Flirting with the Socialite Doc (Mills & Boon Medical)

by MELANIE MILBURNE

  His eyes gleamed with sensual promise as his fingers went to the buttons on her shirt. ‘Let’s see what you’ve got hidden under here, shall we?’

  One by one he undid each button, somehow making it into a game of intense eroticism. His fingers scorched her skin each time he released another button from its tiny buttonhole, the action triggering yet another pulse of primal longing deep in her flesh. He peeled the shirt off her shoulders, and then tracked his finger down between her breasts, still encased in her bra. ‘Beautiful.’

  How one word uttered in that deep, husky tone could make her feel like a supermodel was beyond her. It wasn’t just a line, a throw-away comment to get what he wanted. She knew he meant it. She could feel it in his touch, the gentle way he had of cupping her breasts once he’d released her bra, the way his thumbs stroked over her nipples with a touch that was both achingly tender and yet tantalisingly arousing.

  Her cotton summer skirt was next to go, the zip going down, the little hoop of fabric circling her ankles before he took her hand and helped her step away from it like stepping out of a puddle. He put a warm, work-roughened hand to the curve of her hip just above the line of her knickers, holding her close enough to the potent heat of his body for her to feel his reaction to her closeness.

  He was powerfully erect. She could feel the thrum of his blood through the lace of her knickers, the hot, urgent pressure of him stirring her senses into frantic overload.

  He touched her then, a single stroke down the lace-covered seam of her body, a teasing taste of the intimate invasion to come. She whimpered as he slid her knickers aside, waiting a heart-stopping beat before he touched her again, skin on skin.

  Izzy tugged his underwear down so she could do the same to him, taking him in her hands, stroking him, caressing the silky steel of him until he was breathing as raggedly as she was.

  He slipped a finger inside her, swallowing her gasp as his mouth came down on hers. His kiss was passionate, thorough, and intensely erotic as his tongue tangled with hers in a cat-and-mouse caper.

  Izzy’s caressing of him became bolder, squeezing and releasing, smoothing up and down his length, running her fingertip over the ooze of his essence, breathing in the musky scent of mutual arousal.

  There was something wildly, deeply primitive about being naked with a man in the bush. No sounds other than their hectic breathing and those of nature. The distant warble of magpies, the throaty arck-arck of a crow flying overhead, the whisper of the breeze moving through the gum leaves, sounding like thousands of finger-length strips of tinsel paper being jostled together.

  Zach pressed her down on the tartan blanket, pushing the picnic things out of the way with his elbow, quickly sourcing a condom before entering her with a thrust that made her cry out with bone-deep pleasure. He set a fast rhythm that was as primal as their surroundings, the intensity of it thrilling her senses in a way she had never thought possible just a few short weeks ago. Her life in England had never felt more distant. It was like having another completely different identity that belonged back there.

  Over there she was a buttoned-up girl who had spent years of her life pretending to be happy, pleasing others rather than pleasing herself.

  Out here she was a wild and wanton woman, having smoking-hot sex with a man she hadn’t known a fortnight ago.

  And now...now she was rocking in his arms as if her world began and ended with him. The physicality of their relationship was shocking, the blunt, almost brutal honesty of the needs of their bodies as they strove for completion was as carnal as two wild animals mating. Even the sound of her cries as she came were those of a woman she didn’t know, had never encountered before. Wild, shrieking cries that spoke of a depth of passion that had never been tapped into or expressed before.

  Zach’s release was not as vocal but Izzy felt the power of it as he tensed, pumped and then flowed.

  He didn’t move for a long moment. His body rested on hers in the aftermath, his breathing slowly returning to normal as she stroked her hands up and down his back and shoulders, their bodies still intimately joined.

  ‘I think there’s a pebble sticking into my butt,’ Izzy finally said.

  He rolled her over so she was lying on top of him, his eyes heavily lidded, sleepy with satiation. ‘Better?’

  ‘Much.’

  He circled her right breast with a lazy finger. ‘Ever skinny dipped before?’

