The Duke with the Dragon Tattoo

by Byrne, Kerrigan

  “You cannot just force me to do something every time I refuse you.”

  “Actually, I can. And I will. Now. Eat.” He gestured to the table. “Buttered croissants and apricot marmalade are your favorite.”

  She glowered at him. “How do you know that after all this time my tastes haven’t changed?”

  “Have they?”

  “… No,” she admitted glumly.

  He lifted a challenging eyebrow.

  “Not in pastries anyhow,” she amended.

  His lip twitched in an almost charming semblance of a smile. “You eat. I’ll bathe. How perfectly civilized we’ll be.”

  “Oh yes,” she mockingly agreed. “It’ll be breakfast, a bath, and then a bit of rape before tea.”

  He cast her another one of his scalding looks. One that made her wonder if as much steam rose from her skin as did from his bath. Turning from her, he peeled his shirt off unnecessarily wide, smooth shoulders before announcing, “One cannot rape one’s wife.”

  Lorelai really did desire to summon a rejoinder, but the salaciousness of his statement coupled with the sight of his skin struck her completely dumb.

  She couldn’t say why it pleased her to discover that she’d been right about the tattoo on his back. Fanned over mounds and mounds of sculpted muscle, a black-winged tattoo flexed and flowed with astounding artistry, leaving no expanse of flesh uncovered. If she were anything other than a practical—some would say cynical—woman of a certain age, she’d truly believe he could spread those dusky wings and take to the skies.

  Her disobedient fingers itched to stroke the designs. To splay against the smooth flesh beneath and discover— Oh heavens! He’d dropped his trousers.

  Gasping, Lorelai spun around, but not before she caught sight of his lean hips and a backside that had once not been so thick.

  What else had changed in twenty years? She’d peeked where she ought not to have done when they were young. Did men change … intimately as well as they matured?

  Stop it! she admonished herself. These treacherous thoughts didn’t bear consideration. She must keep her wits about her, if she were ever to survive this ordeal.

  “You couldn’t be more wrong.” She replaced her wicked thoughts with traumatic memories of Veronica’s pleas echoing through their wing of Southbourne Manor as Mortimer violently forced himself upon her. Lorelai would tremble in her bed, helplessly weeping for her. And she’d often go to her after, helping the injured woman off the floor, or from wherever she’d been discarded, and into her nightgown.

  Every time we’re broken, we get back up and limp along.

  “Wrong? About what?” he queried.

  “A man can absolutely rape his wife. Legally or no, there is no mistaking the sound of the deed. The terror, the pain, and the…” She swallowed vehement emotion. “The irrevocability of it.”

  He met this with another of his infuriating silences. The sloshing sounds of displaced water drew insolent pictures in her mind of what she might find when she turned around.

  Unwilling to do so, Lorelai drifted closer to the table and inspected the food laid out artfully upon it. She could have been at the sideboard of any royal, all told. Not only did she find croissants and apricot marmalade, but Devonshire cream, various tarts, thick slabs of crisped bacon, flat, round foreign cakes soaked through with melted butter. Next to these she found a syrupy amber liquid darker and less thick than honey. Little coils of steam rose from silver coffee and teapots.

  Suddenly she felt faint with hunger.

  She supposed that obstinately starving would serve no purpose at all. If she were to escape her fate, she’d need the strength a hearty breakfast and some strong coffee would allow her.

  With her unsteady gait, she made her way around the table and daintily claimed the green chair, which placed the copper tub in her periphery. She stubbornly avoided looking at the dark head and wide shoulders above the rim as she slathered a croissant with a generous portion of marmalade and tucked into it with more relish than she allowed herself to display.

  If she had to look away from her plate, she made a point of staring out of the windows, as more and more of the mist dissipated, unveiling an emerald sea.

  “You know.” His cavernous voice broke the silence, causing her to start and nearly choke on a splendid bite. “If you weren’t so fixated on the physical aspect, you might bring yourself to consider that marriage to me could be the best thing that ever happened to you.”

