Page 39 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo

It hurt.

Everythinghurt. The icy water against his flesh. His muscles stressed to their limit by herculean restraint. His cock, where Lorelai’s resourceful knee had struck. The disused muscle palpitating against his ribs like a wild beast, hoping to splinter the iron darkness locking it away.

Never matter. He welcomed the pain. Pain was the closest thing he had to a friend.

Hell. He’d had a great deal of time to consider the venue. To contemplate its walls. Its origins. Its meaning. Twenty years, in fact.

To him, hell was taking a drink with Mortimer Weatherstoke at an inn in Heybridge and waking up twelve hours later out to sea on a merchant ship, leagues away from theonly person who’d ever meant anything to him. Hell was years upon years of working on a deck like this one, in just such a storm, the seawater stinging the open whip wounds on his back. It was sleeping in so many chains, in holds stinking of filth and despair, starving, freezing, and dreaming of his precious few months in paradise.

Of Lorelai.

His very own paradise lost.

Hell was the vast, merciless oceans spread between himself and her. The hoary horizon had been his perdition for so many years until, one night, he’d had enough. What had Milton said inParadise Lost? “Better to reign in Hell, than to serve in Heaven.”

But to reign in hell, one must become the very Devil.

And so he had.

Because he thought he’d explored every corner of hell, that he understood its every torment.

God, what a fool he’d been.

For tonight, he’d found a fresh depth of the abyss.

Hell. True hell… had been standing at the door to his cabin, the memory of her warmth still fresh in his hands. The scent of her branded in his nostrils. Knowing that her lush, soft body was there for the taking…

And walking away.

Hell was looking into her beloved visage made only comelier by time, and finding the gaunt shadows of misery etched there. It was the denial on her lips. The refusal in her eyes.

Hell was becoming a devil for the sole purpose of claiming his very own angel.

Christ, the irony. The pure fucking tragedy of it all.

For an angel she still was, even so far as to have maintained her virginal purity. After all this time.

He’d made a fatal mistake. One he never could haveprepared himself for. He’d assumed that enough of his humanity had been beaten out of him by torture, tragedy, and treasure-hunting that he could claim her while remaining unaffected by her protestations.

But time did strange and dreadful things to memory, and he’d underestimated what her touch would do to him after all this time. He’d forgotten about her power over him. The girl whose voice could raise the dead.

He pressed a hand to the tattoo over his heart, willing the organ beneath to still as a familiar hatred welled within, smothering all softer sentiments.

He’d had a plan, goddammit. One he’d painstakingly shaped since making his way back to England. And, once again, MortimerfuckingWeatherstoke had bungled everything. By forcing Lorelai to marry, he’d likewise forced the Rook’s hand.

As he’d stated, he’d left Lorelai in peace at Southbourne Grove because the Rook had ascertained through the spies he’d installed there that since the earl had married Veronica, he’d all but forgotten his sister existed.

A tragedy for the Countess Southbourne, to be sure, but it bought him the time to craft his revenge to correlate with his reclamation of Lorelai.

In order to claim any kind of life with Lorelai, he’d wanted to retrieve his memory.

His identity.

In the twenty years it’d taken to make his way back to her, he’d lost himself. Again. Not just his memory this time, but his humanity, as well. And he’d gained quite a few things along the way. Not just unimaginable wealth and infamy, but innumerable enemies, and a crew of men who would also make powerful adversaries should he not fulfill his duty to them.

To beat a metaphor to death, if he were the king of hell,they were his demons. Demons with an insatiable appetite for blood, women, and above all… wealth.

So, he’d devised a plot in which he might satisfy all involved.