‘People are staring,’ she quietly admonished. But in truth she didn’t mind. Something very different was at work right now that transcended her concern over passers-by gawking at a gentleman nipping the neck of a lady in broad daylight. Channing Deveril wanted her without any contracts between them, without any extenuating agreements. She was tempted to ask why, but she didn’t want to know for fear the reason would ruin the illusion.
The steps came down and he helped her in. He shut the door behind them, his eyes intent on her. She felt her body tremble from the force of that gaze. The coach pulled out into slow traffic, taking her into uncharted territory where a man wanted her without games.
Channing reached for her, taking her face in his hands, covering her mouth in a long kiss. His kisses might be what she loved best: the taste of him in her mouth, the tease of his tongue as it caressed her, the press of his lips. Perhaps she loved it because the comte had never kissed, had never used his mouth the way Channing did. This was her discovery alone. She gave a contented moan. She would have been willing to settle for an afternoon of this; kissing Channing in a carriage with the curtains closed, but Channing had other ideas, better ideas.
He raised her arms and closed her hands over the steadying leather grips that hung from the coach walls. He hadn’t asked, hadn’t told her what to do, he’d simply done it and in doing so, he’d effectively moved them past kissing.
‘Hold on, don’t let go,’ he murmured, his hands working the fastenings of her jacket, pulling free the white linen of the blouse she wore beneath it, only to meet with a chemise. ‘You wear too many damn clothes, Alina.’ His voice was hoarse with frustration and need. There was the tearing of cloth and she was free, Channing’s hands at her bare breasts.
‘I love you like this, Alina, your breasts falling into my hands, your nipples hardening when I stroke them before I take them in my mouth one by one, each a sweet berry for my tongue.’
Alina moaned, her body arching into him. Channing’s words were a seductive litany of promises. His love talk was erotic, building an anticipation that started low in her belly and curled up throughout her until her entire body was on fire. Then, and only then, did he deliver on those promises.
He knelt between her thighs, her breast was in his mouth, his tongue driving her insane, his hand had taken pity on her and slipped beneath her skirts, sliding into the damp, warm core of her, moving in rhythm with his mouth. She wanted desperately to bite down on something, wanted an anchor amid the pleasure, but all she had were the straps and she’d promised not to let go. She groaned, her hips pushing against his hand.
But Channing knew what she wanted, needed, before she could even ask. He had only to raise himself up slightly to position himself at her entrance. Within moments, he was sheathed in her, sunk to the hilt in her wetness, her legs wrapped about him, rocking them with the movement of the carriage while she clung to the straps for dear life. Alina was vaguely aware she was screaming; his name, her pleasure, her release, her fulfilment. Never had she crested so wildly, so quickly, with so little control over herself. Channing had done this to her. No, not to her, for her.
She hadn’t the strength to hold the straps. She let them go, falling into Channing’s arms in a boneless heap as they both slid to the coach floor. He was sweaty and exhausted as he held her. For a long while neither of them spoke. Perhaps, like her, he wanted to hang on to the sensation, too, and there seemed to be no rush. It was hard to imagine so much pleasure could be found inside a coach. ‘I was misinformed,’ Alina said at last. ‘I was told carriages were rather difficult arrangements for this sort of thing, highly overrated as rendezvous points.’
Channing gave a tired chuckle. ‘Whoever told you that must not have known how to use one.’
She felt his arm tighten about her, felt the warmth of his body seep into her, felt a warning rise in her mind against all this comfort. ‘Why did you do it, Channing?’
‘Do what?’
‘This.’
He laughed into her hair. ‘I couldn’t have you thinking I was nice and ordinary, now could I? Anyone can take a woman to tea, but to make love in a carriage afterwards? Let me qualify that—to make good love in a carriage afterwards, that takes talent.’ He rapped on the ceiling, giving the signal to stop. ‘Do you know what else takes talent? Carrying it off in the park as if nothing had happened.’
