Penny Jordan Collection: Just One Night

by Penny Jordan

  ‘Mmm...’ she repeated on an even more breathless note as Piers’s mouth came down over her own. Perhaps, she decided dizzily, he thought she needed a little extra help with her breathing, and obligingly she opened her mouth beneath his in order to assist him.

  ‘Mmm...’

  This time when he felt the shiver run through her body Piers did not make the error of mistaking it for a shiver of cold, but he still tightened his hold on her, wrapping her even more closely against his own body—no doubt trying to warm her, Georgia assured herself. And since he was being so helpful and such a good Samaritan the least she could do was to facilitate all that he was doing to assist her.

  Obviously it would be much easier for him to keep her warm with his own body heat if she wrapped her arms around him, and she could quite understand why it was necessary for him to run his hands up and down the length of her naked back. Their touch was deliciously warm—and the things it did to her spine and her nerve-endings...! Heavens, she had had no idea that her flesh could be so extraordinarily sensitive, and if the way he was kissing that small, pulsing cord in the side of her neck was perhaps just a little unorthodox, well, it was still having the most deliciously pleasurable effect on her senses, which surely was far more restorative than had he adopted a more traditional means of warming her—such as proffering a hot-water bottle or a heated blanket.

  Thinking of hot-water bottles and heated blankets inexplicably reminded Georgia of the fact that the bed was right there, only inches away from them, and inexplicably she had the oddest need to lie down on it. Probably because she was feeling so light-headed and weak, she told herself.

  Through the fine softness of Piers’s shirt Georgia could feel the heavenly warmth of his chest, and when she opened her eyes she could see the soft darkness of his body hair. A thrill of sensation ran right through her, a shocking female awareness of Piers’s maleness; her fingers itched to stroke their way through that inviting silkiness and to explore the flesh that lay beneath it. A hundred unfamiliar and highly erotic impulses flashed their tantalising messages to Georgia’s senses, flattening immediately the tentative and semi-shocked resistance her brain put up to the wantonness of such thoughts.

  Weakly Georgia told herself that it was the very unfamiliarity of such thoughts that made her feel so vulnerable towards them, so unable to deny or reject their provocative allure. The temptation to unfasten just one of the buttons on Piers’s shirt, just to see if actually touching him would prove to be as deliciously erotic as she imagined, was proving impossible to resist. Just one button, she promised herself, that was all, but as her mouth meshed with Piers’s responding to and returning the increasing passion of his kiss, ‘just one’ became two, and then three, and then, before she knew it, Piers was murmuring to her that he wanted her to take his shirt off completely. What was more, he was helping her to do so. And then, blissfully, the hard, naked warmth of his upper body was hers to touch and explore.

  Vaguely Georgia was aware of how odd it was that she should want to touch Piers like this when she had never once felt even remotely tempted to explore or caress her first lover in the same almost frenziedly hungry way, but she dismissed the thought as an unnecessary and unwanted distraction from what she was doing. The silky arrowing of Piers’s hair ran right down the centre of his chest—and lower—and Georgia’s fingertips followed it all the way to where his belt obstructed her progress.

  She heard Piers catch his breath as she stopped, lifting his mouth from hers whilst he looked deep into her eyes.

  Georgia held her breath, conscious of the solemnity of the moment, and then, as Piers lifted his hand to touch her face, she saw his gaze drop to her naked breasts and stay there.

  Very gently he reached out and touched her, his fingertips just stroking the merest feathering of touches along the outer curve of her breast.

  Immediately Georgia gave an involuntary shiver of sensual reaction, her nipples thrusting eagerly into dark, excited peaks. Just the thought of Piers’s hands cupping her naked breasts made her shudder voluptuously, but when he did so the pleasure she had imagined came nowhere near matching the real thing, and Georgia made a small soft sound of pleasure as he started to caress her.

  When he picked her up and laid her gently on the bed she watched him, liquid-eyed, whilst he leaned over her, silently spanning her small waist with his hands before lifting his head to look into her eyes.

