Excerpt of The Spy by Celeste Bradley

Propping both fists on her hips, Phillipa looked down at her student disapprovingly. "You, me lad, are about to experience the patented Atwater tickle revenge."

Robbie jumped up to run, a giggle already bubbling through his mock fear. Phillipa snapped him up just before he made it to the door. He must not have been trying very hard, for he'd surely learned more speed than that in his years on the streets.

She swung him yelping into the air and brought him down onto the rug before the fire, her fingers raking his bony little sides.

Robbie screeched, his rusty laughter another reminder to Phillipa of his short hard life before she'd met him. Grinning, she almost let him catch a breath before she began anew. "Robbie the Rebel, are you? Robbie the Great Know-it-all, are you? You look more like Robbie Twitter-on- the-rug, if you ask me!"

Time to go in for the kill. The volume of Robbie's screeches rose to full riot level. Phillipa heard another sound beyond it, but she didn't identify it as the thumping of running feet in the hall until the door of the schoolroom crashed open.

"What the bloody hell are you doing to him?"

Before Phillipa could turn around, she was lifted by the scruff of her neck and dragged from Robbie.

She found herself dangling from James Cunnington's grip, gagging on her cravat--which was apparently auditioning for the role as her brand new Adam's apple.

Then her gaze sharpened on James and her eyes bulged further. It was probably a good thing she couldn't speak, for the man was more than a little naked. In fact, he was naked, but for a towel around his neck and a pair of drawers that clung to his bath-damp skin like paint.

He was revealed to her eyes in all his powerful beauty. His wide brawny chest, his rippling belly, the dark trail of hair that led the eye below the sagging waist of his drawers which did nothing to hide the muscular thighs framing what could only be It.

Great Greek Gods.

She desired him. The realization sent fresh strength into her struggles.

She wanted him, when she couldn't bear to speak her own name in solitude for fear of discovery. When she couldn't allow her body so much as a moment of freedom from its bindings and trappings.

With more strength than she'd known she had, she pushed herself from his grip. James laughed, obviously realizing his mistake, and gave her an apologetic grin. Phillipa forced a sickly chuckle to hide her appalling new awareness.

She lusted for a man who thought she was a man.

What a fix.