The Heart of an Earl (A Box of Draupnir Novel Book 1)

by K. J. Jackson

  He lifted her out of the bath, spinning and setting her feet down in front of the fire between two chairs.

  “I don’t understand that.”

  “Because I shouldn’t trust you?”

  She nodded.

  “You don’t know yourself, Jules.”

  She bristled. “I know myself.”

  “Do you?” The towel draped over his arm, he grabbed her shoulders, turning her body to the side. “Sit.”

  The command said so simply, but with such force, her knees buckled and she sat on the wingback chair behind her. Her naked backside sank into the cushions.

  Des dropped to his knees in front of her. “And you need to find yourself again. Admit what you are.”

  She stiffened. “I have nothing to admit.”

  His right eyebrow lifted at her for a long, silent moment and then he grabbed her right calf, lifting it, dragging the towel achingly slow across her wet skin. The towel moved up her leg. Higher, dipping into her inner thigh.

  His mouth followed suit, kissing her damp skin, trailing upward. Her calf. Her knee. Her inner thigh. The heat of his mouth setting her cold skin to fire, inch after inch.

  He draped her right leg over his shoulder and his mouth sank inward, parting her folds. She sank backward at the touch, grabbing the arms of the chair, searching for support. Searching for anything to help her not collapse.

  His tongue flickered over her nubbin, forcing her to draw an intake of breath her lungs couldn’t hold. A gasp, and his tongue dipped, sliding into her core.

  Blast—he was the devil in an inferno. His tongue moved back up, plying her nubbin, sending agony through her core. Her hips started to writhe and he rode the movement, meeting every thrust of her hips with the wicked punishment of his mouth.

  Lash after lash of his tongue and she came unhinged, black spots in her vision, the scream in her throat tearing free as her body exploded under his ministrations.

  Her body twisted unnaturally under him, and he lapped at her core, waiting for her to come back to earth, to no longer exist in the black of the stars above.

  And then suddenly he was gone.

  Her eyes cracked open. Des stood in front of her, stripping off his trousers and boots. Naked, just the same as her.

  His stare sliced deep into her, like he wanted to both devour her and deliver her. From what, she wasn’t sure.

  He stepped forward, his stare not wavering, and he leaned over her. “Now admit to me you’re terrified everyone will see you like that.”

  “Like what?” The halting words slipped out between staggered breaths as her core still clenched, fighting through wave after wave of her orgasm.

  “A degenerate pirate.” He grabbed her arms and pulled her to stand straight, tugging her to move to the side of the chair. “Part of a pirate crew. You’re afraid that everyone will know that you became like them. Rotten to the bone. Ruined beyond repair. Never to be trusted.”

  Her lips flew inward, her teeth clamping down on the skin. Damn him. Far too close to the truth. And in a moment she couldn’t deny it. Couldn’t lie to herself.

  She nodded.

  He spun her around, his hand on the dip of skin just inside her right hip bone. His cock jutted onto her lower back, hard and insistent as his cheek brushed down along her wet hair, his mouth stopping by her ear.

  “You aren’t the innocent girl you once were, Jules. I’ll not try and convince you of that lie. But you are a woman that has gone through hell and survived. Strong and beautiful and kind and wicked canny. You’re too smart to not know how I see you.”

  His hand at her waist moved inward, his fingers slipping into her raw folds. Heaven help her, her body hadn’t had enough, her core already straining for more from him.

  His words went harsh next to her ear. “You’re not a pirate. Not a wretch. You’re a woman that needs honesty and trust and fire in the man touching her—needs me touching her. No one else—for you could have moved onto anyone else on that ship.”

  Her head rolled back onto his chest, her arm lifting high, her fingers wrapping around the back of his neck. “I didn’t want anyone else, Des.”

  “I know.”

  He lifted her up and set her knees on the cushioned side arm of the chair. His body not leaving her, the heat of him blanketed her back as he set the tip of his cock at her entrance.

