Joanna Bourne - The Black Hawk

Nothing could be more masculine than that hard palm of his hand. She had become the center of a determined and focused hunger. Hawker’s hunger. It was hard in his body and his spirit. Clean-edged as one of his own knives. She read all that in the single touch on her face.

Soon, he would thrust into her and she would receive him.

A man. Inside her. She waited for the slick chill of nausea to uncoil in her belly. It did not come.

HAWKER ran the side of his thumb along her cheekbone, feeling the soft of it. Strange to know a woman like Justine DuMotier was soft to the touch. In her eyes, the pupils were contracted to tiny hard points. If she wanted a man’s hands on her, he was a caterpillar.

“Why me?” he said.

“There is not one man in a thousand who would ask such stupid questions when a woman offers herself to him.” Now she looked annoyed. That was better.

“I’m an unusual man.”

Touching her distracted him, so he stopped doing it and folded his arms. Her skin still called to his fingertips. Sort of an itch, making him want to touch her some more. “Why me? Why here? Why now?”

“Oh, then. Reasons.” She huddled into herself, hunching a shoulder, looking sulky. “I have heard rumors of you and I am curious. Is it so strange I would wish to pass a pleasant afternoon with . . . an old friend? We have been something like friends, have we not, though it is inconvenient for both of us. There is no reason we should not come together pour le plaisir.”

“For pleasure.” But she wasn’t hungry for him. Not a sign of it in her anywhere. “Do you do this much—go to bed with men?”

“You know what I am. There is nothing I do not know of the many acts of love.”

That didn’t answer his question, did it?

She raised her cup from the stones of the hearth and hid her face behind it. Hid her eyes by looking down into the tea. “It is not so surprising I wish to lie with you. You have acquired a reputation, did you know? You are said to be a young steed in bed. I stayed in an inn in Milan run by two widows. They had many interesting tales to tell about you.”

Milan. The merry widows. Oh, yes. He remembered them kindly, and not just for being warm and welcoming and what you might call educative in bed. They cooked like angels. “I offered to marry them both, but they didn’t take me up on it.”

“They admired your skill, however. You would blush to hear them speak of it. There was also the foolish young kitchen maid you sent away from your room in the night, telling her to come back when she was older. They have not forgotten that.”

“I’m a prince of a fellow.” He squatted down next to her so their eyes were level. “What are you up to, Owl?”

“Nothing evil, I promise you. A few hours of your expertise in bed. With you, I might . . .” She drank the last of the tea. “I did not come here with this intent. Now it seems inevitable, as if it were destined. I have been thinking about this for more than a year.”

“Thinking about going to bed with me?”

“Sometimes. I have imagined others, but it did not . . .” There was a little tremor in her hands where they were wrapped around the empty cup. “It did not turn out to be possible, after all, when I faced them.”

He’d made it a policy never to take on a woman with a herd of private nightmares. He broke that rule more often than he kept it, but that didn’t stop it being a good one. If he had any sense, he’d stomp off into the rain and find a bed in Doyle’s house.

But Owl was shaking. A woman like her, afraid.

And, by God, he wanted her. He kept pushing that out of his mind, but it kept coming back. She’d turned into a woman. She had breasts, for God’s sake. Nice ones, from what he could see. He could almost taste them. But he wasn’t going to play the fool for a lovely body. Not even Owl’s lovely body.

Then she said in a small, flat voice, “I am weary of being a coward,” and he was lost.

She’s leading around three thousand demons, give or take. I guess I could kill a few. “I keep hearing that. ‘Justine DuMotier, the coward.’ Battle of Arcola and you underfoot through the worst of it. They sent you into Verona, alone, and you went. Coward right to the heart.”

“Do not be stupid. That is our profession. If it terrified me, I would take up knitting.” She breathed out. The air brushed his face like she was touching him. “I wake from sleep, shaking. When I think of being with men, I am afraid and ashamed and my stomach is unwell. This will stop, when I have done this with you.”

“It might. Owl, it might not.”

“You are skilled. You have that reputation. You are known to be discreet. We will part, and our paths do not cross often.” She looked up with an absorbed and grave expression. “We will do this once. It should not take long. I know what to do to—”

“You don’t know a damn thing. You’re worse than bedding a virgin, which I will mention is something I do not do. You know too much that’s wrong.”

