“It would behoove us check in with Agent V-2 also.” Her voice shook a little. Daniel was staring at her mouth now as if he wanted to lick the words coming out of it. “There may be an update from the servants’ quarters, and—”
“Your stance was incorrect,” he interrupted abruptly.
Alice frowned in perplexment. “My what?”
“A married woman would never stance—um, stand in that manner while she was being kissed.” He made a vague gesture.
“Oh.” Alice felt a blush warm her face. “What manner?”
“Er—angled too much to the left. Yes. And I got the—er, the middle bit wrong.”
“You did?”
“I think we need to practice a little longer,” Daniel said. “For the sake of the mission.”
A thrill shot through Alice’s blood. “That is an admirably professional attitude.”
“Diligence is key to being a good secret agent.” Taking her hand in his, just like they had rehearsed, he tugged her across the room in a manner that felt less marital than salaciously premarital.
“Where—?” Alice began to ask, but before she could further the query, they arrived at the bed and Daniel arranged her so she was sitting at its edge. He sat beside her and, removing his spectacles, laid them neatly on the bedside table.
“Occupational safety measures are important,” he explained. “By continuing to stand, we risked falling and wrenching a knee or ankle.”
“Ah, good point,” Alice said. “I shall write in my report that you were assiduous in maintaining the welfare of all mission operatives.”
He brushed the words from her lips with the pad of his thumb, and Alice gasped as sensation rampaged through her. Immediately he took advantage, sliding the thumb along the inside of her lower lip in an action so scandalous Alice would have gasped again were not hertongue, operating under its own instruction, busy swirling around that thumb, trying to draw it farther in. He tasted like salt and unsweetened tea. Alice swallowed as he shifted his hand away to cradle her cheek.
“And now I am going to kiss you until you see stars, Mrs. Blakeney.”
“For the sake of the mission,” she added.
He smiled. “Exactly.”
“Very well then, Mr. Blakeney. You may proceed.”
Daniel had spent his entire life devoted to duty. Literally. Raised in one of A.U.N.T.’s feeder orphanages, he had been selected for Elite Force training after he corrected the headmistress’s caning technique in the middle of her punishing him. Slowly, inexorably, the nurses and instructors had drawn him out of his all-consuming desire for exactitude until he learned to find it again through obeying orders. Whenever the world seemed an impossible mess clattering against his senses, they taught him to clean it by sweeping, folding, assassinating. Whenever his own internal world threatened to explode, they taught him to become a precision bomb.
He had never viewed himself through any other lens than that of secret agent for the downstairs government. And he excelled at his work. To do less would chip away at his identity, threatening him with disorder, uncertainty, fear.
Daniel could not abide fear.
Alice Dearlove frightened him more than anything else had in all the years of violence, piracy, and dirty kitchens. Just looking at her stirred emotions and sensations that would shatter his carefully wrought control if he dared to allow them. Touching her felt like skimming his hands across a live electrical wire. Even were she not the most alluring thing he’d ever encountered, he’d fall for the charm of herstern disapprobation and the incredibly sexy way she talked about rules. He could not seem to chide himself out of wanting her, despite knowing it was hopeless. He longed to incinerate himself against her naked skin—to let the whole universe storm with the force of her breath on his tongue—and to sit cuddled up with her on a rainy night, reading aloud from Pushkin.
But that would be terrifying, agonizing, and inappropriate under the circumstances. So he just kissed her with such cool mastery, she swooned back onto the bed.
It went exactly how he intended. He could have written the process down on paper and ticked it off as he went along. After all, kissing a woman was no different from putting a gun together. If one fit the pieces properly, in the right order, it resulted in an effective bang. Daniel had done enough research to know this—textbooks, novels, and a few ladies who had volunteered as willing subjects for experimentation. In addition, living with a pirate for three years had provided a wealth of data. Before marrying, Captain O’Riley had been a notorious rake whose mere smile was worth several volumes on the art of seduction. Daniel applied the most interesting details of his research directly to Miss Dearlove’s lips.
And then he struck a problem.
He had her right where he wanted her: soft and warm beneath him, in an appropriate disarray of lace and silk.
And she had him in chaos.
She tasted like hunger in his mouth. She felt like loneliness against his body as they lay on the pirates’ bed, practicing how to be piratic. His precise list of tactics began to burn away as if written on Snodgrass’s self-destructive parchment. His heart pounded so hard, he was the one seeing stars. And it is best not to mention what was happening inside his underwear.
Stop, he told himself.
Hm, his hand replied, sliding up under her skirts.
