Joanna Bourne - Rogue Spy

Cloth slipped over her. She felt individual threads of embroidery brush by. Her breasts held back the glide of the linen for a moment, then let go. It whispered across her belly, down over her hips, till the hair between her legs was uncovered and cloth piled around her feet. Her mind tumbled and danced like a kite in a high wind.

He said, “I don’t deserve this.” Maybe he didn’t know he’d said that aloud.

She felt shy suddenly. “It’s not so much. A body. They sell them on the streets—”

“This isn’t about your body. It’s you. The body just comes along for the ride.”

He swept her up, easily, and carried her to the bed. He’d always looked frail, with his thinness and the keen, intelligent face. That was deceiving. Pax was distilled strength. Any weakness in him had been burned away in fire after fire his whole life.

He laid her on her back on the sheets, among the crumpled coverlet and blankets. The bed creaked under him as he climbed in to kneel between her legs. His body was dense. Solid. Hands smooth as soft leather stroked her thighs and opened her knees.

Not simply to take. Not to fall upon her, heavy and hurried. Her lovers had not been crude men or uncaring, but they’d been in a hurry, worried every moment they were with her, afraid of being discovered, of being forced to marry her, of public shame.

She’d thought all men were like that, grabbing for sweets like greedy children. Clumsy.

Pax was not clumsy.

The bedside candle lit his familiar, sharp-edged face. His pupils had become huge. Behind him, dimly, the cracks in the ceiling became and unbecame maps of unknown countries.

This was the man she had chosen in so many ways. This analytical mind. This disciplined body. This man with no softness over the stark frame of him. She ran her hands over the tendons of his neck, over the muscles of his back, tight with suppressed need, that stretched like whipcord across long, clever bones. His cock prodded her thigh and that was long and hard and clever as well.

He kissed her mouth and his hair fell and tangled with the kissing. He gave a low growl of need—of hunger—and began kissing his way down her throat, down between her breasts, down to where her ribs rose and fell, pumping breath in and out. She could lift her head and see him loving her skin with his eyes, his fingers taking in the ridges and valleys of her rib cage. Kissing each one.

He raised his head and met her gaze. “You taste like a color.”

“I do?”

“Rose madder.”

“That’s one of the reds, isn’t it?”

“Mouth color. Earth color. Color of that blossom between your legs. One of the oldest hues. Intense, and it doesn’t fade over time.”

“You’re making me a”—she drew in a shaky breath—“compliment.”

“You taste like sunrise.” He licked around her breast.

She jerked madly when he came to the nipple. Her body jangled like a hundred bells ringing and she curled around a pleasure so intense it was pain.

Slow as a kestrel hovering in the sky, his hands shaking, Pax stroked down her belly, staring and wondering. Stroked the insides of her thighs, under her buttocks, and around to cradle her hips in his hands. He lifted her, kissing down the long bow she made of herself. Kissed her between her legs, spreading the tangle of hair with his tongue. Lapped his tongue into her.

She choked out a gasp. Desire poured across her. Sweet. Honey sweet. She arched toward it.

Her lips formed “Oh, my,” without saying it. She’d read about this. In Latin. The aunts had an extensive library. But I didn’t know men actually did it.

Obviously men did.

He lifted from her to look into her face. “Even your shadows are red and gold. It’s like falling into a painting to touch—”

He jerked in surprise. Went completely still.

He looked over his shoulder. “There’s a cat biting my ankle.”

A cat?

She drew her elbows behind her back and propped herself up to look.

Where the sheets were thrown back in disorder, a ball of gray fur was wrapped around Pax’s leg, attacking the foot with single-minded intent.

She said, unsteadily, “It’s a kitten.”

“With teeth and claws.” Pax shifted to see better. The cat fell into a frenzy, growling, drawing little beads of red blood.

“It could be worse. He could have attacked . . . elsewhere.” She fell back on the bed, sputtering into laughter.

“I was thinking that.” He twisted free from her and detached the kitten, paw by paw, till he held it up by the scruff of the neck. He stood with it, magnificently naked, hugely erect, looking frustrated. He and the cat glared at one another, man to cat, cat to man. “A Baldoni watch cat. I should have expected this.”

