‘Mmm...please...’ Georgia began, her back to the dog as she turned to respond to Piers’s question, her answer turning to a startled gasp as Ben rushed full tilt into her, knocking her completely off balance.
Immediately Piers swung round, reaching out to grab hold of her, and instinctively Georgia steadied herself by grasping his arms, her head bumping against the solid wall of his chest with the force of Ben’s enthusiastic response to being allowed inside.
It was only the way Piers had braced himself to catch her as she fell that was responsible for the fact that she was virtually lying full-length against him, her body pressed so close to the hard strength of his that it would have been impossible to pass a piece of paper between them. That was all, Georgia warned herself sternly. Just as it was only to support her that his arms were now wrapped tightly round her, almost as though he was cradling her tenderly within them. There was no doubt even a practical reason for that fierce, accelerated thud she could feel as his heartbeat picked up.
But her body seemed waywardly determined to interpret all these things in a very different way altogether. Cerebrally it might be implausible to believe that Piers was holding her like a lover, but her body was reacting to him as though he was. Embarrassingly so, Georgia realised as she felt her nipples become rigid, and the hot wave of shame washing down her body from her pink-cheeked face crashed into the even more intense surge of sensual awareness that was sweeping upwards over her skin.
‘Oh, thank you,’ was all she could find to say as she lifted her head from its resting place against Piers’s deliciously solid chest and forced herself to look up into his face. After all, she had to say something to him for saving her from a nasty fall.
Her glance wavered treacherously on its upward journey, for some dangerous reason deciding to linger over his mouth, which for once was curled into a smile and not tightening into his customary frown. And what a smile! Feathers of delicious but oh, so dangerous sensations drifted through Georgia’s stomach—tiny, barely perceptible tendrils of delicate pleasure that were somehow still strong enough to trap and enmesh her, making her feel light-headed and dizzy as well as a whole host of other things she didn’t dare allow herself to name.
‘Georgia...’
Piers’s voice seemed to reach her from a long way away, a husky resonance that vibrated thrillingly through her whole body.
‘Yes—’ Her lips parted in her acknowledgement, starting to form the word but never finishing it because, impossibly, Piers’s mouth was brushing softly against hers. It was the merest tantalising movement, the tiniest suggestion that it could turn into something far more intense and intimate, but her body seemed to be decoding its message with an instinct, an insistence, and immediately it sent her heart rate into triple speed, her breath catching in her lungs as her own lips seemed to cling provocatively to Piers’s.
Now she knew why it was that Victorian women had swooned so often when their lovers had kissed them, Georgia decided dizzily as she looked bemusedly up at Piers through half-closed eyes.
‘Mmm...’
Was that soft purr of appreciation really coming from her own throat? Were those really her own arms that had wound themselves so tightly around Piers? Was that really her body that was reacting to him...to him...with all the ardency, all the excitement, all the expectancy she had so longed to feel with Mark but which, in reality, she had never come anywhere near experiencing?
And, most importantly of all, was she really going to waste time on foolish mental conundrums when there were far more rewarding and pleasurable things to do? When the increasingly determined exploration of Piers’s mouth was teaching hers a whole new world of sensual discovery? Slowly his lips caressed hers, and even more slowly his tongue explored their shape and softness. One of the hands which had saved her from her fall was now supporting the back of her neck, stroking through her soft curls, cupping the delicate line of her jaw. His mouth, then momentarily lifted from hers as his thumb pressed gently against the fullness of her bottom lip, exposing its velvety, sensitive inner flesh.
Shakily Georgia closed her eyes completely as she felt her body’s response to what he was doing. How could such a simple gesture, such a simple touch, be capable of making her feel like this, want like this?
Piers’s mouth had replaced his thumb, his tongue probing the softness it had just exposed and then going beyond it with a devastating intimacy that shocked through her body like an electric current.
‘Oh-h-h!’
With a small startled protest Georgia realised that Piers was releasing her.
‘You shouldn’t have done that,’ she told him unsteadily as she realised what she had done.