Page 38 of A Lady’s Handbook of Espionage

The world went sideways the instant Isabel’s mouth collided with his.

Callahan’s mind emptied of everything but her – the heat of her skin against his palms, the glide of her tongue, the soft noises she breathed into him. Just Isabel, wild and urgent in his arms.

“Not that I’m complaining, but what brought this on?” he whispered.

Isabel’s gaze skittered away. Vulnerability sat strangely on her. “I needed a moment. To feel . . . real.”

Ah, Christ.

Callahan’s heart cracked against his ribs. He knew the ugly, serrated pieces of her history that still had teeth. Some scars never stopped hurting.

He curled his fingers around her hips, guiding her to the bed. “Let me make you feel real, then.”

They removed each other’s clothes, shaking hands interspersed with fleeting touches – relearning all the secret places that made the other gasp and shiver.

Of all the times they’d come together, it had never been quite like this. Reverent. Aching. A meeting of broken edges, trying to make something whole.

When she was finally bared to him, Callahan took a moment just to look at her.

“Beautiful,” he murmured, trailing fingers over the hollow of her throat, the arch of her collarbones, the lush swell of her breasts. “So damn beautiful.”

He followed the path forged by his hands with lips and tongue and the barest graze of teeth, worshipping her. Mapping the tracery of silvered scars and the fresh bandage over her sternum. Silent vows breathed into pebbled flesh.

His. Only his.

Always.

By the time he settled between the cradle of her thighs, she was trembling. Callahan caught her gaze and held it as he lowered his head and put his mouth on her.

“Yes,” she gasped. “ Yes .”

He focused on wringing more of those sweet noises from her, licking into her in slow, deliberate strokes. She was hot and slick against his tongue, hands twisting in his hair. It was too much and not enough. He sealed his lips around her clitoris and sucked, fingers thrusting into her.

She cried out as she climaxed, arching off the bed. Callahan worked her through it until she was shaking and so unbearably lovely he could hardly stand it.

Surging up her body, he claimed her mouth in a hard, hungry kiss, letting her taste herself. She curled her legs around his hips, and he groaned.

“Inside me,” she mumbled. “Please, Ronan—”

Hearing his name on her lips nearly undid him. Callahan reached between them to position his cock. He paused, the air between them electric. Waiting.

“Look at me, Trouble.”

Their eyes met. Slowly, achingly, he pressed forward.

They both moaned. Callahan forced himself to go slow, to savour her. Gritting his teeth against the urge to simply take . But then Isabel rolled her hips, and—

He broke.

Braced above her on his elbows, Callahan started to move, each thrust measured. Deliberate. She rose to meet him, fingers clawing at his back, his arse, urging him harder. Deeper. He obliged, picking up the pace until the rhythmic creak of the bed filled the room.

When her second peak hit, she gasped out his name.

“That’s it,” he coaxed. He thrust hard into her, seeking his own completion. “Let go for me, sweetheart.”

With a harsh groan, Callahan buried his face in her neck and let his own release crash through him. His thoughts blanked, every cell in his body singing with pleasure so acute it bordered on pain.

Long, lazy minutes passed as their breathing slowed.

Callahan had just enough presence of mind to roll to his side, bringing Isabel with him so she was tucked against his chest. If he concentrated, he fancied he could make out the slow, steady thrum of her pulse, an echo of his own, a Morse code tapped out into the chambers of his heart.

Here , it said. Still here.

Her fingertips tracing his face jolted him out of his reverie, light as moth’s wings as she mapped his cheekbones, the ridge of his brow, his jaw.

There was an aching sort of tenderness in her touch.

Something uncomfortably close to memorisation.

As if she thought this was the last time she might ever be permitted to learn him this way.

Before Callahan could second-guess the impulse, he turned his head to press a kiss into the palm cradling his cheek.

“I love you,” he murmured.

Three small syllables he’d bitten back a thousand times.

A beat of silence, nothing but the harsh rasp of his breathing.

The naked vulnerability laid out between them like an offering.

Callahan briefly considered snatching them back, shoving this dangerous truth back into the locked box inside his chest where it had taken up residence years ago, sprouting insidious roots in Hong Kong, Athens, New York.

Every heated glance and breath, every slide of skin and shared secret.

Finally, Isabel loosed a trembling exhale. Her smile was a fragile, bittersweet thing, and when she leaned up to brush her lips over his, it felt like goodbye.

“I love you too, Mr Ashford,” she whispered against his mouth.

Something plummeted in Callahan’s chest, even as he reached up to tangle a hand in her hair, keeping her close. Because that wasn’t his name. Not the one he wanted to hear from her, in the intimacy of tangled sheets and languid caresses.

It was a door closing. Like she was rebuilding her walls brick by brick, mortaring the cracks with that false name.

And he was letting her.

Because in the end, loving her and losing her hurt less than never having her at all. So he memorised her weight in his arms, the rise and fall of her ribs beneath his splayed palm, and told himself it was enough.

He willed his breathing to even out, feigning the deep, slow rhythms of sleep until Isabel’s breaths became soft and regular, her body going slack in repose.

