The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo

by Byrne, Kerrigan

  Lorelai found the sight of him without his eyepatch disconcerting. A gash dissected his left brow down to the cheekbone, and the wound had left his right eye a milky blue instead of deep brown. The effect was stunning, on many levels.

  He speared her with a desolate gaze upon her approach, and Farah left her side to go to her husband.

  They all had scars, Lorelai realized. The pain they wore on their skin warning of deeper, more dangerous wounds within.

  They stood for a moment as a crack of departing thunder overshadowed the roar of a man held prisoner by desperate nightmares. It chilled her to the bone and tore at her heart. It strained credulity to think that such a piteous, tormented sound could come from such a sinister and self-possessed man.

  Blackwell put his hand on the wood of the door, as though testing it for the heat of a fire on the other side. “We all have them,” he said through a voice made husky with sleep. Or maybe with the lack thereof. “All of us who came of age in Newgate. It is hard to find rest, when sleep makes you vulnerable to the cruelty of others.”

  The connotations of that sentence tore at Lorelai’s insides every bit as much as the raw, low cries of agony on the other side of that door. She truly couldn’t comprehend the depths of suffering a man must have borne in his waking hours to battle such demons in his dreams.

  “We used to take shifts sleeping. He, Argent, and I. One of us would stay awake, take watch against the older men who would…” Blackwell’s hand slid to the latch. “He always fought them off the best. But we none of us won the battles all the time. Not until we were older. Stronger.”

  Lorelai’s gaze collided with Farah’s, and the confirmation she read there finished turning her heart into a puddle of pain. She’d not have been able to conceive of such things as a girl. She’d not known the real demons he fought in the night when she’d woken him all those years ago.

  It made sense now. His aversion to the doctor’s touch as a boy, his distrust of other men.

  The chaos in his room reached an agonizing crescendo, like a ghost being dragged through hellfire. A soul bereft of hope. A helpless child screaming through the chest of the man who’d forgotten him.

  Blackwell turned to her. “Before I go in there, I wanted to ask if you were aware if your husband sleeps with weapons.” He quirked a sad smile at her. “Most of us do, and I’m not after being shot by a brother returned from the dead. Even I don’t enjoy irony that much.”

  “I’ll go,” Lorelai breathed before she was truly aware that she’d made the decision.

  “Darling, do you think that’s wise?” Farah worried. “He’s in such a state.”

  “I’ve done it before, when we were young,” Lorelai said. “He had these same nightmares. I used to think it better he not remember the past, if those are the demons he has to fight in the dark.”

  “You’re not wrong about that, my lady.” Blackwell’s mismatched gaze was warm on her. Approving. “But my wife is right to worry. It may not be safe for you in there.”

  Lorelai put her hand on Blackwell’s arm, nudging it away from the latch. “I fear it is not safe for anyone but me in there.”

  He considered her with the thoroughness of a chemist, as though mentally dissecting all her parts and then putting them back together. “Very well,” he finally said. “But I will stand guard should you need help, until I’m certain you’re out of any danger.”

  “Thank you.” She took the candle he offered, filled her lungs with air and her heart with courage, and opened the door.

  Her candle flickered and danced as she entered. He’d left his window open to let in the storm, and heavy drapes flapped in the wind like unsecured sails.

  As she drifted closer to the bed, the low light revealed his distress in heartbreaking increments. The bedclothes tangled about his long legs as he thrashed against them like a prisoner would against his chains. The heavy muscles of his bare torso arched and strained as though some invisible force pinned him.

  Lorelai couldn’t imagine a man alive who could pit his strength against all the raw, sinewy power stretched taut over his heavy bones.

  But when he was a boy, he’d been leaner. Smaller.

  She set her candle on the edge of the nightstand, out of his reach, the sounds of his hissing breaths and grinding teeth wore down her resolve.

  He was so dazzlingly large. He tore whole crews apart with his bare hands, he’d only just said so.

