Breathless for You: Outback Skies, Book 1 (3 page)

Oh God, he was touching her. He was—

He closed his hand over her right breast and palmed the heavy globe.

She whimpered into his mouth, clawing the backs of his shoulders. So good. It felt so good.

“Fuck, Tash,” he moaned against her lips, kneading her breast before dragging his thumb over her puckered nipple. “You have no idea…”

He didn’t finish. Instead, he lifted the front of her shirt with a sudden shove of his arm, exposing her breast to the day. He closed his lips around her nipple and sucked on it through the satin of her bra.

She arched at the unexpected possession of her body. Shards of molten pleasure sank into the very pit of her belly. Her pussy contracted. Her clit ached. She hissed in a shallow breath, scraping her nails over his scalp, holding his head for fear he would remove his lips from her breast.

He didn’t. Instead, he hummed around her nipple, flicked its tip with his tongue and then suckled it harder, cupping the round weight of her breast with one hand as he kneaded her backside with the other.

Ribbons of fresh pleasure joined the building pressure in her core, an intense heat that made her head spin and her breath rapid. She writhed on the spot, her clit an aching button of denied need. “Matt…” she rasped, rubbing her thighs together. “That’s…that’s so good, oh God, that feels so…”

Without warning, he yanked up the other side of her shirt and fastened his lips around her other nipple.

The air licked at the wet satin covering her abandoned nipple in a wicked torment of sensations. Her mind had a second to register it, just a second, and then Matt was slipping the fingers of his hand between her breast and her bra cup.

A wave of concentrated pleasure crashed through Tash and she clawed at the back of his head. “Oh God, yes,” she groaned, arching her spine when he caught her distended nipple with his thumb and finger and pinched.

Delicious pain shot through her, searing her body with a need she never knew she had. “A…again,” she panted, her pussy contracting in a throbbing pulse. “Please…again.”

He did as she begged, pinching and pulling her nipple. This time, however, he drew on her other nipple just as fiercely with his mouth.

Her lower body, her very core, bloomed with heady lust at the unfamiliar and oh-so-amazing sensation. She wasn’t a virgin, she’d had more than one boyfriend, but she’d also been determined to become the best fighter pilot this country ever had. It had been her dream since she was a teenager. That dream had always come first to anything else, including making out. Time making out with groping boyfriends had meant time not spent studying, training…

Her parents weren’t the only high achievers in her family, and Tash had never regretted her lack of experience. And then, when her final air force medical examination had revealed she had severe adult-onset asthma… Well, after that there had been no desire to connect with anyone again.

The concept of pleasure in pain was as unfamiliar to her as failing.

And here she was, discovering
in
her failure a concept unlike any other. With a man she craved no matter how often she told herself she didn’t.

If this was failing again, she didn’t care.

This…him…the doc, Matt, was nothing like failing…his mouth on her breast, his hand on her breast, her ribcage, her hip…between her thighs…

Oh God, between her thighs…

Tash gasped again, bucking into Matt’s hand as he buried his fingers between her thighs and rubbed at her pussy.

The pressure, coupled with the coarse denim of her jeans’ crotch, sent fresh heat twisting through her. Her sex throbbed, a damp need pooling inside her.

He stroked at her clit through her Levis, his fingers exactly where they needed to be. She hitched out a cry of surrender, parting her thighs to grant his hand greater access to the most sensitive area.

He moaned his appreciation around her nipple, before sucking it deeply into his mouth. Once again, dark swirls of painful pleasure claimed her. Owned her.

She threw back her head, staring with unfocused eyes at the cloudless blue sky above her. The place she’d always felt more at peace, more alive…the sky. How wrong could she have been? She’d never felt
this
alive in the air. She’d never felt this—

Matt’s fingers slipped from her pussy and tugged at the zipper of her fly, shattering all thought of the sky and peace and flying.

She staggered back a step, the abrupt action tearing his lips and fingers from her nipples.

“Shit, Tash,” he ground out, his stare locking on her face as he straightened. Regret boiled in his eyes. “I didn’t mean…I didn’t…shouldn’t be rushing…”

Lifting one eyebrow, she lowered her hands to her fly and slowly lowered the zipper.

His nostrils flared. His Adam’s apple slid up and down his throat.

“Rushing?” she echoed, inching the opening of her fly wider apart to expose the flat plane of her belly below her navel and the small tattoo of a F-35 Lightning fighter plane inked there. “I was about to tell you to hurry the hell—”

Someone cleared their throat behind them.

He jerked away from her. Spun to face whoever had joined them, his face flooding with embarrassment, his eyes wide.

“I’m sorry, Doc,” Beryl McGuire’s wavering voice met Tash’s ears, the hesitant dismay in it mingled with undeniable worry, “but I can’t seem ta get Reggie ta wake up.”

