciousness thus, and this time she’d been gone for hours.

She’d insulted him, obviously, by fainting in the middle of their kiss.

And then she’d left him.

Why did it feel in her heart that an escape from a pirate ship, from a coerced marriage, was somehow a betrayal? Why did the bleak austerity in his midnight eyes cause her own form of frantic sorrow?

Because he was her Ash. Despite everything. He was in there, locked away somewhere, somewhere beneath the tattoos and the brutal strength and the emptiness. He’d come for her. She just … she just needed to find him.

She thought she had for a moment when his lips touched hers. They were the same lips she’d remembered, filled with the same need. Only amplified a thousandfold. Oh God, she wished she could tell him, that she could convey somehow that she’d not lost consciousness out of terror, or pain, or lack of affection.

Quite the opposite.

His kiss had done something to her. Had unlocked a part of her that she’d not known existed. It was as though he’d breathed some part of his own animalistic lust into her, and the raw, primal desire had overwhelmed her so completely she’d just … collapsed.

Strange, that she’d not done so when Mortimer died. Or when the Rook had married her under a piratical threat. Historically, such stressors would have put her under for days.

It was just a kiss … and it was so much more than that.

She’d tasted Ash on the Rook’s lips. She’d wanted a taste of more. Wanted him to do all of the things he’d offered to do. She’d wanted it with such a ferocity, and feared it with such a timidity, that the contradiction had seemed to tear her consciousness from her.

Lorelai’s first instinct was to go to him. But, of course, that would not do. Not in a room filled to bursting with wealthy, and possibly dangerous, strangers. She laced her fingers together and crossed her ankles beneath her borrowed dress to keep from reaching for him.

At first, his gaze had consumed her from the top of her freshly washed curls, to the beribboned hem of her peach gown. As though making sure she wasn’t some counterfeit sent to confound him.

More emotion played across his sinister features in the space of a few breaths than she’d identified in the entire time he’d been her captor. A desperate sort of relief warmed his gaze before a dreary disenchantment slackened his proud shoulders in the same instant it tensed his jaw.

It was a long time before he looked at her again.

I didn’t leave you, she wanted to shout. I woke up on a boat halfway to shore, and all I wanted to do was turn around.

Which clearly proved she’d gone mad. Didn’t it?

She yearned to smooth the wrinkles of strain from between his forehead. To press a calming kiss to the twitch above his left eyebrow. To shape her hand over the scars on his jaw.

He prowled into the room ahead of Blackwell, appearing every inch the self-possessed predator, stalking into the den of a rival wolf pack.

But Lorelai noted the whites of his knuckles. The rov ing eyes. The calculations of each exit, of every man and woman assembled. She saw the trickle of sweat break from his hairline and roll toward his neck.

Something had happened out there. It had to have been terrible to affect him like this.

Lady Farah Blackwell, Countess Northwalk, pressed her hand into Lorelai’s, a silent, reassuring smile on her angelic face. The countess had let her borrow this gown, a confection that hadn’t fit Farah since her second pregnancy, or so the lady had lamented as she’d gently burped her infant son in the nursery.

On Lorelai’s other side, Veronica sat ramrod straight, reminding her of Ann Boleyn awaiting her death sentence from Henry the VIII.

When Moncrieff sauntered in behind Blackwell, Veronica tensed so abruptly, had she been an instrument, her strings would have snapped. She and the first mate stared at each other, not with distemper, but with a sense of silent warning.

Like distrustful comrades sharing a secret.

Troubled, Lorelai regarded her dearest friend. No matter what happened between herself and the Rook, she needed to get Veronica to safety, Lorelai decided. She owed her that much. Everything the woman had been through was the fault of her terrible family.

Herself, included.

In all their years as sisters, Lorelai had underestimated Veronica’s bravery. Her capability. She was so very heroic, rescuing her from a man who’d begun to capture Lorelai in ways other than the physical.