Rogue Spy

Forty-two

Cami wanted him. Wanted him wholly, all the many virtues and lethalities of him. All of the man.

He was admirable in so many ways. There are sorts and degrees of adventurers. Some men were too wise to break and enter a dwelling inhabited by armed Baldoni. Pax took this risk in his usual imperturbable way.

She touched his hair where it fell over his forehead and the curve of his eyebrow, the sharp bone at the top of his cheek, wanting to memorize the bones beneath his skin. Or deeper than that—wanting to know the thoughts in his mind.

He said, “We have time. Time to taste each other.”

She wanted to taste him. He brought the smell of the night in with him, on his shirt.

He wasn’t wearing a knife sheath on his arm or fixed at his back. Perhaps he’d tucked that deadliness into his jacket before he tossed it aside. He was tactful as well as lethal. One does not wear a knife to a romantic assignation.

“I won’t let my cousins kill you,” she said, “in case you’re worried about that.”

“Getting knifed by your relatives is one reason I shouldn’t be here. There are others.” He fumbled at his cuff buttons and didn’t take his eyes from her face. “I can’t think of a single one right now.”

She found it exquisitely endearing that he wanted her so much he had become too clumsy to undo a button. “Let me do that.”

He held out his wrist in a gesture, deceptively tame and domestic, so she could slip buttons from their moorings and free him. This was a symbolically satisfying chore, freeing him from the bindings that held him. They sat on the bed and she enjoyed every nuance of undressing him for the first time. There could be only one first time, though there would be many other times, if they lived.

The shirt was good linen, soft with many washings. She smelled the faint, clean scent.

“I was lying awake,” she said, “looking at the cracks in the ceiling and seeing maps of Scotland and hoping you would come to me.”

His hold around her became adamant. “Let me get the rest of these clothes off.” He lifted her away from his lap lightly, as if she weighed nothing. Then he held her a minute longer as if his hands were reluctant to let her go.

At some point since parting from her he’d darkened his hair to brown. When he was above her and inside her, she’d reach upward with her mouth and taste his hair, damp with sweat.

He leaned to pull off his boots and tossed them to the side of the bed. When he stood to unbutton his trousers, he pushed his sleeves back in folds up his arms. His shirt fell in long, loose folds from his shoulders to his thighs. His upright cock jutted, clearly visible, nudged hungrily against the cloth. His eyes were full of heat.

And she . . . she was suddenly too restless to sit still. She swung her legs around and stood up to walk to the window. Her skin prickled with the cold and the floorboards were chill under her feet. She’d be grateful for the warmth of Pax’s body in that bed.

She closed the slit where the window curtains had parted when Pax came through, excluding even the last small crevice of darkness, tucking the edges together.

There are explanations to be made when one is a woman of some experience. She began, “The men I lay with—”

“You don’t have to tell me,” he said.

“It’s not an apology. I just wanted to say, those men didn’t know me. I opened my flesh to them, but not my mind. This is the first time I have made love with a man who is my friend.”

“I couldn’t do it at all,” he said. “I couldn’t take a woman to bed with me and tell her lies with every breath. Not a woman I cared about.”

“There were no good choices for us, were there?” He’s known only bought women. “The Coach House poisoned us both.” She rubbed her upper arms. Her shiver was not entirely from the chill in the air. It was excitement rising in her belly. “This will be different for both of us. I feel naked with you. Naked inside my skin because I have no wrapping of lies around me.” She shook her head. “I’m being dramatic.”

He crossed the room. Each step was set with care, deliberate as if he approached her across a lake, insecurely frozen, and any misstep might plunge them into the dark water beneath.

He was, of course, silent. That was the least of his skills.

They stood a few hand spans apart. Touching distance.

He said, “Truth. Lies. There’s probably a Baldoni saying about that.”

“Several. We say, ‘Telling the truth is planting coins in a field, hoping to reap bullion.’ You’re still dressed. Let me remedy that.”

He bent and let her take his shirt in handfuls of linen up, over his head. He came from her hands naked, beautiful, wholly at ease without clothing. That was another legacy of the Coach House, one of the more harmless.

The Greeks carved statues of their athletes and of their gods. Pax could have been one of them—an Olympic runner, stripped to lean muscle for speed, or the god Hermes. But the Greeks did not depict their gods in a state of arousal. Pax was most supremely aroused.

The sight of Pax, rampant in all his demanding sexuality, buffeted her like a fierce wind. Her breath built inside her and would move neither in nor out. Her skin heated.

The cloth of his shirt felt heavy and significant and warm as she held it. She wanted to take it to bed with her and hide it under her pillow, to keep the smell of him with her when he went away in a few hours. It was with reluctance she let it drop. That left no barrier between them, really, except her shift.

She said, “The first time, I was seventeen. He was the squire’s son.”

“Cami—”

“This isn’t about him. It’s about me. Let me tell you. He was very handsome and I hungered to fall in love and be foolish. Instead, I was mortifyingly sensible and calculating and clear-sighted. I was a French spy and could never marry anyone. He had to marry money. The daughter of a shipbuilder, as it turned out.”

“He sounds like a selfish popinjay.”

“He was a nice young man.”

“That condemns him absolutely. ‘A nice man.’” Pax shook his head, smiling. “What would you want with a nice young man? You scared him to death.”

“I don’t scare you.”

“Oh, yes, you do.”

Her lovers, both of them, had been dark, with wiry thickets of hair upon the body. She liked it that Pax was wholly different, pale as the moon reflected on a steel blade. That he was swift, precise, and austere as the blade itself. When she ran her hand across his chest, she felt smooth springing hair, invisible to the eye.

At seventeen, she’d longed to be overmastered by passion. Tonight she would be. There would be no careful exchange of pleasure in that narrow bed.

She was halfway mad already and Pax was shaking with the need to control himself.

She said, “I like your hair better when it’s white.”

“Disguise. I’m supposed to be sailing to France. About now, I’d guess.”

“Tonight? But—”

He set a finger on her lips. It was a shock, a vehement thrill. “That’s a long story.” His eyelids were heavy and half-closed. “I’ll paint you naked, if we both live. I’ll paint you in red silk and rose petals.”

She had never, not once, considered the possibility of being covered in rose petals. Her voice became husky. “You hollow me out until I’m full of wanting you. I can’t hold anything back. This is no light moment for me.”

“It isn’t light for me, either. There’s been no one else. No one but you.” She watched him follow his own fingers as they journeyed from her mouth, down her neck, to the pulse in the hollow of her collarbone. He said, “You hold me in the palm of your hand, Cami.”

To be told, so simply, that she had such power. That she was the first woman he’d felt this for. It left her without words.

He said, with stark simplicity, “This isn’t comfortable for either of us. Tonight, we’ll feel too much.” He slid her shift off, down her arms. “Let me unveil you. Let me see.”

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.