  Though she’d promised herself not to look, he’d stunned her enough to evoke an openmouthed gape in his direction. He scrubbed his long, decorated arms with some sort of pumice stone lathered with soap. In complete contrast to his back, colorful tattoos wended their way across his chest, his shoulders, and stretched down the swells of his arms all the way to the wrists. Lather covered some of their particulars, and she snapped her eyes back down to her plate before she became completely transfixed by the shapes and forms.

  “How could it possibly?” she marveled. “Other than your infamy, what do you have to offer me? I’d be the wife of one of the most wanted men in the world.”

  “Granted, but you’d be the wife of one of the wealthiest men in the world.”

  “Your wealth means nothing to me,” she said tartly. “I’d rather starve than remain married to you.”

  “You say that because you have never starved.”

  Something about the way he stated this left no question that he had.

  Her next bite tasted sour rather than sweet as an unwanted twinge of regret twisted in her stomach.

  “I can offer more than money, you know.” Casually, he lifted his arms to scrub at his hair.

  Lorelai made a rude noise. “You have no past, no country, no family, no compassion. No kindness. You won’t even claim a name. Just what do you have that could possibly entice me?”

  “A kingdom.” He gestured to the window where the panorama stretched endlessly now, until it disappeared around the curvature of the earth. “I rule the seas. I wield more power over innumerable leagues than your so-called empress could even begin to fathom.”

  “But you are ever at the mercy of those seas. Of the tides. No mere mortal can claim to control them,” she argued, astonished by his arrogance.

  He dunked his head beneath the water and rose again. Rivulets sluiced from his hair and chose distracting trails down the cords of his neck, the groves of his clavicles, and between the swells of his chest. To look at him, it was easy to forget that he was a mere mortal. That he’d not been crafted of clay and iron, fortified by volcanic stone, and tempered by unimaginable storms.

  “The sea has no mercy. Upon that I can rely.” He wiped a hand down his face, swiping away excess water, and Lorelai did her best not to notice that it still spiked in his dark lashes and gathered like gems on his skin in the invading sunlight.

  “We are alike in that respect, the sea and I,” he rumbled. “Mercy serves me no purpose. I have learned to become as devastating as any storm. I can count upon the tides. They ebb and flow by the will of the moon and stars. I can time my life to their pull.” He studied her with such alert vigilance, she might as well have been crushed beneath a chemist’s microscope. “It is people who are more difficult to predict. They are the indefinable variable.”

  Lorelai turned to the porthole window, their eye to the sea, and found that they’d somehow turned so an emerald coastline loomed in the distance. The Isle of Mull. The stronghold of the Blackheart of Ben More.

  “Should my hoary kingdom not impress, I’ve plenty of land holdings and the applicable titles to offer you,” he continued. “For example, I’m the Duke of Castel Domenico in Italy. The Comte de Lyon et de Verdun in France, and—”

  “You’re a duke?” She nearly spurted coffee across the table.

  “Well, a Continental one, but I believe it’s still apropos to address me as Your Grace.”

  No, he had to be lying. “How … how did you…?”

  “Easily. I kille
d the previous one, but not before he named me his heir. Many Continental titles are not so entailed to primogeniture as English ones.”

  Lorelai had rarely been stunned so witless in her life. “You killed the…”

  He held up a water-wrinkled finger. “To be fair, most of them tried to kill me first.”

  Most of them? “Does life mean so little you would discard it with such indifference?”

  “Categorically.”

  “What happened to you?” she cried. “When did you decide to become such a villain?”

  When were you on the Continent? she wanted to rail at him. And why didn’t you come for me then?

  His words from the prior night drifted back to her. I waited to inflict myself on you for as long as I could … It’s the only kindness I can afford you. In this moment, she didn’t know whether to be grateful, or angry.

  Gods, but he sent her emotions scrambling in so many directions, she felt caught in the web of the most confounding, dangerous spider on earth.

