All I Ever Needed (50 page)

She accepted his hand with an alacrity that surprised him. She had, after all, turned down his proposal of marriage three years earlier, and he had expected a gracious, but not effusive greeting. Evidently, he thought, the long separation had made her more kindly disposed toward him and softened her opinion of the country dances.

* * *

Lady Gilbert was long asleep by the time Eastlyn let himself into Sophie's residence. Still, he made a quiet ascent of the stairs. In deference to her aunt's sensibilities, Sophie had been reluctant to allow him to spend a single night in her bed since she had arrived in London. Even when Eastlyn informed her that Lady Gilbert had used extraordinary tortures to wrest the truth of their marriage from him, Sophie would not relent.

Until tonight.

He suspected it was the waltz that had calmed her fears. The waltz, and the undeniable need she had for him on the sofa in the ambassador's gallery. He almost wished he had taken her there, but some modicum of sense prevailed. The realization that any of the ambassador's four hundred guests might come upon them also gave him pause, but it was a narrow thing. Sophie had used her perfectly delicious mouth to make a convincing argument for reckless abandon.

Eastlyn reached the landing and cocked his head, listening for any signs of stirring. Candlelight slipped out from under Sophie's door, but he noticed that she had not left it open for him. Hefting the journal and ledgers he carried under his arm to better secure them, East started down the hall. Sophie's door opened while his hand was merely hovering over the knob.

"Quickly," Sophie said, pulling him into her bedchamber. "Else my aunt will hear you."

The chuckle that rose in East's throat was smothered by Sophie's urgent kiss. He nearly lost his grip on the books as she flung her arms around him and drew his head down. He managed to get to her bedside before he dropped them. One started to slip over the edge, but he caught it with his knee and kept it there until Sophie released him long enough for him to let it slide gently to the floor.

"What are those?" she asked. Her mouth was still against his. Her lips and her warm, sweet breath tickled him.

"Later." He did not want to explain now how so many sleepless nights strung end to end had afforded him the opportunity to refine his sneaksman skills. She would quite correctly point out that he might have been mistaken for the Gentleman Thief had he been caught. This moment, then, would be lost, and just now that was of more import to East than all the evidence he had gathered this past week.

Sophie tried to glimpse what East pushed to the bottom of the bed by standing on tiptoe and straining to see over his shoulder. Her tenuous balance made it easy for him to topple her. Her protest came to nothing as he followed her down.

Candlelight flickered over them, lending its glow to Sophie's upturned face and East's profile. She fell silent, her lips parting a fraction as he studied them. She had the sensation of his mouth on hers moments before he lowered his head and touched her in fact.

It was as if they had never parted in the gallery. Every one of Sophie's nerve endings was charged with anticipation. The first contact of East's mouth fired them all off in quick succession, and she felt her flesh tingle with the press of a thousand tiny darts. Tension immediately replaced that swift explosion, and Sophie arched under him, finding purchase in the quilt and bunching it between her fingers.

The thin fabric of her shift was rent by East's impatience. Sophie wondered only that it did not happen sooner. She moaned softly as his mouth worked its way down from the curve of her neck to the puckered tip of her breast. He took the nub between his lips and tugged gently, laving it with the damp edge of his tongue until her short gasp became a whimper.

She showed the same disregard for his clothes that he had shown for her shift. It was not so simple, though, to tear a frock coat or a finely made linen shirt, and Sophie had to be satisfied with the one button she left dangling from his embroidered waistcoat.

He reveled in her frantic desire for him, not minding in the least when she managed to remove his tails, waistcoat, cravat, jabot, shirt, shoes, stockings, breeches, and drawers, and he had yet to eliminate the remnant of her shift. When he finally wrested it from her, he waved it not like a man claiming victory, but one offering his surrender.

Laughing, Sophie bore down on him. He cautioned her to quiet with a finger to her lips. She bit it.

"Ow!" He drew it back quickly.

"Shh." She murmured this against his lips. "You will wake the house."

East suspected none of the servants would be brave enough to venture forth, and Lady Gilbert would be too polite to interfere. "Everyone will return to their slumber soon enough," he whispered huskily. "Sooner, if you do not bite me again."

She found his hand and brought it to her mouth, kissing his fingertip this time. "That is better, is it not?"

"Infinitely."

She smiled because he did. It was a sly and wicked look that they mirrored to each other. Heat was raised anew and sensation stirred again. East caught Sophie's shoulders suddenly and twisted her around so that she was facedown on the bed. Surprise kept her from struggling. She laid one cheek against the sheet and eyed him with a mixture of interest and wariness.

East ran his thumb down the length of her spine and back up again. On his next pass he went lower. His palm moved over the curve of her bottom, and he felt her lift her hips in reaction to the touch. He dipped his head and brought his mouth close to her ear. Even before he spoke a single word, she responded to the anticipation of it, and a delicious sort of shiver made every part of her body sensitive to his touch. With only the slightest urging, Sophie drew her knees under her as East moved to kneel behind her. He stared at the elegant curve of her back as she raised her buttocks. His hands caught her hips, and he pulled her close until she was pressed hard and intimately against his erection.

Sophie's eyes closed, and her fingers curled in the sheet. Her mouth parted on a silent O as she felt East's measured entry. He moved with exquisite slowness so that it was in every way the wicked, pleasing torture his eyes had promised earlier. It required all of her control not to rear back and force her own need on him. She waited him out, knowing that she would be sweetly rewarded for her patience.

