Bare for You: Outback Skies, Book 3 (3 page)

Chapter Three

Damn it, what a fundamental fuck-up.

He shouldn’t have left the deputy prime minister’s house. When the mayor took a phone call from someone called Senior Constable Baynard, Jeremy had chosen to give the man some privacy.

His feet—no, his body—had taken him outside before his brain could move him to just another room.

When he’d seen Ryan still sitting in the helicopter, every fibre in Jeremy’s body had begun to thrum with an elemental need. One he couldn’t deny, no matter how dangerous.

He’d crossed to the waiting chopper, telling himself he was just going to talk to Ryan. That was all. Just a conversation between two men. They’d hardly gotten a chance to talk on the flight here, what with the mayor filling Jeremy in on Wallaby Ridge. It made sense to find out a bit more about Ryan now, given they were going to be spending a lot of time together over the next five days.

That was the reason for coming out here, he’d told himself as he’d opened the chopper’s pilot-side door. Not the primitive, compelling desire unfurling deep within his very core.

He’d opened the chopper’s door, ready to say hello. To break the ice with some kind of neutral topic. What that neutral topic was, Jeremy hadn’t known. He’d been hoping his knack for thinking on his feet was going to save him.

But then Ryan Taylor had turned to look at him, and in the split second their stares met, Jeremy saw raw, open lust in the man’s eyes. Lust for him. In that split second, any hope of neutral conversation had been shattered, replaced instead with a driving urgency to take possession of Ryan’s lips.

To take possession of him.

They’d both spoken. Words had fallen from their tongues. Jeremy thought he’d said something wankerish and pretentious, and then his hand was fisting in the hair at the back of Ryan’s neck and he was claiming the man’s lips for his own.

The kiss lasted barely a heartbeat.

Long enough to delve his tongue past Ryan’s parted lips and slide it against Ryan’s.

Long enough for Ryan’s groaned exhalation to mingle with Jeremy’s own moan of fatalistic dismay as he caught Ryan’s bottom lip between both of his and sucked.

Long enough to comprehend he wanted to do more to the heli-musterer from the Outback than kiss him. So much more.

Long enough for Jeremy to realize he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.

Chest tighter than tight, cock throbbing, gut churning, he tore his lips from Ryan’s and staggered back a step.

Shit.

Shit, he’d kissed him.

Ryan stared at him from inside the helicopter’s cabin, his lips glistening with Jeremy’s saliva.

The deepening dusk cast his face in shadows not there a heartbeat ago. All Jeremy could see of Ryan’s reaction to Jeremy’s sudden sexual assault on his mouth was the bunching of his jaw.

Say something, man. Before he—

Without a word, Ryan stepped out of the chopper.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t…” Jeremy took another step backward. He scrubbed at his mouth with a hand, his stare fixed on Ryan’s shadow-shrouded face. “I couldn’t…I don’t…I don’t know what I—”

Ryan stepped closer. Close enough Jeremy could feel the heat from his body radiating from him. Close enough he could breathe in his scent—an intoxicating mix of sandalwood, sweat and Old Spice.

Despite the churning sensation in his gut, despite the shocked disbelief of his actions, his body reacted. Not just to Ryan’s smell, but to his proximity.

In dusk’s fading vestiges, Jeremy saw Ryan’s nostrils flare. Saw his Adam’s apple slide up and down his throat.

Saw his shoulder muscles bunch.

Jeremy braced himself, readying for the punch.

“Do you fuck the way you kiss?”

The raw hunger in Ryan’s voice stroked Jeremy’s sanity. He sucked in a sharp breath, struck immobile—and speechless—by the heli-musterer’s unexpected question.

“There you are!”

At Barnaby Doyle’s jovial shout from the homestead, Jeremy flinched. And let out a startled, “Fuck!”

In front of him, Ryan chuckled.

“I didn’t know where you were, Minister,” Barnaby exclaimed, joining them both beside the helicopter.

“The minister and I were just getting to know each other,” Ryan answered.

Jeremy’s gut coiled at the innuendo. So did his balls.

His mouth however, turned dry. His heart smashed up into his throat.

God damn it, what had he been thinking? Coming out here and kissing the man like that? What would happen to his political career, his political goals, if the mayor had caught them?

