Page 49 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo
“Butyouare.” His cold eyes blazed for a transient moment before he blinked it away. “She’s just insurance.”
Heaving a great breath, Lorelai stepped toward him, out of Veronica’s grasp. “What will it take to secure her release?” she murmured. “What will I have to do?”
Dawn broke over them, then. Scalding the mists, but not completely dissipating them. Pillars of golden light graced the deck, spilling over the Rook as he regarded her. It gilded a cobalt hue in his midnight hair and glinted off the sable lust in his eyes.
After a protracted moment, he answered her. “I think you know.”
CHAPTERELEVEN
The hungry glint in his eye left no room for interpretation. He desired her submission. He was hungry for sex. Lorelai gulped as an explosion of butterflies erupted in her stomach.
“I’ll do it,” she said, then cleared the catch of fear out of her throat to proclaim, “I’ll do anything you want.”
“Lorelai, stop. You don’t have to. Not for me.” Veronica seized her, thrusting herself between Lorelai and the Rook. “She’s innocent. Take me, instead. I am younger than she, and less fragile. I’ve been married, and I… I know how to please a man.”
The glance of distaste the Rook flicked toward Veronica baffled Lorelai. Her sister-in-law was considered a great and mysterious beauty, and she accentuated her natural allure with a wardrobe fit for a queen, all designed and stitched by her own hand.
“I don’t want you,” the Rook bluntly informed Veronica.
“I’ll take ’er!” a crewman with a heavy French accent offered from somewhere off to their left. A chorus of male guffaws spread across the deck like a wave.
Veronica spat at the Rook’s feet. “What kind of monstrous brute forces himself onto a frightened, crippled woman after murdering her brother and her intended on her wedding day?”
He stepped forward, grim amusement deepening the brackets around his hard mouth. “This kind of monstrous brute.”
Even in such an extraordinary situation, it occurred to Lorelai that she didn’t at all appreciate being discussed as though she were not capable of making her own decisions. Her own sacrifices.
The Rook held his hand out. “Come with me, Lorelai.”
Lorelai couldn’t bring herself to release Veronica and reach for him. The woman next to her trembled, and a wild terror bled from her eyes.
“I gave you my word, Lady Southbourne will not be harmed.” He motioned her forward. “If you behave, I’ll let her go.”
“We cannot trust his word,” Veronica said.
Lorelai extracted herself from Veronica’s clutches. “It’ll be all right,” she soothed in a voice that failed to even convince herself, let alone her terrified sister-in-law. “You had to… to lie with Mortimer. Nothing can be worse than that.”
“A pirate could,” Veronica wailed, gesturing wildly to the Rook. “Just look at him. He’s enormous!”
Their audience found no end of amusement in her declaration.
“Just wait until she sees ’im without his trousers. She’ll faint dead away,” one chortled.
“Take ’em both, Captain. The pretty one could teach the other one what to do, and then you could show ’em a thing or two.” Another’s salacious suggestion was met with howls of encouragement.
Lorelai heated with abject mortification. As much as she was used to being the brunt of a joke, it still stung when they laughed.
The other one?Not the most hurtful moniker she’d been subjected to, granted, but still. Veronica was the pretty one. She… was the other one. Though, on a pirate ship, her status might, for once, be an advantage.
Except… the Rook didn’t want the pretty one.
He wanted her.
“The next man who makes a sound loses his tongue.” The Rook’s soft threat had immediate effect. Silence landed like a heap of bricks. They might as well have been alone on deck.
Lorelai turned to Veronica and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be all right. Every time we’re broken, we get back up and limp along. Isn’t that what we’ve always said?”
“Don’t leave me alone.” Tears streamed down Veronica’s cheeks and she backed away to the railing, her wild eyes finding the hulking forms of surrounding pirates in the swiftly dissipating mists. “I’ll jump into that ocean before allowing you to leverage yourself for me.” She scooted onto the railing, readying to hurl herself backward into the sea.
