Page 77 of A Lady's Handbook of Espionage
Isabel’s gaze dropped to her hands. Those memories whispered from their little box at the back of her mind, all the things she buried deep that liked to sink their claws in during dreams.
“I was a virgin before that,” she said quietly. “Did you know? I mentioned in my briefings sent to Wentworth.”
A soft exhale left him. “No. I didn’t read them. They felt too . . .” He cleared his throat. “Personal.”
“Well, I described Louis Favreau to Vale physically, but didn’t mention that he’s quite beautiful. Blond, tall, blue eyes. To a half-starved girl of sixteen, he looked like an angel. That’s what I called him when he caught me attempting to pick his pocket.Un ange. And for those first few weeks, he was. He bought me food and clothes and looked at me like I was the only person in the world. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be someone’s sole focus? To be taken care of when you have nothing?”
Callahan’s expression was gentle. Not pity, just understanding. He shook his head.
“When a man starts to hurt you,” she said quietly, “you do anything to get the good back. Even if he holds you down and you realise it’s not safe to say no.”
Callahan slid his fingers into hers, holding tightly. “It won’t be like this forever. The nightmares. The restlessness. I know it doesn’t seem that way now.”
“Do you whisper that to all the battered creatures who warm your bed? Am I just another bird with broken wings for you to soothe?”
She expected him to recoil. To take the excuse she offered to retreat into banter or brittle silence. But he remained still.
“You know you aren’t.”
But she was broken. She didn’t even think she deserved this man, let alone his kindness. Parts of her still wanted to push him away. Save him from cutting himself on her jagged edges. She was built to break men.
“What if I used you again?” she asked. “Wanted you to hold me down and fuck me until it hurt? Would you do it? Would it get you hard to hurt me?”
She watched his throat work as he swallowed. Imagined sinking her teeth there. To stake her claim in the same primal language he’d used to write his possession across her skin.
“I get hard from you.” Stark. Unvarnished. “From the way you look at me when I’m buried inside you like you can’t decide if you want to claw my heart out or swallow it whole. I’ll fuck you however you want me to, Isabel.”
She glanced down at their entwined hands, the way his fingers engulfed hers. There was a terrible sort of symbolism in that – the notion that he could enfold all her broken pieces, swallow up the fractured sprawl of her until she disappeared entirely. Until Isabel Dumont was nothing more than a memory, a whisper of smoke on the wind.
“I think Favreau broke something in me,” she confessed, the words tearing themselves free.
“Do you?” Callahan’s voice sharpened.
“I thought when I was free of him, I’d never want a man’s hands on me like that again. That I’d want . . . softness. Gentleness.”
“Isabel . . .”
“I like it when you bruise me and cuff me, and I surrender. What does that say about me? That I can only find pleasure in the echoes of my own violation? Ronan, I think hebroke me—”
“No.” Callahan gripped her shoulders. “You’re not broken. What that twisted fuck did to you wasn’t about desire. It was about power. What we do together? That’s about trust.” His palm cradled her jaw, breath ghosting across her parted lips. “Little thief. Would you feel safe enough to say no with me?”
“Yes,” she breathed. Immediate. Unwavering.
“There’s the difference.” He stroked his thumb along her cheekbone, unbearably tender. “Safety. The certainty that I’ll never take more than you’re willing to give. The fact that you crave pain doesn’t make you broken. It’s all right to want it, sweetheart. It’s pain you choose.”
It was too much. The steady conviction in his gaze, the absolution of his touch.
“I’m so desperately sorry for Hong Kong,” she whispered, her eyes stinging. “I should have told you on the steamer when you asked—”
“Isabel, you don’t owe me any explanations. What’s done is—”
“I was pregnant.”
The confession dropped between them like a stone into a pond, the ripples of it radiating out.
Callahan’s breath left him in a sharp exhale. “What?”
Isabel curled in on herself, shoulders hunching. Her gaze skittered away to fix on some distant point over his shoulder, unable to look at him.
