Georgia released her bottom lip and tried to smile.
‘It’s kind of you to take the trouble—’ she began stiltedly, and then had to stop as a betraying sob choked off her voice and shook her body.
‘Oh, Georgia,’ she heard Piers groaning, and then he was sitting on the bed next to her, wrapping her comfortingly in his arms.
‘I keep thinking about poor Ben trying to cross the motorway,’ Georgia sobbed. ‘He doesn’t...he won’t...’
‘Don’t,’ Piers groaned. ‘If only I hadn’t put him in the car.’
‘You weren’t to know that it was going to be stolen,’ Georgia tried to protest, and then, as she saw the look of desolation in his eyes, her heart was rocked with tender compassion for him and she told him softly, ‘You mustn’t blame yourself; it isn’t your fault...’
‘Yes, it is,’ Piers insisted, ‘but I promise you, Georgia, I never meant him any harm. I was jealous of him when you insisted on defending him...protecting him from my anger,’ he admitted gruffly, drawing Georgia’s head down against his shoulder and leaning his chin on it so that she couldn’t see in his eyes the real reason for his jealousy, and so that he couldn’t see in hers her compassion and the knowledge that she didn’t return his love.
‘It seemed as though everything he did was right and everything I did was wrong. I could see in your eyes how much you despised me for complaining because he had chewed my shoe...’
‘No!’ Georgia protested quickly, lifting her head to look into his eyes before he could stop her. ‘I never despised you; I was just afraid...afraid that you might insist on sending Ben away.’ She bit her lip again. ‘You see, I knew...know, really...that you were—are right when you say that he isn’t really a suitable pet for your godmother. What he really needs is—’
She stopped as Piers supplied for her, ‘A family.’
Georgia swallowed hard as she nodded.
‘But your godmother loves him, and he’s already been rejected once.’
‘And your tender heart can’t bear to think of him being hurt again.’
‘I hate hurting anything...or...or anyone,’ Georgia admitted in a low voice.
‘Right now, I’m badly in need of some of that TLC of yours,’ Piers told her huskily, bending his head closer to hers.
Georgia took a deep breath and tried to keep still. If she so much as moved an inch...a centimetre...her lips would almost be touching Piers’s. Had what he had just said to her been the invitation it seemed, or did he just mean that he wanted her understanding? The cotton nightdress she was wearing was only thin with tiny shoestring straps but she felt unbearably hot in it, as though her whole body was on fire. Whatever she did, though, she must not give in to the temptation to look at Piers’s mouth, because if she did...
‘Nothing to say?’ Piers whispered, his words so faint that she had to lean closer just to catch them.
But leaning closer was a fatal mistake, and her glance was drawn helplessly from the deep open V of Piers’s robe all the way up the bronzed expanse of his naked chest, with its soft sprinkling of richly silky body hair, up past his Adam’s apple, so tautly masculine in a throat that just begged to be touched and kissed, right to his mouth.
His mouth!
Georgia swallowed helplessly, totally unable to drag her transfixed gaze away from the tormenting temptation it was feasting on. Just looking at Piers’s mouth made her want to reach out and touch it, to trace its shape with her fingertip, memorising its shape and texture so that she could then re-draw it, sketching its every angle with soft butterfly kisses, before...
As though he was reading her thoughts as they formed, she heard Piers telling her urgently, ‘Do it, Georgia. Oh, God, yes...’ he breathed thickly as her wide-eyed, bemused gaze met the sensual intimacy of his. ‘Yes,’ he repeated rawly. ‘Kiss me...’
But as his mouth fastened over hers he was the one doing the kissing, his lips hungrily devouring hers, his arms tightening around her as he drew her closer.
Delicious tremors of excitement shivered down Georgia’s spine as her mouth, her body responded helplessly to him.
‘Piers... Piers...’ She could hear herself moaning his name against his mouth as she clung to him, her hands gripping the edges of his robe and then releasing it as her fingertips accidentally brushed against his hot skin and fiery darts of pleasure acted like magnets, fusing her fingertips and then the whole of her hands to his body as she slid them beneath his robe, exploring the hard breadth of his chest. Her whole body was burning with arousal and longing now, aching to be touched...caressed...possessed...