Gaspard’s eyes refused to adjust as he blindly felt his way down the steps, and perhaps this was his body’s means of telling him that he should never have left Claudia’s bed. Having donned the rough attire he’d worn the night before, he shoved one hand into the pocket of his trousers. The satin ribbon she’d removed from that red, red corset twined about his thumb, and his blood heated at the memory of seeing her bent over the bed, face flushed and hair tangled, fists clutching the bedsheets as she moaned his name. He’d only taken her the once, but his body ached for more—more of her, more of them. But he had only one letter on him, those protective sheaths the death of his already pitiful accounts and thus needing to be rationed. Today marked the end of his spying and whoring. No more turning tricks for the Crown, and certainly no more playing Évoque’s little lapdog, sent off to fetch useless intelligence by humping the leg of a randy stranger. It was frivolously degrading, and Gaspard, intimately familiar with degradation, had had enough.
