All I Ever Needed (44 page)

"I was told you had thrown down the glove."

Eastlyn shrugged. "People forget the particulars even if they once knew them. In truth, there was little known factually about what happened. Most of it was supposition."

"Then is it true that you killed him?"

"It is true that I meant to when I set out that morning. Hagan's pistol ball struck me first." Eastlyn showed her a faint, slightly puckered scar on his left arm just below his shoulder. "I had a choice then to delope, and I decided he did not deserve so easy a dismissal, but it was also enough for me that he knew I could kill him. I adopted the middle course and aimed my shot low. He took it in the thigh, close enough to his ballocks that he would forever think twice before he compromised himself with a woman." He regarded Sophie directly. "The reason that you heard he was murdered is because he immediately left the country and has never returned. It is quite possible that he did come to a bad end, but it was not by my hand. I suspect the Russians no longer found him useful."

Sophie thought it was likely East knew more about Hagan's bad end than he could properly tell her. She did not press him. "So you are not a murderer either," she said. "It would seem that you have been poorly judged by many people."

"Perhaps, but they are judgments not often repeated behind my back, and only once to my face."

The realization that he was speaking of her incautious words put color into her cheeks. "I deserved to be called out for it."

"I decided to marry you instead."

She looked at him narrowly, wondering if she could believe him. "You are diabolical."

"Thank you."

"It is not strictly a compliment, you know." She stretched crossways on the bed, raising herself up on one elbow. "You told me rather a lot about your assignment on behalf of the East India Company. It doesn't seem to me that it is much different than what Hagan did. Weren't you concerned that I would say something to Tremont?"

"You gave me your word that you would not."

"You could not have trusted me so completely."

East said nothing.

Sophie saw the whole of it then. "You did
not
trust me. You took me into your confidence in anticipation that I
would
say something."

"No," he said. "Only that it would not matter if you did. It surprised me how very much you knew about the Company's plans, but then I had not realized that you listened to your cousin practicing his speeches from the other side of the door."

"You made everything you told me seem as if it should be an intrigue."

He shrugged. "I thought you were looking for one. I only meant to oblige you."

Sophie's fingers curled around one corner of a nearby pillow, and she hurled it at him. East caught it easily. Her attack was a little more difficult to deflect, but he managed to capture her wrists and pin her back to the bed. The blankets and sheet tangled around them, assisting his efforts to keep her confined. She was breathing hard when he finally subdued her.

"Admit it, Sophie," he said pleasantly. "You are more embarrassed by your gullibility than you are angry with me. And I did not lie to you about anything except that you should keep it all a secret. It was inevitable that the arguments for and against the settlement proposal were going to be made public."

She glared at him. "I thought you trusted me."

"I do... after a fashion." East was forced to shift one of his legs across both of hers when she tried to squirm away. The unmistakable press of his erection against her hip made her go still. He acknowledged this evidence of his desire with the ironic lift of one eyebrow. "I did not know about the
Aragon,
Sophie. If I had suspected Tremont was actually involved in the trade, I would not have told you why I was meeting with him. It did not occur to me that you might use some part of our discussion to blackmail him."

He felt her relax, though the cast of her eyes was not so forgiving. "You threatened to tell him what you knew and put yourself at great risk. You are fortunate that he only made you absolve your sin with prayer. He could easily have done more than set you on a bed of stones. That is why I will not let you confront him a second time. That is for me to do, Sophie. It is all part and parcel of my work, and your interference will only complicate matters." East searched her features. He thought the line of her mouth had softened a little, but he was not so certain that he would risk kissing her.

"I will agree to one of your demands," he told her. "We will be wed here in Clovelly by special license, but the marriage will remain a secret from everyone but my family. I will arrange a house for you in London, and you will let it about that it is part of a settlement from the estate of a distant relative. A settlement that is not subject to entailment, of course."

"Of course," she murmured.

"We will find a suitable companion for you until such time as we make our marriage widely known. With your companion, you will be able to go out in public."

"There is Lady Gilbert," she said softly. "My great-aunt in Berwyn."

"Very well. I shall find her, but companion or no, you will not—under any circumstances—visit Bowden Street, and you will not entertain your family alone in your home."

"Very well." Her voice was not raised much above a whisper.

"I am very glad to hear it. This secrecy cannot last, Sophie, but I concur with your assessment that it will provide time. I can use it to gather evidence of Tremont's involvement in the opium trade. It is a task that would be made more difficult if he knew we were married."

She nodded, though he had not asked for her agreement.

"Then it is settled."

"Yes."

East regarded her closely, gauging her sincerity. She did not look as if she meant to bite him any longer, or rather that if she did, it would be of a kind he would not mind. Her eyes were vaguely slumberous, darkening at the center with her lashes lowered. Her mouth was still parted on her last spoken word, and it no longer seemed that her response was entirely meant as an answer to his question.

Dipping his head, Eastlyn brushed her lips with his. She followed the movement, trying to reach him as he drew back. He came again and touched her just as lightly this time, the contact as fleeting as the first. The breath she caught sounded like a whimper. He saw her eyes dart over his face as she tried to anticipate him. Her wrists were still pinned, her body held taut under his, and when she moved it was only to lift her chin and offer the slender curve of her throat. He put his lips there, at a point above her collarbone, and tasted her. The suck of his mouth left a small bruise. He had not meant to mark her skin, but the sight of it made him feel oddly powerful, as if he had laid claim to her in the most elemental way.

