Page 71 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo
She thought she had for a moment when his lips touched hers. They were the same lips she’d remembered, filled with the same need. Only amplified a thousandfold. Oh God, she wished she could tell him, that she could convey somehow that she’d not lost consciousness out of terror, or pain, or lack of affection.
Quite the opposite.
His kiss had done something to her. Had unlocked a part of her that she’d not known existed. It was as though he’d breathed some part of his own animalistic lust into her, and the raw, primal desire had overwhelmed her so completely she’d just… collapsed.
Strange, that she’d not done so when Mortimer died. Or when the Rook had married her under a piratical threat. Historically, such stressors would have put her under for days.
It was just a kiss… and it was so much more than that.
She’d tasted Ash on the Rook’s lips. She’d wanted a taste of more. Wanted him to do all of the things he’d offered to do. She’d wanted it with such a ferocity, and feared it with such a timidity, that the contradiction had seemed to tear her consciousness from her.
Lorelai’s first instinct was to go to him. But, of course, that would not do. Not in a room filled to bursting with wealthy, and possibly dangerous, strangers. She laced her fingers together and crossed her ankles beneath her borrowed dress to keep from reaching for him.
At first, his gaze had consumed her from the top of her freshly washed curls, to the beribboned hem of her peach gown. As though making sure she wasn’t some counterfeit sent to confound him.
More emotion played across his sinister features in the space of a few breaths than she’d identified in the entire time he’d been her captor. A desperate sort of relief warmed his gaze before a dreary disenchantment slackened his proud shoulders in the same instant it tensed his jaw.
It was a long time before he looked at her again.
I didn’t leave you,she wanted to shout.I woke up on a boat halfway to shore, and all I wanted to do was turn around.
Which clearly proved she’d gone mad. Didn’t it?
She yearned to smooth the wrinkles of strain from between his forehead. To press a calming kiss to the twitch above his left eyebrow. To shape her hand over the scars on his jaw.
He prowled into the room ahead of Blackwell, appearing every inch the self-possessed predator, stalking into the den of a rival wolf pack.
But Lorelai noted the whites of his knuckles. The roving eyes. The calculations of each exit, of every man and woman assembled. She saw the trickle of sweat break from his hairline and roll toward his neck.
Something had happened out there. It had to have been terrible to affect him like this.
Lady Farah Blackwell, Countess Northwalk, pressed her hand into Lorelai’s, a silent, reassuring smile on her angelic face. The countess had let her borrow this gown, a confection that hadn’t fit Farah since her second pregnancy, or so the lady had lamented as she’d gently burped her infant son in the nursery.
On Lorelai’s other side, Veronica sat ramrod straight, reminding her of Ann Boleyn awaiting her death sentence from Henry the VIII.
When Moncrieff sauntered in behind Blackwell, Veronica tensed so abruptly, had she been an instrument, her strings would have snapped. She and the first mate stared at each other, not with distemper, but with a sense of silent warning.
Like distrustful comrades sharing a secret.
Troubled, Lorelai regarded her dearest friend. No matter what happened between herself and the Rook, she needed to get Veronica to safety, Lorelai decided. She owed her that much. Everything the woman had been through was the fault of her terrible family.
Herself, included.
In all their years as sisters, Lorelai had underestimated Veronica’s bravery. Her capability. She was so very heroic, rescuing her from a man who’d begun to capture Lorelai in ways other than the physical.
It had almost worked, too, had they not been beset upon by Blackwell’s men the moment they touched the beach, and conducted to Ben More to hold court with the reigning King of the London Underworld.
The man in question was followed by his valet, a stocky Scot named Murdoch. Blackwell’s gaze found his wife instantly, and Farah greeted him from where the ladies sat on the long settee perpendicular to the fire.
A wrinkle appeared between Lady Farah’s brows, as though she knew something was wrong the moment she met her villainous husband’s eye. Her finger anxiously twisted a silver-blond curl, even when the Blackheart of Ben More offered his wife what was meant to be half of a reassuring smile.
Not for the first time, it struck Lorelai how much he resembled the Rook. Perhaps his nose was more patrician, and his mouth softer. His skin decidedly less swarthy and weathered. More marble than bronze. He’d spent his life beneath the eerie pallid lanterns of the London night, or the constant clouds of Ben More.
Not on the deck of a ship with no escape from the relentless sun.
Neither the Rook, Moncrieff, nor Blackwell or Murdoch claimed the two monstrous leather chairs across from where the ladies anxiously perched.
Blackwell instantly went to a hearth large enough to house a small village, bracing his arm on the mantel and staring into the roaring fire as though he could see the past in the flames with his one good eye.
