Princes of the Outback Bundle

by Bronwyn Jameson

  “Can you hold your plait up, out of the way?”

  She did, and he made a soft sound of approval in his throat. A perfect accompaniment to his hands as they slicked the body wash over her shoulders and back.

  “We worked well together today, don’t you think?”

  He expected her to think? With his big hands making those slow, gliding strokes over her back and down her sides. Teasing the outsides of her breasts with each pass. Closer and closer. Slower and slower. With a low groan she slumped forward and pressed her forehead against the cool tiles.

  “We work well together in other ways, too.”

  His voice was close to her ear, a low rumble of heat in her blood as his hands slid around her ribs. As his thumbs stroked the underside of her breasts.

  Then retreated.

  The breath left her lungs in a hot gust of frustration. But when she tried to turn around he pressed a splayed a hand across her abdomen and held her there. Trapped between the wide spread of those fingers and the wall of hard, wet body at her back. Trapped in a web of wanting that twined through her, as warm and slow and liquid as the gentle wash of water on their bodies. As warm and slow and liquid as his open-mouthed kiss against the side of her throat.

  “I’m not taking,” he murmured, moving that sensuous mouth up to nip at her earlobe. “I’m giving.”

  And, finally, his hands closed over her breasts, cupping each with finely textured skin and finely hewn restraint. Cat didn’t give a damn who was giving or taking or receiving. Shamelessly turned on, she arched her back and drew a long breathy moan of pleasure at the dual friction of her nipples against his palms and her backside against his erection.

  “Can I take off my jeans?” she asked.

  “Not yet.”

  His hands slid from her breasts, down over her abdomen to rest at her hipbones.

  She turned her head, frowned at this lessening of contact. “You said you were washing me.”

  “And your clothes.”

  “Well, you’re taking your time and that isn’t efficient!”

  He laughed, low and gruff and sexy. “If I take off your jeans, I’m likely to get very inefficient. And I haven’t washed your hair, yet.”

  Cat growled impatiently as he rolled away from her back, but then his hands were in her hair, unbraiding her plait, separating the thick sections and playing them against her skin. Working a thick lather of shampoo, massaging her scalp, turning her weak with the impact of that whole sensual experience.

  The brush of wet skin, belly to back, as he leaned past her to reshelve the bottle. His hands smoothing a delicious path from her shoulders down her arms until they closed over her hands and linked their fingers. His face nuzzling her wet hair aside, his mouth at the junction of her shoulder, kissing, biting, sucking.

  The press of his body at her back and the sweet ache of hunger in her blood and her body.

  “My hair is done,” she said, and her voice felt as thick as her blood, as clumsy as the fingers that struggled to unsnap her jeans. “Can you get this blasted thing?”

  His laughter rasped over her as he turned her around. As he stroked those wonderful hands over her shoulders and upper arms and kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. Most inefficient, she thought, but then his hands were at her waist and tugging at her jeans and she decided he might just be getting the message.

  He released her mouth with a last long stroke of heat, tongue to tongue, a last nip of her bottom lip, and his half-lidded gaze lifted to hers. “We are having that conversation.”

  Talk? Coherently? Was he serious?

  “I want to start by making one thing clear.” He lifted his hands and cupped her face, a gentle, cool contrast to the searing intensity of his eyes. “I haven’t thought about another woman since I opened my eyes in that Cessna.”

  Cat blinked. “Why are you telling me this now?”

  “In case you need any reassurance.”

  “I need,” she said slowly, “you to take off my jeans.”

  One corner of his mouth lifted but his hands didn’t move from her face. “I’ll get to that. After you tell me why you ran away.”

  “That’s blackmail.”

  “Let’s just call it enticement.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her again. And because of the sweet hunger in that kiss and the straight heat of his gaze and, yes, the enticement of getting his clever hands to soap where her jeans now covered, she met his eyes with complete honesty. “I was homesick. And scared. I panicked.”

