Page 37 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo
“I amnotyour wife,” she hissed. “You may not simply order me about like one of your crew. Just because I’m here against my will doesn’t mean I belong to you.”
His head made a serpentine motion on his neck. “That is where you’re mistaken, Lorelai.” He spoke through his teeth, reaching for a post of the bed as he carefully navigated around it.
“I—I won’t like it,” she threatened, taking an infinitesimal step backward.
Would he make a liar of her?
He advanced to the foot of the bed, and only one corner separated her from her fate. And then he stood before her once again, a dark tower of saturnine grace. A man who moved with such finesse, she’d not marked his footfalls. It seemed his shadow reached her before he did, and now here he was, close enough to share breath.
“I can promise your screams will be of pleasure, not of pain.”
Lorelai found herself once again unable to move as his words evoked a quiver somewhere south of her belly. Shebecame mesmerized by something both foreign and familiar in his dark eyes. He didn’t blink. Never once did he break eye contact as both human and nature’s laws dictated he should.
“Is there no kindness left in you?” A muted whimper escaped her as hot tears burned her temples. “Do I mean so little to you?”
“So little?” He spirited away a mystified expression as quickly as it appeared, replacing it with his maddening inscrutability. “I survived…” He paused. Blinked. Then seemed to change his mind. “I crossedhorizonsfor you, Lorelai.” He reached out to trace her jaw, her cheekbones, her trembling lips. Pausing at the river of moisture at her temple, he swiped at a tear, rubbing it between his thumb and finger and examining it like one would a foreign substance. “I’ve been watching you for several months, you know.”
“Several…months?” She gasped, her mind swimming with implications she couldn’t reconcile.
“I came for you the moment I made my way back to England.”
Backto England? Where had he gone? Where had he been for twenty years? Why hadn’t he come for her the moment he touched down on British soil?
“I spied you in the estuary,” he continued. “Teaching a fucking orphaned otter how to swim. And I decided that I’d give you as many days as possible without me. It’s the onlykindnessI can afford you, I’m afraid. I waited to inflict myself on you for as long as I could.” The fingers he rubbed together now curled into a fist. “But I wouldnotsee you married to another man. So now… here we are. And there is nothing to be done for it.”
“You speak as though it’s out of your hands,” she marveled.
“It is. It always has been.” He might have sounded apologetic, which was both terrifying and ludicrous. “I was born the moment I heard your voice commanding me to live. And you have been mine ever since. You’re right, Lorelai, there’s nothing to be done for that.”
“Then perhaps I should have left you to rot beneath that ash tree.” She’d meant to lash out at him. To hurt him. To drive him away, somehow, until she could contain this rapidly disintegrating situation.
“Perhaps that might have been best for us both.” He toyed with a loathed wispy curl at her temple, one of several which would neither grow nor be tamed, and forever framed her face.
Then his palms traced their way down her neck to her shoulders. They were even rougher than she remembered, the calluses like sandpaper against the tender skin. In a feline gesture, he brought his cheek to rest against hers, the stubble rasping against her jaw, as he seemed to savor her fragrance like one would an expensive wine before taking a sip.
His dark head lowered further to the hollow of her throat, dragging his lips across it. His warm breath made way for the heat of his tongue, and something damp and disloyal rushed between her legs.
Desire flared, and panic surged alongside it, surpassing the sensation with a dizzying rush of terror. She could not allow herself to submit. Not to him. Not like this. Not until she could find Ash behind the dead-eyed predator.
Lorelai’s knee connected with hard flesh before she’d even made the conscious decision to fight. She rushed around him as a breathless sound escaped his throat followed by hoarse, horrid curses.
She hoped to put the table between them, if only to buy her some time.
She hadn’t thought this through, had she? Where would she go on an unfamiliar ship? What awaited her on the other side of that door?
The boat pitched sharply, and her left foot met the ground with more force than she could take. She gave a cry of pain as her weak ankle gave out, and she sprawled forward, biting her lip hard enough to draw blood upon impact with the ground.
The tears didn’t flow because of fear or pain anymore, but out of sheer, helpless frustration. She looked like a fool, prostrate on the floor. Despite her intensifying antipathy for the Rook, she didn’t want Ash—if any part of him was left—to see her humiliated like this.
Maybe he’d be angry enough to kill her before she had to lift her head. Then she wouldn’t have to face her own mortification.
He was on her in an instant, turning her, lifting her, cradling her to his chest. Much like he’d done so long ago. Lorelai’s tears became as torrential as the storm. She did her best not to remember the last time she’d cried against him. The last time she’d made herself a fool in front of him. It had been over a raven.
A rook.
Silently, he conducted her back to the bed, limping only slightly. He sat her on the counterpane, rumpled by her struggles. This time, she didn’t fight him, not even when he reached into a trouser pocket.
“Get it over with,” she sobbed, crossing her arms over her corset in a feeble attempt to regain her modesty. “I’d rather die than live as your wife.”
