The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(73)

He tensed, but looked to her.

Lorelai had to clear her throat before replying, “All is well.”

“Good night, then.” Lorelai was certain his ears also pricked to the sound of two sets of footsteps retreating from the door.

She went to move her hand, and he hesitated in letting her go, as though reluctant for her to see what was beneath her palm.

The action befuddled her. One cannot see another’s heart through the chest, only through the eyes. Everyone knew that. So, why did he seem disinclined to show her his chest?

She blinked down at the hands covering hers, scarred and rough and square. They trembled slightly, or did they only mirror her own quivers?

Instead of tugging away again, she slid her hand down over the iron mound of his pectoral, gasping at what she uncovered.

His nostrils flared, as did a spark of something wild and dangerous in his eyes, but he sat unnaturally still as she stared for what seemed like hours at her discovery.

She’d not noticed it until now, even when he’d stood naked before her. She’d been so focused on not looking at him, that she’d missed the very confirmation she’d been waiting for all along.

There. On his chest. Protected by a fierce tiger above, and a serpentine dragon beneath, was inked the ruby silhouette of small, perfect lips.

Her lips.

The lips she’d used twenty years ago to kiss the nightmare of darkness away from his heart.

She’d once again stopped breathing as she gaped.

I knew it, she thought, both humbled and elated at once. He’d lied to her, but her discovery of the truth wasn’t at all unpleasant. Nor was she angry.

I knew Ash was alive. That he loved me.

Here was the proof.

She quirked her eyebrow at him.

His lips thinned and his eyes narrowed. The air darkened with a threat. Then a warning. Followed by a promise.

Everything spoken and unspoken hung suspended between them, and for the first time since she could remember, Lorelai didn’t question her place. She was meant to be here. Now. In this bed, with this man.

“Go,” he forced through a labored breath. “If you don’t leave, Lorelai, I’ll forget—”

Lorelai lunged before she could change her mind, driving her body against his and stopping his words with a desperate, artless kiss. He said he’d not take her, but this time, she’d come to him.

He’d crossed oceans, and she’d only crossed a hallway. But it seemed as though some greater divide had been forged in doing so.

This time, she’d come for him.

Though, if she’d thought to be the one to do the taking, she immediately learned her folly.

With a powerful, effortless grace, he enfolded her in his arms and rolled them until he’d pinned her beneath the animal heat of his body.

Only when he seemed to have secured her, did he soften the kiss from desperate to reverent. His mouth didn’t just take hers, he worshiped it. Every bit of him was so much harder than her. So much bigger, stronger, but for his lips, which were unexpectedly soft.

He kissed like a man unused to kissing. He applied no artful, seductive skill nor patient, practiced moves. He simply drank pleasure from her mouth, and returned it in generous, overwhelming increments.

Lorelai had forgotten this. That a kiss was so much more than warm, wet sensation.

A kiss had a taste. A singular flavor. Something bold and yet subtle.

A kiss had a scent. Mint, hers, and whisky, his, expelled on the breaths they shared.

A kiss was a rare and strange perspective. The other so close, the sight of him blurred into flesh and flashes of eyes.

A wild jolt speared through her, an animal reaction of her own, at the possession she spied in those eyes.

Her womb clenched on an aching emptiness and, as though he sensed her need, his knee split her thighs and he settled, once again, between her legs. Only the barrier of her nightgown separated the smooth, long barrel of his arousal from touching her aching flesh.

From slipping inside.

Her chilly fingers grazed the warmth of his neck before threading through raven strands as sultry as silk.

This was real, and this was right.

This was Ash. Her Ash. Despite his protestations to the contrary. She’d found him, here. She’d found him in the nightmares she wished he didn’t suffer. She found him in the darkness he ruled. In the storms he summoned.

She found him, and was determined not to lose him again.

The pressure of his mouth became more urgent, his tongue sweeping into hers with voluptuous strokes, doing things to her she never knew could be done. His kiss became many. A stanza of kisses. His tongue working the syllables of poetry into her mouth, his lips creating the meter and rhyme, the ebb and flow.

And his body. Oh, his body. Long and lithe and lethal, it rocked against her in a percussion so ancient, so achingly necessary, it called to the very soul of her. To that place woven together from the whispers of her ancestors into the finely spun tapestry of her own arrangement. The one that was born to dance beneath him.

Her hands smoothed away from his hair, down the cords of his neck, and over his muscled back. She feathered soft caresses over his scars, soothing him to relax deeper into her. To press himself down against her.

But he didn’t, not entirely. He held himself with the strength of one arm, his other hand trailing over her nightgown, heating the quivering skin beneath until he covered her breast.