  “Scared of…?”

  “Your home…it’s so…” How could she explain? How could he expect her to find words with him naked and—

  “You don’t like my home?”

  He sounded stung, and Cat closed her eyes and tried again. “You know it’s beautiful, but I didn’t feel at home. It’s all too much.”

  “It’s just an apartment.”

  “Like you’re just a man?” She laughed softly at the incomprehension in his voice. “You’re Rafe Carlisle.”

  “So?”

  Her eyes drifted open when she shook her head. “Do you really think you’re no big deal?”

  “To you I should be a big deal. I’m your husband.”

  “Well, there’s a problem right there. I have trouble thinking of you as that. There’s so much I still don’t know about you.”

  “Then learn me,” he rasped. Eyes sparking with what looked like irritation, he took her hand and put it on him, traced it over the hard sculpted muscles of his chest, rested it against the heavy thud of his heart until his heat seeped into her skin and chased through her blood.

  Her husband. A mystery, a heartbreaker, a very big deal.

  Cat shook her head.

  “What?” he growled, leaning closer again, driving the worrying impact of that thought from her mind with the intensity of his expression. She lifted her other hand and traced the sculpted line of his jaw, his cheekbone and the brooding fullness of his mouth. Then she stretched up on her toes and kissed him with all she had to offer in her heart, while her fingers spread over his skin and learned the thick steady beat of his heart.

  Her big-deal husband would break her heart when he left. She did not have enough to keep his attention here in the outback and she could not live in his city. He would leave and she would regret, but for now—this time and maybe again tomorrow, maybe a few more weekends—she would take what he had to give.

  And she would give back in equal measure.

  Easing back from that rich, earthy soul kiss, she touched his lips and asked, “Will you take my jeans off now?”

  The corner of his mouth lifted under her fingers. “Are you asking nicely?”

  Eyes linked with his, she slipped her other hand down his sleek wet hide until it closed around his sleek wet erection. “Is that nice enough?”

  He licked at her bottom lip. “Did you say please?”

  She squeezed until he groaned and pushed more fully into her hand. “Pretty please,” she said sweetly. “With sugar on top.”

  He took her jeans off then, although it wasn’t an easy task. The wet denim might well have shrunk already. It stuck to her skin and he kept dipping in to lick at each new exposed portion of her body. To nuzzle her thighs with the bristly texture of afternoon whiskers. To pump a new dose of body wash onto his hands and smooth it over her bottom and the backs of her legs.

  By the time she kicked the weight of sodden denim aside she was breathing heavily and an inch away from begging. He rose in one smooth movement, and she saw the ripe color of arousal along his cheekbones and in his lust-dark eyes. They locked on hers, and his nostrils flared as she breathed one word.

  “Yes.”

  His hands on her hips lifted her, a long cool slide against the wet tiles and she wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his hips. She felt him, hard and hot between her legs and felt a swell of need, unbearably intense.

  “Take,” she whispered against his mouth, “whatever you want.
”

  His hands cupped her buttocks, held her there wide and open as he plunged, one full thrust of his hips that slid her hard against the tiles and drove the air from her lungs and filled her with heat and sensation and emotion so big it burst from her lips in a wild primal cry. But her eyes remained locked with his, linked in a supercharged arc of connection, lost in the sensual thrall of their sea-green intensity and the awed revelation that he felt the same magnitude, the same power, the same intensity.

  He didn’t need to touch her anywhere else, didn’t need to do anything except drive her with the primitive rhythm of his body and look at her in exactly that way and whisper her name until she came apart in a swell of sensation that rose and rippled and peaked, only to come again as he drove deeper and faster and spilled himself in a spasm that resounded over and over and over in her blood.

  She felt the slump of her boneless weight against the slick tiles and muttered something about letting her fall, and his grip on her hips tightened. “I won’t let you fall, baby.”

  “I won’t feel a thing if you do.”

