Page 56 of The Spy’s Song

His cock pressed against her entrance and nudged her open, just enough to make her catch her breath.

"I must enter the path again," he murmured, his voice thick with false solemnity. "See whether there are any further obstructions. I would not dream of giving you half a service."

She let out a breath that trembled at the edges. "Since when are you so thorough in your promises?"

"I promise you this. I'm not done making you scream," he said, bracing his hand beside her head.

Then he drove into her. Louise arched beneath him as a moan left her throat before she could bite it back. Her legs clamped around his hips, her fingers flying to his back, digging in. He filled her completely, and she cried out, mouth open in the dark.

Louise clung to him, breathless, the air between them gone. His weight pressed into her, his rhythm steady and deep, his body locked with hers in a motion that felt more like surrender than possession. She had never known anything so fierce.

Her hands slid up his back, fingertips tracing the curve of his shoulders, the ridge of his spine. She hesitated—then let them rise higher. She touched his hair, combed her fingers through the damp strands at his nape.

She tilted her head and kissed the side of his neck, just beneath his ear. The skin there was slick with sweat. She tasted salt. She licked it slowly, shyly, and his body buckled over her.

He groaned and thrust harder, deeper. Something hot and startled opened inside her. She had done that. His hand flew to her hip to hold her still as he moved faster, the rhythm no longer measured but frantic. Desperate. He drove them both to the edge, held her gaze as her body began to clench around him, as her breath turned ragged, as her cry rose again, higher this time, broken open.

He pulled out and spent himself across her stomach in hot, pulsing waves, his mouth pressed against her shoulder.

Louise lay still, her legs tangled in the blanket, her chest rising against the hush that followed the last wave of movement.

"So this is what it's like to be pierced by an Englishman."

Rodrick pressed his forehead to her shoulder, his weight familiar now but no less unsettling. His breath was rough against her skin.

"Now I'm an Englishman, Lou?" he muttered. "When you were begging me, you said I was a Norman."

He rolled away before she could bite him, stood, and moved through the dark with that same infuriating ease—as if nothing ever touched him for long. A few moments earlier he had been trembling against her neck, and now he acted as though control were merely a coat he had taken off and put back on again.

Louise hated how quickly she missed the man without it.

She heard the rustle of cloth. Then he returned, knelt beside her, and wiped the seed from her stomach and the blood from between her thighs.

"I must thank you," she said quietly. "For thinking about the consequences."

Rodrick sat back on his heels. "The world isn't ready for a Montfort-Bonaparte child."

She turned her head sharply. "Bonaparte-Montfort, you mean."

He chuckled. "Whatever helps you sleep, Lou."

He stretched out beside her again, folding an arm behind his head as though it were just another night in another camp with another woman whose name he wouldn't remember.

Louise huffed. "You know what would help me fall asleep? If you stopped snoring."

"Don't be spiteful," he said, voice dry. "A snoring spy is a dead spy. And you moan like a traitor under torture."

She didn't respond. She stared up at the ceiling, trying to breathe past the tightness in her chest.

Their fingers touched under the blanket. Louise's heart climbed into her throat. If she turned her hand, their fingers would lace. An absurdly small thing after everything they had done…

"Nothing changes between us," she whispered.

She waited for him to call her a foolish Corsican and catch her hand.

Rodrick pulled his hand away. "Don't make promises in bed, Lou. Morning has an unfortunate habit of asking whether we meant them."

He turned onto his side, his back to her. She stared at the curve of his spine and said nothing.