Page 53 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo
He stared at her a long time, retaining that unnatural stillness that unnerved her to no end. “The boy you—knew is dead,” he informed her gravely.
But that made no sense. He stood right here. “Why?” she demanded. “Who killed him?”
His eyes burned with an onyx fire. “Mortimer Weatherstoke. Though Ash has died many times since the first.”
“Mortimer?” Lorelai snatched her hand back as though she’d been burned. “What did he do to you?”
He said nothing, but his knuckles whitened as fingers curled into fists. It was the first sign of emotion Lorelai had observed since he’d taken her.
“What happened to you? To Ash?” she whispered. “Tell me.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he rumbled. “The past has already been written. The blood is already dry. The only part left of Ash is the part who—”
“The part who what?”
“The part who… owns you.” Had she imagined it, or had it seemed as though he’d been about to say something else?
“You don’t own me.” How cruel time could be, to turn the boy she’d loved into a man she loathed.
“Of course I do.” He smothered his sentiment with a leer. “Haven’t you ever heard it stated that possession is nine-tenths of the law?” Without the barricade of her hand, he crept forward, crowding her. “What if IwereAsh? What would you say to me?”
Heart stalling and then sputtering back to life, Lorelai took a limping retreat backward. “Y-you only just said that you wouldn’t answer to Ash. That he was dead.”
He reached for the ever-present curls at her temple, and she flinched as he caressed them, and twirled them about his finger. “Indulge me,” he purred in that voice as thick and sonorous as torn velvet. “Pretend we are not on a pirate ship. That I am not the Rook. Imagine I walked into your little estuary yesterday and called your name. And we now stand in the same place, in the same mist surrounding us the day we were parted. What would you say to Ash?” He leaned closer, his warm breath smelling of whisky and desire as his head dipped low. His mouth a threat hovering over hers. “What would you do to him, after all this time?”
Without forethought, her hand whipped up and slapped his cheek with such force, her palm stung with it. “You promised to come for me!” she cried. “I prayed for your return, and then I begged. Ipleadedwith God to protect you, to send you back to me. When he didn’t, I mourned you. ForyearsI mourned you like a beloved who’d died tragically. Mortimer told me you remembered who you were. I thought you’d gone back to your life. And as much as it pained me, I could have forgiven you for that. But you left me alone for twentysoddingyears to becomethis?” She gestured at him in all his dark glory. “This heartless, violent, deviant man? If you are not Ash, then you are nothe who promised to come for me! You are not who I wanted.”
“Yet I am what you get.” His eyes glittered dangerously as he straightened. “My condolences. But it doesn’t change anything. You still belong to me, and you will from this day on. It’ll be better if you just resign yourself to the inevitability of it.”
“Just how do you expect me to do that?” she demanded. “You would have me simply roll over for you? Swoon and submit gratefully to you? A stranger? To the most violent and deadly criminal the world has lately known?”
After a protracted moment, he said, “Well. Yes.” He turned his back to her then, and walked to the sideboard, pouring himself a drink. “You would have done so for that fat slab of rotten blubber. Don’t tell me you’d have rather been Mrs. Sylvester Gooch. That you’d prefer to spread your legs for that gibface mutton wank over me.”
She flinched. “I was trying to save my family from ruin. Without my marrying Mr. Gooch, we’d have been homeless.”
“I know.” He knocked back his whisky.
It occurred to Lorelai that he might have been angry with her. That most men would have slapped her back, or worse. He might have attacked her with the sexual frenzy of the prior night, full of masculine indignation over her physical challenge.
But the Rook treated her outburst as though it were nothing. In fact, he didn’t even flinch as her slap had collided with his face. Hard. He’d reacted to it like it had no more consequence than a fly landing on his cheek.
And yet, for a man who claimed to be so emotionless, Lorelai swore she glimpsed moments of the maelstrom churning beneath the smooth surface.
He went to the bath and adjusted the knobs so the water flow ceased before turning to regard her. “Why are you so thin?”
The question couldn’t have surprised her more. “I have been too distraught of late to eat much,” she answered honestly. Might she have seen a flicker of regret in his dark eyes before he hid them from her?
He motioned to the breakfast, cooling on the table. “Eat now.”
“I’m not hungry.” Her stomach made a rude noise, which she stubbornly refused to acknowledge.
He took a threatening step toward her. “I will feed you from my hand, if I must.”
“You cannot just force me to do something every time I refuse you.”
“Actually, I can. And I will. Now.Eat.” He gestured to the table. “Buttered croissants and apricot marmalade are your favorite.”
She glowered at him. “How do you know that after all this time my tastes haven’t changed?”