At his side, Wallaby Ridge’s mayor let out a braying laugh. “Somehow I don’t think you’re the minister’s type, Taylor.”

The homophobic insult—because that’s what it was, Jeremy had no doubt—cut through the post-dusk darkness.

“That so?” Ryan’s low drawl followed. With night almost fully descended, and the interior light of the helicopter’s cabin turning him into a silhouette, it was now impossible to see his expression.

A rush of icy terror gripped Jeremy. His heart pounded harder. He snapped his stare to the heli-musterer, ready to deny anything the man said, hating himself even as he did so.

The mayor laughed again. It was, Jeremy decided, the most condescending guffaw he’d ever heard in his life. “While I’m sure the minister would love to stand here and discuss his love life with us both—”

I really wouldn’t,
Jeremy thought, his gut a knotted ball of tension.

“Unfortunately, duty calls. I have to get back to the Ridge.” The sound of Barnaby’s palms smacking together cracked the dark silence. “You ready to take me, Taylor?”

Jeremy heard Ryan’s slow intake of breath. It spoke of barely controlled restraint.

“Let’s go,” Ryan answered, the dark outline of his shape turning towards the chopper.

For a second, the low light from inside the helicopter fell over Ryan face, and his gaze connected with Jeremy’s.

A split second. No longer.

But it was enough for Jeremy to feel…branded. Marked for possession.

Which aroused him to no end.

And scared him with equal ferocity.

Incapable of movement, or even breath, he watched Ryan climb back into the chopper and settle into the pilot’s seat. Barnaby Doyle may have grabbed his hand and shaken it before hurrying to the passenger side. If that was the case, Jeremy’s brain didn’t register it.

Instead, he stared at Ryan’s profile, devouring its rugged strength, as Ryan removed his Akubra, positioned his flight headphones over his ears and flicked at a switch on the control deck.

The chopper’s engine kicked over, filling the darkness with a thrumming roar to rival the charged energy radiating through Jeremy’s body. The blades began to spin, slowly at first and then quicker. By the time Barnaby Doyle climbed into the passenger seat and covered his ears with headphones, the blades were nothing but a blurring circle above the helicopter.

Jeremy stood motionless, the wind from the spinning blades flattening his hair to his forehead and whipping his tie about his shoulders. He stared at the man inside the chopper.

The heli-musterer’s lips curled into a small grin, revealing that tiny hint of a dimple again in his right cheek, and Jeremy bit back a groan. Goddamn it, the man was sexy.

And then Ryan turned to look at Jeremy. Faced him. Pinned him with a steady gaze ablaze with a promise Jeremy felt all the way through to his soul.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Minister,” Ryan shouted through the open door, the grin on his lips messing with Jeremy’s body just as much as it messed with his mind. “Be ready for me at six.”

“I told you,” Jeremy called back as Ryan pulled the door shut, “to call me—”

The chopper lifted from the ground and rose into the air, leaving Jeremy alone in the dark Outback night.

And more horny than he’d ever been in his life.

“Fuck.” The expletive burst past his lips with frustrated dismay.

He wasn’t a man prone to swearing. In fact, amongst his political peers and in the media, he was known for his modulated reactions and almost Zen-like calm. No matter how often his policies were mocked by the opposition when Parliament was in session, Jeremy took each in his stride, more often than not turning the argument’s flaws back on the attacker with an unruffled decorum the press decreed mesmerizing to witness.

He was an articulate, educated man who’d risen through the political ranks without the need for dramatics or vitriol. The only slight, as it were, against his personality was his perceived affection for the ladies, as one news program so delicately put it, and the fact some of the older voters considered him a tad too…hipsterish.

And yet now here he stood, in the middle of the Outback, his hair a mess, his cock hard and his control shattered by just one man.

Just one fucking man.

“Fuck,” he burst out again, watching as the chopper carrying that one man disappeared from sight in the night sky.

Letting out a ragged breath, he pulled his iPhone from his hip pocket, woke it up and tapped out a text message to Linda.

I need a personality profile on Ryan Taylor. ASAP.

JC.

He stared at the message, wondering what the hell he was doing. What would his assistant make of such a request? What would she think?

Chest tight, throat tighter, he hit send.