  He wanted to touch and memorise every delicious curve of her, Piers decided as he felt the tiny responsive nerves jumping beneath Georgia’s skin. Just the sight and scent of her aroused him to the point where... And as for that soft, liquid, melting look he could see in her eyes...

  Reaching for her hand, he took hold of it in his and lifted it palm upwards to his mouth, slowly kissing the sensitive flesh of her palm and watching her reaction darken her eyes at the same time as he felt the responsive shudder go though her. And then, still holding her hand, he placed it on the fastening of his belt, holding it there as he leaned over and slowly kissed first her mouth, and then the dark points of each breast in turn, once, and then a second time and then a third.

  As she felt Piers’s mouth caressing her nipples Georgia cried out softly, unable to control her response, her fingers curling into the buckle of his belt. His hand was caressing the bare flesh of her hip and Georgia could feel the tiny quivers of sensation running like quicksilver inside her body, starting to gather, to coalesce, into a torrent which she knew instinctively would totally sweep her away.

  Piers was drawing her nipple deeper into his mouth, and the shivers of pleasure his caress was causing her were turning into deep, fierce shudders of female reaction.

  As Piers released her nipple from the sensual captivity of his mouth and tongue, feeding its hunger with the pliant caress of his fingertips, he whispered thickly to her, ‘Undress me, Georgia. I want—’

  ‘Woof!’

  Both of them froze as Ben suddenly came into the room and gave one firm bark.

  Ben!

  Guiltily Georgia pushed Piers away. How on earth could she have forgotten not just the dog but her entire sense of reality as well?

  Equally swiftly Piers moved back from Georgia. Just what the hell was he doing? Every instinct he possessed told him that Georgia was quite definitely a serious commitment type of woman. Georgia had already managed to worm not just her way, but also that of that wretched dog as well, into his godmother’s affections, and now here she was, performing an equally dangerous trick on his own emotions.

  ‘Ben!’ Georgia exclaimed at the same time as Piers instructed sharply, ‘Downstairs...now...’

  Placidly Ben wagged his tail and headed towards the open bedroom door, but once there he simply sat down and looked at Piers.

  Angrily Piers glowered at him as he got up off the bed and picked up his shirt, pulling it on before walking towards Ben. If he hadn’t been far too sensible to think anything so foolish he might almost have imagined that the dog had come upstairs with the deliberate intention of interrupting them, and that he was making it equally plain that there was no way he was going to go back downstairs and leave Piers alone with Georgia.

  Georgia, meanwhile, as soon as Piers had got up off the bed, had reached for her robe and pulled it on.

  What on earth had come over her? There was no rational explanation for what she had done—or for what she had wanted to do.

  * * *

  Some hours later, on his way to bed, having checked that all the doors and windows were locked and the alarm was on, Piers paused outside Georgia’s bedroom door. It was all very well for her to have claimed earlier that she wasn’t suffering any after-effects from her wetting; he still...

  His hand was on the door handle when Ben suddenly came padding upstairs and very determinedly lay down outside Georgia’s bedroom door. Was it just his imagination or was the dog really looking at him, not just reproachfully but almost a little reprovingly? It was his imagination, of course, Piers assured himself, ju
st as the only logical reason that Ben had come upstairs was not really to guard Georgia but simply to try and get a more comfortable bed to sleep on than the one he was officially allocated downstairs in the kitchen.

  Nevertheless, Piers didn’t make any attempt to return Ben to the kitchen—or to open Georgia’s bedroom door.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘BEN!’

  Georgia tensed as she heard the wrathful warning in Piers’s voice as he called Ben’s name.

  She had spent the whole of the previous day, her first day’s leave, working with the English setter, and she had been very pleased with the results.

  Ben wanted to learn, to please, but he was an energetic dog who got easily bored. Now, as she saw the way his ears went down and he looked anxiously at her before going under the table to hide as he, like her, recognised the anger in Piers’s voice, all Georgia’s protective instincts came to the fore.