  “The fearless spirit that made you drop on top of me on the Red Dragon is the same spirit that made you mine. That made you a survivor. No matter how bruised and battered your soul is from the past—those bruises are mine now. Those scars are mine. The good—the deep, unfaltering good in your soul—shines beyond any of the horror you had to endure during the past six years. I see that. I know that.”

  “Des—”

  His cheek pressed against the side of her face, his words raw. “And I will maim, injure—crush anyone that dares to see anything less than the true spirit of who you are. The true spirit I know you to be.”

  He slid up into her, filling her, his fingers against her nubbin drawing her higher and higher with each stroke of his shaft. Each thrust reaching deeper into her body—into her soul—until she was glass, ready to shatter.

  And still he drove into her, his arm around her middle, supporting her weight, as her body could no longer control the last vestiges of her muscles.

  A ragged growl in her ear and he slammed up into her, reaching impossible depths, his body erupting.

  She broke. Fracturing into a thousand pieces, her body no longer her own as the agonized release twisted, searing every nerve in her body.

  He picked her fully up, clutching her to his chest as he moved to collapse in the chair. Her body cradled in his, her legs draped over the side of the chair.

  Air in her lungs came back slowly, the heat of the fire, the heat of Des making the cold bath a distant memory.

  Her head snugged onto his chest, she played with the back of his hand clasped onto her belly. Her fingertips traced a feather light circle around the crooked knuckle of his ring finger. The bones moved under his skin with the slightest touch—marrow that had broken and never fused back together.

  She stared at the bumps in the skin. “What happened to it?”

  His fingers twitched under her touch and his head dipped down, his lips burying into her damp hair. “The finger was yanked back, splitting the knuckle. Then I broke it against a jaw before it had healed. Then it was near to being set solidly back in place, but it was crushed under a boot. It was never the same after that.”

  “Three blows and it was done?”

  “Aye.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  He gave a slight shrug. “It is more a reminder now.”

  The floating bones shifted under her finger. How she wished she could make it solid again. Mend the bones back in place for him.

  She shifted her head back, looking up at him. “How is it that you have trusted me when I have not returned the same to you?”

  He kissed her forehead. “I know what you’ve been through, Jules. That you are managing to live now with some semblance of normalcy is admirable.”

  “You overestimate me, Des. Nothing is normal. On the street—in the shop today with you, I realized I still don’t feel normal—I don’t know if I ever will. Maybe I cannot even recognize normal anymore. On the ship with you, it was easy. But now, the stares of the people on the street—the shop girl—it’s as though they can see everything about me, everything I was, had to do to survive, and they’re sending me to hell with their eyes.”

  Des exhaled a sigh. “I felt that same way—for a very long time—after I got off the warship. The things I’ve done—the men I’ve killed—all of it will send me to hell and I believed for the longest time everyone could see it in me.”

  Her head tilted upward to look at his profile. “Does it go away, that constant gnawing of fear that people will see the darkness inside of me?”

  “Not completely, but it did ease. It helped once I realized that everyon
e—every single person—is more worried about themselves than of me, a complete stranger. They have their own sins to hide. There are people that know my past and have not judged me for it—Captain Folback, Wes, Johnson. Beyond that, no one cares. People don’t look that deeply unless they need to.”

  She nodded against his bare chest. “I pray you’re right.” She pulled her head away from him and sat up, looking at him squarely. “I need to show it to you.”

  “Show me what?”

  “The box. I need to trust you as much as you trust me. You have never once asked to see it after I told you about it. Never once went looking for it.”

  “How do you know I didn’t search the ship top to bottom for it?”

  Both of her eyebrows cocked. “Did you?”

  He chuckled. “No. I jest.”

  Her fingertips swatted against his chest. “Don’t scare me like that—I like the Des I know, not one I have to be suspicious of—not like every other person around me.”

  His thumb slipped under her palm and his fingers curled around her hand. “That is the one you have—always.”

