Page 59 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo

“I—I’m not sure if I—or how to—”

“There is no right or wrong way of it,” he pressed. “Just do what you want.”

She did everything she could not to look at him, and why he found that charming, the Rook would never know. It was as though she desired to preserve his modesty, rather than hers.

Was there such a thing, he idly wondered, as a modest pirate?

“But… you’re all wet,” she protested.

That word, onherlips, nearly drove him mad.

Wet.

Yes. He was, indeed, wet. And if he had his way, she would be, too. But only in that sweet, hidden place.

And only for him.

He glanced down at his chilly, decorated body. “If you wish me dry, you may help.” He gestured to a plush towel hanging from an ornate banister at her elbow.

Her delicate throat worked over a difficult swallow before she dragged the towel away from its perch and attempted a cautious approach.

She still wouldn’t look at him, he noticed. For the most fleeting of seconds, her gaze would drift toward his body, land, and then dart away, like a hummingbird testing a flower.

Settling her hands—covered safely with the towel—onhis shoulders, she tentatively soaked up the bathwater with soft little drags.

He watched her as she did this. Delighting in her shyness. In her artless, gentle caresses. When one dried themselves, it was usually with firm, decisive strokes, but her touch barely deserved the designation.

It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Lorelai was here. In his cabin. Touching him.

Sort of.

“W-where did you sleep?” she queried.

It was something she did, he remembered, when she was anxious. She tried to fill a fraught silence with polite conversation.

“I didn’t, really. I stayed awake to watch the tempest.” He obediently lifted his arms toward her as she pulled the towel down each one, revealing his colorful, permanent sleeves.

“Don’t sea gales ever frighten you?” she asked, running the cloth down the ripples of his ribs.

“No.”

She paused at his waist, unwilling to go further, and circled around to his back, drying his shoulders. “Why not?”

Because I tasted your lips on every rainstorm.

“Because fear is dangerous,” he answered aloud. “Fear gets people killed.”

She left that response alone. “What about my kittens?”

Something in his lust-clouded brain stalled. Kittens? Who could be thinking of fluffy, noisy little beasts at a time like this? “What about them?”

“Why go through the trouble of bringing them on the ship?”

Why, indeed?he wondered. “The crew can be superstitious. I figured, like the whores, the kittens would appeasethem. It’s considered bad luck to have women on board at sea, you know. But quite good luck to have cats.”

Her brow wrinkled. “But… if women are bad luck… why bring—er—other ladies onto the ship?”

“The bad luck doesn’t apply if we are anchored.”