“I am very skilled. I am not ignorant. I—”

“You are ignorant as a clod of dirt. If I had any sense I’d just walk right out of this and go sleep in the rain.” Looked like he didn’t have any sense. “I’m not flattered, in case you’re wondering. There’s a name for men who pleasure women for a living.”

She’d gone motionless, the way you do in an alley when there’s men hunting you. Or maybe like she was afraid she’d shatter apart if she wasn’t careful. “Are you saying no?”

Not on your life. “Just pointing out some of the complexities. You’re an enemy agent, for one thing, which is a complicating factor of some magnitude.”

He settled back on his heels, digging into the knot of his neckcloth, thinking. She’d been hurt so bad.

He never understood the way some men treated women. Himself, he never got tired of the marvel of them. The sounds they made when they felt good. When you made them feel good. There was nothing in the world like it.

Maybe they could outrun her ghosts. “I should have sense enough to let you be . . . but you’re so damn beautiful.”

HIS KISS—THE FIRST ONE—WAS COOL ON HER FOREHEAD. It felt like he said hello to her body in this way. It reassured her.

He leaned back. She saw that his eyes had gone vehement and dark, as if he deliberately laid aside a layer of civilization along with his neckcloth. He tossed it, without looking, up onto the chintz-covered chair.

Three buttons held his shirt closed at the neck. He was fast, getting them undone. One button. Two. Three. She appreciated the speed. It would be best to get this over with as quickly as possible.

He said, “You’re going to drive me mad. You know that?”

“It is not my intention to—”

“Well, it’s too late, innit? Set the damn cup down before you drop it.”

She had been holding it protectively between him . . . and her. She put the cup down into its saucer on the hearth.

He reached to cradle her chin in long, clever fingers. “Let’s try this.” He kissed her mouth.

I do not like the kissing part. It’s not the worst, but I . . .

She lost the thread of that thought as he nibbled upon her lips. Nip, nip, nip, traveling from one side of her lower lip to the other. He licked her upper lip as if he reveled in the shape of it against his tongue. Her mouth opened to him and he plucked at her lip with his teeth and sucked. He was not tentative.

It tickled. No, not tickled. It was little shocks that made her want to turn away. Or move closer, somehow.

She put her hand up to her face. Not to stop him. To touch . . . her mouth. His. The joining of the two.

He had already drawn away.

“Right.” He did not sound entirely calm. “All the parts in working order. We get our clothes off next. Give me a minute.”

Some men liked to take off her clothing. Some wanted her to do it herself, while they watched. The fichu kerchief she wore, crossed in front, was tucked into her bodice. She eased one end free, touching the curve of her breast as she did so. Teasing. She had done this many times—

“Stop it,” he snapped. “Just undress. And stop goddamned thinking about everything.”

“You are very bad tempered. I do not stop thinking because you order it.”

“Then think about me.” He unbuttoned his cuff and shook his arm so the sleeve loosened. He was scowling. “I’m going to risk getting kicked out of the Service, taking you to bed. You bloody well be here, body and soul, when I do it.”

Body and soul. He wanted to touch both her body and her soul. No. That would not happen. That was not what she had planned.

He pulled his shirt over his head in ripples of white linen, and came out, still frowning. He crumpled the shirt in his fist and tossed it behind him and stood up, making it one continual motion. He reached both hands down, wordlessly, to take her hands and pull her up to stand beside him.

He skimmed his breeches down and kicked them away and he was naked. His cock was upright and large, which he continued to ignore. She had made many compliments to men in this regard. Now, when she might have spoken sincerely, she said nothing and resolutely looked elsewhere.

He was the same brown everywhere. That was from being in Italy. She had seen the boys and young men, naked as fishes, swimming in the heat of the day, in the harbor between the boats or beside the bridge of a river, and envied them that freedom.

He was so thin. The British gave him no peace and no rest. They used him as a courier when he was not set to more serious work. His ribs showed, each one separate and defined. The muscles of his belly, his shoulders, his arms, were stark as rocks jutting from a hill, smooth as peeled wood. He was a fierce and violent simplicity, like a force of nature. There was not the least softness upon him anywhere.