The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(76)

Instead, she’d regressed into a much younger, more na?ve version of herself. One who could pretend again. One with an imagination still hued with optimism and hope.

It felt as if the candle not only swathed them in its sonorous light, but glowed through her veins, as well. Soft and golden and intimately warm.

She’d been happy to let him treat her like a rag doll, allowing him to fetch a cloth by the basin and wash them both before he lifted and draped her over his magnificent reclining body.

She listened to the storm for a long silent while, waiting for their breathing to return to normal. His arms encircling her felt like the most natural thing in the world.

For the first time in twenty years, she was safe.

Drowsily, she traced the edges of a few of his tattoos, admiring their work. The tiger on his chest stood beneath an Asian waterfall, the dragon stood in flames. Unburned.

On his other pectoral, jungle cats leaped from rushes, a tribal bear roared at a majestic stag. Other creatures littered his torso. A strange mammal with a ringed tail. A shark so realistic, it could have leaped off his skin. Serpents, fish, wolves, foxes, glass-eyed raptor birds, Indian elephants with exotic markings.

How much pain it must have caused him, to capture these renderings beneath his skin.

She touched her finger to the tiny lips, the ghost of her lips, covering the oblong they made. One of the only designs on his body not an animal.

When the silence finally felt as though it’d stretched too tightly, she asked, “Penny for your thoughts?”

His torso rippled with an amused breath. “You’d not be getting a bargain, they’re barely worth that much.”

“They are to me.”

His big hand settled against her hair, idly undoing her loose braid with careful motions and dragging her long curls over his skin as though the sensation pleased him. “You drained me of thoughts,” he rumbled in a silken tone. “Gifted me a quiet mind.”

She smiled against his chest, thinking she didn’t do much more than lie there and enjoy his body. His incredible, colorful body. “Would it interrupt your quietude too much if I asked you a question?”

That flex again, low across his abdomen. A tightening of impossibly defined muscle and sinew denoting his pleased hitch of breath. “You could ask me to invade China right now, and I’d find a way to do it.”

Most men would be jesting, but with him … one could never tell.

“Why so many tattoos?” She traced the detailed horns of the elk. “Why all the animals?”

The hand stroking her hair stilled. “I’ve been just about everywhere. When I saw these creatures, in captivity or in the wild, I thought of you. I thought of showing them to you, and so I put them on my body.”

She lifted her head to look over his shoulder at him. “Are you in earnest?”

He nodded down at her.

Incredulous, she regarded his artwork with new eyes. “You’ve seen all of these creatures? And then you brought them back to me?”

“All but the dragon, obviously.”

“Obviously,” she echoed, pushing herself up to sit and wrapping the sheet around her. She’d have told him it was because the storm chilled her, but the truth was she didn’t yet feel comfortable with her state of nudity.

She splayed her hand over his skin, leaving his more … masculine parts modestly covered. “Where did you see a bear?”

“Mongolia.” He rested his hands behind his head, examining his own topography as though mildly interested. The movement did interesting things to his muscles.

Lord, if she had her druthers, he’d never put his clothing back on.

“And wolves?”

“America.”

“This snake?”

He checked. “That’s a black mamba, the deadliest snake known to man.”

She covered her open mouth with her fingers. “Did you catch one?”

“One almost caught me.” The ghost of a smile whispered at the corners of his mouth. “In sub-Saharan Africa.”

She liked him like this. A lion at rest, the ever-present tension leached from his muscles. The vigilant void of his gaze warmed to something almost … human. Alive.

Part of her wanted to ask him about his nightmares tonight, another about his dreams for the future. She wanted to know what had happened during the last twenty years. She wanted to know what happened next.

But no force on this earth could convince her to say a thing that would ruin the first interaction they’d had that wasn’t fraught with danger, passion, or pain.

This was what she’d wanted. To be in bed with Ash, sharing small, inconsequential intimacies. This was how she’d fallen in love with him the first time.

Now, instead of a bleak-eyed boy with an empty past, he was an experienced man who’d seen the whole world. And still he brought little parts of that world back to her.

The very thought of it melted her heart.

“What manner of creature is this?” She pointed to the strange, big-eyed mammal that didn’t seem to fit with the theme of hunters painted on the body of the most alpha predator.

“It’s a ring-tailed lemur.” He smoothed his hand over hers. “I met her in Madagascar. She followed me through a market and leaped on my shoulder, tried to share a plantain with me.”

“She didn’t!”