Page 65 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo

“Shefell?” Fully present now, Veronica picked up her skirts and kept his frantic pace down the hallway, her breath already short and labored. “Did you push her? Orstrikeher?”

“I didn’t fucking hurt her,” he said from between clenched teeth. “She just—fainted.”

Crossing the threshold, Veronica rushed to her dearest friend, carefully arranged on top of the counterpane, still in her wedding skirts and the pilfered flannel.

Lorelai’s mussed, unbound curls spilled in a waterfall of gold down the side of the bed, as her lashes fluttered softly against cheeks bereft of color.

“Lorelai?” Veronica searched her face for swelling, or redness, for the early signs of a blow, and surprisingly found none. Lord knew they both had suffered plenty.What if he’d hit her where it wouldn’t leave a mark? Her stomach, maybe? Her back? Maybe she’d hit her head.

With gentle fingers, Veronica checked for bumps, again finding none.

“Is she still fucking breathing?” The Rook almost shoved her aside to press his ear to Lorelai’s chest, which rose and fell with the gentle rhythm of a sleeping child. “I’ll get the doctor.”

“There’s no need.” Veronica sighed out a hitching breath of relief.

“What do you mean?” the Rook demanded, seizing at her wrists in a crushing grip. “What’s happening to her? Has it happened before? What is to be done?”

It occurred to Veronica to be frightened, but an odd sense of wonder replaced her panic at a man’s aggressive touch. The Rook, the terror of the high seas and their ruthless, devilish captor, was… worried.

She gaped at him. “I-it’s just a faint, she does this sometimes.”

“This is more than a fucking faint. I’ve knocked men to sleep with my bare fists who’ve come around faster. I tried smelling salts, ammonia, even loud noises and shaking her. It’s beenminutes.”

“Sometimes a cold washcloth helps,” she ventured. “Or some ice.”

“Ice. I can get ice.” He released her, and stalked to the door. “Ice will wake her? It’ll bring her back?”

Veronica smoothed a hand over Lorelai’s clammy forehead. “In time.”

“How long?” he demanded.

She shrugged and shook her head, unable to venture a guess.

He took a threatening step toward her. “How. Long.”

“Hours, maybe.” Veronica stood her ground. “Once she was gone for an entire day. Thirteen hours in all.” That had been a good day to leave, she remembered sourly. A good time to miss one of Mortimer’s drunken rages.

The Rook stilled, his black gaze smoothing over every inch of Lorelai’s prone form. His entire lean, predatory body rippled with tension and strain. “Gone?” he echoed.

“The doctors all said it’s hysteria,” she explained, taking Lorelai’s limp, clammy hand in her own. “That it’s how her body reacts to trauma.”

“Trauma…” He swallowed heavily, losing some of his own high color.

“What did you do to her?” Veronica asked in a horrified whisper.

He said nothing.

A protective rage welled within her. Only hours ago, she’d been ready to take her own life on her best friend’s behalf, and now, it seemed, she’d be willing to do it again. “Did you hurt her?” she demanded. “Did you… did you force yourself upon her?”

Had she been awakening the long-dormant lust within her body at the very same moment this monster had been thrusting his own upon poor Lorelai?

Dear Lord, she’d never forgive herself.

The Rook’s features darkened from sinister to brutal. It was a look that would fill demons with dread, but Veronica was beyond that.

“It was only a kiss…” he muttered.

“Not to her, it wasn’t,” she snapped. “She’s never even been truly kissed, you bloody fiend! Not since some sacred chaste encounter as a child. Now she’s been forced to wed a pirate? You terrified her, you—you monstrous boor! I mean, just look at you!” She gestured rudely to his unclad body. The vibrant, menacing tattoos of things withteeth and tails. The vast breadth of his shoulders. The muscles built upon other muscles screaming of brutal labor, vast years of violence, and barely leashed ferocity.