Heart crashing way too fast, Tash turned to face the billabong, shoving her shirt back into her jeans and yanking up her fly.

“I didn’t mean ta interrupt,” the elderly woman continued behind her, “but I’m so scared he’s gone inta a coma. You said he had a concussion, and I read on Google that if someone goes ta sleep with a concussion they can go inta a coma, and I’d be lost without him, and I’m sorry for interrupting, but I didn’t know what else ta do, and Ted said you hadn’t taken off yet, and he thought he’d seen you both walking towards here, and I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean ta—”

“It’s okay, Mrs. McGuire,” Matt cut off her stressed babbling with a soothing voice. Tash didn’t need to check over her shoulder to see he was walking towards Old Man Dingo’s fretting wife. Nor did she need to see his face to know he was still shaken by what had just happened between them. “It’s better you told me now, rather than when I’d taken off.”

“I really didn’t mean ta interrupt you and…what you and Miss Freeman were…”

“It’s nothing, Beryl,” Tash heard him say, farther away now. “Honest. Miss Freeman, I’ll meet you back at the plane, okay?”

She half turned her head, enough for him to see her silent nod, not enough for her to look at him.

A dry cough scratched at her chest. Just one.

She raked at her hair with shaking hands and cursed herself for being so damn weak.

Damn it, she couldn’t let that happen again.

Not when Matt’s words still echoed in her head now.

“Because I’ve only just survived a broken heart.”

She wasn’t going to be a rebound. There was a reason she didn’t do relationships. She sucked at them. A snarky perfectionist with little social skills and a serious failure complex had no right getting into a relationship, no matter how much she
liked
the doc. Being his rebound would just be asking for grief.

Her
heart—and her stupid lungs—wouldn’t survive.

Chapter Three

Climbing into the small cockpit thirty minutes later, it took Matt all of three seconds to realize Tash had retreated into the standoffish, detached pilot he’d known for the last six weeks.

“Dingo okay?” she asked, eyes concealed by the dark aviation Ray Bans she wore, face shadowed by the peak of her RFDS cap. A stiffness filled what little of her face could be seen. Her body language spoke volumes, her hands gripped the control wheel, knuckles white. Her arms were tense, her shoulders square.

Whatever had allowed her to surrender to the passionate desire he now knew ran through her veins, the desire he’d felt in her kiss, her touch, it was gone.

Gone, or denied.

Either answer pissed him off.

“Reg is fine,” he answered, buckling in. Damn, what he’d give to have his nurse in the plane with them right now. If Jen had been on the call-out, this wouldn’t be happening. He wouldn’t have kissed Tash with his nurse in tow, that’s for certain. And even if he
had
clued into the fact Tash was sexually attracted to him, he definitely
wouldn’t
be doing what he was about to do now with a forty-two-year-old mother of three sitting in the medical section of the plane.

Twisting in his seat, he fixed his pilot with a level gaze. “So, you going to tell me what’s going on?”

Tash’s jaw clenched. She didn’t offer him anything but her profile. Not even a word.

Instead, she placed her headphones over her ears and adjusted the small mic near her lips.

Lips Matt wanted to taste again so fucking much his cock ached.

“Tash?” he said, raising his voice.

A powerful vibration thrummed through his body as the plane’s twin engines roared into life.

Letting out a curse not even remotely muttered, he reached for his own headphones and rammed them onto his head. “Tash?” he repeated into the mic in front of his mouth. “Care to explain the situation.”

“I’m about to do a systems check,” her voice teased his ears through the headphones’ small speakers, its tone matter-of-fact and impersonal. “And then take off. We’ll be back at Wallaby Ridge within the hour.”

Matt narrowed his eyes. “That’s not what I meant.”

“That’s the only answer you’re getting at the moment. Now shut up and let me do my job.”

Gut clenching, he sat back in his seat and listened to her run through the pre-flight checklist. He’d heard her do this many times, every time curious as to why she wasn’t flying for a major commercial airline. She was an incredible pilot, beyond competent. He’d wondered often why she worked for the Royal Flying Doctors in Outback Australia when she could be earning bigger bucks elsewhere. Now, he finally knew.

Asthma sufferers could not fly commercial airlines.

Did that tear her apart? Or didn’t she care?

Another thing he needed to ask. After he got the whole we-were-about-to-have-sex-by-the-billabong conversation out of the way.

