Chapter 12

                                    

                                          
*PG-13 material ahead!*
                          
------

                          
 Georgie had been awake for hours.
                          
For all intents and purposes, she should have fallen asleep because of the near miss on her life. That, and her conversation with Burkeley and then her mother had left her feeling as if she had been bled out slowly, leaving her raw and wan and pale.
                          
Heavens, if Georgie stared any harder at the maroon canopy of her bed, her eyes would cross. And yet, she didn't dare close her eyes for it seemed every time she did, a hazel gaze laughingly haunted her. 
                          
I could have lost you.
                          
Surely, Vincent's - Thorne's, she corrected - confession had been a figment of her  imagination? Surely, he had not, in truth, meant them. It must have been  the fright of falling stone - their friendship of the past or the duty  of a close family friend - that made him act so quickly or had made him  appear as frightened.
                          
Anything else was preposterous.
                          
Wasn't it?
                          
But that had hardly explained Georgie's relief that when her eyelids finally opened, the chunks of stone scattered around her, it was Thorne she found above her, cradling her head and crooning to her softly. Burkeley hadn't even crossed her mind. It had been Thorne who had centered her in that moment. 

                          
Georgie sighed, kicking the bed linens off her lower body and flipping onto her side.Her knuckles were cold as they fisted next to her cheek.

                          
Her mind fell back to that confession. After the whispered words, Georgie had zeroed in on his lips. Had almost begged Thorne to kiss her. It must have scattered her brain completely for it reminded her of five years past.

                          
Thorne's weight felt as heavenly back then as it had tonight, even if Thorne had had the good sense to leave inches separating their bodies. After all, even the most hardy of the ton would have been quite scandalized otherwise.
                          
But Georgie hadn't cared one way or another.
                          
Her body had honed in on the heat of him, imagining the way his lips had used to gently sup at hers, a desperate meeting of their lips as he pulled softly away from her mouth only to dive back as if the thought of not capturing her mouth again, as often as he liked, and as hard as he liked, was too powerful a temptation to resist. 

                          
Georgie shifted on the bed, her skin blazing hot, as she remembered the roughness of his tongue as it had swept across her lips, demanding entrance into her mouth and sliding in to twine around hers. Thorne had pulled back as far as her seeking hands would let him, only for Georgie to follow his mouth. His smoky chuckle sent chills skating along her skin now as it had then.

                          
The straw had scratched at her shoulders and back as his fingers had dragged the material down, capturing the fabric along the mounds of her breasts. His mouth had pressed behind her ear before pressing lower and lower still, dragging slowly down her skin... 

                          
Georgie gasped, stilling as she realized her hands had moved of their own accord. Her left hand clutched her nightgown in her fist, and she startled to find that her right hand lay low on her belly, inches from the bare skin her left hand had revealed. 
                          
Snatching her hands back, Georgie arched her back groaning softly as she fell back to her bed,  her heavy breaths the only sound in the silence of her room.
                          
If only she didn't know what the man felt like. How his thumb had felt as it pressed into the bud at the apex of her thighs or the feeling of him opening her further, pushing in as she...she...