The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo

by Byrne, Kerrigan

  He’d reached the edge of his legendary self-control.

  And now, he meant to claim her.

  * * *

  He’d meant to wait. To draw this out. To wring every last moment of pleasure he could from her body.

  This was what he’d come back for. Wasn’t it? To take her. To fuck her. To claim what he’d been denied all these years.

  And he was about to. God help him. Because he was a man no longer used to denying himself.

  Except … He’d forgotten various and sundry things in his life, but never anything so important as what her gentleness did to him.

  That was what he’d come back for. He understood now. He admitted it to himself.

  It wasn’t this raging inferno of desire. This rutting instinct. Not entirely.

  It was the small hand delicately exploring the surface of his chest. The softness of her beneath him. The sweet, feminine fragrance of her. The heavy-lidded satisfaction bedazzling her sapphire gaze. The trusting, lazy half-smile she offered him.

  The absolution she offered so freely.

  He knew he’d lose himself in her body, but he’d never expected to become so thoroughly absorbed in her pleasure.

  Gods, was it exquisite.

  He held himself levered over her for a tense moment. Paralyzed by a radiant, infuriating arousal. It battered at him with all the frenzy of madness, pulling his muscles taut.

  He could do it now. Surge inside of her, take her virginity in one quick thrust. She’d be his then. He could pound into her all of his pain, his past, and his passion.

  But … Some astounding part of him refused to move. Choosing, instead, to luxuriate in her insanely tentative exploration of him. Her hands smoothed down his arms, tracing engorged veins pressed against his skin by flexed muscle. Dainty fingers tickled along his ribs, and it took all of his hard-won stoicism not to flinch or twitch.

  Or smile.

  Her hands paused at his hips and they both ceased to breathe. Indecision blinked into her eyes, warring with curiosity.

  He had to stop this. If she touched him now, he’d lose himself. One way or the other, and neither option was desirable.

  A primitive fear became a surge of satisfaction as her thighs parted wider for him, making that infinitely sweet cradle for his hips.

  Neither of them needed to use hands to guide him. Their bodies found exactly the right position. His cock slid into place, parting her soft folds. He bent to her, surrounding her with his strength, hoping to lend it to her. Sorry for her pain. Wishing he could kiss it away somehow. Or take it upon himself.

  He placed his hands on either side of her head, kissing her as he pushed into her gently resisting flesh with infinite slowness.

  She gasped and he froze. Their kiss became two people sharing panting, openmouthed wonder.

  “More.” It was the only word she’d spoken since they’d begun. It would be the only word spoken until they finished.

  He fed her inch by agonizing inch. Her hot, wet flesh closing around him, drawing him inside, inviting him to take his pleasure there. It was beyond even the bliss he’d spent a lifetime imagining.

  He dimly wondered, as he watched her eyes widen in direct proportion to his penetration, if only someone who’d experienced the depths of suffering he had, could truly appreciate an ecstasy like this.

  He was glad, in a way, that he’d not known it would be this good. This sweet. That he’d feel this much.

  Because maybe he’d not have waited until this moment. This perfect moment.

  The moment Lorelai Weatherstoke became his.

  For the first time in his life he felt both freedom and power. Both surrender and strength.

  She moved with him, then, practicing shy little thrusts upward. Twitches and rolls of her lithe body sent him spiraling out of control as she reacted to every sensation and his every movement with raw, almost giddy amazement.

  Her little gasps of discovery stroked not just his body, but his ego, as well.

  She was enjoying this. Enjoying him. On top of her. Inside of her.

  That thought unleashed something within him he’d not expected. A patience he’d never known. An overwhelming tenderness he wanted to both embrace and escape. It held his monster in check as he initiated her untried flesh in long, slow, deep strokes. It allowed him to shore up his threatening release until her head pressed back into the mattress, then began to strain from side to side, her eyes squeezed closed.

  Maybe he’d be able to coax two orgasms from her body before he gave in to his own.