  His gaze became a dreadful void, swirling with a darkness so abysmally black, she feared that if she looked for too long, she’d find the depths of hell. “That is a story I do not wish to tell,” he said in a voice as cold as the Arctic Sea. “And one you do not wish to hear.”

  She believed him. And yet … She did want to hear it. She wanted to know. To understand. But did she want to picture the sort of torments that could have torn Ash away from himself?

  Categorically not.

  “Come over here,” he ordered. “I wish for you to wash my back.”

  “But I—I’m not done with my breakfast.”

  “Yes you are.”

  She meant to argue with him, but then she glanced down at her empty plate.

  “Will you go back on your word?” His challenge landed harshly in the lush opulence of his quarters. “You promised me anything.”

  So he kept reminding her.

  Sighing, she slid her chair back and pushed to her feet. She approached him cautiously, as she did those wounded, wild animals, and his demeanor contained just as much lethal ferocity.

  She’d wanted to run her fingers across his winged tattoos, hadn’t she?

  Here was her chance.

  After rolling up her sleeves, she perched behind him on the tub, picked up a cloth and soap, and dawdled by creating more lather than necessary before she touched the cloth to his back.

  Anxiety had leached the heat from her fingers, and the warmth of his water-heated skin immediately radiated through her, lancing up her arm. She’d been right, he was solid as stone and smooth as marble. The feel of him was as familiar as it was foreign. She’d washed him before, long ago. She’d run her fingers over these very same long, lovely muscles. Sometimes, her fingers found a ridge beneath the artwork. Scars, she realized. Wounds. Ones he’d covered with ink and time. He’d been scarred as a boy, but not like this. They were everywhere. Some of them shallow and wide, others long and deep.

  Who had hurt him like this? Who would dare?

  Mortimer?

  “Heroes and villains…” he mused, a husky note was added to his already resonant voice. “Must men be defined thusly? There are none of either in the animal kingdom. There are only those who eat, and those who are eaten. The strong prey on the weak. There is an order to things. You adapt and survive … Or you die.”

  “Yes,” Lorelai conceded. “But you are not a beast.”

  “Am I not?” His chin touched his glistening shoulder. “That may be the kindest thing anyone has said to me in ages.”

  “I meant you are human.” She’d not meant to show him kindness. Had she?

  “Some believe man to be a higher form of animal. The king of beasts.”

  “You certainly are a predator,” she accused. “And I have become your unwilling prey.”

  “Think that if you like.” His jaw hardened as he stared forward again. “I’m a conqueror. You are the conquered. To the victor go the spoils. You’re the one who’s lived among wild creatures your whole life, you should understand how this works. How many beasts apologize to their mates after taking them? What happens, Lorelai, when a powerful male creature wants a female? Does he woo her with flowers and poetry and pretty manners? Does she entice him with a dowry and a family name? No. The male fights off every other who would have her, he dominates them, kills them if he must. Then, he claims her. And she lets him, because he has proven himself the strongest. He can protect her and their offspring. It is the way of things in the wild, and so it is with us.”

  Lorelai’s trembling fingers dropped the cloth, and it slowly disappeared beneath the opaque surface. She was glad he wasn’t looking at her, that he couldn’t see her chin wobbling. Or her thighs trembling. “It doesn’t have to be thus,” she ventured.

  He twisted his torso to spear her with his frigid glare. “But it is. I was hoping you’d understand.”

  Her distress increased, and she loathed the tear that escaped her. “As a girl I thought … I knew … Ash would be the man I offered myself to when I came of age. I hate that, in the end, you’re going to be the one who hurts me. Who treats me like Mortimer treated Veronica. I never thought in a million years you would cause me that kind of pain…”

  “I won’t!” he hissed vehemently. “Don’t you fucking dare compare me to him.” He slammed his lips shut, as though his outburst surprised even him. Frowning, he seemed to consider something for a long while. So long, in fact, her nerves stretched to the breaking point.