He lowered his head again, taking her mouth hard. His tongue speared her. She kissed him back, equal to his strength, and if there was surrender it was not because he held her body flush to the bed, but because she wanted him in just this manner. When she could stir, her movements had a restless edge and only one purpose: to be closer to him.

She was made breathless by his kisses, and light-headed. When she opened her mouth to draw air, he stole it from her. He whispered her name against her lips and what he meant to do to her against her ear, and then she could not breathe or even think beyond that moment. At the periphery of her vision there was darkness, but at the center was the image he had placed in her mind. She had a view of herself lying under him and his lean frame cleaved to hers, and it was as if she were apart from both of them, watching him move a moment before she felt his lips on her skin. There was his mouth on her breast, at the underside of her arm, then at her throat again. And there was her shift being pushed to her thighs and the blankets unwinding around her legs.

She did whatever he asked. "Raise your knees, Sophie." And when he was settled between her thighs, a second husky command: "Lift your hips." She felt him push inside her and her back arched and then he demanded her mouth. She gave him this, too. Her wrists were released, and his hands slipped around her back. He sat up, carrying her with him. She remained joined to him, her face close to his, and she felt boneless and weightless, unable to move until he told her to put her arms around his neck.

Her breasts rubbed his chest. Their aching fullness was not relieved by the press of his skin against hers. She wanted his hands there, and he teased her by placing his palms on either side of her and running his hands from her waist, along her ribs, and then down again, always stopping short of cupping her breasts. He made her tell him what she wanted, and she hardly recognized her own voice when she found it. The breathy, husky timbre sounded as if it were spoken by another woman, one drugged by desire and shameless in her need.

His thumbs made a pass across her nipples, and she closed her eyes against the intensity of the sensation. Her hips rocked forward, drawing him more deeply inside her. He took her mouth, her breath, her voice. Her body rose and fell in a slow, undulating motion, like a wave washing over him.

The sound of her own heartbeat was a roar in her ears, and for a moment she was deaf to everything but that. The bed creaked, embers popped in the fireplace, there was the rustle of the sheets and the moist suck of their mouths, and she heard none of it.

He was all hard muscle and tension, his need defined in the taut features of his face, in skin that was pulled too tightly. His embrace was too intense to be sheltering, too demanding to be comfortable. It was exactly what she wanted, this raw, naked need of his, and the sense that he could not get close enough to her, or thrust too deeply.

Her teeth caught his lobe. She bit gently, and she told him what she wanted, her breath hot against his skin. The words were ones she had learned from him, but on her lips they were earthy, not rough, and he knew himself to be as helpless as she had been earlier.

They collapsed together, arms flung wide, legs tangled. Sophie's hair hung over the side of the bed, and she thought that if East moved, she would simply slide limp and liquid to the floor. When he raised his head, she pushed it back to her shoulder, and she thought she heard a small, raspy chuckle, though she could not imagine how he came by the strength to summon it.

They lay in just such an abandoned posture until their breathing eased and their limbs where once again sound enough to lift. East rolled away and pulled Sophie the few inches necessary to keep her from spilling onto the cold floor. She turned on her stomach and buried her face in a pillow that was filled with the scent of both of them.

"Did you really tell me that you wanted me to—" East stopped, bent close to her head, and whispered the rest of it in her ear. Sophie's short, embarrassed moan was proof that she had said exactly that. Eastlyn lifted part of the heavy curtain of Sophie's hair and brushed it back so that he could make out a measure of her flushed profile. She turned her head just the fraction required to look at him with one accusing eye. "It is to be my fault, then," he said, unconcerned and unrepentant. "You mean to charge me with putting those words in your mouth."

"I mean to charge you with pulling them out of it."

He grinned as she placed her face squarely in the pillow again. "You are going to suffocate." Her muffled reply was unintelligible, and Eastlyn let it pass. Turning on his side, he laid one arm lightly across her back. She fit herself to him without any urging, and for a time they slept.

East woke first and was already preparing a luncheon for them when Sophie arrived in the kitchen. She set the table and added a kettle to the hearth for tea while he stirred the soup pot. When it was time to sit, East did not miss that Sophie placed herself somewhat gingerly in her chair. She intercepted his look of concern and warned him with a quelling glance that he should not inquire. Because he believed she was fully capable of throwing her soup bowl at him, East did not challenge her.

The ache that made Sophie ease herself into her chair was more of a certain awareness of her body than strictly a discomfort. She could still feel the pressure of East's hands on her breasts, at the small of her back, and cupping the rounds of her buttocks, but between her thighs it was the absence of him that she felt most keenly. No matter how uninhibitedly she had expressed herself in their bed, this was not a subject to be discussed over soup.

Later, they walked along High Street almost the entire way to the cove. There was more than a touch of winter in the air this afternoon, but the chill was bracing, and the walk proved more invigorating than tiring. East bought Sophie some threads and ribbons. He would have purchased the milliner's entire supply of bonnets and gewgaws if she had expressed the least interest, but she was wholly satisfied with the ribbons. It occurred to him that her lack of interest in fashion might make her an inexpensive wife. He said as much to her when they passed the dressmaker's shop and she did not glance once at the window.

"It is not difficult to have little interest in such things when your taste is far superior to my own, and I know that you will never permit me to go about shabbily." She gave him a sideways glance and saw he was much struck by her reasoning. "I think you will find it quite expensive to turn me out to your satisfaction."

"You are wrong, Sophie." He tipped his hat and bid a good afternoon to Mrs. Godwin, the harbormaster's wife, who had three of her five children in tow. When the parade had moved on, he added, "It will not cost me a farthing to keep you naked and abed."