Thanks to Jen’s normal presence in the plane, he knew Tash’s favourite movie, book, television show, food and animal, all of which—he was surprised and then unsettled to discover—lined up with his neatly. It was easier to not harbor fantasies about a woman if there were no signs of compatibility. But with every question Jen asked of Tash, Matt grew increasingly aware of how similar their tastes were, right down to an appreciation of
Doctor Who
. Jen interrogated every new person she met like an enthusiastic six-year-old. Matt thought it delightful, if somewhat jarring. He’d also used it to his advantage, casually suggesting topics and questions to her in an attempt to discover more about the reticent pilot who’d gotten under his skin and invaded his fantasies.

Tash had been reluctant to be drawn into
any
conversation the nurse instigated, but that hadn’t stopped Jen, and by the second week of Tash joining the Wallaby Ridge base, all answers had been divulged, usually with a hint of a smile.

Except for
where
she’d been before coming to the Outback.

Did that have anything to do with her asthma? Surely not.

Maybe it had something to do with the way she was behaving now? Like the Tash he’d first met, not the woman of molten desire he’d encountered less than an hour ago.

A subtle pressure on his gut told him she’d put the plane in motion, a second before his stomach slammed into his spine as she propelled them down the dirt runway.

The sudden G-force on his body drove him back into his seat. His head swam for a heartbeat, his ears popped and then they were in the air, climbing rapidly.

Admiration flooded through him. Tash may very well be driving him to sexual insanity, but she left his old pilot for dead when it came to flying. She was incredible.

And fearless. Almost aggressive.

“Okay,” her voice sounded in his ears, making him flinch. Actually flinch. Wow. After all the shit he’d been through in the last twelve months, here he was flinching at a woman’s unexpected voice? She really
was
driving him mad. “Let’s talk.”

Turning to face her, he ran his stare over her profile. “Okay, talk. What’s the deal? What’s the reason for the about-face? We’re all over each other like a rash back at the billabong, and then I climb into the plane and it’s Captain Ice Queen again.”

“Captain Ice Queen?” The corners of her lips curled. A little. “I thought you called me Captain Tight Pants?”

Matt blinked. A warm tension radiated through his lower body, filling his cock with thick need. Jesus, that was not how he thought she’d counter his demand for answers. “Who told you that?”

“Jen.” The faintest tinge of humour tickled her answer. “She heard you and the rest of the Outback Skies Fly-Boys’ Club using it last month.”

He raised an eyebrow. “The Outback Skies Fly-Boys’ Club?”

“That’s what you, Ryan, Evan and Senior Constable Baynard are called around town. Although never to your faces.”

“Excellent. I’ll make up T-shirts when we get back.”

She snorted out a short laugh. “Of course you will.”

He shifted in his seat, his gut tight. “More importantly, you’ve known I’ve had a…thing for you since then? Since Jen overheard our conversation?”

Tash shook her head, her attention never leaving the sweeping sky before her. “No. I just thought you were disapproving of my less-than-professional jeans.”

Matt grunted. “That explains why they got tighter a few weeks ago then.”

“To be honest, I thought I was doing it to piss you off. That’s what I’d told myself. He doesn’t approve of my jeans? Fine, let’s see what he makes of
these
ones.” She threw a quick sideways glance at him, her sunglasses hiding her eyes—and the emotion in them—from him. “But really, it was because I
wanted
you to keep looking at my arse. I
wanted
you to want to look at it.”

Confused frustration scraped at Matt. “Then explain what’s going on with us now. There’s no denying we want each other. If Beryl hadn’t interrupted us back there, I’m ninety percent sure we’d be fucking like rabbits on the grass by now. That kiss was unlike any other I’d ever had, and you were halfway to undressed. Nice tat, by the way. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to trace it with my—”

“
Your
words, Doc,” she cut him off, twisting her grip on the control wheel, all sign of her previous levity gone once more. “From
your
lips less than an hour ago—‘
because I’ve only just survived a broken heart’
. A woman hears those words, even a woman as in lust with you as I am—” she gave him another Ray Ban-covered glance before turning back to the view of the sky outside, “—and she knows she’s only going to get hurt.”

Prickling heat razed Matt’s body. His balls rose up. His gut knotted.

“What if it’s only a purely physical thing?” he asked, the question stupid and pointless and so ridiculously male he wanted to cringe. He was grasping at straws of course. He wanted the passionate woman he’d discovered back at the billabong to return. Could he fool Tash into letting that woman free with the promise of no-strings sex? Could he do that to her? To himself? “What if I only want wild sex with you?”

Her laughter took him completely by surprise. “Yeah, you don’t strike me as that kind of guy, Doc.”

“If I am?”

She snorted. “What if I want more than just a purely physical
thing
with you?”

An invisible fist slammed into his chest at her question.

His ears began to roar, a thrumming pressure in his temples at the implication behind her words.

More than wild sex with her?

A
relationship
?