“Fuck,” he muttered for the third time, before shoving his phone back into his pocket and striding back into the homestead.

By the time he walked through the front door, he was—he hoped—the epitome of outward calm.

In the brief time he’d spent inside earlier with the mayor, he’d met the resident staff. Now, two of them—the chef and the housekeeper—waited inside the opulent foyer for him.

“Is there anything we can help you with, Minister?” the housekeeper said. “Would you like some supper? Tea? Coffee?”

Jeremy shook his head with a smile. “I’m fine, thank you. Why don’t you two call it a night? If I get hungry later, I’ll find something in the kitchen.” He let his smile turn cheeky. “I’m actually quite adept at making toast.”

The homestead’s chef laughed. The housekeeper tittered. Both, Jeremy could tell, approved of his relaxed attitude.

Personable and highly vote-able, that’s me.

“What time will Ryan Taylor be collecting you in the morning, Minister?”

At the chef’s mention of Ryan’s name, Jeremy’s throat tightened. So, unfortunately, did his semi-hard cock.

“Six,” he answered, instantly unsettled. Damn it, if this was how his body reacted at just the sound of the heli-musterer’s name, what was going to happen when they were face-to-face again?

The chef nodded. “Then breakfast will be ready at five am.”

“Have a good evening, Minister,” the housekeeper said.

He smiled once more, praying to hell he appeared just as outwardly calm as he had a mere moment ago. “Please, call me Jeremy.”

Ten minutes later, after roaming the luxurious homestead and trying to absorb himself its serene silence, Jeremy gave up on the ridiculous notion of having a good evening.

He’d have no hope of a good evening until he exorcised Ryan Taylor out of his system. The only way he could when he was in a house alone.

With his hand.

Tugging his tie from his neck with savage frustration, he stormed through the living room and into the master bedroom.

Standing at the foot of the king-size mahogany bed, he yanked his shirt from his body and threw it aside. His belt and pants came next. Followed by his socks and then his boxers.

His cock, once again harder than a steel pole, sprang free, slapping against the flat plane of his stomach.

He glared down at the organ.

Damn it, he’d come to the Outback to open an art gallery. He hadn’t come to the Outback to get a hard-on. It was highly inconvenient.

In fact, everything about Ryan Taylor was inconvenient. The way he looked in faded denim jeans, the way his shirt stretched across his broad shoulders and wide chest. The way the stubble on his jaw and chin only served to highlight the chiseled perfection of his bone structure.

The way his gaze had raked over Jeremy with a promise Jeremy knew he had to resist, even as every molecule in his body craved it…

“Do you fuck like you kiss?”

Ryan’s earlier question caressed Jeremy’s torment, sending fresh need to his already engorged dick.

Letting out a growl of frustrated want, he wrapped his fingers around his erection and squeezed.

Pleasure—at once brutal and punishing—shot through him.

He drew in a slow breath, still glaring at his cock. At the tiny slit on its tip, now anointed with a glistening bead of pre-come.

The distended rim of his cockhead was hot against the side of his fisted hand. The fleshy steel of his erection pulsed with building desire.

“So damn inconvenient,” he muttered, pumping his length even as he pictured Ryan Taylor doing the deed instead.

Another wave of pleasure claimed him, tightening his balls and his gut.

Since the day he’d realized girls didn’t turn him on the same way they did his male friends, he’d cursed his sexual orientation. A confused teenager at a private co-ed school, surrounded by teenage girls with impeccable lineage and bottomless funds to spend on grooming, and he’d spent most of his time admiring the latent strength of the captain of the soccer team, or surreptitiously checking out the P.E. teacher’s muscular legs.

At the age of fourteen, when he could no longer deny he was attracted to members of his gender, he’d begun his life of subterfuge.

By the time he was seventeen, his reputation as a guy who knew how to seduce any woman he wanted into bed with him had spread throughout the school. His father had been proud, his mother too ensconced in her own socialite world to care.

When he’d entered politics, that reputation became part of his strength, even as he tempered his constant efforts to maintain it. He no longer hated the fact he was gay. He just knew it didn’t align with the one dream and goal he held dear.

Every night, alone in his bed, he cursed the fact he was hiding who he really was.