The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo (Victorian Rebels, #6)(80)

He wanted her again, cad that he was, he desired her splayed across things, bent over other things, on her knees, on her back, over him, under him, beside him. Against that wall …

Christ. He scrubbed a hand over his face, and then through his hair, tugging in frustration.

He yearned to claim every inch of her. With his mouth. With his cock. He could keep her naked for the next decade, fucking away the last twenty years. Listening to her voice, the only sound in the world with the power to soothe his restless rage, or to stir his listless soul.

Her fragile innocence reminded him of just what a devil he was. An insatiable beast. A terrific villain.

He’d done his level best to focus on the quest. To pay attention to Dorian, Moncrieff, and his crew as they planned their approach and excavation of Tersea Island with painstaking care. But dammit if Lorelai hadn’t wandered his ship with her distracting loveliness. She’d stood on the forecastle deck for an eternity, posing with her attractive sister. It was a marvel anyone had accomplished anything.

When she’d tugged her earlobe, he’d remembered biting it as he came inside her from behind. When she rested a hand on her dramatically tilted hip, he could see it through the folds of her borrowed gown. His hand would burn at the memory of the pale shape of it in his hand as he’d guided their rhythm. When she’d bent over to scratch at one of the infernal kittens, he’d nearly fallen over the railing at the sight of her backside.

Here he was, near forty, and his body was acting like a besotted teenager’s. His cock had been at half-mast nearly all day, as just the sight of her was enough to create a lack of available space in his trousers.

And he could do fuck all about it with so many of his crew around at all times. He’d half a mind to just toss them all in the sea and have her on whatever part of his ship he fancied.

What stopped him was a comment she’d made this morning upon peeling herself out of bed. His little wife reminded him none-too-gently that she’d never been particularly fond of mornings, and she’d admitted to an intimate tenderness after he’d demanded an explanation for a wince she’d not hidden fast enough while beset by early sluggishness.

So, instead of whisking her into the room with the first available bed upon their arrival at Southbourne Grove, he acquiesced to the plan of allowing her to explain away his presence here.

The story she and Dorian had concocted was a simple and effective one, he had to admit. He was to be her long-lost cousin of some considerable distance, Ash Weatherstoke, a continental duke who had purchased Southbourne Grove back to the family from the Gooch estate. He was supposed to have rescued her from the Rook’s dastardly clutches and conveyed her back to inspect his new British holdings. This story would be corroborated by only a handful of staff left who might recall a relation by the name of Ash Weatherstoke staying at Southbourne Grove a few decades ago. A distant cousin, if their memory served, convalesced here after a tragic accident.

The staff had been so relieved at Lorelai and Veronica’s safe return, along with a visit from the infamous Blackheart of Ben More, that they’d barely paid their supposed new master any mind, other than a few polite courtesies and skeptical glances.

He’d immediately retreated, allowing Lorelai to receive the adoration that was her due. First, he’d double-checked preparations for tomorrow’s excursion, and then he’d drifted here. To the room where he’d first heard her voice.

This place, for all intents and purposes, was where he’d been born. The residence of his earliest memory.

Her voice.

Did you love me?

Love was too tame a word. Obsession too plain a concept.

Worship might cover it. Might come close to—

A quickening in his body and a thrill in his blood alerted him to her approach long before his ear pricked to the swish of her skirts or her uneven gait.

His every muscle tensed, every hair on his body prickled with awareness of her. It always had. It was as though she had an electromagnetic pull on him, her nearness charging the air between them, calling him closer. To touch. To hold.

He had no choice but to obey.

“I thought I might find you here,” she murmured.

He shoved his fists in his pockets.

She stopped next to him, to gaze out the same window.

Close. She was too close. He could smell the sea in her hair and the fragrance of the lilac soap she’d bathed with this morning warmed by her skin.

His jaw cracked.

“I come in here all the time,” she admitted. “I look over to the horizon, and understand why people used to assume that the distant sea was the edge of the world. I think a part of me knew you were out there. That this ocean separated us. You felt that far away from my heart.”

The suppressed longing in her voice pricked a hole in his lungs, but he continued to stare at the dark water, the threads and branches not unlike the pitch-black ice he boasted for blood.

Her shoulder brushed his arm. “The sea calls to a man, or so they say. I wonder if he has no choice but to answer.”

“I had no choice.” His lips barely moved, but still the bitter words cut through the air like a blade of rime.

“I know.” She put her head against his arm, and something in his middle melted. “I always questioned why something so incomprehensibly large, so deadly, so inhospitable to man, could take us away from who we are. From what we love. From the land upon which we rely.” She tilted her golden head up to regard him, and her gaze felt like the first warmth of dawn. “How brave you men are, who make your lives on the sea.”