Page 104 of How To Tempt A Bodyguard

"Don't thank me." Tam's voice was dry. "Just don't wake anyone else up with your... reunion."

Matthew didn't dignify that with a response.

Chapter twenty-eight

Raw

Florence

She dreamed of him.

Not the gentle dreams of early courtship: walking through gardens, stolen glances across crowded rooms. These dreams were raw. Desperate. His hands on her skin, his weight pressing her down, his voice rough in her ear saying things she couldn't quite hear but understood anyway.

In the dream, she reached for him. Her fingers found only cold sheets.

She woke with tears on her cheeks and his name on her lips.

"Matthew."

The word hung in the darkness of her small room at the Hollow. Outside, wind whispered through the trees. The house was silent around her.

Florence pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, willing the tears to stop. She was Madam Tansley. She'd faced down violent men, coordinated dangerous rescues, stared into the abyss of human cruelty without flinching.

She would not fall apart because she missed her husband.

But God, she missed him.

Three weeks of coded messages passed through Brennan. Three weeks of sleeping alone, of reaching across the bed and finding nothing, of waking from dreams where he was inside her only to face the cold reality of his absence.

She knew why he'd gone. Knew the logic was sound. Knew that every day he spent in Carrick's household brought them closer to destroying the man who'd caused so much suffering.

Knowing didn't help.

"You better be safe," she said aloud to the empty room. "Because if you get yourself killed…"

A tap at her window.

Florence's heart stopped.

She reached for the knife under her pillow, slid out of bed, crept towards the window. The moonlight silhouetted a figure outside, broad and familiar.

"The barn." His voice was barely a whisper.

Then he was gone.

She didn't remember crossing the yard.

One moment she was standing in the doorway. The next she was at the old storage barn, the one with the collapsed roof and the door that hung crooked on its hinges.

He stepped out of the shadows.

The hollowness, longing, of reaching for him in her sleep. It all collapsed into a single moment. He was here. He was alive. He was real.

"Matthew—"

She didn't finish his name. His mouth was on hers before the second syllable left her lips.

The kiss was desperate. Devouring. His hands fisted in her hair, tilting her head back, claiming her mouth with a ferocity that bordered on violence.