It wasn’t an answer. It was a diversionary tactic and Alina recognised it as such immediately. Still, she was glad to get out of the coach a short while later, looking respectably decent. Tidying herself and focusing on the walk prevented her from thinking too much. Inside that carriage, the world had shifted to something more dangerous. In truth, it was not fair to blame it on the carriage ride. The shift had been in gradual evidence since they’d returned to London. Channing’s obligations had ceased and yet his concern persisted.
No one required him to set up the meeting with David Grey. No one required him to take her to tea or to continue any social association with her. Yet he had done all that and now he was walking with her in Hyde Park, at the crowded hour none the less, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He tipped his hat to a group of ladies as they walked by.
Alina laughed when they were out of earshot. ‘Channing Deveril, you are the most wicked man I know. If those ladies knew what you’d been up to...’ If they knew he’d been driving into her a half-hour before with nothing close to gentlemanly reserve, that he’d made her scream and then he’d made her question everything...
‘They’d be jealous.’ Channing disarmed her with a smile that had her already thinking about the next time. Perhaps they could get back in the coach right now.
‘A little arrogant, aren’t we?’ she teased. It was easier to tease than to ask questions, to think about what the afternoon meant, what being with him meant. She’d known what it meant when there’d been a contract. Now, she was at a loss. Perhaps she should simply leave it at impossible and move on.
Channing whispered at her ear, ‘It makes you wonder what everyone else has been up to when they get out of their carriages.’
Alina gave him a playful shove. ‘You are the reason it’s not safe for a girl to ride in a closed carriage with a man.’
He grabbed her hand and trapped it against his chest. ‘I’m the reason a lot of things aren’t safe.’ He danced her around the back of a wide oak that hid them from view, his eyes full of mischief. She could handle this. This was good, this laughing with him, the flirting, but it was an illusion. It had been like this the last time, too, and it had led to nothing, nothing that she’d hoped for anyway.
‘What are you doing, Channing?’ She gave a breathless laugh as he pressed her against the tree trunk.
‘Stealing a kiss.’ Channing bent to claim one, but she turned her head, his effort landing her cheek.
‘I meant, what are you doing with me?’ She was serious now. She needed answers before her emotions could become more entangled, more uncertain of the response she needed from them.
‘You’ve already asked that question once today.’ Channing nuzzled her with his nose.’
‘But you haven’t answered it,’ Alina pressed him. She pushed at him. Something in her tone must have warned him she meant business. Reluctantly, he stepped away. ‘I understood our arrangement at Lady Lionel’s. That was business and I dare say we each had our own games attached to that business. But this? There is no more business, no more obligation, Channing. All that happens now, or doesn’t happen now, is entirely up to us. So, what’s it to be?’
She hoped her bluntness would pin him down, force him to confess to whatever his agenda was. But Channing was too wily for that. ‘Do you want me to leave it alone, Alina? Do you want me to leave you alone?’
‘That is not fair.’ How dare he make it her place to announce her intentions, her feelings, when she’d been the one t
o ask him first.
His eyes were sombre, studying her with a gravity one seldom saw in the public persona of Channing Deveril. ‘None of it’s fair. It’s easy to talk about Seymour, isn’t it? He’s an external problem we can choose to solve together or not. Here’s what I think. You need my help with him. You are blind to the potential danger you might be in. Period. I have connections and solicitors that you do not. Additionally, I have protection to offer you that you do not have on your own should it come to that.’
He made it sound so logical, so practical to lean on him, just a little. Something primal leapt within her at the sight of Channing Deveril standing before her, booted legs shoulder-width apart, hands behind his back in a powerful stance, as masterful in this as he was in bed. In spite of her desire for independence, there was something thrilling, something confiding in having her burden shared. She wasn’t turning it entirely over to him, she could never do that, it wasn’t in her nature. But to share it with someone strong and capable was a relief all its own. ‘You’d be willing to help me with Seymour?’ Alina ventured to be sure she understood him correctly.
He gave her a smile that spoke of irony and her new-felt relief faded. ‘That’s the rub, isn’t it, Alina? Why would I be willing to invest myself in such a project? Especially, as you point out, when I am not obligated to do so by the agency or by any other standing between us.’
