DD-Michaels-END.rtf (31 page)

"With my knife, of course. You seriously mean you didn't think of that?"

"You have a knife?"

"I
have
a knife."

"With you now?"

Morgan thought of the pistol she'd left inside, on the chair. "Not here, silly. Back there. With my pistol."

"Only you would bring a knife and a pistol to a romantic assignation." Ethan chuckled softly. He took hold
of her hand, pulled them both up onto their knees. "And
the woman wonders why I waited f
o
r
her
to
come to me rather man the other way round. A gentleman caller could get his head blown off."

"You're laughing at me," Morgan said as, bent at the waist and holding hands, they made their way to his open window. "Wasn't it you who said we might encounter some problems tonight, that we should be prepared?"

Ethan slipped inside his room and, his hands now around her waist, lifted her down beside him. "Prepared, yes. Prepared to cancel our plans. I never realized you'd take my words as a warning to arm yourself, imp. Although your determination flatters me. Are you so anxious to be ruined?"

Morgan placed her palms against his bare chest, where his buttons had fallen open, then slid them up and onto his shoulders. "Are you so anxious to ruin me?"

With the help of the moonlight, he looked deep into her eyes, and saw no lingering shadows. She'd faced her demons and conquered them, or had hidden them away. She certainly gave no hint that she wanted to talk with him about Jacob, about her strange mood earlier today.

He had to try. One last time. And he'd try with honesty, speaking from the heart he suddenly realized was in real jeopardy.

"We will marry," he told her quietly, reaching up to untie the satin ribbon at her throat. "We have to. I can't imagine my life without you in it."

Morgan's smile was small and somewhat sad. "Very pretty. Was that
to soothe your conscience, Ethan? I'
m
not asking for anything more than what we'll have here tonight. What we've been moving toward from
the beginning. Please, just give me tonight. Give us both tonight."

He wanted her, wanted her so badly. But she spoke as if this was their ending, not their beginning. He needed all of her, and he needed her forever. Even when he'd tried to tell himself that what he'd felt for
her was based on their obvious physical attraction to each other, he'd known there was more. Much more.

Once he'd possessed her, buried himself inside her and taken them
both to the heights, could he let her go?

Not as the earl, not as a gentleman, not as someone bound by the strictures of society..
.
but as a man. Could the man in him ever let her go?
Never.

So he said what had to be said, even if that meant he'd never have her. He didn't know what the words he would say meant, but he knew that she would.

"Is it the island, Morgan? Is it the ghost? Is it that once you're back at Becket Hall, safe in Ro
m
ney Marsh, I can't be allowed in, can't be trusted? Will
you let me love you, even love me in return, and then send me away? Can you do that? You'd give me your body, and still not trust me?"

Morgan had begun backing away from him as he spoke, and when her legs encountered the seat of a chair, she collapsed into it, still staring at him. "You... Chance?" She shook her head. "No, not Chance." Her eyes opened wide.
"Jacob.
Oh, Jacob, what did you do now? Hadn't you done enough?"

Ethan turned to close the casement beside him, then looked at her. "Only those few words, Morgan, that's all he said. The island. A ghost. The need to keep outsiders away. The chance you may all hang. I don't understand any of it, Morgan, although I believe I could make a few educated guesses. I only know that whatever it is you're all hiding at Becket Hall, you don't trust me enough to believe you can tell me. It isn't that you don't want to marry me, Morgan. I doubt you plan to marry any man, because you can't let any man too close. So you're using me, which is fairly lowering, imp. Using me to satisfy some curiosity I've raised in you. What would it be like to know a man? Know this man? So different from the men she's known."

"No," Morgan said, slowly shaking her head. She could see pain in Ethan's eyes. What was wrong with her? Was she destined to hurt every man who cared for her? "No, you're twisting everything. It's not like that. It was never just that."

"I know, Morgan," Ethan said, going to his knees in front of her. "Like recognizes like. Your mother's child. Nothing about you is simple, darling. You're a puzzle I can't unlock, that you can't seem to unlock, either. So what do I do? Do I take what I want, knowing this is all you're willing to give, all you're not afraid to give?"

He got to his feet, figuratively throwing down his last card, hoping it was the trump card. "I don't think so, Morgan. Much as I want you, ache for you, I don't believe I could live with that half measure. I might have thought I could, those first few days, but not now. Now, Morgan, it's all or it's nothing."

She looked up at him, tears standing in her eyes, and some trick of the moonlight seemed to bathe his entire body in a red glow rimmed with yellow...
t
he same aura she had seen around him that first day, as he stood in the bright sunlight.

Her dangerous man.

Did she trust him? Could she trust her own instincts?

Could she let him go?

"I.. .
I
can't tell you all about the island," she began slowly, "because I was still very young when we left it, came here. But Papa...
Ainsley and Chance and the others, they...
d
id some things." She looked away, closed her eyes. "We had to live, and that's how we lived. And then something horrible happened, and we had to leave. We all had to..
.
to die, and come here. Be the Beckets."

Ethan knelt in front of her once more. He thought for a moment about Chance Becket. Outwardly, a London gentleman...
b
ut there had been more to hi
m
—
h
e'd sensed that
,
too. A leashed wildness, an intensity not often found in London gentlemen. Ethan could picture the
man
on
the
deck
of a ship, shouting out orders. "I think I'm beginning to understand. They were pirates? Privateers?
"

Morgan bit her lips between her teeth, and nodded. "Papa took care of us, all of us, and then we had to leave, and we came here, and Papa ordered the ships dismantled
,
and now we stay here. We're safe here.
 