  ‘Not with a man present.’ Izzy gave him a wry smile. ‘I did it with Hannah and a couple of other girlfriends when we were thirteen at my birthday party. It was a dare.’

  His finger made a slow, nerve-tingling circuit of her other breast. ‘Is that how the crazy birthday stuff with her started?’

  Izzy sent her own fingers on an exploration of his flat brown nipple nestled amongst his springy chest hair. ‘Come to think of it, yes. She was always on about me being too worried about what other people thought. She made it her mission in life to shock me out of my “aristocratic mediocrity”, as she calls it.’

  He stroked his hand over the flank of her thigh. ‘Somehow mediocre isn’t the first word that comes to mind when I think of you.’

  Izzy angled her head at him. ‘So what word does?’

  He gave her a slow smile that crinkled up the corners of his eyes in a devastatingly attractive manner. ‘Cute. Funny. Sexy.’

  She traced the outline of his smile with her fingertip. ‘I never felt sexy before. Not the way I do with you.’ She bit down on her lip, wondering if she’d been too honest, revealed too much.

  He brushed her lower lip with his thumb. ‘You do that a lot.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bite your lip.’

  Izzy had to stop her teeth from doing it again. ‘It’s a nervous habit. Half the time I’m not even aware I’m doing it.’

  His thumb caressed her lip as if soothing it from the assault of her teeth. ‘Why don’t you come down here and bite mine instead?’

  Izzy leaned down and started nibbling at his lower lip, using her teeth to tug and tease. She used her tongue to sweep over where her teeth had been, before starting the process all over again. Nip. Tug. Nip. Tug.

  He gave little grunts of approval, one of his hands splayed in her hair as he held her head close to his. ‘Harder,’ he commanded.

  A shudder of pleasure shimmied down her spine as his hand fisted in her hair. She pulled at his lip with her teeth, stroked it with her tongue and then pushed her tongue into his mouth to meet his. Zach murmured his pleasure and took control of the kiss, his masterful tongue darting and diving around hers.

  It was an exhilarating kiss, wild and abandoned and yet still with an element of tenderness that ambushed her emotionally.

  She wasn’t supposed to be feeling anything but lust for this man.

  This was a fling.

  A casual hook-up like all her girlfriends experienced from time to time. It was a chance to own her sexuality, to express it without the confining and formal bounds of a relationship.

  She was only here for another couple of weeks. She was moving on to new sights and experiences, filling her six months away from home with adventure and memories to look back on in the years to come.

  Falling in love would be a crazy...a totally disastrous thing to do...

  Izzy eased off Zach while he dealt with the condom. She gathered her tousled hair and tied it into a makeshift knot, using the tresses as an anchor. Her body tingled with the memory of his touch as she got to her feet, tiny aftershocks of pleasure rippling through her.

  She was dazed by sensational sex, that’s all it was.

  It wasn’t love. How could it be?

  Maybe it was time to cool off.

  ‘Are you sure it’s safe to swim here?’

  ‘Not for diving but it’s fine for a dip.’ He took her hand and led her down to the water. ‘Not quite St Barts, is it?’

  Izzy glanced at him. ‘You’ve been there?’

  ‘Once.’ He looked out over the water as if
he was seeing the exclusive Caribbean holiday destination in his mind’s eye, his mouth curled up in a cynical arc. ‘With my mother and her new family when I was fourteen. Cost her husband a packet. I’m sure he only took us all there to make a point of how good her life was with him instead of my father. I didn’t go on holidays with them after that. I got tired of having all that wealth thrust in my face.’

  Izzy moved her fingers against his. ‘I hated most of my family holidays. I’m sure we only went to most of the places we went to because that’s where my parents thought people expected to see us. Skiing at exclusive lodges in Aspen. Sailing around the Mediterranean on yachts that cost more than most people ever see in a lifetime. I would’ve loved to go camping under the stars in the wilderness but, no, it was butlers and chauffeurs and five stars all the way.’

  He looked at her with a wry smile tilting his mouth. ‘Funny, isn’t it, that you always want what you don’t have?’