He paused and gave her a piercing look that made her want to shrink into the tree. ‘That’s the harder question to answer, isn’t it? What’s between us? Is there more between us than this contretemps with Seymour and the coincidence of encountering one another?’
Channing moved towards her, crowding her with his height, his size, making her entirely aware of his maleness, of what he was offering her; his body, tentatively even his heart, if she would answer those questions. Those two questions stood between her and Channing Deveril. ‘But we both know to answer that question, we have to talk of unpleasant things.’
She drew a deep breath and placed a hand on the lapel of his coat. ‘Not here. This is not the place.’ She was not going to have such a critical conversation in the middle of Hyde Park at the crowded hour.
‘Where?’ Channing breathed against her ear, making her tremble with wanting all over again. He might have been asking her for an assignation.
‘The Evert ball—are you invited?’ She arched her neck and let him kiss its length, the spreading spring greenery of the tree allowing them to steal the indiscretion.
‘Yes.’
Channing released her then. ‘Have my driver take you home.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘Aren’t you coming?’
Channing gave her a wicked grin and gave her back her own favourite cryptic response. ‘What do you think?’
She smiled and shook her head. ‘What a wicked creature you are.’
Channing swept her a bow. ‘I will consider the afternoon a success, milady. I have risen above your estimation of being nice and ordinary.’
Chapter Fifteen
Nice and ordinary would have made things easier, Channing thought later that afternoon. He sat on his side of the desk at Argosy House and Amery DeHart sat on his, but their roles were decidedly reversed for once. It was Amery who pushed a hand through his hair and said with an angst Channing recognised as a tone he himself had used not long ago with Nicholas and Jocelyn, ‘What the hell have you got yourself into?’
Channing hardly knew. One day he’d simply been taking over a standard assignment for Amery. The next, he was faced with a ghost from his past, the very inspiration for the agency. Even then, he might have been all right. He had his boundaries entrenched, the lessons he’d learned firmly in place. She would not sneak past his defences again. Yet she had. ‘She’s in trouble, Amery. There’s a man who has stolen from her family.’ Channing went on to explain the situation with Roland Seymour, how she’d wanted the introduction as a means of anonymously insinuating herself into Seymour’s influence in order to trap him, how she’d used a false deed.
‘Don’t you dare scold me,’ Channing concluded with a pre-emptory argument when Amery would have protested. ‘She would have asked you to do the same had you been there. It was what she’d hired you for.’
Amery gave him a wry look. ‘Was that all she wanted with you?’ He played idly with the pen on the edge of Channing’s desk. ‘She and I did not have a carnal relationship, merely a social one. She liked how I looked on her arm, nothing more. I am imagining from your tone, Channing, that she liked how you looked on more than her arm. In her bed, perhaps?’
It was Channing’s turn to look discomfited. Amery’s arrow had hit the mark most accurately and it was unnerving. He was used to being the one who read people so flawlessly. ‘Originally, I was glad you were back a little early,’ Channing replied drily, but Amery wouldn’t be put off the scent.
‘I was worried about you.’ Amery’s gaze was even now, unafraid to meet his. It was a sign of how Amery had matured in the past year, a sign, too, of how their friendship had deepened with Jocelyn’s absence. Once, it would have been Jocelyn Eisley, co-founder of the League, who would have sat in Amery’s chair, probing relentlessly for information from his friend. But Jocelyn had married and his wife held his attentions now.
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ Channing denied. But it was a blatant lie. There was everything to worry about, everything to sort through and reassess—not all of it was about Seymour, but also about that cruel cur of a husband.
