Page 17 of A Lady’s Handbook of Espionage

When Isabel was little, she dreamed of the sea.

Not that she’d ever actually seen it at the time.

Paris was so far from the coast, and Maman had always been too busy to take them on a holiday.

She shopped, visited the modiste, attended the theatre with the duke while he was in town.

Isabel and Emma’s days were spent in lessons – language, philosophy, deportment.

Everything their mother decided they needed to navigate a world with little kindness for bastards and fewer options for women.

After Southampton threw them out, Isabel used to curl onto the floor in their new, cramped little flat and imagine the waves. Maman once told her the sea sounded like breathing, deep and endless.

Isabel liked that.

Later, when Favreau was on top of her, inside her, hurting her, she’d think of the ocean. Its rhythm, its vastness. A reminder that she existed beyond her skin and bones and whatever he was doing to them.

The first time she ever saw the sea, she’d been stupid enough to tell him.

Quelle innocence , he said, stroking her cheek. We should make it a memory.

That night, he gave her the first of what would eventually become a collection of scars.

She stood at the ship’s railing with England fading into the distance. Her cigarette rested between her fingers, the smoke curling in the air. The waves rose and fell in a ceaseless flow, hissing and roaring with each swell before crashing against the hull.

She’d stopped dreaming of the sea years ago. Now, it just reminded her of knives. Of blood and constant running.

Find a distraction , she thought to herself.

She liked to find lovers on her travels.

Ships were good for that, for confined spaces and temporary men with no names and no histories.

Men who thought they were claiming her when she was actually using them.

She’d spend a few days forgetting, letting herself understand that a cock could feel good and make her body sing.

The more she fucked, the less Favreau owned her.

But there was only one distraction on this ship worth pursuing.

Tell me one real thing. Just one, and I’ll call you whatever you want.

Let Ronan hate her. He didn’t have to like her to bed her.

She ground out her cigarette and descended below deck, removing the pins from her hair as she reached Callahan’s door. The lock yielded so easily.

Isabel slipped inside.

Callahan surged up from where he rested on his bunk, snatching his pistol from the bedside table and pointing it right at her chest.

“If this is a new interrogation tactic, it needs work,” Isabel drawled. “What kind of agent lets a thief sneak up on him?”

“The kind who was expecting a knock.”

Her gaze lingered on his muscular torso, at the bandage from where she’d stabbed him in the shoulder. This was the first time she’d seen him without clothes since Hong Kong, and somehow, he was even more beautiful. More devastating.

“I’m requesting an audience,” she said, shaking herself. “I assume we can dispense with the formalities?”

She wasn’t sure what reaction she’d expected – annoyance, maybe. Or wary resignation. She hadn’t expected the way Ronan’s stare swept over her in a slow, heated drag, as tactile as a physical touch.

Yes. He might detest her, but that look was hungry.

“Is this the part where you tell me you’re here to complain?” Callahan asked. “Take issue with the thread count, perhaps? Or are the sightlines from your quarters not murderous enough?”

“Now that you mention it, I do have a bone to pick.” She moved to the edge of his bed. “Something about a truly unfortunate alias I suspect may be your doing.”

After unpacking the dresses he’d managed to procure for her on short notice, she’d opened the envelope with her travel papers to find his petty revenge staring her right in the face.

“Sweetheart, the bureaucratic wrangling required to pull those identities together would astonish you. And this is the thanks I get? I’m wounded.”

“Oh, I haven’t begun to wound you yet. Do I look like a Felicity Snodgrass to you? It sounds like someone who faints at the sight of ankles.”

“You’re unbelievable.”

“So I’ve been told. Often and with great enthusiasm.”

The pistol lowered, but not before he dragged the cold barrel down her throat. She shivered despite herself.

“Why the hell are you really here?” He pressed the muzzle between her breasts, not gentle, not careful. “Got an itch that needs scratching, Trouble?”

She bit her lip. “If I said I did?”

His lips curved into a wicked smile. He set the pistol aside on the small table next to his bunk, then leaned back against the wall, his broad shoulders flexing as he slowly, deliberately, pulled down the sheet covering his lower half.

Her throat went dry when it finally slipped past his hips. He was hard. Thick. Ready.

Waiting.

His hand wrapped around his cock, and he began to stroke, slow and taunting. “Go on, then. Scratch .”