  “Good. So then, you need to see the box. I need to trust you with seeing it.”

  “I don’t need to see it to know you trust me, Jules. I already know you do.”

  She grinned. “Your arrogance astounds me sometimes.”

  He didn’t bother to hide the obnoxious smile that cut across his face.

  She extracted her naked limbs from his and went to her new dress draped across the other chair by the fire. “I had the shop girl sew longer pockets into the dress. That is what took so long in the dressmaker’s shop.”

  He shrugged. “It gave me time to appraise the latest fashions.”

  “You’re a connoisseur?”

  “Not in the slightest. I wouldn’t know how long the tails of my own coat should be these days, much less what a fashionable lady should be wearing. Nevertheless, the dress is stunning on you, though I imagine any dress would be stunning on you.” His eyes drifted, hungry, across her naked skin. “Not that I want you in anything but what you’re wearing at the moment.”

  She quirked a smile at him over her shoulder as her hands sifted through the fine wool of the dress, searching for the deep pocket. Her fingers found the box and she pulled it into the air.

  She couldn’t help but pause for a moment, dreading what she was about to do.

  She knew the power of the box.

  What it did to men.

  She didn’t want that to happen to Des.

  But if she was to trust him—truly trust him—she needed to show him.

  Worry filling her chest, she shuffled to him, her right hand clutching the box along her thigh, hiding it, though it was wider than her palm. Stopping in front of him, she took a deep breath and then flipped her hand over, presenting the box to him.

  “I thought it would be bigger.”

  She stared at him, her right eyebrow raised. “You thought it would be bigger?”

  “To kill men over it? Yes. I expected bigger.”

  She held it out to him. “Open it.”

  He took it from her, turning it over in his hands, admiring the shifting swirls of the grain of the wood that looked as though a whirlwind had been captured in full fury and turned into wood. No hinges, but a well-hidden top plank that was an eighth of the box tall. No hinges, no latch.

  “You have to swivel the top to the side to open it.”

  Des did so and her heart dropped in her chest, just as it did every time the box was opened.

  She’d battled this peculiar energy that ran through her ever since she’d seen the blasted thing years ago in Mr. Draper’s dying hand. He had trusted her father and been rewarded for his loyalty with a bullet in his chest. He’d struggled for air, for words that were drowned out by the blood in his throat, yet his fingers still gripped the box.

  After his last breath, her father had ordered her to grab the box from his dead hand and open it, and she did.

  She had never been the same since. Nothing had been the same since.

  Des’s head stayed angled down, his stare on the ring inside.

  The gold of the ring entwined in the middle—slipping along a smooth finger of wood that curled and weaved inside the box. Alive.

  The whole of it was alive anytime light entered it.

  The ruby caught the flicker of a flame from the fireplace and she cringed.

  She didn’t want Des to be affected. Didn’t want him to see what everyone else saw in the box, in the ring, in the stone.

  Long moments passed as he stared at it, tilting it to the light of the fireplace. Each breath she took quivered into her lungs.

  Des’s hazel eyes finally lifted to her—clouded—she couldn’t read what was in them.

  “Jules, I was not a believer. Not a believer in this Box of Draupnir. Not a believer of the lore.” His head dipped, his stare going back to the stone. “But this…” His head shook, his words dipping to a whisper. “This scares me.”

  Her legs went wobbly and she shuffled two steps backward, collapsing onto the other chair, her fingers weaving together and gripping tight.

  She nodded, her mouth dry. “It has always scared me. You feel it, don’t you?”

  “This thing in my chest?”

  A gasp caught in her throat and she nodded again. “Every man that I have watched look at—it’s…it’s a glaze over their eyes they get. A madness descending over their minds.” She stared at him, her head leaning to the side. “But you—you feel it like I do, don’t you?”