Only then did he reach out, let his fingertips hover above the constellation of freckles dusting her shoulder but never making contact.

It was the only concession he’d allow himself, the bittersweet ache of this not-quite-touch in the witching hours. The agony and the ecstasy of almost, nearly, just short of.

Just for a little while longer.

The scant inches between them might as well have been a chasm, and Callahan let himself drift, let the exhaustion of the last few days drag him down into the waiting dark.

He never felt her leave.

*

Callahan woke to silence.

He reached out, seeking Isabel’s warmth, but his searching fingers met only cool sheets.

“Isabel?”

Silence. A silence with teeth.

Already knowing what he would find, or rather, what he wouldn’t, Callahan made a swift circuit of the flat. Each room yielded the same result: nothing. As if she’d never been there at all.

A glance at the window confirmed it was still early, the sky heavy with the promise of rain. Wherever she’d gone, she’d likely managed a head start of several hours. More than enough time to vanish into the city’s underbelly.

He dressed quickly and yanked open the door, consumed by the imperative need to act, to move. He hailed a passing hack.

“Whitehall,” he barked.

The ride passed in a blur of streets. Callahan leaped down, tossing a few coins to the jarvey over his shoulder.

He ignored the startled squawk of the clerk at the reception desk as he strode past to Wentworth’s office. Callahan rapped his knuckles against the wood and shoved inside.

The spymaster’s eyebrows climbed as he took in Callahan’s dishevelled state. “Agent. I was scheduled to visit the safe house this afternoon to brief you on Ripon’s. To what do I owe the pleasure at this obscene hour?”

“She’s gone. Isabel slipped out sometime in the night.”

Wentworth’s expression shuttered. “You believe her departure was coerced.” It wasn’t a question.

“She’d never go to that bastard willingly. Not after—” He broke off as he mastered himself. “I think she saw him last night. And I think he made clear, on no uncertain terms, that he would hurt more people if she didn’t return. And I think Isabel went as some noble sacrifice—”

“Forgive me for saying, but Miss Dumont doesn’t strike me as the type to submit herself as a noble sacrifice . Let’s not be delusional.”

“Then she went to kill Favreau,” he snapped. “The result is the same. She’s with that bastard, and God knows what’s happening to her right now.”

For a moment, the spymaster simply watched him. Callahan fought the urge to fidget under that penetrating stare.

“You know,” Wentworth said, “when I assigned Miss Dumont as your partner, I did so with some reservations. And not just because I found out my agent threw caution to the wind and fucked a wanted criminal.”

Callahan blinked, thrown by the non sequitur. “Sir?”

“Her history is chequered, to put it mildly. Clawing her way to the top of Favreau’s empire breeds a certain moral flexibility.

” He paused, letting the implication hang.

“But she came to us in the end. Turned her coat, offered up Favreau’s secrets in exchange for her sister’s safety and her own freedom.

It was enough to make me wonder if perhaps there wasn’t some shred of decency, after all. ”

“You can’t honestly believe—”

Wentworth silenced him with a look. “I believe Miss Dumont will act in the manner she feels best ensures her continued survival. An alliance with Her Majesty’s government is simply a temporary condition of that survival.

How can you be sure she hasn’t leveraged your personal investment to facilitate her return to Favreau?

She has proximity to power in the Syndicate. Power she lacks here.”

The question hovered between them. And Callahan – who had grown up hard, who’d clawed his way out of the rookeries with nothing but gutter-cunning, whose first lessons had been in hunger and cruelty – flinched.

Because hidden under duty and purpose, he was still that grubby orphan with quick fingers and scars all over his body. Still half-convinced the noose would drop any day, that the gilt and polish of his new life was little more than the thinnest veneer over the festering rot beneath.

Rationally, he knew Wentworth was wrong.

Knew it with the same fierce, unshakable certainty that the sun would rise in the east. But some small, twisted part of himself – the part that had always whispered he’d never be good enough, never be clean enough to deserve softness, or kindness, or love – shuddered in old fears. Ones that festered since Hong Kong.

After all, what was the Spectre but an actress? A performer?

Ale and climaxes are truth serums to the over-indulged and under-cautious, and I excel at telling men exactly what they want to hear.

But—no. She couldn’t fake what happened after Favreau murdered Harrington. Couldn’t fake begging Callahan to carve his initials into her.

The only man’s name I want to wear on my skin is yours.

“No,” he said with certainty now. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“Is that so?” Wentworth’s gaze sharpened.

“I know what the woman means to you, Agent. More than is strictly wise for men in our profession. It’s little wonder she saw an opportunity to exploit that connection for her own gain.

Love is a liability in our line of work.

It makes you weak. Clouds your judgment.

Causes you to overlook things you shouldn’t. ”

“I know who and what Isabel Dumont is, Wentworth.” He’d traced the fucking scars on her body. “If you trust my judgment, then know that I wouldn’t lay my life down for this woman if I weren’t certain, with every bone in my body, that she loved me back.”

Wentworth rubbed his eyes and sighed. “Fine. My men are searching for Favreau as we speak, and when they find him and Spectre, I’ll use my not-inconsiderable clout to re-release her into your custody. I just hope she doesn’t destroy you.”