Page 15 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo

Then you stroked them, comforted them. Let them come to trust you.

But first, the animal must be subdued for the safety of all involved.

A good rule, with creatures great and small, was to avoid the face at all costs.

But a man? What sort of animal was he, really? She’d learned no tricks to calm such a violent soul but avoidance.

And that wouldn’t do in this case.

A low groan decided it for her as she neared the bedside. His cheeks were wet with tears. His ebony hair matted with sweat.

Someonewashurting him. She couldn’t bear it.

His knuckles narrowly missed her throat as she ducked around them, and tentatively splayed the fingers of one hand over his chest above his bandaged ribs. “Wake up,” she admonished him, jostling him a little. “Comeback.”

Two monstrous hands shackled her arms like iron cuffsas he gasped awake, his entire body seizing, convulsing. He wrenched her hands away from his skin.

Fearing he might snap her bones in two, she couldn’t contain her own sob of pain as it cut through her.

To her astonishment, he didn’t let go.

He stared up at her, his eyes two volcanic voids of unfocused wrath. His teeth were bared, sharp and menacing. His breaths sawed in and out of him, as though he’d run a league at full tilt.

This was not the man to whom she’d fed soup only two days prior.

This man… might just be a monster.

“It’s me,” she whimpered. “It’s Lorelai.”

As quickly as she’d been seized, she was released.

A low groan tore from him as he regarded his hands like they’d betrayed him. Like he would rip them from their wrists.

Ignoring her smarting arms, she ran tentative fingers over his fevered brow. It twitched with little shocks where they connected.

“It was just a dream,” she crooned. “You’re safe.”

Though he said nothing, tears leaked from the corners of his eyes in an endless river, running down his temple and joining the beads of sweat glistening at his hairline.

His breath hitched and gasped. Deep grooves appeared between his brows, and his entire visage tightened.

“You are in pain,” she realized aloud. Had he reinjured something? The bandages about his ribs were secure, as were the ones over his shoulder, neck, and right torso covering his rapidly healing burns.Oh no. Should she call the doctor? Did she dare check beneath the blanket twisted around his lean hips and tangled about his legs?

“What can I do?” she asked frantically.

He’d not wept the entire, agonizing time they’d treated him. Not once.

If he did so now, he must be in absolute anguish.

“Where does it hurt the most?”

Black eyes rimmed in red searched her face, as though he might find answers to a question he didn’t know how to ask. The air shifted as threads of trust weaved through the space between them, adding a soft color to their tapestry.

Silently, cautiously, he took her hand, and placed it over his heart.

His skin was warmer than she’d expected. Harder. His pulse kicked beneath her palm, the rhythm unsteady and frenzied, still waging the battle he’d carefully schooled out of his expression.

He was as stoic as ever, except for the moisture still gathering his sooty lashes into wet spikes.