“You did it, Matt.” Her voice came out as a choked whisper. She cleared her throat. “You did it. In little more than a day, you’ve done what we couldn’t do in months, years. You’ve found the thread to unravel the killer’s game. This is the breakthrough we’ve been looking for.”
She didn’t remember throwing herself at him, but suddenly she was in his arms, laughing and crying at the same time. She looped her arms around his neck and looked up into his wide-eyed gaze, then planted a kiss right on his lips.
She drew back and framed his face with her hands, giddy with happiness. “Thank you, Matt. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You’ve saved my career. And you’ve saved lives! Casey can’t deny this is a real case anymore. He’ll have to get involved, throw some resources at finding the killer. And we’ll stop this bastard before he hurts anyone else. How does that feel? How does it feel to know you just saved someone?”
His arms tightened around her waist, and he pulled her against his chest. “It feels pretty damn good,” he whispered. And then he kissed her.
Not the quick peck she’d just given him. A real kiss. A hot, wet, knock-every-rational- thought-out-of-her-mind kind of kiss. His mouth moved against hers in a sensual onslaught—nipping, tasting, teasing—before his tongue swept inside and consumed her with his heat.
Desire flooded through her, and she whimpered against him. She stroked his tongue with hers, and he groaned deep in his throat. He slid his hand down over the curve of her bottom and lifted her until she cradled his growing hardness against her belly. He held her so tightly she felt every beat of his heart against her breast. His breath was her breath, drawing her in, stoking the fire inside her into a growing inferno.
He gyrated his hips against hers in a sinful movement that spiked across her nerve endings, tightening her into an almost painful tangle of tension. Every movement of his hips, every slant of his lips, every thrust of his tongue stoked her higher and higher, coiling her nerves into one tight knot of desire, ready to explode.
Nothing had ever felt this good.
Nothing.
Ever.
The tiny voice inside her, the one she’d ruthlessly quashed as soon as his lips claimed hers, suddenly yelled a loud warning. Stop this madness!
Her eyes flew open. This was Matt making her feel this way, on the brink of a climax when all he’d done was kiss her. Matt. Good grief, what was she thinking? He swiveled his hips again, and she nearly died of pleasure.
No, no! This had to stop.
Convincing her traitorous body to respond to her mind’s commands was the hardest thing she’d ever tried to do, because every cell, every nerve ending wanted to stay exactly where she was: pressed up against Matt’s delicious, hard, warm body.
His twenty-four-year-old body to her thirty-year-old one.
This was insane, a recipe for disaster. She had to stop, now, before she pulled him down to the ground and demanded that he make love to her right this very minute.
She broke the kiss and shoved out of his arms.
An Excerpt from
THE GOVERNESS CLUB: BONNIE
by Ellie Macdonald
The Governess Club series continues with Miss Bonnie Hodges. She is desperately trying to hold it together. Tragedy has struck, and she is the sole person left to be strong for the two little boys in her care. When the new guardian, Sir Stephen Montgomery, arrives, she hopes that things will get better. She wasn’t expecting her new employer to be the most frustrating, overbearing, and . . . handsome man she’s ever seen.
When he reached the water’s edge, Stephen stopped. Staring at the wreckage that used to be the wooden bridge, he was acutely aware that he was looking at the site of his friends’ death.
Images from the story Miss Hodges had told him flashed through his mind—the waving parents, the bridge shuddering before it collapsed, the falling planks and horses, the coach splintering, George’s neck snapping, and Roslyn—God, Roslyn lying in that mangled coach, her blood pouring out of her body. How had she survived long enough for anyone to come and see her still breathing?
Nausea roiled in his stomach, and bile forced its way up his throat. Heaving, Stephen bent over a nearby bush and lost the contents of his stomach. Minutes later, he crouched down at the river’s edge and splashed the cold water on his face.
From where he crouched, Stephen turned his gaze down the river, away from the ruined bridge. He could make out an area ideal for swimming: a small stretch of sandy bank surrounded by a few large, flat rocks. Indeed, an excellent place for a governess to take her charges for a cooling swim on a hot summer day.
Stephen straightened and made his way along the bank to the swimming area. A well-worn path weaved through the bush, connecting the small beach to the hill beyond and Darrowgate. The bridge was seventy meters upstream; not only would the governess and the boys have had a good view of the collapse, the blood from the incident would have flowed right by them.
No wonder they barely spoke.
Tearing his gaze from the bridge, he focused on the water, trying to imagine the trio enjoying their swim, with no inkling or threat of danger. The boys in the water, laughing and splashing each other, showing off their swimming skills to their laughing governess.
Stephen looked at the closest flat rock, the thought of the laughing governess in his mind. She had said she preferred dangling her feet instead of swimming.
His mind’s eye put Miss Hodges on the rock, much as she had been the previous night. The look on her face after seeing his own flour-covered face. Her smile had been so wide it had been difficult to see anything else about her. He knew her eyes and hair were certain colors, but he was damned if he could name them—the eyes were some light shade and the hair was brown, that he knew for certain.
And her laugh—it was the last thing he had expected from her. He was in a difficult situation—not quite master but regarded as such until Henry’s majority. For a servant, even a governess, to laugh as she had was entirely unpredictable.
He shouldn’t think too much about how that unexpected laughter had settled in his gut.
The image of Miss Hodges sitting on the rock rose again in his mind. The sun would have warmed the rock beneath her hands, and she would have looked down at the clear water. She would laugh at the boys’ antics, he had no doubt, perhaps even kick water in their direction if they ventured too close. Her stockings would be folded into her shoes to keep them from blowing away in the breeze.
Good Lord, he could almost see it. The stockings protected in the nearby shoes, her naked feet dangling in the water, her skirts raised to keep them from getting wet, exposing her trim ankles. The clear water would do nothing to hide either her feet or her ankles, and Stephen found himself staring unabashedly at something that wasn’t even there. He gazed at the empty water, imagining exactly what Miss Hodges’s ankles would look like. They would be slim, they would be bonny, they would—
Thankfully, a passing cart made enough noise to break him out of this ridiculously schoolboy moment. Inhaling deeply through his nose, Stephen left the swimming area and made his way back for a closer look at the ruins.
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