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 old 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.
“Tash!” Matt yelled.
She grabbed at the controls, trying to level out the King Air B200 even as she fought for breath. Oh God, this couldn’t be happening. She had to do something.
Autopilot. Activate the autopilot now!
Head swimming, chest on fire, she reached for the switch that would activate the autopilot, and let out a strangled wail as the plane tilted sickeningly, the wheel jerking violently out of her single grip.
No. Oh God, no—
She grabbed the wheel with both hands again, whimpering with frustration.
Her headphones were torn from her head and then Matt pressed his hands to her face with fierce pressure. “Tash,” he spoke, his voice loud and yet calm, so very calm. “Tash, look at me.”
He turned her head to face him, his stare connecting with hers. Even as the black swirls of oxygen-deprived panic filled her vision, she could see his smile.
His smile.
Oh God, she loved his smile. “In-inhaler,” she rasped. “I…don’t…have…”
“Your inhaler?”
She tried to nod. Her lungs burned from a lack of oxygen. Her head swam. She tried to tell him about the autopilot, but the word wouldn’t come.
“Okay, babe, I need you to stay calm,” he ordered. “I’m going to get the corticosteroid from the med kit. Don’t crash the plane while I’m—”
The world turned to grey fog.
Her lungs ignited. Her throat seized up.
The pressure on her face vanished. A jarring movement to her left followed by a heavy thud scraped at her fading awareness. Her lips tingled.
She clung to the flight controls, kept the plane as level as she could. Even in the asphyxiating fog, she clung on…
And then a sharp pain pierced her arm and her lungs flooded with oxygen again.
Just in time to wrench back the control wheel as the plane pitched to the right in a spiraling nosedive.
A sickening crunch filled the cockpit as Matt slammed into the wall, the hypodermic needle in his hand clattering to the floor. The plane’s on-flight med kit flew through the air, crashing against his chest.
“Matt,” Tash screamed, watching him slump to the floor and unable to do a thing about it.
She snapped her head back to the windscreen, fighting the plane’s plummeting dive with what little strength she had in her oxygen-deprived muscles. She stared at the rapidly approaching ground, gauged its distance and then flicked a look at the bank of instruments. Still twelve thousand feet below. Twelve thousand feet…
Eleven thousand…
Sweat trickled into her eyes. Warning alarms screeched and beeped and blared around her, a klaxon cacophony she’d hated even in her air-force days when it was the mocking sound of a flight-simulator exercise gone bad.
Fucked if she was going to let it go on any longer.
She yanked harder on the control wheel, feet rammed to the floor. Her shoulders strained.
C’mon, Freeman. She ground her teeth. Pull this fucking bird up. Pull this fucking bird up now!
“Pull up, you fucking bitch,” she screamed, hauling at the control whe
el with every fibre of strength she had. “Pull up now!”
Her stomach lurched, her middle ears popped, and then the plane fell silent, leveled out.
And stayed level.
“Holy fuck,” she whispered, staring at the cloudless dusk sky stretching forever before her once again. “Holy fuck, I did—”
A weak groan came from the floor.
Tash’s heart punched up into her throat. “Matt!”
She activated the autopilot with a savage flick of the switch, unbuckled and then flung herself from her seat, propelling herself to where Matt lay in a folded heap.
“Doc?” She slid her hand behind his head and jerked it away again when her fingers encountered something hot and wet.
“Oh God, Matt,” she moaned, staring with numb horror at the blood slicking her fingertips.
He groaned again, his face scrunching with pain. “I take it…” he rasped, struggling to sit up on the plane’s floor, “…we’re not going…to crash?”
A ragged laugh burst past Tash’s lips and she shook her head, smoothing her hands around his torso to help him. “Oh, no, we are,” she said, brushing his hair from his face even as she tried to see the wound at the back of his head. “I just got sick of all the noise.”
He flicked her a bleary-eyed look, his lips twitching. “Ahh, I see. In that case, care to kiss me as we go…”
The rest of his jest slurred into silence, his eyes closing again. He slumped sideways, his face going slack.
“Matt?” Tash shook his shoulders, gentle. Anxious.
Tight chested. Again. “Matt?”
He didn’t answer.
She felt for his pulse, even as she fought to suppress the urge to cough.
It was there. Faint, but there.
She coughed again.
And again.
Cold terror flooded through her, quickly followed by sinking realization.
She was about to have another asthma attack. She could feel it in her lungs, her throat. An insidious constriction was already trying to steal her breath.
Which meant she had to land the plane. ASAP.
Or sooner.
Because with Matt unconscious and her inhaler who the fuck knows where, she had no hope of surviving another attack without crashing.
And if she crashed, she’d not only kill herself, but the unconscious man beside her she freaking wanted more than anything. The only man capable of keeping her from dying at this point in time due to her faulty fucking lungs.
Not exactly what she’d planned.
Biting back another cough, her chest tighter than ever, she wrapped her arms around Matt’s torso and tried to haul him off the floor. Her muscles, utterly depleted of energy, refused to co-operate. Her stomach rolled. Her chest squeezed.
She let out a choked curse, frustration melding with self-hate and despair. It was foolish to exert so much energy when her lungs were going belly-up. Foolish and dangerous. But she had to get Matt buckled into his seat. She had to. She refused to land the plane with him unbuckled. It was too dangerous for him. He was already hurt, already injured because of her. She couldn’t risk him being flung about the cockpit again.
Mustering all the strength she had—which was currently fuck all—she threaded her fingers behind his limp back, planted her feet as firmly as she could on the floor and pulled.
He moved. Only a little at first. But it was enough.
“Man,” she grunted, shuffling backward a step as her knees shook under his weight, “you’re heavier than you look.”
