Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

The candle he’d seen from below was in a glass chimney on the dressing table. Another was at the bedside.

He pushed aside the curtain with the back of two fingers. Cami lay on her back in bed, eyes closed, her hands clasped behind her head on the pillow. She’d pulled the sheets and coverlet as high as her heart. Her breasts were covered in a chaste white night shift, made of linen so thin her nipples showed through. Her hair lay in curls on the white of the pillow like the first ink on clean canvas.

She showed she wasn’t asleep, and provided a reason it would be unwise to be a burglar entering this house, by opening her eyes. A knife had found its way to her hand that hadn’t been there an instant ago.

If he’d been less certain of his own skill, he might have thought he’d made some sound climbing up. He hadn’t. Cami just knew.

He pushed the curtain back all the way. “I was passing and I saw your light.”

“I hoped you would. I’m glad it’s you.”

“I’m glad it’s me, too. I’d be stepping over a corpse, otherwise.”

“Another man would have set the dogs barking.”

“Sausages.” He put his hands on the windowsill, swung across, and put his boots to the floor. “While we were eating, I slipped them sausages under the table.”

“Everyone slips them sausages under the table. Baldoni children in medieval Florence slipped sausages to the ancestors of those dogs.”

“They trust me because I smell like you, from kissing you over the last couple days.”

“They’re canny dogs.” She sat up as he crossed the room to her and dropped her knife carelessly on the bedside table.

I’m wearing more clothes than she is. I have to get out of them. He sat on the bed beside her and leaned to take her head between his hands. He kissed her, not reverently. Not like the prince waking Sleeping Beauty. He kissed her like a man taking his first drink of water when he’s dying of thirst.

She pulled herself upward and put her legs underneath her till she was kneeling on the bed, pressed against him, solid and urgent. Her lips tasted like mint pulled right out of the earth, still warm from the sun.

He said, “I have to get my coat off. I want to touch your skin with my skin.”

Her tongue came inside his mouth and he stopped worrying about what he was wearing or not wearing. The world closed in till it held one sensation, one thought, full of the knowledge of her mouth.

His cock, huge and sensitive, rose, moved of its own accord, demanded. He gave a little of his mind to controlling that. The rest, he gave to her.

She withdrew from his mouth. Her arms still around him, she laid her head to his chest and breathed onto his neck.

His. She was his. For this one moment, she was his.

He closed his eyes. This was what he wanted, no light, no color, no shapes and angles. Only the dark velvet of her breath against his throat. The silk of her hair under his chin.

Where did he put his hands on her? What did he touch?

I can get this right. I speak six languages like a native. I know how to fight. How to kill. How to march ten men across a mountain range in winter. Twenty-four years old and I don’t know where I can put my hands.

I’m supposed to know what to do next.

None of the books he’d read said anything useful.

He opened his eyes, looked down at her head, resting on his chest, and kissed into the tender, soft cluster of curls.

Touch her. That’s what she’s saying. She’s saying I can touch her anywhere. He put his hands on her shift, under her breasts, holding that soft curve. Her rib cage was full of breath and the fast pound, pound, pound of her heart. He held life, warmth, breathing, vibration, all the miraculous complex whole of her.

I will never hold a woman’s flesh again and not remember this.

He lifted her and she lifted herself, pushing down upon his shoulders till her little, perfect breasts were at his mouth, ready to be kissed. His cock held a hunger so huge it was pain. “I want to make love to you.” His whisper came out low and grating.

She laughed, deep in her chest. He felt the sound of it in his bones. She pushed a little away so they could see each other better. “I want you back.”

“I’d better set about seducing you.”

“Oh, yes.”

She was playing with his hair, drawing it through her fingers. An ache spread from his groin and filled his whole body. He was going to die of this. Practical matters. Deal with practical matters. “I need to take my clothes off but I don’t want to let go of you.”

“A problem.” Her face was bright with laughter. Lit from inside with it. Dancing with it. “I’ll help.”

She wriggled to a more comfortable position. Torment. He was rigid for her, hard and heavy with wanting her. He was going to . . .

No. He had himself under control. Deep breath. Another deep breath. “Don’t move. Give me a minute.”

