Bound By You (Outback Skies Book 1)

by Lexxie Couper

  Matt swung his glower on the man. “Jesus, you too, Evan?”

  Evan Alexander’s lips curled in a slow grin, the white scars covering the lower left side of his face giving the expression far more menace than Matt knew it had. It wasn’t often Evan smiled, or even let the collar of his jacket rest on his shoulders.

  “Corvin, I’ve got a group of doped-out tourists from Amsterdam in lock-up less befuddled than you.” Charlie Baynard, the last of the group—and the most intimidating—chuckled and raised his beer to his lips. “And if you say the words tight jeans one more time, I think I’m going to have to throw you in there with them.”

  Trying to ignore the now familiar tension in his body at the thought of Tash’s exquisite arse wrapped up in the faded Levis she wore daily, Matt sat back in his seat, crossed his arms over his chest and gave Wallaby Ridge’s Senior Constable and the town’s only Air Police Wing pilot a pointed look. “Will you now, Charlie? Is that before or after I let everyone in town know I wrote you a twelve-month prescription for Viagra?”

  On Matt’s left, Evan chuckled.

  Charlie crossed his own arms over his chest, a chest far more muscular and powerful than Matt’s, and leveled a steady stare at him. He didn’t utter a word. Just stared at him.

  Matt rolled his eyes and let out a wry laugh. “Okay, I didn’t write you a twelve-month prescription.”

  Charlie nodded his head. “Damn right you didn’t.”

  “It was a six-month one.”

  Charlie smirked and reached for the handcuffs hanging on his belt. Cuffs he wore even when he was off-duty. When it came down to it, Charlie Baynard was never really off duty. Not as far as Matt could tell. “Right, that’s it. Lock-up time.”

  Matt laughed. So did Evan and Ryan.

  Four men completely different and yet all joined by one thing—their place in the sweeping skies of the Outback.

  Matt had found them in his second week living in Wallaby Ridge.

  Two weeks into his new job as the Ridge’s resident Flying Doctor he’d come to the decision he needed a beer. The first he’d had since waking from the coma that had resulted in everyone he loved presuming he was dead over a year ago.

  He’d wandered into the pub on a Friday afternoon, found the other three men talking about the hours they’d spent in the sky for work that week and asked to join them. He’d introduced himself and bought them all a round of beers. That had been the beginning of their tradition.

  Friday afternoons in the Outback Skies, talking shit, giving each other shit, finding calm and peace in their friendship when their jobs flying high above the world left them raw and exhausted and drained.

  If it weren’t for Friday afternoons, Matt probably would have done something stupid by now. Like tell Tash Freeman she had to stop wearing those tight bloody jeans of hers.

  Her and those damn faded Levis that left no uncertainty she wasn’t wearing underwear beneath. Not even a G-string. After he and his ex-fiancée parted ways four and a half months ago, he’d been adamant any kind of connection with anyone was off-limits. Well, anyone of the opposite sex, that was. And then six weeks ago, Tash had swooped into Wallaby Ridge, stalking across the runway and into his life in hip-hugging, thigh-hugging, arse-hugging jeans, and he’d been connecting with the image ever since.

  He was on the verge of telling her to buy a pair of sweatpants, for Pete’s sake. At least that way he’d be able to keep his mind on saving lives. He was finding it increasingly difficult to stop thinking about her and her tight jeans, tiny waist, toned limbs, pixie-cut auburn hair, round, full breasts, rarely heard laugh and rarely seen smile.

  Increasingly difficult not to think about her when he was stretched out in bed alone and—

  Damn it. He hadn’t come to the Outback to fall in lust. If Tash knew about the very debauched, very carnal thoughts he was harboring about her and her jeans every time he buckled into the seat beside her, she’d probably toss him out at twenty-seven thousand feet, whether he was the area’s only flying doc or not.

  The RFDS-supplied pager on his hip vibrated into life. A second after that, his mobile phone began to ring and the theme music from the cult sci-fi television show Doctor Who rose above the rowdy sounds inside the pub.

  “And there she is,” Evan murmured, tugging at the peak of his cap as he seemed to slouch lower in his seat.

  At Evan’s side, Ryan laughed. “Duty calls, Doc. Guess you’re going to be tortured by those tight jeans some more before the sun goes down. Going to take her a coffee again?”

