Page 92 of The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo

She covered her open mouth with her fingers. “Did you catch one?”

“One almost caught me.” The ghost of a smile whispered at the corners of his mouth. “In sub-Saharan Africa.”

She liked him like this. A lion at rest, the ever-present tension leached from his muscles. The vigilant void of his gaze warmed to something almost… human. Alive.

Part of her wanted to ask him about his nightmares tonight, another about his dreams for the future. She wanted to know what had happened during the last twenty years. She wanted to know what happened next.

But no force on this earth could convince her to say a thing that would ruin the first interaction they’d had that wasn’t fraught with danger, passion, or pain.

This was what she’d wanted. To be in bed with Ash, sharing small, inconsequential intimacies. This was how she’d fallen in love with him the first time.

Now, instead of a bleak-eyed boy with an empty past, he was an experienced man who’d seen the whole world. And still he brought little parts of that world back to her.

The very thought of it melted her heart.

“What manner of creature is this?” She pointed to the strange, big-eyed mammal that didn’t seem to fit with the theme of hunters painted on the body of the most alpha predator.

“It’s a ring-tailed lemur.” He smoothed his hand over hers. “I met her in Madagascar. She followed me through a market and leaped on my shoulder, tried to share a plantain with me.”

“She didn’t!”

“By share, I mean she peeled it daintily and shoved it in my eye.”

She let out a surprised giggle. “Tell me you didn’t hurt her!” she said.

“I ate her plantain, that’s for certain.” A smile didn’t sit easily on his hard mouth, but it seemed like it wanted to. “But we parted as friends.”

“I thought you said you didn’t have friends,” she taunted.

“Not of the human variety.”

She petted the lemur, somewhere left of his navel, a frown tugging at her brows. “I wish I could see these exotic creatures, but I know I never shall.”

His fingers lifted her chin with a gentleness she’d not thought him capable of. “A lot can happen between now and never.”

The words she’d spoken to him as a child glowed in her chest and spiked her lashes with threatening tears. “True,” she said haltingly, “but with my leg, there’s no traipsing around jungles or climbing mountains for me. I’m essentially useless.”

“Nonsense,” he soothed. “I’ll hire elephants to take you through the jungle, and sedans carried by ten bronzed men to conduct you through foreign cities. Arabian horses will convey you through the deserts, and we can take trains or my ship everywhere else.”

She sniffed, wishing she weren’t such a ninny. “And what about all the places elephants, and bronzed men, and Arabians and trains and ships can’t go?”

His playful gaze sobered, and warmed. “I’ll carry you.”

Driven by a desperate hope, she collapsed back to his chest. “Can we leave tomorrow? Just leave pirates and treasure and our names behind? We could start our lives anew.”

His hands toyed at the tendrils beside her face, as a gentle regret settled on his expression. “I have to find the Claudius Cache,” he murmured. “I’ve promised my men.”

“Couldn’t you just give the map to your men? Let them find it?”

“I have to see this through,” he insisted.

“But why? You have more money than you could spend in five lifetimes. Do you really need more treasure? Hasn’t this search taken enough from you?” She traced her fingers over his ruined tattoo. “It almost killed you once, already.”

He watched her with glittering black eyes. “I’ve been searching for this treasure since before I was Dorian Blackwell. When I think about it, I feel like my past is hurling itself at the iron door separating me from my memories. I feel like if I find the Claudius Cache… I’ll find myself.”

At this, she nodded reluctantly. “I understand.” And she did. “What then?” She was almost afraid to ask. “What will drive you once you’ve found what you seek?”

“Drive me?”