His voice faded away, drowned out by the roaring of her blood in her ears. She stared at the screen, jumping from image to image, words and phrases jumping out at her, slapping at her. Words and phrases she’d heard Desmond dictate into his smartphone the previous day at the scene.
Shame ate at her. She’d spent every night for the last six months going over her notes and photos of the fire that took Kenny’s life. She’d written letters to politicians, high court judges, the Fire Commissioner, the Police Commissioner outlining Darius Russell’s dismissive report and his denial of evidence of arson. No one had dogged her brother’s murder longer than she had. With ragged guilt, she realised while she’d been sleeping, he’d been working. While she’d been in the deep slumber of sexual exhaustion, he’d been researching her brother’s fire and writing notes on the Broken Downs fire. He’d been doing not only her job, but revisiting his father’s incompetent but official reports.
He’d found the connection she’d missed, the one so obvious she should have seen it herself. The one staring her in the face the moment she’d walked onto the Broken Downs fire scene. God, how could she have missed such an obvious connection? How? Was she truly that inept?
She should have connected the suspicious wax residue at the homestead to the same wax residue at her brother’s house. After six months obsessively focusing on her brother’s fire, she should have identified the arsonist’s same MO immediately.
But Desmond had found that. And all she had done was let her mind be clouded into a lustful stupor when he was near her.
Her heart punched harder, faster at her breastbone.
A shiver rippled over her, reminding her she was naked.
Naked. Because she’d spent the last six hours fucking him when she should have spent them fucking doing her fucking job.
How could he be so fucking focused on his job, so clear headed he could find the connection that alluded her when she was still sex addled and weak and trembly? How?
Fuck, had she gotten more involved last night than he had? Had she?
He’d blown her away, drained her and sated her and made her feel…feel alive, for the first time since Kenny’s death, and then he’d gone right back to work like it was nothing? While she slept?
Her chest squeezed tight. Her throat seized tighter.
“It didn’t click with me,” he said, returning his attention to her, an expression on his face she could only describe as triumphant, “until I saw who your brother was—spokesperson for the mining company trying to move into Wallaby Ridge, And it made me think of the policy the Deputy PM tabled last month in Parliament granting said company unlimited access to—”
She spun on her heel and stormed across the room to where her clothes lay on the floor. Jesus, she’d just let a big-city suit do her job. A job she’d sworn never to leave in another person’s hands.
She needed to get away from him. Now.
“Jess?”
She ignored him. Snatched up her shirt and shorts instead.
Kept her back to him as she shoved her legs into her shorts and yanked the zipper up with savage force. Refused to admit he was there as she pulled her shirt over her head. Who the fuck knew where her undies were. She didn’t care. Didn’t want them anyway. They’d only make her think of how fucking weak and pathetic she’d been by stupidly submitting to her own fucking lust for Desmond whenever she looked at them. They’d only remind her of the power he’d had over her body, of the fact he’d kept working while she’d slept.
They’d only mock her for being so…so…
“Jess?” A firm hand wrapped around her upper arm, tugging her to face him. “Mind telling me what’s going on?”
She couldn’t meet his eyes. “You’re telling me someone here in the Ridge killed my brother because he worked for a mining company?”
“That’s my theory. Despite the very vocal objections the town had about their arrival here, his job, as a local, was to smooth things over. To convince people losing their land to a faceless multinational corporation was a good thing.”
Unable to stop herself, she flicked him a glare. “And you got all that from only one day on the scene of a fire and by reading a few reports?”
“I did.”
She barked out a humourless laugh. Grief and guilt and pain lashed at her. “Of course you did. Of course you’ve done what your father refused to do and prove my brother was murdered. And by someone he probably knew, of all things. No wonder you’re the country’s leading arson investigator.”
“Are you serious?”
She ground her teeth, a tumultuous ball of sickened rage in her stomach. It was all there. The connection, the link…and she’d missed it all. And Desmond had just swooped on in and found it…when she should have…
“I have to go,” she muttered.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “Tell me, Captain, are you pissed at me now because of who my father is? Or because I did my job?”
The question sank into her belly like a fist.
Shaking off his grip on her arm, she stormed for the door. She’d collect her boots later. After the bastard left for Sydney. “Send me copies of your report later today, please, Mr. Russell. I have no doubt they will be perfect.”
“What the fuck?”
She didn’t stop at his confused exclamation. Nor did she pay any heed to the jealous guilt and shame squirming in her gut. Instead, she yanked open the door and hurried outside.
The scorching Outback heat wrapped around her, greedy and unrelenting and brutal.
She squinted at the morning sun sitting low in the eastern sky like a white ball of fire.
Fire. So much of her life was dictated by it. So much of her existence ruled by it. And now, she could add the fire of her lust to that list. God, she was a fucking joke.
“Jess,” Desmond called behind her.
