Calder Promise by Janet Dailey

attempt to exert it again. “And I have never met a woman willing to concede that she might be a disappointment in the bedroom.”
    He stopped near the bed. A single lamp burned on the bedside table, throwing a pool of light over the downturned bedcovers. He let her feet sink to the floor while keeping an arm around her. The blanket fell away, only a corner of it caught by his encircling arm.
    “That’s hitting a bit below the belt, isn’t it?” she challenged lightly while her hands glided down the opened front of his shirt, halting when they reached the waistband of his slacks.
    “But that’s often what happens when Mars and Venus collide.”
    “But what a magnificent collision it can be,” she murmured, her dark eyes shining with promise.
    “Indeed,” Sebastian agreed and stayed her attempt to unfasten his trousers, catching hold of her hands and pulling them away despite the hot and hungry part of him that was eager for her to continue. “But you are rushing things.” He set her away from him and made a quick, appreciative skim of her uptilted breasts, slender waist and curved hips. “We men tend to be dreadful creatures of habit.” He steered her toward the bed, maintaining discreet pressure until the back of her knees made contact with the mattress. Then he gave her a little push that forced her to sit down. All the while she watched with intense curiosity and interest. “Each of us has our own particular routine when it comes to disrobing. Some prefer to start at the bottom and remove their shoes first. Others begin with the tie.”
    “You have a head start there.” She reclined onto the bed with languorous ease, bending one leg over the other to show him the full rounded curve of her cheek bottom.
    “And I have been remiss in not thanking you for that before now.” Which was the truth. There was hardly a part of him that didn’t feel thick and rigidly swollen. Sebastian doubted that in his present condition his fingers could have managed the intricacies of unknotting a tie or unbuttoning his shirt. Clamping down on a very primitive urge to rip off his clothes and join her on that bed, he pulled the tie from around his neck, striving for a leisurely air that he was far from feeling. “Myself, I do a combination of top and bottom.” He draped the tie across the overstuffed armrest of a nearby chair and shrugged out of his suit jacket. “After the tie, comes the jacket.” After making a show of precisely folding it, he laid it on the chair. “Then the shirt.” He pulled the tails loose from his pants and proceeded to remove it as well, conscious all the while of her avid gaze.
    Again, he was anything but casual about the way he arranged it on the chair. At that point he paused and faced her once more. Her eyes made a greedy, almost tactile inspection of the muscled width of his chest and shoulders, taking special note of the curly mat of auburn chest hair.
    “This is where I reverse the procedure and begin from the bottom.” He sat down on the edge of the cushioned seat, careful not to muss the clothes already there, and began removing his shoes. After he had arranged them neatly side by side next to the chair, he peeled off his socks, shook them out, and laid them precisely one on top of the other.
    “First the top, then the bottom. The middle must be next,” she declared, her dark eyes agleam with anticipation.
    “An astute deduction.” He smiled lazily as he stood up, unzipped his trousers, and stepped out of them. Wearing only his briefs, he folded the dress pants together, leg crease against leg crease, draped them over their suit jacket, and gripped the elastic waist of his lone remaining garment. “Last, but far from least, I remove my briefs.” As he stripped them off, he turned his back to the bed and fixed them on the chair with the rest of the clothes.
    “Thus the deed is done,” he announced, squaring around to face her once more, quick to notice the way her gaze instantly