His last relationship had ended with the woman he loved choosing a rock star over him. Had taught him he was better without connections.

Had shown him it was stupid to be vulnerable to love.

And yet every day, every
moment
he’d spent with Tash since she strode into his life, tight jeans, black aviation sunglasses and aloof attitude firmly in place, had proved him wrong. Had worn down his stubborn resolve to keep his heart guarded, like a constant wave on an immoveable rock, until he couldn’t do anything but accept the obvious truth.

He was falling in love with her, standoffish, detached mystery that she was. Maybe already
was
in love with her. And now here she was, rebuking him because she wanted something from him she didn’t think he was prepared to give her.

A dry laugh burst from him. “This is ridiculous,” he said, slumping in his seat as he took in the purple dusk sky beyond the cockpit and scratching at the scar on the inside of his wrist.

“What is?” Bewilderment filled Tash’s voice.

He laughed again, a rush of delighted apprehension flowing through him. “This. You and me.”

Her silence made him swing a grin toward her.

She studied him, eyes still hidden by those damn aviators, expression as guarded as ever.

“You want a relationship with me.
I
want a relationship with
you
. You won’t let yourself have a relationship with me because you’re scared you’ll get hurt. I won’t let myself have a relationship with you because I’m scared I’ll get hurt.” He shook his head, letting his grin stretch wider. “For two people who have lived most of their adult lives doing, I suspect, some seriously courageous stuff, we’re both as gutless as they come, wouldn’t you say?”

Her silent, sunglasses-concealed inspection didn’t change.

Matt shifted in his seat. He reached forward and, smile wide, plucked her Ray Bans from her face.

She stared at him, terror in her eyes. And something else, something that made his heart soar higher than the plane they were currently in.

“Tash,” he said, “in the last twelve months, I’ve survived a Somali militia attack on my Doctors Without Borders camp, injuries that almost killed me, my home country declaring me dead and the revelation my ex-fiancée had fallen in love with a famous rock star while I was in an eight-month-long coma…and
none
of that affects me, emotionally
and
mentally, the way you do. Do you get what I’m saying?”

“Okay,” she whispered.

He narrowed his eyes. “Okay?”

She gave him a jerky nod. “Okay, let’s have a relationship.”

He bit back the relieved breath threatening to escape him. He’d never seen her so unsettled. So…exposed.

Fuck, it just made him ache for her even more.

Unable to control his joy any longer, he lifted his hand and cupped her face with his palm, tracing her bottom lip with his thumb. “Okay,” he echoed. “Let’s have a relationship.”

And before she could say another word, he removed his headphones, leant across the small distance between them and kissed her.

His lips brushed hers with a reverence she would remember for the rest of her life. Soft, tender, and at the same time lingering with a hungry desire that sent her pulse racing. The pit of her stomach clenched. Her sex contracted.

When he drew away from her, Tash buried her hand in the hair at his nape and held him fast, letting him know in no uncertain terms he wasn’t going anywhere.

She parted her lips and sought out his tongue with hers.

He gave it to her without hesitation.

Gripping the control wheel, she allowed herself one long, glorious moment of losing herself to his kiss before pulling away reluctantly. “I have to fly the bird, Doc,” she murmured, a laugh dancing on the words. A laugh that turned to a cough.

A dry cough.

Tash’s heart slammed into her throat.

She stiffened in her seat, snapping her stare forward.

Another cough sounded in her chest.

Her tight chest.

Shit.

“Tash?”

Matt’s voice slipped into her ears, her headphones doing nothing to filter out his concern.

She closed her eyes, drawing in a slow breath. Oh God, it was wheezy. And hard. Hard to breathe. Hard to fill her lungs.

Another dry cough tore at her.

Her heart slammed faster. Her lips began to tingle.

She couldn’t panic. She couldn’t—

“Tash?” Matt said again. She knew he was speaking louder, but fuck, it sounded like he was far away. Her head felt fuzzy.

She sucked in another breath. It wouldn’t come. All that seeped into her lungs was a trickle of air.

No, not even that.

Not even—

She rammed her hips upward, scrambling at her hip pocket for her inhaler.

Her fingers encountered nothing.

Nothing but taut denim stretched over the jutting ridge of her hipbone.

“Natacha,” Matt’s shout blasted her ears through her headphones. His worry flayed at her panic. “Are you having an attack?”

She ignored him. Sucked for breath. Failed.

Searched her other pocket for her inhaler, her head swimming.

Failed at that as well.

Her inhaler.

Her inhaler wasn’t in her pockets. None of them.

Her inhaler… God, had she dropped it back at the billabong? Had she—

Black swirls of nothing blurred her vision. The world tilted a second before alarms filled the cockpit. Warning beeps and alarms that drilled into her head.