She didn’t turn. Balling her fists, she stomped out into the hotel’s car park, the concrete already hot from the sun, its surface already coated in a film of red dirt from the surrounding emptiness. The soles of her feet burned but she ignored the sensation in the same way she ignored Desmond’s shout.
It was, after all, just a typical day in the life in the Outback: savage and punishing to those foolish enough to expose themselves to the heat.
She was on the footpath before a strong hand grabbed her by the upper arm and spun her around.
Desmond stood before her, towered over her. He hadn’t put on a shirt. Nor had he covered his black boxers with his ubiquitous suit pants. He stood bared to the sun, his stare fixed on her face. “This is the way you’re going to end us, is it? You don’t want to hear what I have to say?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Us? There’s an us? When the fuck did there become an us?”
His jaw bunched. “The second I stepped foot on the Wallaby Ridge runway. The second you challenged me, there was an us.”
“Jesus, you’re full of yourself, Des. We fucked. You did my job. End of us.”
He gripped her arm tighter. For a moment, she thought he was going to shake it. A muscle ticked below his eye. His nostrils flared. “Your stubborn insistence that what I do for a living insults your skill is wearing thin, Captain. And the fact you think I’ve somehow slighted your devotion to your brother by discovering the link between his death and the Broken Downs fire only tells me that insistence has nothing to do with your skill and everything to do with your fear.”
“Fear?” She barked out a dry laugh. “What the fuck am I afraid of, Des? You?”
His nostrils flared again. “Yes. Me.”
She shrugged his grip from her arm. At least, she tried to. His fingers refused to budge. “Jesus, you think you’re shit hot, don’t you, city boy? Just like your fucking father.”
Before she could blink, Desmond lowered his head to hers, until their eyes were level. “I am nothing,” he spoke, the words a low growl, “like my father. My father was an abusive, alcoholic, arrogant bastard who abandoned his family and fucked
over so many victims of fire it’s all I can do but spend my life attempting to make amends. And of all those people I’ve helped, of all those I’ve uncovered the truth for, you’re the first to throw it back in my face. The first to make me feel like shit.”
He sucked in a slow breath, his fingers around her arm growing firmer. “Even as you make me feel freer of that bastard’s crushing shadow than I’ve ever been. Even as you make me realize life is not about control, but about trust.”
Jess’s heart skipped a beat. She gazed at him, her blood roaring in her ears, her throat thick.
Desmond’s jaw bunched. “I got up to work while you slept because I knew how much it meant to you to know what happened to your brother, and I wanted to fix it for you. I wanted to take your pain away.”
She froze. Stared at him. Her head roared. Her mouth fell open.
“I don’t believe in love at first sight, Jessica,” he went on, blue eyes holding her prisoner. “To be honest, until you stomped into my life and turned it on its fucking ear, I didn’t believe in love, full stop. But I’m telling you right now, after I submit the report we write together on the Broken Downs fire—a report that links your brother’s death to that fire—I’m going to do everything I can to help the authorities catch his killer and the person responsible for the destruction of the Deputy PM’s homestead. Which means the Deputy PM is going to owe me. Big time. And that means I’ll have access to a private jet whenever I want it. And I will use that private jet to fly out here every damn weekend until you accept I’m not the bastard you desperately insist on wanting me to be. I will use that jet to spend every Friday and Saturday night in your bed, fucking you senseless, until you can’t deny that there is, indeed, an us. And that this us may be the best fucking love story this scorched goddamn country has ever seen. Do I make myself clear, Captain?”
A wave of something hot and prickling and powerful swept over Jess.
She stared at him. Thought of her brother, thought of the pain of losing him, of her inability to show the world he hadn’t died in an accident caused by his own incompetence, as Darius Russell had proclaimed. Thought of the fury she’d felt at Darius Russell’s dismissal of her suspicions and findings.
How many days had she wanted to slap him? To scream at him he was wrong? Wrong. And now, here was his son, declaring loud and clear she was right. Letting her know he believed in her judgement, believed in her ability.
Letting her know he wanted to heal the wound in her heart.
Telling her in no uncertain terms he wanted not just to heal her, but to be with her.
What exactly did she say? What did she do?
Hug him. Kiss him. Exist with him…
“It’s either me spending every weekend here,” Desmond went on, “or you moving to Sydney with me. That place is always in need of amazing fire scene investigators.”
Jess’s heart—already pounding at a rate beyond medically sound—smashed faster into her throat. She gaped at him. Opened her lips. Closed them. Opened them again. And closed them once again.
Was he serious? Move to Sydney with him?
“I’m just putting it out there,” he said. “You don’t have to answer me now. But of course, you need to understand I won’t give up. Here or in Sydney, you and I…us? It’s happening.”
She couldn’t say a word.
He cocked an eyebrow. “Am I to assume you’re not going to argue with me? You’re not going to tell me I’m wrong? Or to shut the fuck up?”
“Y-you really can prove my brother’s death wasn’t accidental?” The question fell from her on a whisper. “And get the fucker who killed him?”