  Pulse thumping fast in his throat, Matt silenced the pager on his hip, pulled his mobile phone from his back pocket, swiped his thumb over its screen and raised it to his ear.

  “What is it, Tash?” he asked, all too aware the reason for his accelerated heart rate and constricted throat had nothing to do with whatever medical emergency he was being called to and everything to do with the woman on the other end of the connection. A woman he’d been fantasizing about for the last six weeks, even if she behaved like he barely existed.

  “Reg McGuire’s fallen off the roof of his woolshed,” his pilot answered, her husky voice playing merry hell with Matt’s senses. And his body. “His wife called it in. Says she found him on the ground, bleeding like a stuck pig from the head and a wound she can’t see on his back. And unfortunately, we’re doing this run without a nurse, because Jen’s sister just went into labour and Milly isn’t answering her page.”

  “I’ll be at the runway in five,” Matt said, rising to his feet.

  “I’ll have the engine running,” Tash replied before killing the call.

  “Bad?” Charlie asked, studying Matt as he shoved his phone back into his pocket, his cop’s instincts no doubt kicking in.

  Matt reached for Ryan’s half-full beer glass, took a mouthful and then wiped his lips with the back of his arm. “Doesn’t sound good. Old Man Dingo’s fallen from his woolshed roof.”

  “The old bloke with Parkinson’s?” Ryan asked, taking his beer back from Matt. “What the fuck was he doing on the roof in the first place?”

  Matt shook his head. “No idea. But I gotta go. Catch you next week, guys.”

  And without another word, he turned and left the pub.

  He had a job to do, a good job. The job he loved doing. He just wished to bloody God he had his old pilot back.

  He’d never gotten turned on by nose-picking Fred Stiller.

  Ever.

  *

  Keep your focus on Old Man Dingo. Keep your focus on Old Man Dingo.

  The mantra wasn’t helping Tash at all. Nor was the fact the doc was looking sexier than freaking ever. Which wasn’t really possible, given only two hours had passed since they’d touched down from the Bourkenback cattle station call-out and this one. But he was. In those short two hours, he’d somehow grown more of a five o’clock shadow, his hair had become scruffier, the jagged scar running from his forehead down his temple to his cheekbone had become whiter in his tanned face and his shoulders had somehow become broader. Impossible.

  It didn’t help that he was now doing what he did better than any doctor she’d ever known. He had an uncanny ability to make a person in serious pain forget all about the agony wracking their body with his amazing, relaxed and totally natural bedside manner.

  She stood at the side of Reg McGuire’s bed, octogenarian’s wife clinging to her hand like a lifeline, and watched Matt do his thing.

  God, why couldn’t he be a fat, chain-smoking, alcoholic doctor like the one who’d shattered her fighter-pilot dreams? That way, she’d have a better chance of hating him.

  If she hated him, good doctor or not, drop-dead gorgeous or not, sexy scar or not, she wouldn’t spend every day wishing—deep down in the most selfish centre of her soul—for emergencies that would require them to be together.

  Pathetic.

  She truly was pathetic.

  What would her parents think of her now?

  At the unexpected thought of her est
ranged parents, a tight ribbon of cold pain unfurled through Tash.

  “Okay, Reg, you’re done.” Matt’s warm declaration jerked her back from the brink of self-loathing dismay. She blinked, suddenly aware Old Man Dingo’s wife no longer gripped her hand.

  A hot blush flooded her cheeks.

  Great. Another reason to despise the doc—he made her forget where she was and what she was doing.

  “Thank you so much, Dr. Corvin,” Beryl McGuire gushed, enveloping him in a hug as he straightened beside Reg’s bed. At her feet, the five pet dingoes responsible for Reg’s nickname whimpered with joy, as if aware Matt had saved their owner. “I told Reggie he shouldn’t get up onta the roof. He falls over on flat ground. But he didn’t listen ta me. Maybe now he will.”

  Matt’s gaze met Tash’s. A smile shone in his blue eyes, far more…intimate than any he’d given her before. A connection.

  For a moment, her chest tightened. Her heart beat faster. A dry cough escaped her, soft and sharp at once.