  What could he do to her, here in the dark? What if he mistook her for one of his demons?

  He whimpered, and suddenly none of that mattered.

  Bracing herself, she slowly lowered to perch on the edge of the cavernous, canopied bed.

  That was all it took.

  His shoulders sprang from the mattress, and his fingers wrapped around her neck before she had the chance to make a sound. He stared at her with fathomless, unfocused eyes long enough for panic to set in as she fought to draw air through her throat. Unable to use her voice, Lorelai did the only thing she could think of. The only thing that had worked before.

  She reached out her left hand, and pressed it over his heart.

  His gaze cleared in an instant, and he released his grasp with a low groan that might have been her name.

  Both his hands flew from her neck to cover the one she held against his chest, as though to trap it there.

  Each of them breathed too violently to form words, and so they sat like that for several moments, focused on the feel of his heartbeat. It threw itself at her palm, looking for a way to escape the prison of bone and blood if only to be held in her hand.

  He was a colorful kaleidoscope of muscle, bathed in golden light. His body a profusion of swells and divots, of brawn and bone. They were both of the same species, but how could they possibly be? His chest expanded in hard disks, while her breasts were softer and more teardropped with every passing year. His ribs scaled down a broad, flat torso, narrowing to obdurate mounds of stomach muscles disappearing beneath the bedclothes. Hers. Well … her ribs could sometimes be seen, but not in a way anyone would consider remarkable.

  He shook his head, his raven eyes both accusing and appealing to her. The silent messages hurled at her in the wan light of the lone candle were both as loud and undeniable as if he screamed them.

  You shouldn’t have come.

  Don’t leave me.

  Her replies were equally as tangible and unmistakable.

  I know.

  And I won’t.

  His skin blanched pale beneath his tan. Sweat gathered at his temples, cooling in the stormy breeze let in through the window.

  A hesitant knock sounded on the door, and Farah’s voice called softly, “Is everything all right?”

  He tensed, but looked to her.

  Lorelai had to clear her throat before replying, “All is well.”

  “Good night, then.” Lorelai was certain his ears also pricked to the sound of two sets of footsteps retreating from the door.

  She went to move her hand, and he hesitated in letting her go, as though reluctant for her to see what was beneath her palm.

  The action befuddled her. One cannot see another’s heart through the chest, only through the eyes. Everyone knew that. So, why did he seem disinclined to show her his chest?

  She blinked down at the hands covering hers, scarred and rough and square. They trembled slightly, or did they only mirror her own quivers?

  Instead of tugging away again, she slid her hand down over the iron mound of his pectoral, gasping at what she uncovered.

  His nostrils flared, as did a spark of something wild and dangerous in his eyes, but he sat unnaturally still as she stared for what seemed like hours at her discovery.

  She’d not noticed it until now, even when he’d stood naked before her. She’d been so focused on not looking at him, that she’d missed the very confirmation she’d been waiting for all along.

  There. On his chest. Protected by a fierce tiger above, and a serpentine dragon beneath, was inked t
he ruby silhouette of small, perfect lips.

  Her lips.

  The lips she’d used twenty years ago to kiss the nightmare of darkness away from his heart.

  She’d once again stopped breathing as she gaped.

  I knew it, she thought, both humbled and elated at once. He’d lied to her, but her discovery of the truth wasn’t at all unpleasant. Nor was she angry.

  I knew Ash was alive. That he loved me.

  Here was the proof.

  She quirked her eyebrow at him.

  His lips thinned and his eyes narrowed. The air darkened with a threat. Then a warning. Followed by a promise.

  Everything spoken and unspoken hung suspended between them, and for the first time since she could remember, Lorelai didn’t question her place. She was meant to be here. Now. In this bed, with this man.

  “Go,” he forced through a labored breath. “If you don’t leave, Lorelai, I’ll forget—”

  Lorelai lunged before she could change her mind, driving her body against his and stopping his words with a desperate, artless kiss. He said he’d not take her, but this time, she’d come to him.