“No.” He shook his head. “We can.”
Her heart pounded faster in her throat. Hot tears stung the back of her eyes.
She drew a slow breath, holding his gaze.
We.
“I think,” she said, her whole body thrumming, “I was wrong.”
An unreadable emotion flickered across his face. “Wrong?”
“I think I’m glad you came to the Ridge after all.”
He chuckled, the sound at once happy…and very, very relieved.
Her chest constricted. In that one laugh, she’d heard it all. What he was feeling, what he was hoping. He wanted her. He wanted a relationship with her. A relationship. With her. A foul-talking girl from the Outback. Whether that was here, in Wallaby Ridge, or in Sydney…
Elated disbelief and wonder flooded through her.
And something else. Something complicated and beautiful and amazing.
Closure.
“Very glad,” she said. “And not just because of my brother.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “No.”
His fingers on her upper arm relaxed into a delicious caress even as he tugged her closer to his body. “Do the other reasons have anything to do with my ties?”
A warm sensation bloomed through Jess’s lower body. Became a flush of exquisite heat. Her breasts grew heavy. Her breath grew shallow. Her sex grew damp. Ready. “It does.”
A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. A sexy-as-sin smile. A big-city suit smile. “In that case…”
Without warning, he dropped into a crouch, snared her wrist and the back of her thigh with two firm hands, pressed his shoulder to her belly and hauled her off her feet in the most perfect fireman’s hold she’d ever witnessed…or experienced.
“We need to get your arse back inside ASAP,” he said, spinning on his heel to stride back to his hotel room. “There’s some serious fucking to be done.”
Jess let out a squealing giggle, her heart wild, her grin wide. In a distant part of her mind, she registered the owner of the hotel watching them, censure on his face. Word would spread through the Ridge about this. Before Desmond could even throw her on his bed and tie her hands above her head, word would spread. It never took long in a small Outback town.
Word the captain of the fire brigade and a suit from the Big Smoke were getting it on.
Jess didn’t give a flying fuck.
She was about to be set on fire by a man who knew more about heat than any she’d known.
Again.
And she couldn’t be happier.
Breathless For You
(Outback Skies, Book Two)
Available Here
More Romance From Lexxie Couper…
The Always Series
Unconditional
Unforgettable
Undeniable
The Outback Skies Series
Bound to You
Breathless for You
Burn for You
Bare for You
Better with You
The Heart of Fame Series
Love’s Rhythm
Muscle for Hire
Guarded Desires
Steady Beat
Lead Me On
Blame it on the Bass
Getting Played
Blackthorne
Stimulated
Blowing It Off
Revving It Up
Switching It On
Rubbing It Out
Pinning It Down
Heart of Fame: Stage Right
Compliance
A Single Knight
Balls Up
Lust’s Rhythm
Dangerous Desire
The Bad Boy Next Door
The Good Girl in My Bed
The Bad Boy in Cuffs
The Good Girl in Trouble
See the full book list…
First Chapter Preview: Breathless For You
Outback Skies, Book Two
He never wanted to love again. She never wanted to love, period.
Breathless For You
(Outback Skies, Book Two)
Available Here
Two steps into the Outback Skies Pub, a place so stereotypical Australian Outback it could have been used in a Crocodile Dundee movie, Matt Corvin, M.D. was struck just below the eye by a cardboard beer coaster.
“Busted.” A man in a beat-up cowboy hat grinned at him from a table to his right just inside the main door. “You were thinking about Captain Tight Pants again, weren’t you?”
Dropping himself onto the table’s only empty seat, Matt let out a disgruntled chuckle and rubbed at his cheek. “Nice aim you’ve got there, Ryan.”
Ryan Taylor, heli-musterer and Wallaby Ridge’s only openly gay man, laughed. The sound matched the way he looked completely—rough and rangy. “I’ve got an eye for nabbing befuddled animals. Before I took to the skies to round up cattle, I was pretty damn good at using a rope.”
Matt gave Ryan a wounded look. “You calling me a befuddled animal?”
He had been thinking of his prickly, standoffish pilot again, but was that any need for the beer-coaster assault?
Ryan smirked. “When it comes to Natacha Freeman? Yep.”
At the mention of the person responsible for flying him all over the vast area of the Outback covered by the Royal Flying Doctors Service, a tight heat curled in the pit of Matt’s gut. And lower. Damn it, he’d just spent the last three hours in her company thanks to an emergency at a cattle property two hundred and fifty kilometres from Wallaby Ridge. For his own peace of mind, he was hoping to get away from thoughts of her for a while. But nope, it seemed like his mates were determined to give him hell tonight.
Bastards.
The man slouched in the chair beside Ryan snorted and tugged the brim of his baseball cap lower over his eyes. “Befuddled animal is an understatement,” the town’s aviation firefighter said. “More like pre-occupied, fixated, goo-goo eyed, love-sick puppy.”
Bound By You (Outback Skies Book 1) Page 8
