How very, very much Eve wished he would take his pleasure quickly and roll off. That would have been so easy.
“I’ve never trained a virgin before,” he had remarked the first time. “Normally I value expertise over innocence. We shall have to see how fast you learn. I don’t expect I will please you the first few times—that’s the way for women, rather unfairly, I have always thought.”
René liked to explore every part of Eve, tracing every crevice and corner of her body, his tongue lingering as long on the spaces behind her ears and the hollows of her knees as on the more expected places. He spun it out endlessly, content to play for hours, taking her hand and using it to explore his own pale unmarked skin. He turned her and posed her, positioned her and explored her, watching and learning through it all.
“Your eyes widen just a little whenever I surprise you,” he observed one night. “Like a doe’s—” And he turned to her breast and employed his teeth in a bit of sudden expert roughness. “Like that,” he said, brushing her lashes with his thumb. It wasn’t something Eve ever considered; how the intimacy of skin against naked skin unpeeled another layer from people besides clothes; how it was another way for people to know one another. I do not want him to know me, she thought desperately. Her work depended on him not knowing her, yet every night he learned more.
“It is hardest to lie to those who know us best.” Captain Cameron had said that in Folkestone. Eve shoved the thought of him away, not wanting it anywhere near her nights in René’s bed, but the fear persisted. If René learned her well enough, would she be able to continue fooling him?
Yes, she thought fiercely. It will mean more and better lying, but that you can do. And remember: you are learning him too.
Night by night, Eve learned the twitch of René’s every muscle, each flare of his eyes. The man armored in his beautiful suits was easier to read now that she knew how the naked muscles moved beneath.
Once he finished toying with her, the joining was swift. He preferred to be behind or above, hand twined in her hair to tip her face back, holding her where he could see her every reaction. He liked her to look back at him—“Eyes open, pet,” he ordered frequently, never missing a stroke. And when he finally allowed his own pleasure to make an end of it, he sank slowly over her, letting her body cushion his as their sweat cooled, and picked up whatever conversation they’d been having in his study, about Débussy or Klimt or Proven?al wine.
Tonight it was about the kaiser.
“I’m told he was pleased by this visit. The airfield met with his approval, though one has to wonder what he thought of the trenches. Ghastly places, one hears.”
“Did you m-m-meet him?” Eve lay still, her fingers twined with René’s against the pillow and her legs tangled around his lean thighs. During moments like these, he was at his most incautious. “I h-hoped he would come to Le Lethe . . .”
René caught a flicker of emotion from her there, as much as she masked her face in innocence. “So you could spit in his vichyssoise?”
Eve made light of it, not lying. She never lied when they lay pressed together skin against skin, not if she could help it. Thoughts traveled faster skin to skin. “I wouldn’t spit in his soup,” she said frankly. “But I’d t-t-think about it.”
René laughed, rolling away. His flesh slid from her, and Eve repressed the usual shiver. “One hears he is a vulgar man, kaiser or no. Still, I was hoping he’d come to the restaurant. Quite a coup that would have been, playing host to an emperor.”
Eve pulled the sheet up over herself. “Has he ordered any ch-ch—any changes in orders, after seeing Lille?”
“Yes, rather interesting . . .”
And René told her.
“What good information you’re getting,” Lili commented on her next visit, a few days after the kaiser’s departure. She stopped by as Eve was getting ready for her evening shift; Eve sat brushing out her hair as Lili copied the latest report. She held up the rice paper, shaking her head half in contempt and half in amusement. “Is the German Kommandant really talking about the new artillery improvements in public, over cherries jubilee and brandy?”
“No.” Eve kept her eyes on the rickety washstand mirror. “René Bordelon does in private, over a pillow.”
She could feel Lili’s eyes on her back.
Eve spoke with as much dry formality as possible, but she still tripped at the first hurdle. “Just before our interview with Uncle Edward, I b-became René’s . . .” What? Mistress? He might employ her but he didn’t keep her. Whore? He didn’t pay her beyond her wages, except in elderflower liqueur and a robe she was not allowed to wear except in his study. Lover? There was no love there.
But Lili didn’t need the sentence finished. “Pauvre petite,” she said, and crossed to take the brush from Eve’s hand. “I’m sorry. Does he hurt you?”
“No.” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Worse.”
“How?”
“I—” Eve’s throat locked. “Lili, I—I’m s-so ashamed.”
The brush crackled through Eve’s hair. “I know you aren’t one to have your head turned easily, which is why I thought you could take such a step without compromising yourself. But such things can become more complicated than we anticipate. Are you developing a tendresse for him?”
“No.” A bitter shake of Eve’s head. “Never in this wide world.”
“Good. If I thought you were becoming conflicted, I’d have to report it. And I would,” Lili said evenly, continuing to stroke the brush through Eve’s hair. “I’m terribly fond of you, but the work is too important to compromise. So if it’s not a tendresse, what makes you so ashamed?”
Eve forced her burning eyes open, meeting Lili’s gaze in the mirror. “The first f-few times I went to bed with him, p-p-pleasure wasn’t—required.” Or even expected. “Now . . .”
Now, however, Eve had had time to grow accustomed to what happened in the crisp, immaculate bed. And René Bordelon had high standards in bedmates, as he did in everything else. Pleasure was expected. Giving it and getting it.
That had led to something utterly unimaginable.
“Tell me.” Lili sounded matter-of-fact. “Not much shocks me, you may be sure of that.”
“I am starting to enjoy it,” Eve said, and squeezed her eyes shut again.
The long brushstrokes never stopped.
“I despise him.” Eve managed to keep her voice steady. “So how can I possibly take pleasure in what he d-d-d—in what he does to m-m—” The word wouldn’t come. Eve let it die.
“He must be good at it,” Lili said.