The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(67)

“If I am Dorian, what do I call you now?” Blackwell asked the night. “The Rook?”

Keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the moon casting the Isle of Ben More in a mystic silver glow, he answered from that place he’d thought empty. “I—I find I like that you call me brother.”

Dorian didn’t look at him, either, but the glass in his hand trembled a little. “And who will you be for your Lady Lorelai?”

“For her, I must learn to be someone else … Or no one at all.”





CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

How was one to focus on anything when locked in an actual tower like some fairy-tale princess? Lorelai huffed out a frustrated breath and let the book she’d been attempting to read fall to her lap. Reaching down, she fluffed the pillow beneath her throbbing ankle. The storm outside and the adjustment from being at sea to coming ashore had angered the ancient injury.

Who’d have ever thought that she’d need to find her land legs?

She studied the door with a pensive frown. Another thing the Rook and the Blackheart of Ben More had in common. Certain rooms with doors that locked from the outside.

Close thunder shook the stones and rattled the glass of the oil lantern at the bedside table of yet another luxurious prison. The bed was comfortable, at least, and the room spacious, done in dark wood and autumn tones.

Still, the storm stirred a restlessness inside of her she couldn’t appease. Something wild. Something indefinable and inescapable. Like time or fate.

But didn’t she exist outside those constructs? It certainly seemed thus. Was she a married woman, or a captive? Her physical desires and her emotional ones were ever at odds when it came to the dark and damaged man who could in the span of a breath be both threatening and tender. It seemed if she were to search for Ash, she’d have to live with the Rook.

As much as the prospect terrified her, it thrilled her, as well.

And the question remained. Did she have a choice?

Did she want one?

A chill lanced up her spine, spreading bumps down her arms, and Lorelai knew he was on the other side of her bedroom door. All six-plus feet of him.

He hadn’t made a sound. He didn’t cast a shadow.

But he was there.

The electric presence of him radiated from just beyond the thick oak as extant and intense as the lightning outside. She was acquainted with his unparalleled strength. The barrier wouldn’t protect her if he decided to pit his body against it.

She didn’t breathe until the bolt slid open, the latch released, and he let himself into her room.

The sight of him freed the band from around her lungs and created a new pressure. One she’d felt awaken inside of her more fervently with each moment they passed in each other’s company.

A lower pressure. A moist desire.

She’d not felt it since their kiss all those years ago. But it was different now. Less innocent. More insistent.

Lanternlight had a way of softening people, but not him. His eyes were too black, too fiendishly clever. His features—dark as a heathen’s—were too hard. His expression, intemperate.

He was a living, breathing sin.

In her bedroom.

Lightning blanketed the sky in blinding brilliance, shifting the deep hollows and broad planes of his features into a queer white light. For a ghostly moment, she caught sight of the boy she’d once known.

Ash. Her Ash. All tender yearning and impetuous youth. Only Ash had gazed at her like that, once upon a time.

By the time the percussion of the thunder broke their stillness, his expression had again smoothed to that eerie tranquility she’d come to despise.

Instead of many, regular beats, her heart gave one great thump. Had he come to finish what he’d started in his quarters this morning?

She’d not known men were such creatures as he until he revealed his unparalleled body to her. Now that she thought of it, most men weren’t.

There was no one like him.

Not that she’d chanced upon many naked men, but she doubted any resembled him in the flesh, a smooth and fearsome canvas poured over hard, iron power.

He approached the bed, and her hand fluttered up to the high neck of her nightgown, clutching it closed against skin gone suddenly flush.

Was he angry? She couldn’t tell. Had he come to punish her for leaving?

Unabashedly, he stared down at her lap. Between her legs. “What do you think of Captain Nemo?”

What? She squinted at him for several silent seconds. Oh, right. Her book. “I find him conflicted,” she answered carefully. “He is a man both riddled by remorse and driven by vengeance.”

“Indeed.” He took the book from her lap, causing her thighs to tense, and inspected the gold-leaf pages. “Did you know the Egyptians believe your ka is in your name?”

“Ka?” she echoed. What a strange conversation to be having at a time like this. When there was so much else to say.

“Orientals call it variations of chi, Christians call it your soul. So many believe there is power in a name. That it is what makes you immortal. Demons are expelled at the revelation of it. God’s name is so sacred it cannot be spoken. It cannot be known.” He spoke to her in a voice every bit as rich and opaque as Turkish coffee. “For so long I have felt such an affinity with Captain Nemo. Nemo literally translates to no name. Did you know that?”