She giggled like a schoolgirl. “A gray cat. Un gatto grigio.”

“I hated that nickname.” He gave a grin. “I’ll evict him.” He held the cat against his chest, stroking its head with one finger, and padded over to the door to undo the protections she’d placed there and put the intruder out.

Because she laughs at me, Pax thought. Because she’s never had a lover who gave a damn about her. Because we both may die soon. Because she’s beautiful.

I have to make this good for her.

Cami curled on the bed, biting her knuckles to keep laughter inside. Her breasts were pebbled up. The lithe, strong muscles of her thighs shook in fine tremors, thrusting a little toward him. Wanting. Ready.

He’d known the mechanics of this. He hadn’t known how he’d feel when he threw himself into this maelstrom and let it pull him under.

“If I don’t have you soon, I’m going to die,” he said.

“Come between my legs.” She opened her arms to him. Opened her knees. “Now.”

“Now,” he agreed. “Before Fate calls up hellhounds and vultures as well as cats.”

She drew him down to her. It wasn’t so complicated. Not when he wanted her this much. There, at the center, she was slick. She pressed against his hand when he stroked her hair aside.

When he entered, she rose to meet his cock. More than meet him, she thrust herself against him. He was inside her and she was smooth and beautiful, warm as rose madder. She closed around him and closed tight.

With everything he was, he drove into her. Again. Again.

Hard, he drove into her, felt her thrust back to him. Return everything he gave. Delight in it, need it, glory in it. All her strength answered to his.

She sobbed in a way that was also laughing. Her fingers clawed into him and she groaned deep in her throat. She tightened everywhere around him. Her entire body stiffened and thrashed hard, suddenly, once, twice, again, again.

The pleasure was like exploding everywhere, helplessly. He was in time, barely, to withdraw from her and spend against her thigh.

She shuddered one last time and softened under him and he collapsed on her, sucking in air. It smelled like lovemaking.

Men didn’t talk about this part, about holding a woman afterward, both of you plastered together, damp everywhere, your bodies somehow melting into each other.

I’ll keep you alive, Cami. I swear it.

He said, “I’m glad one of us wasn’t a virgin.”

The blankets and sheets were everywhere, but he laid his hand on one and pulled it up to drag over both of them. There didn’t seem to be any more hidden animals.

Cami lay perfectly limp. When he pulled her in next to him, she poured into the space like water. His cock stirred. Soon they’d make love again.

She opened her eyes. “What did you say about virgins?”

“Not anymore,” he said.

In the early hours of the morning, when the Crocodile tavern in Covent Garden was filled with petty tradesmen and laborers on their way to work, William Doyle took his ease at a narrow table in the dark corner, engaged in quiet conversation, eating breakfast, collecting information. He wore a leather vest and plain shirt, and around his neck, a Belcher neckerchief. Anyone glancing in his direction would assume he transported wagonloads of bricks for a living or sold cattle at Smithfield Market or, if they got a closer look, that he routinely committed theft with violence.

The young man across from him might have served in a draper’s shop or sold expensive gloves or pounded Latin into the heads of reluctant schoolboys. He was, in fact, a freelance seller of secrets. A collector of errors in judgment. An entrepreneur in other men’s moral failings. A blackmailer, in season.

“I need to know by tonight. Noon is better,” Doyle said.

“You give me very little time.”

“Nobody has any time,” Doyle said. “Give me hints, rumors, a whisper . . . anything.”

“I make no promises.”

“Do what you can.” Doyle slid a folded banknote across the table. It was covered smoothly and instantly by a slender, well-kept hand. The younger man rose from his bench and left like an amiable snake setting off to swallow barn rats.

At the tavern door he brushed past Bernardo Baldoni, entering.

Bernardo stepped to one side and stood with his back to the window, letting his eyes adjust to the dark, giving Doyle a long moment to look him over. Then he threaded his way around two tables to the shadowy corner behind the bar.

He sat on the bench recently vacated and set his hands in plain view. Bernardo was not a large or imposing man. He looked even less so when sitting across from the mass of muscle that was William Doyle. He said, “Mr. Doyle,” and it was a statement, not a question.