  And then Matt was disengaging himself from Beryl’s enthusiastic embrace, his warm smile for her. “Maybe he will.” He turned to Old Man Dingo, currently flat on his back on the bed, head bandaged, right ankle resting on two pillows. “Do you hear me, Reg? You were lucky you only dislocated your hip. Next time you decide to fall from a roof, Tash here might not be in the mood to fly me out to help it pop back in, understand?”

  Reg chuckled, the good-humored sound lost to a wince a second later. “If it means I’m going to see Miss Freeman,” he said, even as he reached out for his wife’s fingers with a wobbly hand, “I’m going to fall off a roof every day. Have you seen the way her butt looks in her jeans, Doc?”

  Fresh heat filled Tash’s cheeks. Unable to stop herself, she flicked a look at Matt.

  Just in time to see him slide his gaze away from her, his smile fading.

  Great.

  “Yeah, yeah,” Beryl harrumphed at her husband, rolling her eyes as she patted his hand. “We all know you’re a dirty old man, Dingo. Now thank Dr. Corvin so he can take off with Miss Freeman and leave me alone with you.”

  “Oh, are you going to get dirty with me, darl?” Reg chuckled, beaming up at his wife. A warm glow filled Tash’s heart at the open love in his face. She’d never seen her parents look at each other that way. What would it be like to be the recipient of such honest affection?

  Unable to stop herself, she flicked a look at Matt. And caught her breath when their eyes connected for a heartbeat.

  “And that’s our cue,” he burst out, jerking his stare away. He bent at the waist and retrieved his doctor’s bag from the floor, the move pulling his rolled sleeve farther up his arm to reveal the knotted scare running the length of his inner forearm. Damn it, she even found that scar sexy on him. What was wrong with her? “Tash, you want to fire up the plane so we can leave these two deviants alone? Reg, you keep your libido in check until I say so. No roof climbing or getting dirty, you hear?”

  “Spoil sport,” the elderly man grumbled, his gnarled fingers threaded through his wife’s.

  Tash ducked her head with a smile, another dry cough catching in her chest. The old geezer may be stupid for trying to fix his wool shed’s roof, what with a crew of cowboys and hired hands working on his cattle station, but that didn’t stop him being adorable.

  “Okay, Tash,” Matt said, giving her a very platonic smile. The type of smile he’d been affording her for the last six weeks, even when he delivered her coffee—hot, black and loaded with sugar, just the way she liked it—on every damn callout. Nothing like his earlier sizzling connection. Or even his furtive glance just now. “Let’s go.”

  A prickle of irritation shot up her spine, not just at the thought of all those unexpected coffees and their strangely unsettling effect on her, but at his words. She wanted to point out that as the pilot, she was the one who decided when they took off. She also wanted to ask him why he insisted on being so damn sexy. Instead, she gave him a nod, gave Beryl a soft smile and then turned one on Old Man Dingo.

  “If you promise not to climb anymore roofs,” she said, “I promise to come back next week in the tightest jeans I own. Deal?”

  “Bloody oath,” Reg agreed with an enthusiastic grin, followed immediately by a hissing wince.

  “Oh, Reg,” his wife tsked.

  Tash dropped him a wink and then, without looking at Matt, exited the McGuire’s bedroom. Better not to look at the good doctor in case she saw that same intimate heat in his eyes again. If she did, she might do something stupid like actually let him know she liked him.

  Huh. Like? Lust is more accurate. Long for, desire, ache for…oh my God, woman, stop it!

  Hurrying for the front door, she heard him delivering calm instructions to the elderly couple. Heard his gentle chuckle at no doubt another joke from Old Man Dingo. Heard a scramble of claws on the polished wooden floor as the injured stockman’s pet dingoes rushed for the door she’d just opened, bumping off her calves as they ran across the threshold.

  They loped about her feet as if trying to get her attention for tummy rubs. By the time she’d made it to the pickup and the stock hand waiting in it to take her and Matt back to the plane, she was grinning with delight at their canine exuberance. She loved dogs. Would have a dog of her own if she could, a scruffy mutt she’d call Doofus who would share her bed, sit in the co-pilot seat on call-outs and whose goofy doggy smile would make the doc laugh every time he climbed into the plane.