“I will give you an entire night.” Her hands went to his cravat. She worked on that, her eyes downcast, absorbed in drawing the knot apart. “We’re in no hurry.”

His cock was in a hurry.

She wasn’t naked, but she might as well have been. The shift showed her breasts as if she were naked. He didn't need years of experience to tell him she was lovely.

I can live through this. He’d be inside her in a minute. Two minutes. Ten minutes. A century. “You have very beautiful breasts. I’ve seen many breasts and those are a fine example.” He was babbling.

So he held her shoulders, thin shoulders all bone and soft skin, and a body filled with fire. Fire like the first fire taken from the hand of Prometheus, clean, vital, unending. That was what he felt under her skin, inside her, where his hands rested on her shoulders.

She unwound the cravat from his neck and pulled it away, long and long, and tossed it over her shoulder. She didn’t look to see where it landed. She said, “You’re worried. You don’t have to be worried. I’m not a virgin.”

“That’s good.” His voice was hoarse. Thank God there weren’t two virgins in this bed.

“There were two men, back home in Brodemere. One, when I was seventeen. The other—”

“Doesn’t matter.” Another thought came, breaking through the madness that filled his brain. “Unless I have to kill somebody.” His hands tightened. “I can do it next week. Just tell me who.”

“You don’t have to kill anybody. They were fine men. I liked lying with them. It was . . . pleasant.”

“Pleasant. Good. I’m glad. Let me get some of this clothing off me.”

Pleasant wasn’t good. He’d have to do better than pleasant. His hands didn’t quite shake when he unbuttoned his vest, but they weren’t steady either. He pulled his arms from jacket and vest together and tossed them on the floor beside the bed. He managed to do that without dislodging Cami.

She said, “I think I would have liked lovemaking more if my lovers had not had to hurry so much. They always worried we might be caught.”

Sounds like a couple of selfish bastards. “I’ll try to go slow.” His shirt now. He’d get out of his shirt. He undid the buttons at the collar. “We might be caught. You have a house full of cousins. Uncles. Aunts.”

“I locked the door and wedged paper in so it won’t open. If anyone comes you can flee through the window as if this were a bad play.”

She was teasing him. Laughing. Everything that was Cami, all her spirit, all her courage, all her wild embrace of life, was under his hands.

He fell into her grin. He wanted that on canvas. He wanted everything of her. Everything of Cami. Wanted to draw it, taste it, see it again and again. He was caught by the planes of her face. He ran his fingertips there and there as if he were light falling on her.

She said, “Love me.”

He held her hips and pressed her down onto the raging hunger of his cock and kissed her. On the soft, pulsing temples, on her cheeks, under the curve of her throat.

She was the one to shudder now. The one to breathe faster.

Not her mouth. Not yet. That would have undone him.

He licked the curve of her ear. Took her earlobe and bit down on it and let himself drown in madness.

They sat in rush-bottomed chairs in the kitchen in front of the long hearth—two old people, brother and sister. They were rich, back in Tuscany, in land, farms, and vineyards. Rich in power, which was more important.

If they chose to sit in the kitchen with their feet at the fire, if they dabbled in fraud and bamboozlement, if they raised a pack of noisy, larcenous grandchildren in London or, barefoot, in the big villa in Tuscany, it was because a wise man does not forget his roots.

“The boys”—Giomar, Tonio, and Alessandro—had eaten hugely, downed a pitcher of red wine between them, and gone off to bed.

Bernardo drank hot watered brandy. Fortunata, a tisane of mint and cloves from a flowered teacup. “He’s upstairs now,” she said.

“Admirably silent.” They’d heard no sound when he entered the window on the floor above. Bernardo cradled the terra-cotta cup between his palms. “An Italian would serve as well, a family from Piedmont or Sardinia. One of the Rossi in Milan. We could find someone who would not meddle in politics.”

“A milksop.”

“He would be more welcome.”

“Not to Sara.” Fortunata was very sure. Two brown dogs sat at her feet, alert but silent, knowing there was a stranger upstairs, sensing he was to be tolerated, intrigued by this.