There was something obscene about his shamelessness. His head fell back, exposing the column of his throat, but his eyes stayed locked on Isabel’s. Like he was fucking her with his gaze.

Look, but don’t touch. Want, but don’t have.

“Take off the dress,” he commanded.

As if he had any right to be giving orders, sprawled there like a debauched king.

“Maybe I should punish you and just use my hand,” Isabel said, as if she hadn’t come in here looking for exactly this.

He grunted, moving faster now, the muscles in his stomach flexing with each pull.

“Can’t have it both ways, Trouble. You break into my cabin in the dead of night, you don’t get to pretend you’re not gagging for it.

So you have two choices. Either strip and ride my cock like we both know you’re dying to, or watch me spend all over my fist like a sad little voyeur too craven to take what you want. ”

“There’s always a third choice. I could leave. Find someone who doesn’t think he owns me. Perhaps you’re not the man to help me scratch this particular itch, after all.”

“If you wanted someone else, you’d be in his bed. And I’d bet everything I own that if I touched you right now, you’d be dripping for me. So. Choose.”

Insufferable, arrogant bastard.

Isabel reached for her fastenings. The weight of Callahan’s gaze was a physical thing, searing through layers of muslin and boning, dark and fevered and ravenous. There was a savage sort of surrender in baring herself to him this way. A profane offering to be devoured or destroyed at his whim.

The dress fell. Her fingers shook when she removed her bustle. He kept watching. Kept stroking himself as she fumbled with her corset next, the front-busk style for women who dressed themselves.

She hesitated at the combinations, the thin cotton all that remained. His hand moved faster, his chest rising and falling, hair tumbling over his forehead.

Enough. She needed to wrestle back some power.

“Stop,” she ordered.

He didn’t. His cock was thick in his fist, and he worked it with lazy confidence. Lips slightly parted.

“Stop or I’ll keep this on.”

“If that stays on, this is all you get,” he said. “I keep going until I spend, and you get to crawl back to your cold bed, aching and empty.”

This was always their problem. Him pushing, her retreating. Him demanding everything, her giving nothing. Except in Hong Kong. For a few hours, she’d forgotten who she was, who he was, and felt more alive than she had in years.

Give in or walk away.

In the end, the hunger won out.

She ripped at the ribbons, shoving the flimsy cotton down until she stood naked before him, flushed and panting and so very, very hungry.

Callahan’s stare drifted over every imperfection.

The scars all over her torso, the puckered starburst beneath her breast, the bandage at her ribs.

All the broken, battered pieces of her offered in unholy sacrifice.

She counted his breaths, waiting for disgust to cross his face.

The light had been so dim in Hong Kong. Kinder.

Maybe he hadn’t seen the full extent of the damage. Maybe—

“Come here,” he said, voice rough.

She stepped closer. He reached out, calloused fingertips skimming over the longest scar on her hip.

Isabel flinched. “Don’t.”

“Why not?” he asked, voice low.

“Just – not like that.” Her jaw clenched. Gentleness was worse than cruelty. Gentle undid her.

But then Callahan’s mouth pressed against the raised ridge of a mark, breath hot on her skin. When his eyes met hers, they burned fever-bright with longing – as if even her scars, her flaws, her myriad failings, only made him want her more.

Too much, too close, too intimate.

“Don’t,” she whispered again.

“Should I tell you how beautiful you are? Scars and all?”

Part of her wanted to shut her eyes against his words. Tell him no and stop . That his tenderness wasn’t what she needed from him when the ocean waves were so loud, and Favreau’s voice kept whispering in her memories.

But he stared up at her like she was a goddess, and she hadn’t felt beautiful since Hong Kong.

Something splintered deep in her chest, the fissures spider-webbing out and out .

“I was expecting you to promise to slay my demons,” she said. “Track down the monsters who gave me these marks and make them all bleed.”

His fingers flexed. “But you don’t want me to slay your demons, do you? You want me to fuck them out of you.” A pause, heavy and charged. “So kiss me.”

Something inside her snapped. She lunged forward, crashing her mouth against his. Her teeth caught his bottom lip, hard enough to hurt. Hard enough to make him grunt. Her nails raked down his back, drawing red lines she wished would scar. Let him carry her marks for once.

“Christ,” he hissed, hands digging into her hips.

Callahan yanked her into his lap. His cock pressed against her, hot and hard, and a whimper escaped her before she could swallow it down.