  “What do you mean?” she prompted. “Are you saying you won’t require me to … we won’t consummate…” Lord, the heat of her blush could have immolated her right where she stood.

  “Oh, we will,” he vowed as the dawning of an idea swirled behind those dark, wicked eyes. “But what if I offer you a reprieve of sorts? A pirate’s promise.”

  “Are pirates any good at keeping promises?” she breathed.

  “I suppose we’ll find out.”

  Why the change of heart? she wondered. “What are your terms?” What was his objective?

  Her question seemed to encourage him. “I will not take you. Not by force. Not until you ask me to.”

  What? Considering the stance he’d taken since he returned for her, this didn’t make any sense. “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t you?” he challenged. “You were always a curious girl. I don’t imagine that’s changed. What if, instead of making you my offering, I offer my body for your use?”

  Mouth suddenly dry, Lorelai stood. “What if I don’t want it?”

  Wings flexed as he stood and turned to her, revealing all of himself. His skin like molten gold shaped over the cold, tempered steel of his chest and decorated with brilliant color. The flare of his shoulders were molded into the fascinating mounds of his biceps before tapering down to sinewy forearms laced with thick veins.

  Lorelai did her level best not to follow the obdurate ripple of muscles down his torso, arrowing right to the lean hips and his—

  Eek. She slammed her eyes shut. That had definitively grown along with the rest of him in twenty years.

  “Tell me you do not, and I’ll tell you you’re a liar.”

  Her lips parted to deny it, but not a word escaped.

  “You may do what any other has died a torturous and painful death for even attempting.”

  “What is that?” She blinked up at him, resolutely watching his eyes and never drifting lower.

  “Use me.” He held his arms out, hands up like a pagan sacrificial offering. “Wield me, Lorelai. I am at your discretion. I am at your disposal. Whip me, bind me, torture me, degrade me. Any need you have, I will fulfill. Any curiosity you can conceive of, I will provide the answer.”

  The first smile she’d ever witnessed spread over his fiendishly sensual lips. It was the smile of a shark, all teeth and temptation. “Out there, I am captain and I am king. In this chamber, you rule me. You command me.”

  His eyes captured hers, and where she’d seen voi
ds before she now saw nothing but opportunity. And something else. Something … she might have once called yearning.

  “You own me.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  He’d have done it all again, the Rook decided.

  He’d have waded through twenty years of hell and oceans of blood to get to this moment. To see Lorelai’s eyes glitter like the most precious gems in the Amsterdam markets. They sparkled with the cerulean agony of indecision.

  Reality touched her with more beauty than his memory ever could. Even as tenaciously as he’d clutched at the memory of her visage, twenty years had dimmed certain details in his mind’s eye. He’d remembered the unruly tendrils of gold at her temples, but not the matching flecks of gold in the azure of her irises. Likewise, the brilliance of her smile had benighted many of his dreams, but he’d forgotten that beloved dimple in her cheek. Just the one.

  Time and melancholy had robbed some of the hope from her eyes, and the light from her smile. But none of her beauty.

  If there was a better word for perfection, he would have used it.

  The years, the sun, and the sea had been far unkinder to him.

  Touch me. He didn’t ask. He didn’t beg.

  Not out loud.

  The Rook begged no one. He asked nothing. He commanded. He ordered. He decreed.

  He used his cunning and ruthlessness to get what he wanted. He’d used it to get her here, into this room, in fact. He was the kind of man that ruined people. One way or another. And something had whispered to him that the moment he’d found his way back to Lorelai, he’d ruin her, too.

  But for twenty long years she’d been the grit in his oyster. The one memory he could not be rid of. The obsession that had kept him alive. Had driven him to survive what so many had not.

  He’d had his weak moments, of course, where he’d wondered if she was some halcyon specter of the past. Unreal and unattainable. He feared he’d find her a figment of perfection his defective mind had somehow enshrined as a mechanism for survival. His memory was faulty, after all. His brain seemed to work differently than others’. When men became impassioned, hot, and angry, he became cool, remote, and unfeeling.