  She had been keeping as much distance as she could between her and Piers since the night of her ignominious fall into the river. After Ben had interrupted them and Piers had gone to take him downstairs Georgia had forced herself to look closely and analytically at what had happened between them, and she hadn’t liked the conclusions she had had to reach.

  Piers was a man, and men thought about, felt about, reacted differently to sexual intimacy than women did. Men’s sexual responses did not need to be touched, coloured or enhanced by their emotions. Men, by their very natures, tended to seize the sexual moment. Who knew what interpretation Piers had put on her own behaviour? Heavens, he might even have thought that she had deliberately allowed her towel to slip from her grasp—he was cynical enough, worldly enough; Georgia was sure of that.

  It wasn’t that she felt that he had deliberately set out to seduce her; she wasn’t so naive nor so melodramatic. No, she felt sure his primary intention had simply been to bring her a hot drink and to check that she was all right. Maybe, too, he had welcomed the opportunity to reinforce to her his views on Ben’s behaviour; but that was all.

  No, she couldn’t blame him. Not entirely. She could have resisted, protested, withdrawn from him, but instead she had—It had taken every ounce of courage she possessed for her to say to him the next day, ‘About last night... I...it... It was a mistake,’ she had told him firmly, unable to lift her gaze to meet his, as she’d walked into the kitchen and found him engaged in making his breakfast. ‘It shouldn’t have happened and I don’t—’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more.’ Piers had cut her off in a clipped voice.

  As he’d leant across the table Georgia had been able to see where the sunlight left a soft gold trail on his bare forearm, and she’d had the most ridiculous urge to reach out and touch him there.

  Speedily she had looked away from him, uncomfortably aware of how fast her heart was beating.

  Nothing further had been said about the incident in her bedroom by either of them, and Georgia had told herself that she was glad. And certainly she was equally glad that Piers had neither said nor done anything that in any way remotely suggested it was an experience he wished to repeat.

  Since then, though, she had taken great care to keep away from the kitchen when she knew that Piers was using it, and she suspected that he was doing the same thing. This morning, however, she had woken up earlier and had taken Ben for a short walk before returning to make her breakfast, only to find that Piers was in the kitchen making himself a cup of coffee, wearing only a towelling robe, his face unshaven and his hair ruffled. For some odd reason the knowledge that he had only just got out of bed had had a dangerous emotional effect on her.

  She hadn’t realised how much her expression was giving away until she’d heard him saying ruefully as he stroked his hand across his unshaven jaw, ‘Yes, I do need a shave, but I was up half the night working.’

  ‘Mmm...I suppose if you were married you’d have to shave at night,’ she began absently, and then stopped as she realised the direction her thoughts were taking. But it was too late because Piers had already picked up on what she was thinking.

  ‘At night—and in the morning,’ he told her meaningfully, his gaze sliding from her eyes to her mouth and then back to her eyes again, so that he could enjoy the confusion he could see so clearly registered there. What was it about her, he wondered, that made it so impossible for him not to give in to the temptation to underline his male sexuality to her and to watch her own female reaction to his provocation?

  ‘Stop looking at me like that,’ Georgia was unable to stop herself from begging him huskily.

  ‘Like what?’ Piers teased, his gaze deliberately dropping from her mouth to her body.

  ‘Like...like that!’ Georgia protested, immediately refocusing Piers’s attention on her softly parted lips.

  What would she do, he wondered, if he went to her now and took her in his arms? If he kissed her? She’d probably complain that his unshaven beard was scratching her tender skin, Piers told himself grittily, deliberately turning away from the temptation she represented and heading for the hallway.

  That had been when Georgia had heard him call out angrily for Ben.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she enquired now, following Piers into the hall and then stopping as she saw the shredded copy of his morning paper.

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Oh, indeed,’ Piers agreed grimly.

  ‘It’s only a newspaper.’ Georgia defended the dog. ‘It won’t take two minutes for me to go out and get you another one.’

