Penny Jordan Collection: Just One Night

by Penny Jordan

  PIERS was dreaming about Ben. He had taken the dog for a walk and Ben had brought a stick for Piers to throw, dropping it at his feet. As Piers picked up the stick and threw it across what he had thought to be a vast open expanse of empty countryside, the countryside transformed itself into a hideously busy six-lane motorway.

  Piers opened his mouth to warn Ben not to run after the stick, but it was too late: the dog was already racing towards the motorway and certain destruction.

  Despairingly Piers called the dog’s name.

  * * *

  At first when she heard Piers calling out Ben’s name, Georgia, still half asleep, imagined that he must have somehow spotted the dog, but when she looked automatically towards the bedroom window Piers wasn’t standing there and the curtains were closed.

  Fully awake now, she sat up in bed, switching on the bedside lamp.

  Piers was lying in bed beside her, obviously in the grip of a nightmare, his forehead beaded with sweat as he lunged to the other side of the bed as though trying to catch hold of something or someone.

  ‘Piers...’ Instinctively Georgia reached over to him, reaching for his shoulder and shaking him.

  ‘Piers,’ she repeated a little more anxiously as she heard him whispering brokenly,

  ‘Ben... No... Please, no...’ His voice was raw with pain and guilt.

  As she shook him a little harder his eyes opened, and she could see quite clearly in them his anguish and guilt.

  ‘Georgia?’ He looked at her in confusion, frowning as he turned his head and stared round the farmhouse bedroom.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Georgia reassured him gently. ‘You were having a dream.’

  ‘A nightmare,’ Piers corrected her tersely, sitting up in the bed and pushing his hand through his hair as he came fully awake.

  ‘You called out Ben’s name,’ Georgia told him sombrely. ‘At first I thought you must have seen him, but then I realised that you were still asleep.’

  As he had sat up in bed Georgia had seen that he was wearing a thick towelling robe, but he must have left it unfastened, she recognised, because as he turned towards her it gaped open, revealing the bronze breadth of his chest.

  Was it really only last night that she had...? The sudden surge of heat that hit her made her look away from him, biting sharply on her bottom lip as she tried to suppress her reaction to him.

  ‘Don’t do that,’ she heard Piers begging her huskily.

  ‘What?’ she asked him in confusion, releasing her lip and looking automatically back at him.

  ‘That,’ Piers told her, touching the spot on her lip where the impact of her teeth had left a small, tender swelling.

  The unexpected sensuality of his fingertip brushing against her lip was heart-stoppingly intimate.

  ‘Why...why shouldn’t I do it?’ she managed to ask him shakily as she felt his burning gaze slide over her skin.

  ‘Because it makes me want to do this,’ Piers told her in a thick voice that had the same effect on her senses as if she were being licked by the rough tongue of a tiger.

  Her body completely still, Georgia watched the descent of Piers’s mouth, knowing what was going to happen even before she felt the velvety, hot stroke of his mouth caressing her own. Helplessly she closed her eyes, and then opened them again in deprivation as Piers lifted his mouth from hers.

  ‘I would never have hurt Ben,’ he told her rawly. ‘I want you to believe that, Georgia. I may not have thought he was a suitable pet for my godmother but I never...’ He stopped and shook his head. ‘I should never have put him in the car. I should have brought him back to you before going to see the estate agent. I wish to God I had,’ he told her vehemently. ‘Because then he would have been safe.’

  ‘As I’ve tried to reassure you before, it isn’t your fault,’ Georgia said, but Piers shook his head.

  ‘Neither of us believes that,’ he told her grimly.

  To her own surprise Georgia heard herself not just saying but meaning as well, ‘I believe it, Piers.’

  ‘You’re so sweet,’ she heard him telling her thickly. ‘So sweet and so...’

  Georgia shuddered in delight as his mouth opened over hers in a kiss of fierce passion and promise. She wanted to tell Piers that he must stop what he was doing, that he mustn’t encourage her to betray herself and her love to him by kissing her the way he was doing, but somehow the words were never uttered. Instead, she was clinging to him, wrapping her arms around his neck as she opened her mouth to his kiss, seeking, finding and claiming the hot thrust of his tongue with a female urgency that made Piers stiffen and then shudder.