  He’d crossed oceans, and she’d only crossed a hallway. But it seemed as though some greater divide had been forged in doing so.

  This time, she’d come for him.

  Though, if she’d thought to be the one to do the taking, she immediately learned her folly.

  With a powerful, effortless grace, he enfolded her in his arms and rolled them until he’d pinned her beneath the animal heat of his body.

  Only when he seemed to have secured her, did he soften the kiss from desperate to reverent. His mouth didn’t just take hers, he worshiped it. Every bit of him was so much harder than her. So much bigger, stronger, but for his lips, which were unexpectedly soft.

  He kissed like a man unused to kissing. He applied no artful, seductive skill nor patient, practiced moves. He simply drank pleasure from her mouth, and returned it in generous, overwhelming increments.

  Lorelai had forgotten this. That a kiss was so much more than warm, wet sensation.

  A kiss had a taste. A singular flavor. Something bold and yet subtle.

  A kiss had a scent. Mint, hers, and whisky, his, expelled on the breaths they shared.

  A kiss was a rare and strange perspective. The other so close, the sight of him blurred into flesh and flashes of eyes.

  A wild jolt speared through her, an animal reaction of her own, at the possession she spied in those eyes.

  Her womb clenched on an aching emptiness and, as though he sensed her need, his knee split her thighs and he settled, once again, between her legs. Only the barrier of her nightgown separated the smooth, long barrel of his arousal from touching her aching flesh.

  From slipping inside.

  Her chilly fingers grazed the warmth of his neck before threading through raven strands as sultry as silk.

  This was real, and this was right.

  This was Ash. Her Ash. Despite his protestations to the contrary. She’d found him, here. She’d found him in the nightmares she wished he didn’t suffer. She found him in the darkness he ruled. In the storms he summoned.

  She found him, and was determined not to lose him again.

  The pressure of his mouth became more urgent, his tongue sweeping into hers with voluptuous strokes, doing things to her she never knew could be done. His kiss became many. A stanza of kisses. His tongue working the syllables of poetry into her mouth, his lips creating the meter and rhyme, the ebb and flow.

  And his body. Oh, his body. Long and lithe and lethal, it rocked against her in a percussion so ancient, so achingly necessary, it called to the very soul of her. To that place woven together from the whispers of her ancestors into the finely spun tapestry of her own arrangement. The one that was born to dance beneath him.

  Her hands smoothed away from his hair, down the cords of his neck, and over his muscled back. She feathered soft caresses over his scars, soothing him to relax deeper into her. To press himself down against her.

  But he didn’t, not entirely. He held himself with the strength of one arm, his other hand trailing over her nightgown, heating the quivering skin beneath until he covered her breast.

  A muffled groan passed between them. His. Hers. She couldn’t be sure. It was low. And it was raw. And it was followed by a violent reaction on his part.

  He reared back, breaking the kiss, and grasped the lace collar of her nightgown in both hands, rending it in half from her body with one smooth, powerful jerk.

  It was in her shy nature to cover herself, and she moved to do so, but her arms were still trapped in the sleeves, which he tucked down next to her body, rendering her immobile.

  He stared down at her silently. Like a pilgrim would a relic, his eyes bright and savage. So opposite from what they’d been that first night when all she’d read within was a selfish, unsympathetic hunger.

  She worried now that he considered her something other than she was. Not a skinny cripple on the wrong side of thirty. But a woman. A provocateur. Someone who enticed and aroused him.

  Would he always see her thus?

  He gave her no words, no platitudes. He didn’t call her beautiful. He didn’t have to. She caught the image of herself reflected in the hunger tightening his brutal features. In the awe glowing from his gaze. In the hitch of his breath, and the heat of his sex.

  Tonight, words served them not at all. There was so much to say. And so little language to properly convey what was lost and found between them.

