Page 54 of The Spy’s Song

He pressed forward and nudged the head inside her. Louise sucked in a sharp breath, and her fingers clenched against his shoulders.

Rodrick halted.

"What's wrong?" she asked.

He drew a careful breath, then caught her hand and guided it between them, closing her fingers around his cock so she could feel exactly what he was asking her body to accommodate.

"This," he said roughly, "is going to hurt."

Her chin came up. "I am not made of crystal, Rodrick."

Rodrick did not know what Louise Bonnechoix was made of. Steel, perhaps, and fire, and some Corsican element Providence had omitted from the rest of creation for the protection of mankind. The more dangerous question was what she had been made for. Every difficult edge of her seemed to find its corresponding place in him, as though somewhere in the manufacture of Louise Bonnechoix the universe had taken his dimensions.

"No." He held her gaze. "You are considerably more troublesome."

Rodrick slipped one hand beneath her knee and eased her leg higher, watching her face as he opened her for him. Then he pressed forward slowly. Louise drew in a sharp breath when the first resistance met him, and Rodrick stopped long enough for her to adjust before moving again. Inch by inch, he worked himself deeper until Louise caught at his shoulders and let out a broken sound against his mouth. Only then did he settle inside her, holding himself still while the effort of not moving made every muscle in his body tighten.

Her breath came in short bursts against his throat. He was inside her, but she was everywhere: heat, trembling muscle, the faint scent of gardenia in her hair. His own pulse hammered so hard he could feel it in his teeth.

Louise raised her hand almost shyly and smoothed her fingertips between his brows. "Are you in pain?"

Of all the things she might have asked. She lay beneath him flushed and breathless, allowing him closer than she had ever allowed another human being, and she was worried about him. His chest filled too quickly with something vast and warm and too good. Such a feeling could not possibly belong to him.

It must be hers.

He pushed the damp hair from her cheek, breathing hard as he searched those gray eyes. "How deep do you keep your soul, Lou?"

Rodrick pressed farther into her, and Louise gasped, her fingers tightening against his shoulders. "Why?" she whispered. "Are you planning to steal it?"

He bent over her and brushed his nose along the warm curve beneath her ear then kissed the place where her pulse beat beneath the skin. "I want to touch it." Rodrick lifted his head enough to find her eyes again. "Will you let me go that deep inside you?"

Rodrick withdrew until the drag of her around him tightened every muscle in his abdomen, then eased back into her, watching Louise's lips part as she felt each inch of his return.

She lifted her hips to meet him before he had finished the next retreat, stealing the distance he meant to take. Rodrick inhaled sharply and caught her at the waist, holding her still while he sank into her again at his own pace. Louise narrowed her eyes. On the next stroke she tightened her legs around him and pulled him forward, turning his careful return into something deeper and faster. Heat shot through Rodrick hard enough to make him clench his teeth.

"Lou," he warned against her mouth.

Rodrick wanted to slow everything down until sensation stopped blurring at the edges, until he could understand what in God's name she was doing to him.

She kissed him with suspicious innocence and did it again.

Rodrick nearly laughed, except she moved beneath him just then and the sound came out as a rough breath instead. He slowed, making her wait through every retreat and every long return, and Louise answered by dragging her nails down his back. The sting broke his rhythm. Rodrick surged into her before he could stop himself, and Louise moaned with such unmistakable satisfaction that he understood exactly what she had done.

Rodrick had spent a career provoking reactions because reactions revealed truth. Louise had required considerably less time to discover the principle. She tightened her legs whenever he slowed and shifted beneath him until she found the movement that made his breath catch.

He kissed her more softly, trying once more to coax them back toward something resembling reverence, and Louise caught his lower lip between her teeth.

"Woman, I am attempting to touch your soul, not debauch you."

"You want my soul?" she whispered against his ear. "Then come and get it."

Desire surged through him with enough force to wipe every noble intention from his mind. He wanted Louise hot and breathless beneath him, wanted those impossible legs wrapped around him.

He rose onto his knees and caught her beneath the legs, drawing them upward until they bracketed his shoulders. The position opened her farther, and the sight of those ballerina limbs framing him sent another rush of heat through his body.

Christ.

If her soul happened to be somewhere along the way, he would deal with it when he found it.