Page 64 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo

Those disgusting, straining distortions of Mortimer’s features when his rutting reached its pounding, painful climax… the pleasure her mother told her only belonged to a man… could be had by awoman?

A sob of wonder escaped her, and she looked from the pretty prostitute’s ecstatic expression back to the man who provided it.

He was staring at the spyglass as his jaw flexed and rolled with the unfathomable, magical motions of his tongue. His gaze glittered wicked speculations. But not at the woman upon whose body he dined.

At her.

Veronica jumped away, propelling herself to the far side of the room to lean against the wall beneath the open porthole. Her quivering legs refused to properly sustain her.

He hadn’t seen her. He couldn’t have done. Not from that distance, surely.

But he’d looked.

She sucked in moist, cool sea air and willed her boiling blood to cool, painfully aware of the slick sensation present each time her thighs rubbed together.

Not him. She guiltily shook her head. She didn’t desirehim. An unfeeling, hedonistic pirate with no blood, nobility, or conscience to speak of. Nothing could be more absurd.

It was merely the act that had fascinated her. The witnessing of it. The illicitness of it.

The unveiling of the truth.

A woman could claim pleasure, if a man was willing to give it.

Which posed another question What manner of man would pay a prostitute for her time in order to provide the ladyherpleasure?

His behavior certainly made no sense.

Andwhyhad he looked atherroom when another woman climaxed into his mouth?

Another slim, mahogany-haired woman.

With green eyes.

Oh, dear God, had he been spying on her through that glass all this time? Had he watched her sleep? Eat? Wash?

Her hands flew to her burning cheeks as different sounds drifted to her now.

Rhythmic, masculine ones.

Veronica blinked back toward the spyglass, invisible in the wall from this distance. Was he coupling with the woman now? Would the muscles in his neck and shoulders strain with his own pleasure? Would his eyes go dark with need? With danger. With violence.

Just as Mortimer’s had.

She wanted to see. Wanted to know.

Should she look again? Perhaps this act wouldn’t disgusther if she witnessed it performed properly. Would the pirate’s oddly hard, magnificent body bunch and cord as he found his—

The bolt to her door slammed aside seconds before the door, itself, crashed into the wall.

The Rook’s black void of a gaze swept the dim room until he found her huddling in her corner. An icy chill instantly swept away the heat accumulated in Veronica’s body. His was a gaze you hoped never found you.

Veronica dumbly tried to recover from the terrific and terrible sight of him in only hastily donned trousers and nothing else.

He reached her in four monstrous strides, and hauled her toward the door by her arm. “She won’t wake up,” he snarled.

“What?” Drat. Her blood didn’t seem to reside in her head anymore.

“Lorelai—she fell. She won’t wake up.”