Page 21 of Duke with a Deception
Finally, the knot loosened, and she slowly pulled the necktie away, placing it along with the rest of his shed garments.
“Now for the shirt,” he said softly.
More buttons awaited her, taunting her with the promise that when they were removed, she would at last be free to feast her eyes upon his bare chest. To touch him. To see the differences between his body and hers. She did not think—at least not in her current recollections—that she had ever seen a man’s naked chest before.
“I shall make short work of it, Your Grace,” she promised him, settling into her role of valet.
Her fingers tingling with eagerness, she moved to the smaller buttons lining his shirt front. One by one, she pulled them free, until the remainder disappeared beneath the waistband of his black trousers. She stepped back to admire her handiwork. He wore no undershirt. A tempting vee of his chest was visible, his body more deliciously defined than on any marble sculpture she had ever beheld. He was strong and masculine, his lean torso banded with muscles that must have been the result of his sporting and riding, nary a hint of spare on his lean form. His skin was dappled with a light sprinkling of dark hair that led to a line below his navel. The trail disappeared into his trousers.
Her hungry gaze followed it to the placket of his trousers, where the thick, long ridge of him strained against the fabric. She had felt him against her earlier, but now he seemed somehow even larger.
“You are gawking as if you’ve never seen a man before, valet,” King warned.
Warmth crept over her cheeks as she forced her eyes back up to his. “Forgive me, Your Grace. How can I serve you next?”
“Take my shirt all the way off, if you please,” he said, his voice husky.
Was he every bit as affected as she was? She hoped so. It occurred to her that she had believed she was seducing him, when, in truth, he had been seducing her. Taunting her,tempting her, prolonging the desire, heightening her sense of need.
Tentatively, Verity pulled the tails of his shirt from his trousers, revealing a few more buttons that required her attention. When they were gone, she pulled the sleeves down his arms, admiring him as she went. His body was a marvel to her, sinewy and hard and angled where hers was soft and pliable and rounded. His skin looked as if it had been revealed to the sun more than once, unlike her own pale curves.
She wondered at once when he went about sans shirt and where he was so daring. At the wicked house parties her brother hosted with him alongside their coterie of friends? At his country estate, punting on the lake?
“The trousers,” he said.
She swallowed against a rush of mad yearning. If her hands had been trembling before, they were quaking now, scarcely able to complete her task. Somehow, she managed to unfasten the placket of his trousers and to push them down his hips until he stood before her in nothing but his drawers.
Would he ask her to remove those next as well?
As if sensing her thoughts, he said smoothly, “I think that is enough playing valet for now.”
“Why?”
He took her hand, leading her across the chamber toward his bed, which loomed massive and imposing on the other side of the room. Somehow, it had not seemed so forbidding when she had slipped into it earlier and fallen asleep amidst comfortable, soft bedding that smelled faintly of him.
“Because I’ve never done what I’m about to do with my damned valet,” he drawled, tugging her after him.
Her bare feet hastened to follow. Was this the moment he would make love to her? Her heart pounded fast.
“It is probably most unkind of you to refer to him thus,” she chirped, trying to distract herself and quell the sudden onslaught of nerves attacking her. For all her bravado, she was quite unsure of herself all at once. “With the attention he pays to every detail of your wardrobe and toilette, I can only imagine he is anything but damned.”
He stopped before the bed and turned back to her, catching her chin with his fingers in a tender hold. “Verity.”
That simple touch, the bed looming behind him, was enough to make her dizzy. She gathered her wits with great difficulty. “Yes?”
“Are you nervous?”
“No.” That was a lie, of course.
Likely, he knew it as well as she did.
“You needn’t be, angel. But I want to be sure you’re ready for this.”
His countenance could have been chiseled in stone, his jaw the sharp edge of a knife’s blade.
She doubted herself.
He was a rake.