  His laugh was a rasp of sound, and she smiled along with it, feeling marvelous and spent and impossibly invigorated all at once. Then his laughter exploded into a raw curse and rush of movement as he tried to evade the water that beat down on his back.

  In the shelter of his body, Cat started to laugh. “I guess the hot water ran out,” she gasped between chuckles.

  He went very still. “So, my wife thinks that’s funny.”

  “In a laughing with you kind of way.”

  “Huh.” His eyes narrowed and gleamed dangerously. “They say marriage is about sharing…”

  And she had barely enough time to yelp before he redirected the showerhead and a stream of cold water onto her.

  Rafe turned off the water and warmed his wife’s cool skin with a thorough toweling before he carried her from the bathroom.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked when he kept walking past the guest-room bed.

  “Your bed.” He stopped and looked into her face. “Did you expect I would want my own room?”

  “No,” she said without hesitation. “But I’ve been thinking about you in this bed.”

  “Have you, now.”

  “Ever since the night of your accident. When I undressed you.”

  “I will let you do that again one day.” He started down the hallway. “Except, this time I’ll be conscious.”

  She smiled and Rafe felt something stir through him and then settle rich and warm in his chest. Contentment. Satisfaction. And a major dose of sexual relief. A man should not have to wait five days to make love to his wife again. Not in the first week of his marriage.

  “How many other places have you fantasized about having me?” he asked as he carted her into her bedroom.

  “Besides in the guest-room shower?”

  A bark of laughter escaped his throat as he sat on the bed and rolled with her until he had her positioned exactly where he wanted. Stretched out, with him on top. “So, Mrs. Carlisle. Did the reality live up to the fantasy?”

  “In my fantasy I got to soap you. All over.”

  “Is that a complaint?”

  “More an observation.”

  “Anything else you observed?”

  Mischief gleamed green in her eyes. “My fantasies tend to be low on talking, big on action.”

  “My action not big enough for you?”

  She wiggled her hips and then blinked slowly. “Already?”

  “Just adapting to the concept of a long-distance relationship.”

  Something shifted in her eyes, a touch serious, a tad wary, and Rafe thought how easily he could chase that suspicion away. To sink down into a kiss and then into her body. But no matter what his friend downstairs might be signaling, he had taken the edge off his sexual hunger, and the mental side craved some loving, too.

  He rolled onto his side, drawing her with him until they lay facing each other. He knew his expression had turned serious, knew because the wariness in her eyes had deepened. “I assume that’s what you want,” he said slowly. “Me flying out here on weekends and whenever else I can manage a night away.”

  “You’d do that?”

  “I’ll have to put some serious work in on your airstrip so I can land the Citation…but, yes.”

  Alarm widened her eyes. “You’d fly out here in a jet? Don’t you need a—”

  “Hey, I was joking.” He leaned forward and kissed her. “But only about the jet.”

  That didn’t erase the sharp notes of whatever worried her eyes. She stared at him, intent and silent for several seconds before she asked, “Why me?”

  He knew what she meant: Why had he chosen her? He couldn’t believe he hadn’t told her, at least several times, but he could stretch himself to tell her again. “Originally? Because I liked you right off the bat and I knew you’d make a good mother.”

  “How can you say that?” A frown pleated her brow. “I’m used to being on my own. I don’t mix with families. I don’t have any experience with babies.”

  “Yeah, but the way you looked after me when I was concussed—that’s the kind of care a mother should show. And then I saw you with those puppies.” He shrugged. “I could picture you with a baby.”

  The fractiousness in her eyes settled, darkened, as if it turned inward. As if imagining that same picture.

  Rafe realized then how quickly, how easily he’d grown used to the notion of a baby—his baby—when that thought had terrified the bejesus out of him two weeks ago. Who would have predicted it? An introspective smile played over his lips. “It’s a great picture, isn’t it?”

  She nodded and attempted to return his smile. Hers wobbled a little at the edges. “I hope you’re right about the mother call.”