‘I disagree,’ Amery answered. He leaned forward, hands steepling on the desktop as he fixed Channing with concerned hazel eyes. ‘Consider the facts.’ Amery ticked them off on his long fingers. ‘You are gone barely a week to a standard house party, to carry out a standard assignment, one that didn’t even expect physical intimacy, and yet you come home ready to slay dragons for a woman you didn’t even know or want to know. As I recall, I had to beg you to take the appointment.’ He paused, a certain gleam in his eye. ‘I’d have reconsidered taking time off, if I’d had any idea she was such a marvellous—’
‘Don’t you ever talk about her that way.’ Channing was halfway out of his seat before he realised Amery had deliberately provoked him. He sat down, feeling foolish, and worse, exposed. Amery would know something was up now.
Amery leaned back in his chair, wearing a satisfied but sad smile. ‘So it’s that way, is it? She got to you. She’s very beautiful, is she not? But there’s something hard and unyielding in her. She’s broken in some way. It’s what gives her that edge she carries.’
‘She’s not broken,’ Channing argued quietly. Far from it. She was strong, like a finely forged Damascus blade. ‘I think she was betrayed by a husband who had destroyed her trust in marriage and in men.’ He’d had time to think in the interim since the house party of what her disclosures meant, how those events had shaped her. Sex was power to her, the one weapon she had to turn men into playthings so they could not hurt her any more. It explained her hesitation today when things had moved beyond the lightness of flirtation.
‘I never dreamed Elizabeth Morgan would appeal so strongly to you,’ Amery put in.
Channing studied his hands. It wouldn’t be fair to keep the truth from Amery. ‘That’s not her name. She gave a false name in order to keep her identity a secret from Seymour. She’s Alina Marliss, the Comtesse de Charentes.’
Amery’s body stilled. ‘I know who that is. But I had never met her.’ The comtesse might run in high circles, but she was socially reserved. Channing nodded. Amery would not have met her. ‘It was why she waited to come to the agency when I was gone.’
‘You knew her.’ Amery’s mind was racing. ‘Not just from London circles, but from before, didn’t you? She’s the one Jocelyn told me about.’ It was like watching a candle light the darkness and Channing regretted ever complimenting Amery’s quick mind or trustin
g in Jocelyn’s sense of discretion.
‘Not by name,’ Amery rushed on, trying to minimise Jocelyn’s culpability. ‘He told me once you’d met someone in Paris, years ago, but nothing had come of it—
‘Nothing is coming of it,’ Channing interrupted. ‘It was an old and ill-timed affair.’ One that had taken six years to consummate.
Amery laughed. ‘Except that now she’s back and she’s in trouble and you want to help her the way you’ve helped all of us, from the footman at the door to the boys in the kitchen.’
‘Is it so wrong to want to assist those in need?’ Channing fired back, feeling entirely too vulnerable. Argosy House and the agency had become so much more over the years than just a strike against broken hearts.
Amery leaned forward. ‘Of course not. What can I do to help?’
‘After our meeting today with David Grey, I think we might need reinforcements,’ Channing said. Alina had left the meeting with Grey dead set on establishing that nearly impossible trend Grey had mentioned and he’d all but promised her under the oak tree to help. ‘I’ve already notified the agency’s team of solicitors to get on it right away. I want her protected against charges of forgery.’ He paused. ‘We’ll need protection of another sort, too. I don’t think Seymour is the kind who will leave this battle to the courtrooms. When he finds out what she’s done and what she knows, he’ll be furious and strike out of self-defence, if nothing else.’
Amery nodded and grinned. ‘No worries, I’ve already sent letters to Nick and Jocelyn. They’re in town for the Season.’
Channing raised his brows in a bit of surprise. ‘I didn’t know.’
Amery shook his head and rose to take his leave. ‘That’s just how far gone you are, my friend. You’re in over your head and you don’t even know it.’
Ridiculous. He was Channing Deveril, London’s luckiest man. Was he in over his head? Was that even possible? Not just with sexual games that offered overwhelming pleasure, not just with Alina’s bedazzling beauty, both of which would have been enough to overwhelm any other man. It was the revelations that had him spinning. The marriage had not just been one of discontentment as he’d originally believed, but one of humiliation and degradation. Danger was not new to Alina. She’d lived with it before. No wonder she felt immune to whatever threat Seymour might pose, no wonder she didn’t take the man seriously.
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