Nathaniel left her mouth. Kneeling astride her, he ran his hands over her breasts, circling the hard buds of her nipples with a fingertip. That same air of detachment clung to him as if he were discovering something entirely new that had to be absorbed, catalogued, understood.
He looked up and met her gaze, and for the first time he smiled. He unfastened his waistband and his flesh sprang free from constraint.
"Come closer," Gabrielle murmured, moving her hand down to enclose him.
He inched up her body so she could take him in her mouth, and he threw back his head on an exhalation of delight, kneeling up, his hands resting unconsciously on his hips as she pleasured him.
When finally he entered her body with a long, slow thrust that penetrated her core, Gabrielle cried out, curling her legs around his hips, her heels pressing into his buttocks as she pulled him into the cleft of her body with fervid urgency.
Nathaniel shook his head in abrupt denial and resisted the pressure, pulling back to the very edge of her body. He looked down at her, that predatory glitter in his eyes again, the tiniest smile touching his lips.
Gabrielle lay still, her body thrumming with expectation as he held himself immobile, and slowly, inexorably, the sensation built deep in the pit of her belly. Still smiling, he watched her eyes, again gauging the progress of her spiraling climb to ecstasy.
When she thought she could bear it no longer, when she thought her body would shatter like crystal under the tension, he drove into her, filling her, becoming a part of her as she became a part of him.
His mouth covered hers, suppressing her cry of joy the instant before it broke from her lips. His body moved in hers, and they rose and fell in mindless union, flesh and bone and sinew joined as one. And then the climactic explosion tore through them and she clung to him like a shipwrecked mariner clutching a broken spar before falling back, barely conscious, on the hard, cold floor, crushed by his body.
"Sweet heaven!" Nathaniel gasped after an eternity. His breath was still an exhausted sob. "What was that?"
"La petite mort." Gabrielle could barely speak.
Nathaniel chuckled weakly. "The French have an accurate turn of phrase." He rolled sideways and lay on his belly, his forehead resting on his forearm as his heart finally slowed and his breathing eased.
Gabrielle struggled up and sat blinking around the moonlit loft. Her ruined nightgown lay in a heap on the straw. "It seems as if I'm going to have to cross the yard stark naked. Whatever possessed you?"
"God knows," he said, sitting up himself. "The devil in you, I suspect." He reached for her discarded cloak and wrapped it around her damp body. "You'll catch your death of cold."
"I doubt that." She smiled and then shivered. "Then again, it is March."
"I used to think I was perfectly sane," Nathaniel remarked in tones of mild interest. "But I now realize that I'm heading for Bedlam. Stand up." He pulled her to her feet and cupped her face between his palms. "Driven there by a wanton brigand! What the hell am I going to do with you, Gabrielle?"
"You seem to have done a fair amount tonight," she observed judiciously. "You've wrestled me and manhandled me and tied me up and then dispatched me to the outer limits of bliss. What else is there?"
Nathaniel shook his head in mock reproof. "You're an impossible woman, too much for any ordinary mortal to manage. Hurry back now into the warm." He pulled the edges of the cloak tighter around her. "Go on, quickly!" He pushed her to the ladder.
"I'd expected a little more ceremony," Gabrielle grumbled, obeying the hand in her back. "But I can't think why, since this has been a most unceremonious evening, one way and another." She edged backward onto the ladder and grinned at him, blowing him a kiss before the bright head vanished into the darkness below.
Nathaniel stood at the window, watching her run across the yard and slip safely into the inn.
How could someone so open, so gloriously candid in her desires and her needs and her loving, be treacherous? And how could he lose all sense of that when he was within her, when she was a part of him and he of her?
He'd asked himself the question before, and, as before, there was no answer.
Chapter 17
"The spymaster is in Paris?" Talleyrand most unusually revealed his surprise as he poured wine into two crystal goblets in the study of the house on rue d'Anjou.
"Just so." Gabrielle untied the ribbons of her hat and tossed it onto a leather couch. She peered at her reflection in the glass over the mantelpiece and tucked a straying wisp of hair back into the pins.
"Where?" Talleyrand handed her a glass of burgundy.
"Merci." Gabrielle took the glass with a smile and inhaled the bouquet. "Idon't know," she said frankly. "He wouldn't tell me. I'm to wait to be contacted."
"A cautious man, as one would expect." Talleyrand nodded. He made a steeple of his fingers and gazed into the middle distance. "For some reason, your letter gave me the sense that there is a… a frisson"-his hands opened eloquently-"between you and Lord Praed."
Gabrielle sipped her wine. How had he guessed that? She'd thought she'd been completely emotionless in her letter. But Talleyrand always saw beneath the surface, and there was never any point attempting to pull the wool over his eyes. "Yes," she agreed. "In fact, something rather more than that, I believe."
"I see." The Minister for Foreign Affairs examined her with the searching, assessing scrutiny of a connoisseur of women. "Passion becomes you," he stated after a minute. "It has always been so. You looked thus after your times with Guillaume."
Gabrielle met his gaze steadily. "There are similarities," she agreed.
"They are-were-both master spies," her godfather pointed out dryly. "It would seem you have a fatal predilection toward the devious, mon enfant."
"With such a mentor, does it suprise you?"
Talleyrand laughed. "Such a quick tongue, you have. How does your spymaster react to it, I wonder?"
Gabrielle rightly assumed that no response was required.
"So, does this added dimension alter your attitude in any way?" Her godfather shifted the subject, blandly matter-of-fact.
"He was responsible for Guillaume s death," she answered. "I can't forget that, despite-" She shrugged. "Despite physical passion. We have that, certainly, but it alters nothing essential."
Talleyrand stroked his chin. "Let us be sure we understand each other, mafille. You are saying that despite physical passion, you still intend to be avenged on this man for his part in Guillaume's death?”
Gabrielle wandered over to the fireplace, staring into the flames. Guillaume's face rose in her internal vision. He was laughing, his eyes so alive, his beautiful mouth curved.…
"Oh, yes," she said, almost to herself. "I will use him, sir, in whatever fashion you dictate."
Talleyrand nodded, satisfied. "There is much at stake. Too much to be sacrificed to blind passion."
"I understand that."
There was a knock at the door, and a footman entered to light the candles, draw the long brocade curtains over the windows as dusk deepened, and make up the fire.
They were both silent as the man went about his work. Talleyrand looked down into his glass as if reading solutions to unanswerable questions in the ruby wine.
"You must be tired after your journey," he said as the servant finished mending the fire and the door closed behind him. "Why don't you go to your apartments and rest. I'm sure Catherine must be eager to greet you."