  First. There must be this. This merging of selves. This meeting of the inevitability of their past and the indefinite future.

  He’d not take her. Not this time. He’d promised not to.

  This time, she would give.

  Lifting herself, she blindly sought his mouth, unable to reach for him as her arms were still trapped.

  He responded immediately, descending on her, ravishing her mouth as his hands explored her body where his eyes no longer could. She had one blurry glimpse of dark lust on his features before he did, indeed, press her down. Down. Engulfing her with the yielding mattress below, and his hard body above in a cocoon of warmth and need.

  Where her calm had surprised her before, now she fought another sensation. The urge to move. To squirm against him as he took his time shaping his hands to her body. He’d claimed to want this for twenty years, dammit, so why did he insist on touching her in places that mattered not at all?

  His mouth moved to nibble delicately at her jaw, her ear, the hollow of her throat as his hands spanned her ribs, followed the curve of her waist to the flare of her hips, charted over the smooth expanse of her belly. None of those places were even remotely sensual, were they? Just various innocuous parts of her, and yet he seemed to delight in finding them. In stroking them. In exploring them as though he’d never before touched a woman.

  After so long, she made an impatient noise, flexing her quivering knees and wriggling impatient hips.

  Lord, what a heathen she was turning into all of a sudden … But she couldn’t help it.

  She’d not been the only one waiting for twenty years, and since Ash was here in the room with her, she was good and ready to make up for missed time.

  An appreciative sound purred from his throat, and he gave her what she wanted, and then some.

  His hot mouth closed over her chilly nipple at the same time his hand slid over the soft nest between her legs.

  She didn’t know upon which incredible sensation to focus. The dance of his tongue on her breast, or the stroke of his hand over her sex. He petted her downy curls before parting them. His fingers were cool against her hot, intimate flesh.

  They gasped together as she saturated his questing hand with moisture. For a moment, she surrendered to it all. Both the sweetness, and the shame.

  The heat of his breath against her breast distracted her for a moment, before his clever, careful fingers began to dip and toy with the slick desire her body had released, dr
awing it up to the tiny place that swelled and ached for him.

  She dared to look down at him, to gauge his expression. She found it intent with lust, his color high and fevered. His gaze desperate.

  But his hands, his infuriatingly stable hands belied what she read on his face. They made sly and circular motions around that place where her sensation culminated, unhurried even as she writhed beneath him, clutched at him. Gasping wordless pleas for something she didn’t understand. Couldn’t express.

  She. Just. Knew. Knew he was taking her body on a taut, excruciating journey with a devastating end.

  He seemed to draw pleasure from her agitation. To savor it. So, unable to stand it anymore, she pressed her head back into the mattress and squeezed her eyes shut. Surrendering to the moment.

  To him.

  A finger found its way inside of her, and she jerked, but he crawled up her body, soothing her with a gentle, probing kiss. His strokes became wicked, then torturous. Quickening in pace and rhythm until she surged in trembling, taut thrusts. Riding his fingers as she imagined one rode a horse, hips moving in time with the animal, urging it onward.

  He slid another finger inside her, and she sobbed at the pressure of it. The pleasure of it. It threatened to annihilate her. To rush toward her with the speed and inevitability of a rogue wave, and there was nothing to be done but brace for the onslaught.

  Which she did. She clutched him, her true source of strength, as it crashed down upon her and threatened to sweep her away. He held her. Soothed her. Encouraged her. All the while continuing his ministrations, his fingers slipping easily into her wetness. Pulled deeper by grasping, pulsing muscles.

  He never let her go, not even when he brought her down slowly. Dragging his lips over hers as she twitched and shuddered long after his hands withdrew from her swollen flesh, leaving it not only empty, but oddly unfulfilled.

  She blinked up at him with dazed fascination. His sweat-misted brow. His unconcealed tenderness. But, where his hands were steady before, now they shook when they touched her.

  A dark intent lurked beneath his tenderness. A hunger too long denied.