One Intimate Night

‘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—’

‘Ben? Someone’s seen Ben?’ Georgia interrupted her excitedly, forgetting her earlier embarrassment and her self-consciousness as she sat up in the bed, hugging the bedclothes around her naked body. ‘What? Where?’ she questioned eagerly.

But Piers shook his head to silence her, saying encouragingly to the farmer’s wife, ‘You say Ben’s been found?’

‘Seems so,’ she agreed, and quickly explained to them both what had happened. ‘Anyway, they’ve got him at the police station in the town now, and you’re to go down just as soon as you’re ready to identify him. Seems like your dog’s a bit of a hero,’ she added with a smile. ‘I expect the parents of the little boy he saved will certainly think so. Now, if you want me to bring you both up a cup of tea...’

He turned his head to look at Georgia, who, now that her initial relief and excitement were subsiding, was beginning to realise that she was going to have to get out of bed in front of Piers without any clothes on. The fact that he had seen, touched, caressed every part of her the previous night, and would have done so again this morning, in the full light of day, and not just with her agreement but with her encouragement, in no way allayed the sense of discomfort she felt now.

As though somehow Piers sensed what she was feeling, to Georgia’s relief she heard him saying to Mary Bowles, ‘No. There’s no need for you to go to so much trouble. I’ll come down with you and make us both a drink.’