He said, “You’ve decided then. I tie you up. It’s simpler this way.”
“Undoubtedly.” Her voice was ragged in her ears. “But I would much rather you did not.”
“At last. You’ve said something I believe.” He backed her toward the bed, step by step. Not roughly. Gradually. A little pressure was all he needed. “Prudent of you to put on the nightgown, even if it’s too late. Were you planning to kill me with that candlestick?”
“I would not kill you on purpose, but I am clumsy these days and might have misjudged. Is there anything at all I can say to keep you from doing this to me?” She was trembling badly.
“Nothing I can think of, right off.”
“What if I promise not to try to escape again, not at all, till we reach England?”
“No.” He was most chillingly ordinary and calm. “I have extra bandages I don’t need for Adrian. I’ll use those. They’re nice and soft.” How provident of him. Perhaps he took prisoners frequently. How would she know what the British did? “It won’t be too uncomfortable. You may even get some sleep.”
“I am harmless, really. You should reconsider.”
“You don’t have to be afraid,” he said. “I don’t hurt women. Not even women like you.”
More of his incomprehensible insults. As if he did not have his dozens of women agents working for his Service. It was illogical that he should despise her.
The mattress bumped against her thigh. He twisted the hold upon her shoulder shrewdly, and she lost her balance and fell downward onto the bed. Coverlets flapped and clung as she scrambled away from him through the treacherous softness, to the wall. That was as far as she could flee. Her back pressed to the cold plaster. Silk slicked against her skin. She drew herself together and set her face to her knees. The Fox Cub was cornered at last.
All her clever roles had deserted her. No one was left to deal with this situation but Annique. And Annique was afraid. Afraid.
She listened to him cross the room. The leather valise creaked. Small sounds told her he searched within it. Then his steps returned toward her.
“Grey…monsieur…I will promise not to attack you again. I will swear it by whatever you like.”
The bed sagged as he sat next to her. “You could offer me a couple French secrets. Maybe the ones you were discussing with Leblanc.”
“The Albion plans.” She made herself say it lightly. “Leblanc obsesses himself with them lately.”
“I’m obsessed with them myself. We’re going to talk about the Albion plans for a good long time, you and I.”
She was cold inside. Cold and sick. “But this is foolish. I am a small player in the Game. I do not make the grand political intrigues. You will be disappointed if you expect important secrets from me.”
“You won’t disappoint me.” There were many nuances in his voice.
The bed jiggled as he worked with something in his hands. That would be the linen bandages he spoke of—the ones he would tie her with. He was preparing them. Soon she would be helpless and all chance of escape gone.
“I do not wish to be tied up,” she whispered.
“I don’t think you can convince me. You could try, though. Offer me just a small secret, and we’ll see.”
Not secrets. Something else. She had known, deep in her heart, that it would come to this.
One last plan. There is always a last plan one has hoped not to use. She gathered the silken nightdress about her and crawled toward him, to his side, till she was close. Till she could almost feel the heat from his body. She made herself kneel on the bed, her knees apart. She had seen prostitutes do this in the whorehouse her mother kept for a time in Paris. Doubtless Monsieur Grey had visited many whore-houses and would recognize what she offered.
She heard him draw in a deep, uneven breath. The bed dipped as he shifted his weight. His finger closed on her arm, but he only brought her right wrist upward. “Did I hurt you?”
“No.” Smoothly, she eased her hand away from him. “It is nothing.”
“That’s another reason I don’t want to fight you. I’ll end up hurting you again. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I do not want you to hurt me either. Or tie me up.”
He gave a grunt. She felt him turn away. And still his breath was unsteady.
The Courtesan had no fear of any man living. No fear of touching and being touched. Ageless knowledge had the Courtesan.
It was time to begin. She found the long, smooth cord and pulled the knot free. It was thin, twisted silk, very strong. Her night-robe slid open, like wind unfolding. He would feel the silk fall upon his skin. Even in the darkness, he would see her body as light and shadow. She felt herself blush.
She whispered, “It has its own appeal, you understand—to be tied. But it is limiting. I would rather be…inventive.” It might have been the Courtesan who reached out to caress him, full of knowledge. It might have been Annique, being curious.
The skin of his neck was dry and warm, rough in texture. To touch him did not feel like stroking an animal or her own skin. His cheek was a landscape of bristles with the muscles of his jaw bunched tight beneath. His mouth, unexpectedly, was silk. It opened under her fingertips, and she felt the touch of his tongue. She did not know what to do when a man tasted her fingers. It brought a shamed little clench of heat between her legs. If she’d allowed herself, she would have been scared silly.
He said, “What do you want?”
“I will not speak secrets. But I will please you, if you give me one final chance.”
“How very tempting. Why?”
“Perhaps I am tired of fighting. It grows discouraging.”
“That’s not it. Tell me why.”
So stern. He must trust her enough to let her close. In the silence, she could hear the crickets from the fields and the murmur of voices in the courtyard below.
“I desire you.” Truth. She would tell him truth. How ironic. “I desired you when I first touched you, in Leblanc’s small dungeon. In the coach, when we fought…” She drew words from the deepest privacy of her mind. “It is a great intimacy to fight with a man as I have fought you.”
“I’ll grant you that. It’s intimate.”
“We fought. But you did not hurt me. You were entirely exasperated with me and you held me down, very heavy on top of me. I imagined…how it would be in bed with you.” Each word was a humiliation, stripping her mind as naked as her body. But this would fascinate a man like Grey. This would distract him. “I am…at need, inside me.”
“Awkward for you.”
“I do not wish to feel this way. We are enemies.” He could not begin to imagine the awkwardness it was for her. Even now, when she should be wholly involved in useful schemes and lies, a warm trickle of wanting coursed through her. If things had been different…She put the thought away.
Her fingers, hidden in the folds of her nightdress, worked away at the cord of the nightgown. She slid it, inch by inch, out of the long casing that held it. “We need not be enemies, in the dark, where no one sees. What happens in this room…it is as if it has not happened at all.”
“An intriguing thought.”
“You may tie me up afterwards if you wish. You have made no promises.” Amazing to hear that teasing in her voice. She crept an inch closer to him.
“I can tie you up right now. I don’t trust you worth a damn.”
“You are wise not to trust me. But sometimes I am not an agent of France. Sometimes, I am only Annique.”
His weight shifted again. She heard a metallic click as his ring touched the table beside the bed. He was setting something there. He had turned away from her.
She wound the silk cord quickly, three times, around her left hand. When she leaned toward him, she touched his back. She lay her forehead upon the hard prominence of his shoulder blade. “Here in the dark…I can be anything you want.” The ache between her legs, which was the ache of wanting him to be exactly in that place, throbbed.
She kissed through the thin linen of his shirt. His muscles twitched under her lips. He had formidable control, Grey, as a man in his position must, but he was not indifferent. He was stretched taut in every tendon, ferocious with wanting her, vulnerable as a strong man is to his own passions. She moved to the bare skin of his neck and tasted that.