  Unfortunately, that wasn’t possible. For a whole world of sucky reasons.

  Another cough sounded in her chest. Damn, it was tight today, probably thanks to the ridiculous amount of dust the dingoes kicked up, as well as the dander from their bodies dancing on the air around them. Still, a tight chest due to animal fluff and dust was preferable to a tight chest from a ridiculous sexual fantasy, that was for certain, even if it was a tad more…dangerous.

  “Dingo gonna be okay?”

  Tash lifted her smile from the raucous dingoes at her feet to the stock hand who had driven them from the property’s small runway to the homestead. “I suspect so. Dingo dislocated his right hip and Dr. Corvin suspects he’s also fractured his tailbone. And he now has five stitches in the back of his head, but he was very lucky.”

  “Silly old bugger,” the stock hand grumbled, pushing himself off the pickup’s passenger door. “No one knew he was up there.”

  Tash couldn’t decide if the grumble in the hired hand’s voice was from concern or contempt. Who knew with the cowboys out here?

  “Hopefully, he won’t get up there again,” she answered as one of the dingoes nudged her hand with its dusty muzzle, begging for a pat.

  She looked down into the dingo’s amber eyes, the open desire for her attention in them making her sad. “Sorry, boy,” she whispered. “I’d love to give you a pat, but I’ve maxed out on my canine interaction today. I just can’t risk it. I’ve got to fly the doc back to Wallaby Ridge and I can’t do that if I’m—”

  “Ready, Tash?”

  She let out a little squeal at the sound of Matt’s voice behind her. At her feet, the dingoes pranced about some more, tails whipping side-to-side as they gave him doggy grins.

  The dingo that had been silently pleading with her for a pat abandoned its efforts and ran to Matt and leaped up to ram its dirty front paws right in the middle of his crotch.

  Right on the not-quite-so subtle bulge in his jeans Tash knew to be his groin.

  Two things happened. Matt burst out laughing even as he doubled over in surprised pain, and Tash sucked in a sharp breath. A breath that turned into a sharp cough.

  Her chest tightened.

  Not just a little, but too much.

  Way too much.

  There was a split-second of frozen weight, a heartbeat of crushing pressure, and then Tash’s lungs refused to work.

  Oh no. Not again…

  Terror and panic and self-hate flooded her. What didn’t flood her however, was air.

&
nbsp; She spun on her heel and hurried away from the dingoes, Matt and the pickup. Doing her best to keep her strides purposeful, not staggering lurches, she shoved her hand—shaking, damn it—into her jacket’s inside pocket.

  “Tash?”

  She waved her other hand without turning, hoping to God it appeared dismissive and irritated. Better he think she was taking a private phone call than know she was really…defective.

  The brutal word her mother had used to describe her, the last word her mother ever spoke to her, lashed through Tash’s head. Chest growing tighter, she closed her fingers around the inhaler in her insider pocket and yanked it free.

  Defective.

  “Tash?”

  Oh crap, he was hurrying towards her.

  Her vision blooming with black smudges, she pulled the cap from her asthma inhaler, shook the small device with furious urgency and then shoved its end in her mouth and sealed her lips around it.

  She depressed the canister and sucked in a long, slow breath.

  Did it all again. Swallowed the medication she both hated and couldn’t live without with desperate greed. Inhaled the Albuterol into her horrible, useless lungs.

  Lungs that instantly relaxed. Lungs that decided they actually wanted to do their job after all the second the short-acting beta-agonists flowed through her wretched bronchial tubes.

  She pulled another breath, slower, deeper, her vision clearing, the panic seeping from her. A little.

  And then Matt was right beside her, curling his fingers around her upper arm, cupping his other hand around her face, and it wasn’t the fear of dying that gripped her any more.

  It was embarrassment.

  And the overwhelming need to throw herself into his arms and let him do what he did best—make a person, even one as faulty as her, feel better.

  Breathless For You

  (Outback Skies, Book Two)

  Available Here

  About Lexxie Couper

  Lexxie Couper started writing when she was six and hasn’t stopped since. She’s not a deviant, but she does have a deviant’s imagination and a desire to entertain readers with her words. Add the two together and you get erotic romances that can make you laugh, cry, shake with fear or tremble with desire. Sometimes all at once.