  I have what I want right now. Izzy quickly filed away the thought. She looked down at the mud that was squelching between her toes. The water was refreshingly cool against her heated skin. She went in a little further, holding Zach’s hand for balance until she was waist deep. ‘Mmm, that’s lovely.’ She went in a bit deeper but something cold and slimy brushed against her leg and she yelped and sprang back and clung to Zach like a limpet. ‘Eeek! What was that?’

  He held her against him, laughing softly. ‘It was just a bit of weed. Nothing to worry about. You’re safe with me.’

  Her arms were locked around his neck, her legs wrapped around his waist and her mouth within touching distance of his. She watched as his gaze went to her mouth, the way his lashes lowered in that sleepily hooded way a man did when he was thinking about sex. A new wave of desire rolled through her as his mouth came down and fused with hers.

  You’re safe with me.

  Izzy wasn’t safe. Not the way she wanted to be. Not the way she needed to be.

  She was in very great danger indeed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  AS ZACH PACKED the picnic things back in the car Izzy looked up at the brilliant night sky with its scattering of stars like handfuls of diamonds flung across a bolt of dark blue velvet. The air was still warm and the night orchestra’s chorus had recruited two extra voices: a tawny frogmouth owl and a vixen fox, looking for a mate.

  That distinctive bark was a sound from home, making Izzy feel a sudden pang of homesickness. She wondered if sounds like those of a lonely feral fox had caused Zach’s mother to grieve for the life she had left behind. Had the years fighting drought and dust and flies or floods and failed crops and flyblown sheep finally broken her spirit? Or had she simply fallen out of love with her husband? Leaving a husband one no longer loved was understandable, but leaving a child to travel to the other side of the world was something else again. Leaving Zach behind must have been a very difficult decision.

  Izzy couldn’t imagine a mother choosing her freedom over her child, but she recognised that not all mothers found the experience as satisfying and fulfilling as others.

  Leaving Zach behind...

  The words reverberated inside her head. That was what she would have to do in a matter of a fortnight. She would never see him again. He would move on with his life, no doubt in a year or two find a good, sensible, no-nonsense country girl to settle down with, raise a family and work the land as his father and grandfather and forebears had done before him. She imagined him sitting at the scrubbed pine kitchen table at Fletcher Downs homestead surrounded by his wife and children. He would make a wonderful father. She had seen him with Caitlyn’s children, generous, gentle and calm.

  Izzy heard his footfall on the gravel as he came to join her. ‘Have you found the Southern Cross?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so.’ She pointed to a constellation of stars in the south. ‘Is that it there?’

  He followed the line of her arm and nodded. ‘Yep, that’s it. Good work. You must’ve done your research.’

  Izzy turned and looked at him, something in her heart contracting as if a hand had grabbed at it and squeezed. ‘Would you ever consider living somewhere else?’ she asked.

  A frown flickered over his brow. ‘You mean like back in the city?’

  Izzy wasn’t sure what she meant. She wasn’t sure why she had even asked. ‘Will you quit your work as a cop and take over Fletcher Downs once your father officially retires?’

  He looked back at the dark overturned bowl of the sky, his gaze going all the way to the horizon, where a thin lip of light lingered just before the sun dipped to wake the other side of the world. ‘I love my work as a cop...well, most of the time. But the land is in my blood. The Fletcher name goes back a long way in these parts, all the way back to the first European settlers. I’m my dad’s only heir. I can’t afford to pay a manager for ever. The property would have to be sold if I didn’t take it on full time.’

  ‘But is that what you want?’

  He continued to focus on the distant horizon with a grim set to his features. ‘What I want is my dad to get back to full health and mobility but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen any time soon.’

  ‘But at least he’s becoming more socially active,’ Izzy said. ‘That’s a great step forward. Margie’s determined to get him out more. It would be so nice if they got together, don’t you think?’

  He looked back at her with that same grave look. ‘My father will never get married again. He’s been burned once. He would never go back for a second dose.’

  ‘But that’s crazy,’ Izzy said. ‘Margie loves him. She’s loved him since she was a girl. They belong together. Anyone can see that.’