  He looked at her. “It’s inside of me—swirling—like the wood around the ring—threatening to explode in a thousand directions. It’s fear of it—yet a draw…” He shook his head, his shoulders lifting. “A draw to protect it, I think—a draw to keep it safe, as bizarre as that sounds.”

  “It’s not bizarre.” Her chest lifted in a deep breath. “You understand now why I couldn’t just toss it into the sea?”

  “I do.” A visible tremor ran across his bare shoulders and he swiveled the lid closed. “The bottom of the sea is not where this thing belongs—but it doesn’t belong with a man like Redthorn. I don’t think it belongs with any man.”

  “Aye.”

  “Yet the demons of Hades are after this thing. That is what I feel in my bones. But I understand now. Understand its lure.” His mouth pulled to the side. “Those men today— I only saw one that I recognized—were they all from the Red Dragon?”

  “They were.”

  “And they’d all seen this?” He lifted the box.

  “Aye. Redthorn would have it out all the time. Claimed it was the reason for all the riches the crew had amassed. He’d flaunt it in front of them.” She shuddered. “The greedy, greedy eyes always on it.”

  “They’re not going to stop, are they?”

  Her shoulders lifted. “I don’t know.”

  He held out the box to her. “So what to do with it? Give it to your father?”

  “The box needs me—I am its keeper, at least for now. I cannot let my father have it again—I saw what it did to him once. He was like every other man.” She stood and took the box from his hand. “So I don’t think that’s where it belongs either. He was obsessed. Killed a man for it. Who knows how many were killed before that? I don’t think he can know I have it.”

  Des leaned back in the chair. “What do you want to do with it?”

  Jules shrugged, going to her dress and burying the box deep in her pockets again. “I don’t know. I am happy to hear any suggestions.”

  “I’ll think on it.” His gaze shifted to the fire, his mind already working on the problem.

  Jules gave a silent exhale of all the dread that had been festering in her chest.

  She had been terrified to show Des the box. Terrified of how it would turn him. Terrified of the gleam of greed that would flash in his eyes.

  More terrified than she’d even admitted to herself.

  But nothing. Des recognized it for
what it was. A wonder. But not worth his life. Not worth any man’s life.

  She should have guessed it—of course he would have the same reaction as she. He wasn’t mad. Not like every other man.

  She stared at Des’s profile, the warm glow of the fire lighting his tanned features. Far too handsome—far too genuine a soul.

  Des was beyond different.

  He was her match.

  And she had made an oath not to love him.

  An oath she knew she had somehow broken days ago.

  { Chapter 15 }

  She was uneasy on the horse.

  And rightfully so, for how long it’d been since she’d ridden. But Jules had insisted on not riding double with him, merely so the horse wouldn’t have to bear extra weight.

  The horse’s comfort and not her own. He never should have listened to her.

  Des had found her the most docile horse at the stables in the town a day’s ride from her father’s estate, but he should have just superseded her insistence that she could still ride.

  He glanced to his left, studying Jules’s stiff body, the pink tip of her nose in the cold. He’d bought her a heavy hooded cloak in Bristol to layer over her pelisse and dress, but he should have bought another wrap for her face as well. “Your arms look like they’re about to fall off they’re so rigid.”

  She gave him a strained half-smile. “Why was it we didn’t take the coach the rest of the way?”

  “With the snow last night I didn’t trust us not to get caught in the slush under the ice on the roads.”

  She nodded. “Getting stranded would have been worse. I recall that about this area—the coaches that would get stuck. But maybe they have improved the roads since I have been here.” Her horse slipped into a deep rut at that moment and a squeal left her mouth, her body crouching down low to the saddle. The horse righted itself, moving forward.

  Jules looked to him. “Or they haven’t improved them at all.”

  “It doesn’t appear so.” His head swiveled as he looked around. A long grove of trees—leafless oaks they looked to be, lined the left side of the road, a stone-lined pasture with sheep digging their snouts under the snow spread off on the right. Not a cottage or farm or home in sight.