Page 53 of The Spy’s Song

Then she glared at him as if the sound were his fault. "Do not become pleased with yourself."

"Far too late."

Louise pressed her lips together and watched him, gray eyes bright with the effort of refusing him another reaction. Rodrick stroked his thumb along the inside of her thigh, felt her tense beneath the touch, and understood with sudden, vicious satisfaction that those magnificent legs were not nearly as disciplined around him as their owner would have liked.

Rodrick slid one hand beneath her knee and the other along her opposite thigh, then eased her legs apart. Louise let him guide her farther than he expected, and he watched the long lines of her body open for him and felt a dark little thrill at discovering just how much flexibility she had.

When he widened her stance another fraction, he forgot entirely about the legs. Apparently they had only been the road to a more serious problem. Her sex opened for him, and Rodrick dropped to his knees.

Louise frowned down at him. "If you intend to take my virginity, Montfort, why are you on the floor?"

Rodrick looked up at her from between her thighs. "You have the high ground, Louise. Now lie back and enjoy the advantage."

He would not take her virginity. But he would take her apart.

Rodrick gripped her hips and dragged her to the edge of the bed. Her thighs tensed beneath his palms, and she braced herself on her elbows.

Leaning in, he pressed his mouth to her sex, licking from the base of her folds to the tip. He opened her with his thumbs and buried his mouth again, tasting her, claiming her, marking the place where her control ended.

He passed his teeth along her labia, just to see her jolt. Then he held her hips steady when she tried to lift them, and the startled sound she made tightened his gut.

He licked again, making his tongue flat, and tasted the ache she tried to bury under pride. She was wet already, and when he slid his tongue inside her, she gasped. Rodrick thrust his tongue deep, again, again, driving into her. Her thighs trembled around his shoulders. He knew she was close, knew it by the ragged edge of her breath, the way her legs tried to close and open at once.

"Rodrick, this is—I can't—"

His cock was so hard it bordered on pain, and he shifted against the mattress, jaw tightening at the scrape of cloth and the answering ache low in his body.

So much for detachment.

Louise arched toward him, and Rodrick nearly lost the rhythm. She would know exactly who had brought her here. Not Gaetan, with goodness shining through him like stained glass, but Rodrick—dark spy, corrupt soul and all.

Her stomach quivered, then contracted, and her ballerina feet pointed. She was coming. A roar erupted from his chest, and he surged upward, planting his hands beside her head. He held himself above her with his arms locked, breathing as hard as any rutting beast.

His knees pressed into the mattress on either side of her legs, while Louise lay beneath him flushed and loose-limbed, her hair spread across his pillow and her gray eyes still blurred from her orgasm. Each breath she released warmed his mouth. He could taste her on his tongue, and when she shifted beneath him, the movement brought his erection against the soft heat between her thighs.

Eighteen months. Christ. Eighteen months in which his body had apparently been storing every abandoned appetite for this exact moment. He pressed his hips down before sense could intervene, and the coarse fabric of his breeches dragged over him with enough friction to make his abdomen seize. Louise inhaled sharply beneath him. Rodrick did it again, slower this time, and the combination of pressure, her warmth, and the small sound she made struck through him so violently that his arms trembled.

Rodrick held himself still above her. "Last chance to send me away, Lou."

She seized the back of his neck. "Right now, if an army tried to take you from me, they'd have to fight me first."

Rodrick had spent half his life fleeing precisely that kind of devotion. He had never considered what might happen if someone offered it to him.

The pressure of her hand at his neck was nothing, and yet he could not move.

He kissed her back with everything he had. No calculation. No plan. No mission. Just the sharp truth that she wanted him.

Rodrick tore his mouth from hers only far enough to breathe. Then his hands went to the fall of his breeches. The buttons refused him. He could open a cipher in three languages, but four inches of horn and cloth were beyond him.

"Damn it."

His fingers finally found their discipline. One button. Then the next. He dragged the fastening open and shoved the cloth down.

She opened her thighs for him, and he guided his cock through her folds. The slick contact sent an ache through him so sharp that instinct demanded one brutal movement forward and an end to months of wanting nothing at all.

He tightened his jaw. If he plunged inside her now, he might hurt her. And he suspected his long-vaunted sophistication would survive approximately three thrusts before disgracing him. He circled her clit with steady pressure, dragging himself across it again and again, spreading her wetness, drawing the rhythm tighter with each pass.

Louise shifted beneath him, seeking more, and Rodrick nearly lost the argument. He moved against her slowly instead, letting her become accustomed to his weight and pressure while he learned the equally humiliating task of enduring sensation without immediately spending himself.