Page 62 of Duke with a Deception
“You can’t see me.”
“Wrong.” In the silvery moonlight seeping through the windows, he could see her silhouette, lovingly delineated. “I can see enough of you to tempt me anew.”
She made a purring sound of delight, stirring against him as she caressed his shoulders. “You are insatiable, husband.”
“When it comes to you, angel, I am.”
She kissed his chest. “If this is the reception I receive when I come home, I shall have to take tea at my brother’s town house more often.”
He chuckled. “And which one of us is insatiable now?”
“You have quite thoroughly debauched me,” she murmured.
“I suppose I should beg for forgiveness, but I haven’t a single regret in that regard.” He stroked the patch of skin at the base of her spine, so smooth, so soft.
“Nor do I.” She pressed her nose to him and inhaled deeply.
“Did you justsmellme, woman?”
“Yes.” She breathed in again. “I love your scent. It reminds me of something that I can’t seem to recall. Something at once decadent and familiar and yet new, all at once.”
“Good, then, I trust?” he rumbled, bemused by her description and the unsettling reminder that parts of her memory could return at any moment.
Parts of her that might one day return and bring a whole new host of demons to claim them both.
“Quite good,” she said, pausing in a way that suggested she had something more to say.
He could sense it.
“And?” he prodded.
“And I like to be surrounded by you,” she said softly. “Because…I don’t know how to explain it. I feel like I almost lost you, and all I want is to breathe you in and wrap myself around you and soak in every second of you that I can.”
A tightness started to build steadily in his chest. He hated knowing that she wasn’t speaking of him just now, but that she was thinking, somewhere in the locked recesses of her mind, of Lord Leopold. He wanted those words to be about him with a ferociousness that startled him. He was jealous, so very painfully, achingly jealous, of a dead man. One whose placehe had taken without compunction. One whose place he would seize again unrepentantly, if it meant he could have Verity in his arms like this.
“You didn’t lose me,” he said at last, his voice rusty with emotion. “You’ll never lose me, Verity.”
Buthecould lose her, came the bitter, unwanted thought. If she remembered, if she discovered what he had done, if her feelings for Lord Leopold and her buried memories of him returned…
So many possibilities, all of them bloody terrible.
And suddenly, with a clarity that seized him so powerfully he could scarcely take a breath, King realized he had begun to fall in love with the woman he had married on a selfish whim. He didn’t know when it had started. Likely the day he’d seen her in her mourning weeds, hiding away from the revelers at her brother’s ball, still holding the candle of her love for a dead man ten years after he was gone. Or when he had learned of her affection for orphans, her sheer dedication to them. Or when she had driven with him to Rotten Row, the way her laugh had rung like a bell as they had set on their path, echoing off the stern and elegant facades of town houses.
“You shan’t lose me either,” Verity said, sliding up his chest to give him a long, lingering kiss.
When she broke the kiss, he cupped her nape, marveling at her in the darkness, this stunning, courageous, loyal woman who by some stroke of fate had come to be his. Ghosts could bloody well remain where they belonged. She was his now, and he was keeping her.
Until she remembers, whispered a voice from deep within.
A voice he summarily silenced.
There was the chance she would never regain her memories, and he selfishly hoped for it. Wished for it, even. Because if she remembered, she would hate him for his deception. She wouldhate him for marrying her, for taking what she had intended for Lord Leopold. Had she intended to go to her grave a maiden, saving herself for her dead betrothed? He couldn’t bear to think it.
What manner of man was he? He almost didn’t recognize himself, the man he had become.
She lifted her head, staring down at him, and he wished he could see more of her face. Her expressive, pale-blue eyes, specifically. He wanted to know what she was thinking.
“Your mind is busy,” she said, reading him far too well.
