He arched one brow. Let a moment tick past before answering. “We finally found someone who saw Justin in his curricle in the early hours of the morning after Randall was killed. An ostler at an inn on the outskirts of the city-on the Dover Road.”
“Dover?” Looking down, she frowned. “There’s nothing at Dover.”
Other than the packet to Calais. Christian saw no value in stating the obvious.
She shook her head. “He won’t be going to Dover.”
Which, despite appearances to the contrary, was his-and Tristan’s-experienced conclusions. “We think he’s deliberately laying a trail to make it appear he fled the scene, and then the country.”
She looked up at him, still frowning. “He’s deliberately making himself look guilty?”
“That’s the way it…feels.” Instinct more than fact had informed his and Tristan’s opinions.
Her frown deepened. “But…why?” Swinging away, she flung out her hands. “Why do such a senseless thing?”
He had one very good idea, but it wasn’t wise to suggest it, given her still fraught state. His supposition was all but guaranteed to send her into another bout of histrionics, albeit aimed at her brother, not him.
She suddenly swung around and strode back to him. “We have to find Justin. We have to locate him wherever he is, and bring him back and exonerate him in the eyes of the authorities and the world.” Halting before him, even closer this time, eyes locked on his, she jabbed a finger into his chest. “You have to do something!”
He caught her finger.
She frowned, tugged, but he didn’t let go. Lifting her gaze to his eyes, she narrowed hers in a glittering, dangerous glare.
Which had entirely the opposite effect on him than she intended.
Through his hold on her hand, he could feel the tension thrumming through her. Her temper was another form of passion; her earlier outburst had opened the floodgates, leaving her passionate, sensual self very close to her surface.
It had been twelve long years since they’d been this close. He looked into her eyes, and saw desire and heat well even as her lips firmed.
“I think,” he said, refusing to let her hand go even when she tugged again, “that it’s time to discuss a down payment.”
He was playing with fire and he knew it.
Knew her fire all too well.
Had never forgotten it.
“Just for getting a sighting?”
He smiled intently. “Consider it an incentive to learn more.”
Her eyes couldn’t get any narrower; they gleamed like molten gold. With her hand trapped in his, no more than an inch separated them, separated the black bombazine covering her breasts from his chest.
“What, then?”
Her voice had lowered, her tone provocative, challenging, demanding. A tone that, despite all, certainly despite her intention, racked his arousal one notch higher.
She held his gaze. “What do you want?”
The answer was obvious. “A kiss.”
“A kiss?”
Her expression was, to him, transparent; she’d guessed his direction regarding payment correctly. She wasn’t surprised by his choice; instead, she was…
Angry all over again. He saw the flash of temper in her eyes in the instant before she wrenched her hand from his slackened grasp, snapped, “Very well,” reached up with both hands, framed his face, moved into him-and kissed him.
With all the passion her temper had stirred.
With all the heat, all the fire pent up inside her.
It was a relief to let it go. Letitia let every reservation, every barrier she had, all the walls she’d erected over the long years to bank her passion, fall. Simply fall to the ground.
Let all the yearning in her passionate soul free.
He wanted a kiss? Very well. She would give him one, one he wouldn’t soon forget, and gain as much as she gave-for one long moment revel as the woman she used to be.
His.
She wasn’t the least bit surprised when he reacted, when he wrapped his arms about her and hauled her against his chest. It had always been like that-her passion effortlessly igniting his.
His lips firmed, then he tilted his head, the kiss changed and he was in command, so he could part her lips and invade her mouth and lay claim.
And send her senses soaring.
Heat poured through her, welled and swelled and spread. She could feel it in him, that same helpless reaction, in the hot kisses he pressed on her, the scorching heat between them as he stole her breath, then gave it back.
Need and desire infused her, and him, there, potent and real in the hardness of his lips, in the grip of his hands on her back.
She would have laughed if she could have, thrown back her head in sheer joy. In the indescribable delight of feeling alive again, of feeling lust, desire, and physical need again.
Of being his again, for however short a time.
She grasped the moment voraciously, tunneled her fingers into his hair and gripped his skull, clung, hung on as they swirled in the spiraling vortex that had risen up and seized them. Frankly reveled in the knowledge that she could still lure him, could provoke the languid lion to action, and more, could still arouse him.
That last was beyond question. The hard ridge pressed against her belly was testament enough to his state. As were his increasingly hungry, nay ravenous, kisses.
She urged him on. Reached up and wound her arms about his neck, pressing against him in flagrant invitation.
Need flared deep inside. Hotter than she remembered, molten and greedy.
And suddenly the kiss wasn’t enough.
Dragging her hands from his hair, she pressed her palms to his shoulders, ran them slowly down his chest, savoring the heavy muscles that seemed harder, heavier, than she recalled.
She knew what it felt like to touch his skin, to feel it against hers. The memories surged, brilliant moments that had tided her over all the long years since. They erupted into her reeling consciousness, and compelled.
Then his hands were on her, closing about her breasts and kneading, sculpting her body, blatantly possessive, and she had to respond.
To his heat and his need and his desire.
To the passion he pressed on her through the kiss, through the commanding, demanding caresses that set her skin afire, that flayed her nerves with sensual pleasure, and an explicit promise of more to come.
She had to have that more.
Had to make him want as she did, make him desire as she did. To strip away the studied calm with which he faced the rest of the world and touch the real man-the warrior, the ruthless demanding conqueror-beneath.
The knowledge that she could had always thrilled-a thrill she’d never thought to feel again. But he was there, arms like steel trapping her, his lips on hers, his tongue plundering her mouth, his large hard hands sliding down to cup her bottom and shift her provocatively against him again…and nothing else mattered.
She pressed his coat wide, fell on the buttons closing his shirt, returned his kiss with a fervor to match his. To taunt, to incite, to demand.
And he gave her what she wanted, dropped every last shield and joined her on that primitive sensual plane on which they’d always danced.
She wasn’t even aware when they sank to the floor, to the silk rug that lay between the sofas.
Christian drew her down beside him. Thought had long flown. Instinct ruled.
In asking for a kiss, he hadn’t expected this-an explosion of need, his as well as hers, a raging fire in his blood he was unable to deny, to control, to even guide. A conflagration from which there was no drawing back.
She was the heat he’d been searching for, the warmth, the life. She was raw passion and need, a bright, slender, scorching flame he’d never been able to forget.