  Wrenching his mouth away from hers, he told her rawly, ‘If you keep on kissing me like that there’s no way I’m going to be able to stay here in this bed with you and not give you with my body what you’re asking me for with your mouth.’

  For a moment Georgia was too shocked to say anything, heat scalding her skin as she took in the full meaning of what he was saying. In the lamplight she could see the hot sheen of his torso.

  ‘I...I wasn’t asking for anything,’ she denied huskily, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to look into Piers’s eyes, and she knew that the little tremors of sensation thrilling through her body were making a mockery of her verbal denial.

  ‘Weren’t you?’ Piers countered swiftly. ‘Come here and prove it to me, then, Georgia; come here and lie next to me, skin against skin, heartbeat against heartbeat, and tell me again that you don’t want me. That this...’ he paused as his fingertip delicately touched the place where the frantic betraying pulse thudded at the base of her throat ‘...doesn’t mean what we both know it does...’

  Very deliberately he slipped the straps of her nightdress down off her shoulders so that it fell free of her immobile body, revealing the full curves of her breasts. Even more delicately he touched her nipples—so tautly erect and sensitive to him that Georgia shuddered visibly in reaction as he did so.

  ‘Oh, God, you don’t know what it does to me to see you reacting to me like that,’ she heard Piers telling her thickly. ‘You want me to touch you, Georgia...to hold you...taste you...’ His voice was so thickly muffled that Georgia could barely hear what he was saying—or was it because her own heart was beating so loudly and so fast that she wasn’t sure whether or not he had said that final, fatal ‘You want me to love you’ or not?

  And anyway, what did it matter what he had said, or what he had guessed? What did anything matter now other than the aching need that filled her? A woman’s need, driven by a woman’s love; her body was so ready for him, so longing for him, so empty for him.

  Proudly Georgia arched her back as his hands held and shaped her breasts, her eyes heavy-lidded with passion as she watched his head bend towards her body.

  A tiny shocked gasp of pleasure quivered past her lips as he began to explore one taut nipple delicately with his mouth. The most exquisitely arousing sensation shot through her, quicksilver, mercurial rivulets of pleasure that had her writhing in sensual torment against him.

  Just for one brief second reality slipped through the rainbow-coloured delight she was experiencing.

  ‘No!’ she protested muzzily as Piers pushed the bedclothes aside and slid her nightdress completely free of her body at the same time as he removed his own robe. The reality of him was so much more than she had imagined, so powerfully, awesomely male.

  ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘We shouldn’t...we mustn’t... Without love...’

  ‘You mustn’t be ashamed of wanting me,’ Piers whispered back. ‘Desire isn’t wrong, Georgia, it’s a normal, natural human need.’

  Perhaps for him it was, Georgia recognised, but for her...

  ‘Love matters,’ she protested fiercely. ‘I should... I need—’

  ‘You need this; you need me...’ Piers interrupted her softly.

  The touch of his hands against her skin was enticing her into a world she couldn’t bear to resist, luring her there with a hundred—no, a thousand sensua
l promises she knew he could fulfil. Just the sweep of his hand against her naked flesh as he caressed the length of her spine, just the warmth of his breath against her mouth as he lifted her to his own body and started to kiss her were enough to vanquish all the arguments her inner voice of caution could muster.

  And instead of repudiating him she heard herself saying helplessly as he touched her, ‘Oh, yes...yes...’

  And then she closed her eyes and let him lead her into such an unfamiliar country that to name it merely ‘pleasure’ was like calling the sun ‘warm’.

  ‘Hasn’t anyone ever done this for you before?’ Piers asked her tenderly at one moment when she was so unable to conceal from him what she was feeling that her eyes actually started to fill with tears, so unbearably intense was her pleasure.