Nobody knows." She looked at him, straight into his eyes. "Nobody."

"Because they'd all hang for their crimes against the Crown," Ethan said, tight-lipped. "Then why come here? Why not America?"

She crossed her arms over her breasts, began to rock. It was such a long story, with so many twists and turns. "It was safer to hide here, where our enemy wouldn't think to look. Etha
n
—
i
t would take me days to explain, to make you understand. But this is my
family.
I've just trusted you with my family. Jacob was right. You can't trust a female when she wants a man. And now my family's safety is in your hands. What does that make me, Ethan? The world's greatest fool?"

He pulled her into his arms. "Hush, darling," he breathed against her ear as she wrapped her arms around him, as he lifted her high and walked to the turned-down bed. "It's all right, everything's all right. I shouldn't have pushed. I'm sorry. We won't talk anymore about any of this. None of it. We're here, just as we knew we would be, were meant to be. Tonight is our beginning, not our ending."

She looked up at him as he joined her on the bed. "There's so much you don't know. And if they don't accept yo
u
—"

He smiled slowly as he finished untying the ribbon on her dressing gown. She was so beautiful in the candlelight, and he knew he'd been waiting all of his life for this moment. "Ah, but I'm such a likable fellow. After all, you like me." He placed a soft kiss on her mouth. "Chance likes me." He kissed her bared shoulder. "His lady wife tolerates me."

He pushed down the sleeve of her dressing gown, to continue his line of kisses, and then stopped. Looked. Saw the bruise on her upper arm. The purplish imprint of four fingers and thumb, circling her tender skin.

Jacob.

He should have hit him harder.

Without saying a word, Ethan kissed the center of the bruise, then levered himself up so that he could look down into Morgan's face.

"It's all right," she told him quietly. "It was a mistake..
.
an accident. He didn't mean it. Please."

"Don't blame yourself," Ethan said, stroking her cheek. "He lost you, and he knew it. Just as he knew he never really had you, could never have you. That's not your fault
,
Morgan. You were
his dream, he wasn't yours."

Morgan let out a relieved breath. "I would have told you, but I was afraid you'
d
—
d
o something."

Ethan smiled. "Oh, I did do something, Morgan. Jacob needed someone to do something."

"I don't understand."

"You can forgive a man his stupidity, but that doesn't mean he doesn't need to feel some sort of punishment." Ethan slowly worked her other arm free of its sleeve. "I obliged him."

"Oh," Morgan said, feeling her worries about Jacob falling from her even as her dressing gown disappeared. "I suppose
th
is is something you'll tell me that men understand, and women don't?"

"Something like that. Tell me, have you noticed that I'm undressing you?"

“I've noticed that you're not kissing me," Morgan said, feeling confident and daring
and more than a little interested in whatever might come next. How free she felt, with just a small part of her secret now shared with this man.

Ethan grinned. "Not very virginal of you to point that out, darling."

"Really? I think I am entirely too virginal, my lord." She slid her hands inside his opened shirt. "But I believe you might be able to rectify that problem?"

They kissed, openmouthed, their tongues immediately dueling, their passions, banked and waiting, bursting immediately into flame.

He drank from her and she from
him, each kiss new, each kiss different, each kiss leading to the next.

Clothing was superfluous, so it was quickly gone, and they pressed their naked bodies together as heavy, drugging kisses continued, both of them consumed with wanting, yet reluctant to leave one pleasure for another.

Morgan held him tightly, her hands pressed firmly against his back, her nails digging into his skin, dragging up and down, pulling him closer, hard against her. She buried her fingers in the hair at the back of his head, swept her other hand low, over the muscled tightness of his buttocks. She skimmed the base of his spine, traced the small dip there and smiled against his mouth when he groaned low in his throat.

Ethan felt himself straining toward completion and knew he'd never forgive himself if he didn't slow down, if he gave all control over to his body.

Breaking their kiss, he began moving the length of her slim throat, pressing his lips against her soft flesh, tasting her as he dragged his tongue in the valley between her full, firm breasts.

He reached up for her hand, pulled it down and cupped it around the bottom of her breast, holding his own hand over hers as he lifted her, brought his mouth over her nipple and began to suckle.

"Ethan..."

His tongue danced across her nipple, flicking faster, faster, and Morgan, the sensual animal he knew her to be, pushed her breast up to him, offering herself totally, completely.

Much as he wanted to go slow, his need for her wouldn't let him. He took his hand from hers, skimming his fingers down over her rib cage, past the swell of her hip. Felt the quiver of her flat belly as his touch set off a response that also served to raise her hips up to him.

She knew. She knew where he was going, what he would do. And with no barriers this time, nothing to keep either of them from that most intimate touch.

Morgan bent her knees, digging her heels into the soft mattress...
t
hen held her breath, waited for his touch. Ached for his touch.

"Oh, God..."

She was wet, ready, and Ethan spread her so that he could stroke, stroke, and then dip carefully into her and stroke again. He felt the small, hard swelling of her and spread her even wider.

Her thighs fell open as he slid his leg over hers, her small, soft cries urging him on as his tongue and his finger kept time, his double assault also doubling the intensity of Morgan's need, an intensity that showed itself in the way she moved against his hand as she pleaded, "Please..
.
please..."