  “How old were you when your mother died?” he asked, guessing at the cause of her concern.

  “Four,” she said softly. “I don’t even remember her.”

  Sorry didn’t cover something like that so he simply stroked a hand down her arm. “When did the wicked stepmother come into the picture?”

  Her lips twitched. “I was twelve.”

  “And she made your life an instant misery.”

  “No, I was over-the-moon excited at first. A new mother who was beautiful and sophisticated and who brought me amazing gifts. Plus I was getting two sisters. Life was going to be perfect!”

  The quiet shadow of sadness in her voice twisted Rafe’s gut. He leaned forward and brushed a soft kiss to her lips, and another and another until he’d chased that unhappy curve away. “What dastardly things did she do?”

  “Oh, nothing overt. She didn’t make me scrub floors and chop firewood or anything. She just made me feel…less. Like no matter what I did I could never meet her standards. Then she started undermining my relationship with Dad. She even convinced him to send me to boarding school.”

  “Isn’t that necessary?” he asked carefully. “Given your isolation?”

  “Maybe, but I hated it from day one. I hated being away from home. I missed my dad and my animals like crazy.”

  She was silent a long while, but Rafe waited, knowing there was more. Knowing, instinctively, that this was crucial to understanding her and why she wouldn’t spend time in the city.

  “I was away at school when my father died. He was out mustering and he came off his bike. He broke his back and…other stuff.” Her hand fluttered under his, her breath shuddered and hitched and pierced somewhere deep in his chest. “He was alive for close to twenty-four hours but no one found him. He died out there, alone.”

  “I’m sorry, baby” didn’t even come close, but he said it anyway. He said it and he wrapped her in his arms and wished he could absorb all her hurt into his own body. Wished he could say that being there wouldn’t have made any difference for her father but he didn’t know that. He did know it would have made a hell of a difference to Catriona.

  “Tell me about him.”

  “My dad?
Oh, he was tall. Dark.”

  “And handsome?”

  “Rugged I think is the right word.” Wry and sad, her smile reached in and grabbed him where he lived. “He was built like a rugby second-rower, which was handy since that’s the position he played.”

  “Lucky.”

  “He had a wicked sense of humor and a laugh that rolled up from his belly. I swear nobody could resist Dad’s laugh.”

  “Sounds like you got a gem.”

  “Yeah, I did. What about you?” she asked after a beat.

  “I got lucky when my mother married Charles Carlisle.”

  She watched him solemnly for a moment. “Have you ever met your birth father?”

  “Once.” Rafe played a long tress of her hair through his fingers. Then he shrugged. “I wish I hadn’t bothered.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “He wasn’t worth knowing.”

  The tenor of her expression changed, a subtle shift in the way she eyed him. Unease swirled in his belly because he knew he’d revealed more than he intended in that one flat statement. Knew that he had to divert her attention before she honed in on the one area of his life he didn’t intend sharing.

  He propped himself on an elbow and trailed a hand down her body, throat to navel in a drift of knuckles and warm velvet heat. “So, Mrs. Carlisle—”

  “Are you trying to distract me?”

  “No, I’m trying to keep on subject.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Which subject would that be?”

  “You asked why I thought you’d make a good mother. I hadn’t finished answering.” Curiosity flared in her eyes, then heat as he caressed the curve of her belly. “I knew you came from good stock. Strong character, sharp brain, smart mouth.” Pausing for effect, he spanned her pelvis with his hand. “Good child-bearing hips.”

  Naturally she growled and swatted him.

  Naturally he wrestled her to her back and pinned her to the bed with the weight of his body.

  Naturally he kissed the fire from her lips and looked deep into her eyes and told her he was joking, that mostly he just enjoyed her better than any woman he’d ever met. In and out of bed. And then he let her roll him onto his back so he could enjoy the weight of her body and her eyes smiling into his and then not smiling at all as she took him inside her and consumed him with her heat.