  ‘Wait until I love you there with my mouth,’ he whispered slowly to her, watching as the expressions chased one another across her face, wondering if she had any idea how close she brought him to the edge of completion just by the way she was reacting to his words and his touch.

  He wanted her more than he had the words to tell her, but out of love for her he wanted to prolong every precious second of this special time with her, not to enhance his own pleasure but to give him enough memories of her to last him through all the long, dark times when she wasn’t going to be there.

  Her honesty when she had as good as told him that she couldn’t love him and when she had struggled to admit her physical need for him had brought him the closest he had ever come to tears in all his adult life. Without her love this act of intimacy between them should have been shallow and meaningless, but with every breath she took, every look she gave him, every small shudder and sigh what she was doing was deepening his love and his longing for her. She was so natural, so giving, so loving even without loving him, that his self-control reached the point of no return sooner than he would have wished.

  Quickly he reached for her, sliding her the length of his body and then kneeling over her as he kissed first her mouth and then her breasts.

  He looked, Georgia thought dizzily, like some Greek god of old, and she felt much as she imagined her mythological female counterpart must have done, her body quivering with longing and awe, her emotions bonding her to the magnificent male she knew, in her heart, she could never hold and with whom she could never have more than this one precious, intimate night—a night that would stay in her memory for ever.

  Tremulously Georgia reached out and touched him, running her fingertips along his collarbone and then down the length of his body.

  ‘Yes,’ Piers urged her thickly when her fingers came to rest in the soft pubic hair that enclosed his maleness. ‘Yes,’ he repeated rawly. ‘Touch me, know me, Georgia. I want...’ And then, almost before her hesitant fingers had had time to do more than merely sketch the shape and feel of him, he was removing them to ease himself very slowly and carefully inside her.

  Each careful movement, each deliberately controlled thrust made her gasp in shocked delight, her body convulsing around him, laying claim to him and welcoming him.

  Georgia cried out loud as she felt him reach fulfilment deep within her, the hot burst of his release triggering her own white-lightning explosion of pleasure, starburst after starburst of it until she was shuddering in Piers’s arms, crying out his name in between her indrawn gulps of air.

  ‘Piers,’ she whispered as the grateful tears of release cooled her heated face.

  ‘Hush,’ he soothed her, drawing her as close to his body as he could and holding her there as he stroked her tear-damp face and kissed her mouth gently. ‘Don’t say anything, Georgia. That was so perfect...so beautiful...so right.’

  So right? When he didn’t love her? Despite her physical satisfaction Georgia could feel the sharpness of her own pain. But he was right about one thing: what was the point in her saying anything? Piers obviously thought her desire for him had been motivated by the same physical need which had driven him, and what was the point in adding to her own misery by telling him the truth?

  Hungrily she snuggled closer to him. She needed this intimate contact, this intimate closeness with him so much. Her starved senses ached for it so much. Wearily she closed her eyes.

  * * *

  When she opened her eyes again it was morning. The sun was shining out of an impossibly clear blue sky and Piers was lying in bed next to her. As she looked uncertainly at him, trying not to betray just how potent an effect the sight of his naked torso was having on her, or of the sensual memories it evoked, he moved to her and said softly, ‘Hello, you...’

  Hello, you! Two very simple words but, oh, what a sense of intimacy, sharing and belonging they conveyed—what a false sense of intimacy, sharing and belonging they conveyed, Georgia’s aching heart warned her.

  Piers felt nothing for her emotionally. She knew that. But she could see he was waiting for her to make some kind of response. Gravely she gave it, returning his greeting with a rather more formal and quiet, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Georgia...’

  Liquid heat suffused her as her body reacted to the sensual urgency she could hear in Piers’s voice when he started to reach for her.

  ‘We ought to get up and start searching for Ben,’ Georgia reminded him breathlessly. ‘It’s a wonderful day...’

  ‘Wonderful,’ Piers agreed, showing no sign of doing anything other than tightening his hold on her. ‘Wonderful,’ he repeated as he feathered the lightest of kisses against her mouth. ‘Just like you...’