  Once the hoarse cry escaped her, and her feminine muscles began to tighten in rhythmic pulses, he was forced to admit his folly.

  She pulled him with her into a transcendent place. One made of harsh breaths and incoherent moans. Time coalesced with the storm, as a flash of lightning lanced the night, blinding them as its equal speared through their joined bodies. The pleasure just as hot and searing. The bliss just as blinding. And the emotions as binding as a contract one signs with fate.

  He’d been lost so many times. For so many years. But, he realized, when he lost himself inside of her, he found something few men ever would.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Lorelai assumed she’d feel more like a woman after her first time. More grown-up, or something, which was a ridiculous expectation to have for a woman her age.

  Instead, she’d regressed into a much younger, more naïve version of herself. One who could pretend again. One with an imagination still hued with optimism and hope.

  It felt as if the candle not only swathed them in its sonorous light, but glowed through her veins, as well. Soft and golden and intimately warm.

  She’d been happy to let him treat her like a rag doll, allowing him to fetch a cloth by the basin and wash them both before he lifted and draped her over his magnificent reclining body.

  She listened to the storm for a long silent while, waiting for their breathing to return to normal. His arms encircling her felt like the most natural thing in the world.

  For the first time in twenty years, she was safe.

  Drowsily, she traced the edges of a few of his tattoos, admiring their work. The tiger on his chest stood beneath an Asian waterfall, the dragon stood in flames. Unburned.

  On his other pectoral, jungle cats leaped from rushes, a tribal bear roared at a majestic stag. Other creatures littered his torso. A strange mammal with a ringed tail. A shark so realistic, it could have leaped off his skin. Serpents, fish, wolves, foxes, glass-eyed raptor birds, Indian elephants with exotic markings.

  How much pain it must have caused him, to capture these renderings beneath his skin.

  She touched her finger to the tiny lips, the ghost of her lips, covering the oblong they made. One of the only designs on his body not an animal.

  When the silence finally felt as though it’d stretched too tightly, she asked, “Penny for your thoughts?”

  His torso rippled with an amused breath. “You’d not be getting a bargain, they’re barely worth that much.”

  “They are to me.”

  His big hand settled against her hair, idly undoing her loose braid with careful motions and dragging her long curls over his skin as though the sensation pleased him. “You drained me of thoughts,” he rumbled in a silken tone. “Gifted me a quiet mind.”

  She smiled against his chest, thinking she didn’t do much more than lie there and enjoy his body. His incredible, colorful body. “Would it interrupt your quietude too much if I asked you a question?”

  That flex again, low across his abdomen. A tightening of impossibly defined muscle and sinew denoting his pleased hitch of breath. “You could ask me to invade China right now, and I’d find a way to do it.”

  Most men would be jesting, but with him … one could never tell.

  “Why so many tattoos?” She traced the detailed horns of the elk. “Why all the animals?”

  The hand stroking her hair stilled. “I’ve been just about everywhere. When I saw these cre
atures, in captivity or in the wild, I thought of you. I thought of showing them to you, and so I put them on my body.”

  She lifted her head to look over his shoulder at him. “Are you in earnest?”

  He nodded down at her.

  Incredulous, she regarded his artwork with new eyes. “You’ve seen all of these creatures? And then you brought them back to me?”

  “All but the dragon, obviously.”

  “Obviously,” she echoed, pushing herself up to sit and wrapping the sheet around her. She’d have told him it was because the storm chilled her, but the truth was she didn’t yet feel comfortable with her state of nudity.

  She splayed her hand over his skin, leaving his more … masculine parts modestly covered. “Where did you see a bear?”

  “Mongolia.” He rested his hands behind his head, examining his own topography as though mildly interested. The movement did interesting things to his muscles.

  Lord, if she had her druthers, he’d never put his clothing back on.

  “And wolves?”

  “America.”

  “This snake?”

