Page 75 of A Lady's Handbook of Espionage
With a cry that Callahan muffled with his hand, Isabel climaxed as he fucked her harder.Harder. Giving one last brutal thrust, he spilled his release with a strangled groan.
Callahan slumped forward, pressing his forehead between Isabel’s shoulder blades as he struggled to catch his breath.
“You’re all right?” he whispered. “Was it too much?”
“I think you’ve broken me in the best possible way.”
A breathless chuckle as he withdrew from her. “Then I’ve accomplished my aim.” He righted his clothing and ran a hand through his hair.
“Arrogance is unbecoming on you.” Isabel bent to snatch up her undergarments, sliding them on with a wince. “Don’t let it go to your head.”
Callahan looked around at the scattered papers and journals in Harrington’s room. “Find anything useful before I disrupted you?”
“Possibly.” She retrieved a piece of paper stuffed between her breasts. “This is a letter from Ramsgate dated two months ago. I didn’t manage to read much of it before you bent me over like an overbearing scoundrel.”
Callahan took the missive from her and scanned the contents.
“Well?” Isabel demanded as she rearranged Harrington’s effects just as she’d found them. “Don’t leave me in suspense.”
“Harrington expressed reluctance to answer Ramsgate’s questions.” He glanced up at her. “Nothing else jumped out at you?”
“Nothing of merit, no.”
“Then we’ll focus our efforts on Harrington tomorrow. See if we can’t determine what Ramsgate asked him for.”
21
Isabel slipped from the sheets and dressed, careful not to disturb Callahan.
The door hinges creaked as she eased into the corridor. She’d never been still for long. With Favreau, there had always been another job. Before that, in childhood, her hours had been circumscribed by lessons and the distant, unyielding figure of her father.
Even in Boston, she had a routine. Breakfast, briefings with Vale, afternoon tea, dinner, a walk. At night, she always watched the stars and listened to the distant noise of the city.
She learned that staying still was when the thoughts crept in. And with the thoughts came memories. She had darker ones than most, a lifetime of cruelties and hunger and grasping hands. The blades that cut her open.
Memories like hers thrived when the world went quiet.
Earlier, she’d used Ronan. When a nightmare threatened her peace, she’d pushed him onto his back and he’d sleepily watched her as she rode him. Two hours later, she woke him again, and he’d pleasured her with his tongue.
Waking him a third time was tantamount to weakness, and that wasn’t acceptable.
So she moved. Her wandering feet took her down the servants’ staircase. She’d long ago internalised the most forgettable routes in any house. The better to avoid detection.
Isabel cut through the kitchen, deserted at this late hour. She appropriated a jug of ale from a cupboard, then continued her restless patrol, skirting the perimeter of the room until she spied the door she was seeking: the one that led to the gardens.
The air was rich with the scent of rain-damp leaves as Isabel scaled the ivy lattice on the house’s rear façade. Three floors up, she swung over a stone balustrade and sat, setting the jug of ale between her thighs.
She allowed her eyes to drift closed. The gleam of Favreau’s smile rose from her memories, the whisper of his blade at her stomach, the caustic burn of his spend inside her.
You make a magnificent canvas, ma belle. Don’t you like the pain?
No.
Not that kind of pain.
Not with him.
Isabel forced air into her lungs. Let those memories stay locked in their iron boxes, chained and muzzled. For now, there was only the dome of stars above and the answering vault of the city, a thousand pinprick windows glowing gold.