And harder. He was all muscle under his clothes. If it wasn’t for the fact he was unconscious, she was on the verge of dying of asphyxiation and they were miles from any discernable runway, she’d take a moment to appreciate just how damn delicious his body felt.
Instead, she grit her teeth, drew a wheezy breath and half-carried, half-dragged him to the co-pilot’s chair.
With a coughing grunt, she dumped him into it, refusing to let her mind process the warm blood seeping from the unseen wound at the back of his head. That would have to come when they landed. For now, she had to focus on actually getting them on the ground. In one piece. Then she could use the miniscule field-medic skills she’d retained from her air-force training.
Hands shaking, lungs burning, she yanked the straps of Matt’s seatbelt over his shoulders and fastened the buckle across his lap.
A groan slipped from him, the barely audible sound like a siren’s call to her ears. “I’m here, Doc,” she said, taking a precious second to brush her thumb over his lips and trace the jagged scar down the side of his face. “We’re going to be okay. After I save us, you need to save me, okay?”
He groaned again, his eyelids fluttering as his head lolled the side against his seat’s headrest.
“I’m taking that as an agreement,” Tash muttered, checking his buckle with a sharp tug before scrambling back into the pilot’s seat.
She slipped her own arms through her seatbelt straps, snapped her buckle together, snatched up her headphones and shoved them onto her head.
“Okay, let’s get this bird on the ground.”
Drawing in the deepest breath her deficient lungs and bronchial tubes would allow, she flicked off the auto-pilot and took control of the plane again.
Her navigational instruments told her she was somewhere near the outer-paddocks of Old Man Dingo’s cattle station. That would put her approximately four-hundred and twenty kilometres from any homestead or populated area. It also meant she was approaching the beginning of what was known as the Wallaroo Plains, a massive flat stretch of arid, unsettled land.
“Perfect.” Shifting in her seat, she adjusted her flight path and activated her com-radio.
“This is RFDS VH one-forty-two, repeat, this is RFDS VH one-forty-two, broadcasting on all channels. We have an on-board medical situation forcing an emergency landing. Repeat, we have an on-board medical situation forcing an emergency landing.”
On her left, Matt groaned something. Something that, to Tash’s adrenaline-spiked ears, sounded like a slurred, “This wasn’t in the brochure.”
Reeling off their co-ordinates, she killed the radio, tightened her grip on the control wheel and checked all the displays and indicators. She threw him a wry grin, biting back a dry cough. “Ready to go down with me, Doc?”
He didn’t reply.
A part of Tash knew that was for the better.
What was to come next wasn’t going to be smooth.
Or fun.
Christ, why the hell hadn’t she become a professional dog walker when she finished high school?
4
The first thing Matt became aware of as he dragged himself up from a black fog of nothingness was a wild, bumping pressure on his body. The second was the sound of shrill beeps and warning alarms. The third, as he fought to open his eyes, was a wheezing rasp he recognized without any problems.
Asthma attack.
Tash was in the midst of an asthma attack.
He sat upright and let out a yelp as the straps of his seatbelt snapped against his shoulders and groin, halting his abrupt movement.
“Hey…Doc,” Tash said on his right, her voice scratchy, barely more than a whisper. “Glad…you’re with—fuck…hold on…a sec.”
The plane bounced, a violent jolt that detonated a white-hot pain in the back of his head.
It took him a second to process the situation. A slow second where nothing made sense even as it screamed at him.
They were speeding across a rough surface, definitely not the Wallaby Ridge RFDS runway, the landscape beyond the plane’s windscreen a blurring streak of reddish-brown, golden-pink and purple.
Land. Lots of it. Land and dirt and dusk sky. Never-ending purple sky and rust-red land.
Where the hell were they?
Tash wheezed and coughed beside him, her stare fixed straight ahead. Her hands gripped the control wheel, her knuckles white, her shoulders bunched.
Matt frowned, a distant p
art of his brain telling him there was serious pain in his left side, middle ribs and the back of his head. The rest of his brain, however, registered his pilot’s inability to draw normal breath even as he processed the sight beyond the window and the insane forward movement of the plane. “Are we—?”
“Crashing?” Tash rasped. “No. Kind…of. Maybe.”
He shot a look out the front of the windscreen, his head swimming at the disorienting view of the world blurring past them. Wincing, he swung his stare back to Tash and almost blacked out at the sudden rush of fresh pain in the back of his head. Okay, he was injured. That wasn’t good.
But not as bad as the state of Tash’s breathing.
“Tash, you’re having a—”
“Yep,” she cut him off, keeping her focus locked straight ahead. “Big…one. Worse…than the one…before. You can…fix…me after…I bring the…bird to—”
The plane’s wheels hit something large, bouncing the craft—and Matt and Tash—with a violent jolt off the ground for a split second.
“To a halt,” she continued, flicking at switches and yanking on levers. “Probably…best…you assume…the crash pos…position.”
He stared at her. Registered how pasty-blue her face was, how purple her lips. He had to help her. He had to—
A deafening bang filled the cabin. A bone-jarring thud rocked the plane. Fresh pain blasted through Matt’s body as the impact flung him sideways in his seat. He yelled out, the straps of his seatbelt saving him from hitting the floor, the shocked cry cut short as another fierce jolt shuddered the plane.
Hot liquid coated his tongue and his mouth filled with the copper taste of blood.
He grabbed at the console deck, desperate for an anchor, and fixed his stare on Tash.
On her profile.
On the gut-wrenching sight of her fierce determination to bring the plane to a halt.
On the terrifying sight of her fighting for breath.
For life.
Hers, and his.
And then, just when he knew she couldn’t fight any more, when he saw the hideous signs of complete oxygen deprivation, she let out a strangled shout and the plane lurched to a standstill.
Breathless For You: Outback Skies, Book Two Page 4