  His lip curled upwards but it wasn’t so much mocking as wry. ‘Stick to your medical journals, Izzy. Those romance novels you read are messing with your head.’

  It’s not my head they’re messing with, Izzy thought as she followed him back to the car.

  It was her heart.

  * * *

  Zach brought a beer out to his father on the veranda a couple of days later. ‘Here you go. But only the one. Remember what the doctor said about drinking plenty of clear fluids.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Doug took a long sip, and then let a silence slip past before asking, ‘You seeing her tonight?’

  Zach reached down to tickle Popeye’s ears. ‘Not tonight.’

  ‘Wise of you.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  Doug took another sip of his beer before answering. ‘Better not get too used to having her around. She’s going to be packing up and leaving before you know it.’

  Zach tried to ignore the savage twist of his insides at the thought of Izzy driving out of town once her locum was up. He’d heard a whisper the locals were going to use the Shearers’ Ball as a send-off for her. William Sawyer and his wife would be back from their trip soon and life would return to normal in Jerringa Ridge.

  Normal.

  What a weird word to describe his life. When had it ever been normal? Growing up since the age of ten without a mother. Years of putting up with his father’s ongoing bitterness over his marriage break-up. For years he hadn’t even been able to mention his mother without his father flinching as if he had landed a punch on him.

  Dealing with the conflicted emotions of visiting his mother in her gracious home in Surrey, where he didn’t fit in with the formal furniture or her even more formal ridiculously wealthy new husband who never seemed to wear anything but a suit and a silk cravat, even on St Barts. Those gut-wrenching where-do-I-belong feelings intensifying once her new sons Jules and Oliver had been born. Coming back home and feeling just as conflicted trying to settle back in to life at Fletcher Downs or at boarding school.

  Always feeling the outsider.

  ‘I know what I’m doing, Dad.’

  His father glanced at him briefly before turning to look at the light fading over the paddocks. It was a full minute, maybe longer before he spoke. ‘I’m not going to get any better than thi
s, am I? No point pretending I am.’

  Zach found the sudden shift in conversation disorienting. ‘Sure you are. You’re doing fine.’ He was doing it again. It was his fall-back position. A pattern of the last twenty-three years he couldn’t seem to get out of—playing Pollyanna to his father’s woe-is-me moods. He could recall all the pep-talk phrases he’d used in the past: Time heals everything. You’ll find someone else. Take it one day at a time. Baby steps. Everything happens for a reason.

  Doug’s hand tightened on his can of beer until the aluminium crackled. ‘I should’ve married Margie. I should’ve done it years ago. Now it’s too late.’

  It’s never too late was on the tip of Zach’s tongue but he refrained from voicing it. ‘Is that what Margie wants? Marriage?’

  ‘It’s what most women want, isn’t it?’ His father gave his beer can another crunch. ‘A husband, a family, a home they can be proud of. Security.’

  ‘Margie’s already got a family and a house and her job is secure,’ Zach said. ‘Seems to me what she wants is companionship.’

  His father’s top lip curled in a manner so like his own it was disquieting to witness. ‘And what sort of companion am I? I can’t even get on a stepladder and change a bloody light bulb.’

  ‘There’s more to a relationship than who puts out the garbage or takes the dog for a walk,’ Zach said.

  His father didn’t seem to be listening. He was still looking out over the paddocks with a frown between his eyes. ‘I didn’t see it at the time...all those years ago I didn’t see Margie for who she was. She was always just one of the local girls, fun to be around but didn’t stand out. Then I met your mother.’ He made a self-deprecating sound. ‘What a fool I was to think I could make someone like her happy. I tried for ten years to keep her. Ten years of living with the dread she would one day pack up and leave. And then she did.’ He clicked his fingers. Snap. ‘She was gone.’

  Zach remembered it all too well. He could still remember exactly where he had been standing on the veranda as he’d watched his mother drive away. He had gripped the veranda rail so tightly his hands had ached for days. He had watched with his heart feeling as heavy as a headstone in his chest. His mouth had been as dry as the red dust his mother’s car had stirred up as she’d wheeled away.