  ‘That’s not the point,’ Piers told her sharply. ‘Don’t think I don’t know why you’re so determined to keep him here,’ he told Georgia grimly. ‘After all, you were the one who pressurised my godmother into having him in the first place.’

  ‘I did no such thing,’ Georgia immediately retorted indignantly.

  ‘No? That’s not the way my godmother tells it,’ Piers contradicted her flatly. ‘According to her, it’s you she has to thank for having Ben.’

  ‘Oh, but that’s...’ Georgia began, intending to tell him that it was because of her absence from the waiting room that his previous owner had managed to persuade his godmother into becoming Ben’s new owner.

  But Piers was in no mood to listen, overruling her before she had any chance to finish what she was saying, telling her curtly, ‘I should have thought that your professionalism alone would have made you think twice about putting emotional pressure on my godmother to take Ben on. Suggesting that he might have to be put to sleep if she didn’t have him was, in my view, a serious breach of professional conduct, and—’

  ‘I never told Mrs Latham any such thing,’ Georgia gasped.

  ‘Perhaps not in so many words,’ Piers allowed. ‘But you certainly gave her the impression that that’s what would have happened to him.’

  As the sound of their raised voices reached Ben through the half-open kitchen door he put his nose on his paws and listened anxiously to them. Human beings! They could be so hard to understand at times.

  * * *

  Piers frowned as he pulled up in front of the house he had come to view. From the details he had received on it he had decided that it sounded ideal for his purposes. Modern, architect-designed, spacious, with a good-sized garden to ensure his privacy—it even had a room specifically designed to house computer equipment.

  The selling agent who was due to meet him here had extolled its virtues to Piers when he had initially expressed an interest in it, adding helpfully that because the property was already empty Piers could move into it virtually as soon as he wished.

  Yes, this property was almost perfectly suited to his needs, unlike the farmhouse which was the only other remotely suitable property the agent had had on his books.

  As he had pondered before, there was no doubt whatsoever in his mind that Georgia would go for the farmhouse. She would probably insist on raising a brood of chickens, which she would want to have wandering about in the farmyard, and no doubt she would want to turn at least one of the outbuildings into temporary
accommodation for all the animal waifs and strays she would insist on adopting. He would be lucky if he didn’t find himself financing a donkey sanctuary, as well as providing a refuge for wild, untrainable dogs, and their children would probably grow up to be as animal-mad as their mother, so that his would be the only lone voice of sanity and restraint in the entire household.

  Not that both she and their children wouldn’t do their very best to subvert his desire to keep their lives as animal-free as possible. He could see it now: the lone school hamster who was brought home ‘for the holidays’ and who never went back; the stray cat who made her home with them and unexpectedly produced a litter of kittens; the pony his daughter would insist on having—and he would, of course, give in.

  ‘But she’ll have to clean it and feed it herself, I’m not getting up at the crack of dawn every day to do it...’

  To his consternation Piers realised that he had not only spoken his thoughts out loud but that, for one moment, his imagination had produced such an intensely real mental picture for him that it was as though his imaginary daughter was actually here, standing in front of him, her mother’s dark red curls bouncing with determination as she besieged him with pleas and entreaties.

  Her mother’s red hair... Georgia’s red hair... But he wasn’t...he didn’t... The clanking of the automatic wrought-iron gates opening alerted him to the estate agent’s arrival, bringing a thankful end to his disturbing thoughts.

  * * *

  ‘It would be the perfect property for a man in your position,’ the agent enthused as they finished viewing the house and he locked the front door. ‘It fulfils all the criteria you gave us.’

  ‘Yes,’ Piers agreed unenthusiastically.

  ‘It’s got vacant possession, and I know that the owner is prepared to negotiate on price,’ the agent persevered.

  ‘Mmm... What time is my appointment to view the farmhouse?’ Piers asked him briefly.

  ‘The farmhouse?’ The agent’s smile turned to a small frown. ‘I have made an appointment for you to view it,’ he began cautiously, ‘but I must warn you, it is in need of some quite serious renovation.’