  * * *

  At the campsite the boys were already awake and clamouring for their breakfast. On the far side of the river Ben waited expectantly as the scent of frying food filled the air. Last night’s stolen sausages had tasted very good, but now he was hungry again.

  Where the boys were camping the river formed a natural pool, quite deep in places, fed at one end where the hillside fell away to create a natural waterfall, and, as Ben had already discovered, the river was quite fast moving, and only really safe to cross at the furthest end of the small valley.

  He headed this way now. Under normal circumstances he would have disdained to touch scraps, his preferred diet being the special food Mrs Latham bought for him plus his extra ‘luxury treats’. But right now his mouth was already watering at the thought of the boys’ leftover bits of bacon and sausage.

  As he padded down towards the shallowest part of the river Ben paused when he heard the boys being summoned for their breakfast. Two of them, either not having heard or deliberately ignoring the summons, were standing on an outcrop of rocks beside one of the deepest parts of the pool, skimming stones across its surface. Ben watched them, and as he did so one of the boys grabbed hold of the other’s shirt, shaking him as though warning him that it was time to go, but the other boy shook him off, stepping back from him as he told him that he wasn’t ready to go yet.

  ‘We’ve got to,’ his companion protested, trying to take hold of his arm a second time, but as his friend laughed and evaded his grasp tragedy struck and he lost his footing, falling backwards into the deep water.

  ‘Alex!’

  As Ben heard the anxiety in the now solitary boy’s voice he leapt into immediate action. He wasn’t a dog bred specifically to retrieve game from water, but he innately knew what had to be done. Quickly he swam strongly towards the spot where the boy had disappeared beneath the water, quickly finding his inert body.

  It wasn’t easy getting underneath him and lifting him to the surface, rolling him over on to his back so that he could fasten his teeth into his clothes and tug him back to dry land, but, to Ben’s relief, as he stalwartly doggy-paddled to the river bank, determinedly taking his human find with him, other help was at hand.

  The other boy had run back to the camp to alert them to what had happened, and now there were many pairs of willing hands to help Ben and to relieve him of the boy.

  ‘Good dog... Oh, good dog,’ someone was praising him, and on the dry sandy ground beside the river bank the
boy was coughing up water and protesting that he was all right.

  Shaking the water from his coat, Ben happily accompanied the children, who were coaxing him back to the campsite, even more happily accepting the food they offered him and the praise they heaped on him.

  A team of paramedics came to take the now recovered victim of the accident to hospital, ‘just as a precaution’, and Ben’s heroism was again extolled for their benefit.

  As he accompanied them to the waiting ambulance the leader of the troop confided to one of the ambulancemen his belief that, without Ben’s timely intervention, the outcome of the accident could have been very different and far more grave.

  ‘A setter did you say?’ the man questioned the Scout leader, frowning a little as he waited for the man’s response.

  ‘Yes, that’s right. He’s with the children now. A nice dog...friendly...’

  ‘Hmm... Well, there’s been a setter reported missing on the local news. Seems like someone must be very anxious to get him back because there’s a reward offered for his safe return.’

  ‘And do you think this might be the same dog?’

  ‘Could be. If it is he answers to the name of Ben, and he’s got one of those implanted microchip identity tags.’

  * * *

  ‘Mmm...’ Georgia quivered in mute delight as she heard the male pleasure in Piers’s voice as his mouth caressed hers. Beneath the bedclothes his hand had found the soft mound of her breast and her nipple was already hardening into excited eagerness at his touch.

  ‘Hello...? I’m sorry to wake you, but...’

  ‘It’s Mrs Bowles,’ Georgia hissed frantically to Piers as she pulled uncomfortably away from him.

  But Piers was already getting out of bed, reaching quickly for his robe, as unfazed by the farmer’s wife’s urgent knock on the door as she was agitated by it.

  ‘Hang on a sec,’ he called out, turning his head to smile reassuringly at Georgia and to check that she was completely composed before going to open the door.

  ‘Sorry to disturb you,’ Mary Bowles apologised again, ‘but there’s been a phone call from my brother about your dog. Seems like—’