Page 25 of Dare to Love a Duke
His mouth went dry.
He lightly stroked at the top of her stockings and couldn’t stop the rumble that rose up within him when he brushed the silken skin of her thigh. Glancing up, he saw her chest rise and fall with quick breaths, and her lips had parted.
With patience he never knew he possessed, he rolled her stocking down her leg. He repeated the procedure with her other garter and stocking and, by the time he stood, her legs were bare and he was dizzy with lust.
He plucked at the buttons of his waistcoat.
She held up a hand. “First, a truth.”
Words tumbled from him, as if waiting for this moment to be spoken. “Everyone expects me to continue my father’s legacy. I’m to be another him—not my own man. The thought is like being hammered into a coffin while I still live. But if I don’t... there’s more at stake than merely my own happiness.”
Hell.He hadn’t expected to share so much, and yet there was a rightness to speaking of these things with her, a purity that came not just from the fact that they would never see each other again, but that it was Amina to whom he confessed.
He threw aside his waistcoat, heedless of where it landed.
“My turn,” she said in a voice as dark as wine. “My heart has been broken three times—and after that, I vowed never to let myself be hurt again.”
“Let me hurt whoever hurt you,” he said at once. His hands curled into fists and his muscles burned with the need to punish those that had dared cause her pain.
A bittersweet smile touched her lips. “Two of the people who broke my heart are dead. My mother, and the man who sired me. The third person was my grandfather, who was blood kin but no family of mine.”
She spoke so simply, and yet each syllable spoke of immeasurable loss. They resounded within him as though she’d whispered in a cavern, the quiet words growing in strength with each echo.
“I’ll take care of him,” he said fiercely.
She shook her head, mingled sadness and anger in her gaze. “He cannot touch me now.” She looked every inch the deposed queen, regal and wounded.
“Amina—”
She spun on her heel and presented him with her back. “The hooks, please. On my gown. I can’t reach them.”
Gazing at the bare column of her neck and the slope of her shoulders, his fury on her behalf dissolved in a haze of desire. For all his experience taking off women’s clothes, his fingers were suddenly thick as sausages, and equally clumsy. He fumbled with the tiny hooks until the back of her dress opened.
With movements supple and graceful as a cat, she slipped off her gown before facing him.
“God almighty,” he rasped.
She didn’t wear stays. Or drawers.
She stood in only a whisper-light chemise, and beneath the fabric he could plainly see the rosewood brown of her taut nipples and dark delta between her legs.
Without a hint of shyness, she let him look his fill.
If they didn’t leap into bed soon, there was the distinct possibility that he’d lose his sanity.
“Here’s my next truth,” he said, his voice low and rasping with need. “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want you.”
Her dark eyes became almost black, and her cheeks reddened.
A conflagration blazed along his flesh to see her so aroused.
Impatient to feel her against his bare skin, he tugged off his shirt and cast it to the floor. His boots were next.
If she minded that he rushed his disrobing, she didn’t give voice to it.
Instead, she murmured, “Dio mio.” Her gaze roved avidly over his torso. “You are...” She shook her head, her cheeks staining deeper with the flush of desire. Reaching out, she placed her palm just above his heart, nestling her fingers in the dark hair that spread across his pectorals. “Where I am from, there are ancient statues of men like you. Statues of heroes and gods.”
“I’m not carved from marble.” His voice was deep, almost guttural. “I’m a man made of flesh.”