His penetration was deep. His hands on her hips kept her bottom in full contact with his groin. Before he began to move in earnest, she was already contracting around him. He did not have to see the small siren's smile curving her lips to know that it was there. His appreciative chuckle ended in a soft groan as she raised herself on her elbows and gave him more freedom of movement. Holding her hips still, East withdrew slightly and thrust again. Sophie's unbound hair fell forward over her right shoulder. She bit off the small cry that came to her lips.

One of East's hands fell away from her hips, and when she felt it again, it was between her parted thighs. This time she did not catch her own cry and could not summon the least embarrassment for even one of her responses to him. When she felt his rhythm change so that the movement of his hips was quick and shallow, she gave herself up to the same quickening of his fingers. Every part of her body pulsed under him, and when he came it was as if he had set off a second round of charges. He had laid all of them with such care that she had only been aware of his caress. Now she felt the sparks of heat and light skitter across her skin wherever he had touched her: at the back of her knee, in the hollow of her throat, along the sweeping curve of her back. Her tender breasts knew the separate trails his fingers had made from peak to valley, and her flesh held the memory of the hot suck of his mouth.

It came to Sophie as something of a shock to realize that East was now stretched out beside her, and that no part of his body was touching hers. The light press of his fingertips still lingered at the base of her spine and her hips. She felt the sensation of his mouth on hers. She offered up a sleepy, sated smile and was warmed by the chuckle that rumbled deeply in his chest.

"I think you should have asked me to dance much, much earlier," she whispered.

"Had I known you could be tumbled for a waltz, I would have." East turned more fully on his side and propped himself on an elbow. "Could I have had you so long ago at Almack's, I wonder?"

Sophie eyed him carefully, trying to gauge the seriousness of his question against the teasing she hoped it was.

"You might have claimed a kiss that night, for I was truly smitten, but I would have been able to keep my petticoat firmly in place. In any event, you would not have suggested anything so improper as a tumble."

"You think I am such a gentleman, then?"

She smiled because he sounded a little disappointed that it might be her estimation of him. "I think you are a rogue with the manners of a gentleman. It makes you quite dangerous, you know. You might be anything you like in aid of serving your purpose—or that of Colonel Blackwood's." She leaned over and kissed him lightly on the mouth. "But I do not believe you would sacrifice your principles or your honor on anyone's account, and certainly not to fondle an innocent like myself in the heady throes of her first passion. You would have defended me against such an overture, not made one yourself."

"It occurred to me that you would require such a zealous defense this evening," he said wryly. "Edymon's eyes strayed quite often from your face, I thought."

"He was particularly admiring of my gown."

"He was admiring of your particulars."

Sophie could not quite keep her laughter in check. It came out as a delicate, expressive snort. Ignoring East's devilish grin, she said, "I noticed Lady Powell was attached to your side after your first set with her."

"A barnacle would have been easier to remove. She had no interest in me but was full of questions about South."

Sophie was skeptical. "I was a witness to the coy manner in which she wielded her fan. It is a wonder you were not bruised by so much playful tapping and batting." She gave East's forearms a cursory glance to assure herself this was not the case. "I have noticed that she has a proprietary nature. What did she want to know about Lord Southerton?"

"His whereabouts. He has come and gone from London again."

"He has?"

"Hmm."

Sophie frowned. "Is there nothing at all you can say to me? Is it your colonel's work again?"

East considered what he could say. This was not a matter of his trust in Sophie, but rather of the trust that had been placed in him by others. "South's absence from town is in some way connected to his work for the colonel, but that does not explain it entirely. He is gone now to Merrimont near Devon to search for Miss Parr."

"She has been absent from the London stage for quite some time."

"Yes, but South used to know where she was. Now he does not. The circumstances of her disappearance are unlike yours or Elizabeth's. She did not voluntarily leave him."

"Then why are you abed with me? You must help him find her."

Before Sophie unwrapped him from the warm cocoon of blankets and forcibly removed him from her bed, he caught her wrist and pressed her splayed fingers to his chest. "The offer has already been made and rejected," he told her. "West. North. We have all gone to him. He thinks I am unsympathetic to the swirl of gossip that surrounds his connection to the actress. I suppose because he knows our engagement put me squarely in the eye of a storm of rumors, he believes I am more than a little relieved to share the ton's attention."

"You might have told him we were married," she said gently. "He would have seen it a little differently."

East shook his head. "It was not the time. I could not express my own happiness when he is so miserable."

Sophie nodded, understanding. "His parents were my rescuers this evening. Did you set them on that course?"

"Your rescuers? How do you mean?"

"I left my aunt's side to better view the dancing, and Tremont slipped so easily to my side that he must have been lying in wait. At the moment I suspected he meant to be most difficult, Lord and Lady Redding arrived. Lord Redding engaged him in conversation, and her ladyship took me under her wing. She is the one who told me I would find you in the gallery. She seemed not at all alarmed to be part of an intrigue, but I suppose that is because she has had naught else to do of late but worry about her son."

East's cheeks puffed a little as he released a slow, measured breath. "It is my mother who is responsible for that timely intervention. I asked her to tell you where I could be found. I do not doubt that when she saw Tremont at your side she considered it would be better for Lady Redding to direct you. Your cousin would have hung on my mother's every word if she had engaged you in conversation."

"Then Lady Winslow was clever to have acted as she did."

"Yes, well, you should have little doubt that South's mother now knows more than I intended." He held up his hand when Sophie would have interrupted. "It is unimportant, and too late to change it if it were not. What did Tremont say to you?"

She hesitated and realized that it was a mistake to have done so. East was immediately suspicious that she meant to prevaricate. She was forced by her own brief pause to tell him the truth now. "He tried pleasantries at first," she said. "But I did not warm to them, nor to his discourse about the Prince Regent's brief appearance at the ball. I made to leave, and he took exception to it."