Page 30 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo
He stalked back toward the carriage in long, primal strides.His carriage, Lorelai realized numbly.
For that’s what she was. Numb. She couldn’t feel her feet beneath her or her hands at the ends of her wrists. Not until he moved closer.
Lightning forked across a once-calm sky, but that wasn’t what lifted every hair on her body.
It was the way he moved. Upright, like a man, but with the feral tread of an animal. Every motion maintained by absolute control and primal intent.
No pleasure brightened the pitiless voids of his eyes. No tender hunger. Nor bitter wrath. Not even a murderous fury to warrant such an act of violence.
And yet there had been no true violence in the deed.
Just a smooth, unhurried pressure. Utter, lethal precision… and a man’s life ended. It had been as if he’d performed the act a thousand times. A million, maybe.
This couldn’t be. Lorelai’s mind hurried to reject the specter of a beloved ghost thought long dead.
Thrusting a hyperventilating Veronica behind her, she did what she could to stumble out of his way.
If only she could run. But, she realized, even an able-bodied person wouldn’t easily evade such a man.
She’d thought him tall, but had been mistaken.
He’d been tall twenty years ago. Now, he was tremendous.
“Get in the carriage.” The wind stole notes of his low, cool command, but Lorelai read every word on his lips.
Veronica scrambled inside.
A thousand,thousandrefusals, questions, and emotions swirled in a maelstrom of hysteria inside of her head.
What escaped was, “Why?” The word was both all-encompassing, and completely insubstantial, but her rapidly closing throat couldn’t force out one more word.
“I came for you,” he answered dispassionately.
“Why?” she gasped again, hoping she could hear his answer over the hammering of her heart.
Coffee-dark eyes speared her with an arctic indifference she’d not known existed until this moment. “Does the sun still set in the west?”
The question stole her ability to breathe. She’d been hoping that despite the brutal features, despite the blue-black of his hair, and the unmistakable scars, she’d still been gaping at an interloper.
Mutely, she nodded.
“Then get in the carriage, Lorelai.”
Something about his order broke the stricken chains of traumatic astonishment. “The sun has set in the west every day for twenty years.” The words tumbled out before she could think better of it. Before she could call them back.
If she’d thought his eyes black before, she’d been wrong. They’d been dark, surely, but now they were little more than desolate, abysmal mirrors in which she could divine her own dire fate.
“You do not want me toputyou into the carriage,” he informed her pleasantly. “I still have your brother’s blood on my hands.”
Was he threatening her? Or showing her an unimaginably macabre form of courtesy?
He held out his gloves, demonstrating that he was in no way being figurative.
Swallowing the acid crawling up her throat, Lorelai complied, allowing Veronica’s clutching hands to pull her in.
Lorelai had expected him to lock them in and mount the driver’s seat in order to race away from the growing pandemonium.
Instead, he climbed in behind her, settling his bulk across from them.