  He checked. “That’s a black mamba, the deadliest snake known to man.”

  She covered her open mouth with her fingers. “Did you catch one?”

  “One almost caught me.” The ghost of a smile whispered at the corners of his mouth. “In sub-Saharan Africa.”

  She liked him like this. A lion at rest, the ever-present tension leached from his muscles. The vigilant void of his gaze warmed to something almost … human. Alive.

  Part of her wanted to ask him about his nightmares tonight, another about his dreams for the future. She wanted to know what had happened during the last twenty years. She wanted to know what happened next.

  But no force on this earth could convince her to say a thing that would ruin the first interaction they’d had that wasn’t fraught with danger, passion, or pain.

  This was what she’d wanted. To be in bed with Ash, sharing small, inconsequential intimacies. This was how she’d fallen in love with him the first time.

  Now, instead of a bleak-eyed boy with an empty past, he was an experienced man who’d seen the whole world. And still he brought little parts of that world back to her.

  The very thought of it melted her heart.

  “What manner of creature is this?” She pointed to the strange, big-eyed mammal that didn’t seem to fit with the theme of hunters painted on the body of the most alpha predator.

  “It’s a ring-tailed lemur.” He smoothed his hand over hers. “I met her in Madagascar. She followed me through a market and leaped on my shoulder, tried to share a plantain with me.”

  “She didn’t!”

  “By share, I mean she peeled it daintily and shoved it in my eye.”

  She let out a surprised giggle. “Tell me you didn’t hurt her!” she said.

  “I ate her plantain, that’s for certain.” A smile didn’t sit easily on his hard mouth, but it seemed like it wanted to. “But we parted as friends.”

  “I thought you said you didn’t have friends,” she taunted.

  “Not of the human variety.”

  She petted the lemur, somewhere left of his navel, a frown tugging at her brows. “I wish I could see these exotic creatures, but I know I never shall.”

  His fingers lifted her chin with a gentleness she’d not thought him capable of. “A lot can happen between now and never.”

  The words she’d spoken to him as a child glowed in her chest and spiked her lashes with threatening tears. “True,” she said haltingly, “but with my leg, there’s no traipsing around jungles or climbing mountains for me. I’m essentially useless.”

  “Nonsense,” he soothed. “I’ll hire elephants to take you through the jungle, and sedans carried by ten bronzed men to conduct you through foreign cities. Arabian horses will convey you through the deserts, and we can take trains or my ship everywhere else.”

  She sniffed, wishing she weren’t such a ninny. “And what about all the places elephants, and bronzed men, and Arabians and trains and ships can’t go?”

  His playful gaze sobered, and warmed. “I’ll carry you.”

  Driven by a desperate hope, she collapsed back to his chest. “Can we leave tomorrow? Just leave pirates and treasure and our names behind? We could start our lives anew.”

  His hands toyed at the tendrils beside her face, as a gentle regret settled on his expression. “I have to find the Claudius Cache,” he murmured. “I’ve promised my men.”

  “Couldn’t you just give the map to your men? Let them find it?”

  “I have to see this through,” he insisted.

  “But why? You have more money than you could spend in five lifetimes. Do you really need more treasure? Hasn’t this search taken enough from you?” She traced her fingers over his ruined tattoo. “It almost killed you once, already.”

  He watched her with glittering black eyes. “I’ve been searching for this treasure since before I was Dorian Blackwell. When I think about it, I feel like my past is hurling itself at the iron door separating me from my memories. I feel like if I find the Claudius Cache … I’ll find myself.”

  At this, she nodded reluctantly. “I understand.” And she did. “What then?” She was almost afraid to ask. “What will drive you once you’ve found what you seek?”

  “Drive me?”

  “You’ve been everywhere, seen everything. You have nothing left to conquer. What will you live for then?”

  His eyes swung to the window as he contemplated the storm that had calmed to a light, pattering rain. “I have seen everything,” he said tightly. “I’ve met every kind of man. There are those who would risk their lives to climb the highest mountain or find the source of the most treacherous fjord. They crawl over themselves to build the highest building. Or to mine the deepest cave. They crave power. Glory. Danger. Excitement. They seek to taunt death. To defy God. To dominate nature … And only that thing, that obsession, makes them feel alive.”

  She contemplated him with as much intensity as he did the storm. “Do … any of those things make you feel alive?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Then … what does? What will?”

  He looked at her then, almost as though she’d disappointed him. “How can you not know?”

  The air between them crackled with the promise of something cataclysmic. The promise of a shift in their cosmos, a rotation of their fates.

  “Did you love me?” The moment the words escaped her, she regretted them.

  His eyes shifted away from her. “I was young. I hadn’t yet learned to fear the folly of a fool in love.”

  The emotion that had threatened the entire night spilled over her lashes, and his thumb smoothed it away. “It’s too late for love, Lorelai. To me, love is no more than the construct of poets. As easily bought and discarded as trust or loyalty. But I understand possession.” He rose up to bring his face close to hers, so they were once again breathing the same air. “You are mine. That is what I know.”

  “So … you don’t love me.”

  He pressed his forehead to hers. “I should have said it,” he lamented. “Back when I still had the ability to feel it. Back when I knew what fear was. What love was. I should have said I loved you before I rode away with Mortimer that day. It was there on the tip of my tongue. Right then, it was there in my heart when I was young enough to have one.”

  Hope permeated the pain of his words as he brushed his mouth against hers. If love had been there once before … maybe she could put it back.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she soothed. “I love you.” She wrapped her arms around him, letting the covers fall away. She didn’t want to look at him. Didn’t want to see fear or guilt or rejection in his eyes. She pressed her heart to his heart, her lips to his lips, and this time, when he moved above her, she had the sense he’d be much more wicked.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Lorelai made space for Veronica as her sister-in-law joined
her on the upper deck of the forecastle to watch the bustling below as they steamed toward the pier.

  “I never thought I’d be so happy to see Southbourne Grove.” Veronica shielded her eyes with her hand and gazed over the branching tendrils of the estuary toward their home.

  “I never thought I wouldn’t.” Lorelai shared none of Veronica’s enthusiasm, which surprised her. Since they’d left Ben More Castle earlier that morning, she’d fought a strange sense of impending doom.

  It unsettled her even more that she seemed to be the only one.

  The general morale on the ship could only be called jolly, if one ignored the furtive and untrusting feeling toward the new small contingent of Dorian Blackwell’s men. Still, the prospect of imminent treasure was to a pirate ship what the prospect of a ducal marriage was to an equally mercenary crew of matriarchs at Almack’s in its day.

  Indeed, Lorelai had diverted herself greatly by watching the antics of eight little kittens roaming freely about the main deck, befriending a band of rough-and-tumble pirates. It caused her no end of amusement to observe a rather gigantic chap by the name of Cutthroat Bill set the little fluff ball on his shoulder for the entire afternoon and refer to his new companion as “Little Bill.”

  Shifty Rodriguez, on the other hand, almost lost an eye when he’d been unaware that a tiny orange tabby had fallen asleep in his hat. He’d lifted it to put it on, and was rewarded with a jack-in-the-box pounce to his face that caused more apoplexy then actual damage.

  He and the orange fellow seemed to have made peace, though, and he even put his hat back on the table where it had been should the gatito be in need of another siesta.

  Barnaby had taken to dragging a red tassel the size of a mouse at the end of a fishing twine from his belt as he paced the deck about his work. Any number of hunting kittens could be found stalking him, swiping at the lure with murderous enthusiasm.

  By the time they reached the estuary, all the kittens had names and, it seemed, had been unofficially claimed by one pirate or another. If Lorelai had it correctly, there was Little Bill, Gatito, Katjie, Neko, Ikati, Bast, White Bastard, and Jim.