Some Girls Don't (Outback Heat Book 2)

by Amy Andrews

  Jarrod’s gaze fell on the still, silent kid who’d been so full of life four weeks ago, his eyes blazing with excitement after running in the winning try. His individual grand finalist medal, all the team had been awarded one that day, was around his neck, hanging by a bright green ribbon.

  “C’mon man,” he said low in his brother’s ear, “you know we can’t.”

  Marcus roared in frustration and shook him off, pushing Jarrod hard in the chest as he backed off. “God-fucking-damn it,” he yelled, kicking the front passenger side door over and over.

  Jarrod let him go. He glanced at his crew who were avoiding the scene playing out, going about their work, looking anywhere but at Marcus. Normally they’d be trash talking each other but they went about their job without a word—pity, empathy and solidarity in their silence.

  Selena had one hand on her belly, the other over her mouth as she watched with anxious eyes. She looked like she was caught between wanting to run to him and running away. Her cameraman had stopped filming, the camera held at his side. Had she asked him to stop?

  The sound of boot on metal came to an abrupt halt as Marcus ran out of steam. He turned away, storming up the road a little way, his back to the vehicle, his hands shoved in his pockets.

  “I’ll take the gurney back to the ambulance,” Brett said quietly.

  Jarrod nodded, his eyes firmly on Marcus’s back. He wished he knew what to do or say to make it easier for his brother. The image of Reggie in the fire-ravaged car with his footy medal around his neck was going to stay with Jarrod forever. He couldn’t begin to imagine how deeply it was going to affect Marcus, who was like a second father to all the boys on his under-twelve team.

  He felt useless. Just like when their mother had died. All he’d wanted then was to feel Selena’s arms around him. And it was all he wanted now.

  But first things first. He pulled his radio off his belt and called it in.

  * * *

  Selena was sitting on the Weston’s front steps at five that afternoon, watching the clouds gather overhead and wondering how long it would take for the smell of smoke to disappear, when Jarrod’s dual cab pulled into the yard. He’d texted her ten minutes ago.

  Leaving station now. Need to shower, eat & crash for a couple of hours. Do you want 2 drink beer with me on the veranda l8r?

  Selena had tapped back a quick reply.

  I’ll be waiting for u when u get home. See you in 10.

  She should have stayed away. Let him get some sleep first, but she’d been dying to wrap her arms around him since she’d witnessed the gut-wrenching scene with Marcus and she didn’t want to wait any longer.

  There’d been no chance to get close to him after he’d called in the gruesome discovery. He’d spent his time with Marcus while they waited for the cavalry to arrive, led by Ethan in his police vehicle. Then he was in the thick of it as the scene grew bigger and bigger.

  It was an hour before Jarrod even spoke to her again, although Brett, who had waited with her and John, had confirmed that there had been a child in the car. Jarrod broke the news about the deceased child’s identity and Selena felt like he’d hit her in the chest with an axe. It was hard to wrap her head around the fact that the kid who had streaked up the field like he had wings on his feet, the day she’d watched the football with Jarrod, was dead.

  In the most horrific way imaginable.

  When Jarrod suggested that Brett take them back to the command centre, Selena had agreed. She’d wanted to stay near him, but it was clear he was going to be busy for a while and needed to concentrate on what had happened here on this road.

  “What about Marcus?” she’d asked.

  “No-one’s going to get him out of here until the bodies are removed,” Brett had said.

  So they’d left and she’d spent the day at the command centre filing stories and going over more footage, preparing a montage of images they’d filmed over the last couple of days to splice together into a segment for tomorrow night.

  Until she’d received the text from Jarrod.

  He shot her a weary smile as he got out of the car. His movements were just as weary as he headed in her direction. He was still in his blackened uniform. His face had been hurriedly washed, but soot still delineated the lines of his forehead and around his eyes, clinging to his whiskers, neck and ears as well as his hairline. He had the world’s worst case of helmet hair, the red-gold strands sticking up haphazardly all over his head.

  “You are a sight for sore eyes,” he said as he climbed the stairs like it was an extraordinary effort just to raise his feet. When he reached the one below hers he slid his hands onto her waist and pulled her close, shutting his eyes as he rested his grubby forehead on her collarbone.

  Selena’s arms went around his shoulders as her heart expanded to fill the entire capacity of her chest cavity. He smelled like smoke, but then what didn’t?

  They stood there silently for long moments, Selena letting Jarrod take whatever he needed from her.

  “How’s Marcus?” she asked eventually.

  He lifted his head and looked at her with his tired green gaze. “Joking around again. Telling everyone he’s okay. He’s at the pub. Ethan’s going to pick him up later, but JJ’s keeping an eye on him for now.”

  Jemima Jane Ericson owned The Stockman, one of two pubs in Jumbuck Springs. She and Ethan had been best mates since they were kids. “You don’t think he’s okay?”

  He shook his head. “Not by a long shot.”

  “What do they think happened?”

  “I don’t know.” He ran a hand over his prickly jaw, a move that seemed both anguished and defeated. “Reggie’s family have been here for less than a year, and there’s not exactly a lot of bushfires in the UK. People round here grow up with the constant threat, they know the dangers, they’re well prepared. The Wyndhams probably underestimated the hazards.”

  Selena nodded. She couldn’t even begin to imagine the panic that must have descended on Reggie’s parents.

  “And how are you?” Selena asked. Marcus hadn’t been the only one to witness the horror of the day. She didn’t suppose having to look at a dead child was easy, regardless of whether you knew them or not.

  “Tired,” he grimaced, soot crinkling with his eyes. “So tired.”

  It was probably a deliberate evasion but Selena figured that exhaustion, both physical and emotional, had to be wiping everything else out.

  “C’mon,” she said, sliding out of his grasp and taking his hand. “Let’s get you in the shower.”

  He followed her without complaint or innuendo, which spoke volumes about the level of his fatigue. They stopped outside the bathroom. “I’ll go and heat something up for you in the microwave,” she said.

  “Thanks,” he smiled and shrugged out of his jacket.

  * * *

  Jarrod placed his palms flat and high up on the tiles, leaning into them as he ducked his head under the shower spray. The hot water ran down his neck and back, easing aching muscles, spreading bliss. The second best thing he could be doing with his clothes off.

  Going for an extended time without a shower might have been nirvana when he’d been eight but days of heat and sweat and grime caking on hour after hour was one of the downsides to this job. He needed to soap up his body and shampoo his hair so he could get out, eat, crash, but he couldn’t find the energy right now. He just wanted to stand for a while and let the magic of warm, running water do its thing for a bit.

  Let the noise of the spray wipe out the roar of the fire, let the sensuous sluice of water erode the replay of events at Gilligan’s Road.

  He stretched his neck from side to side under the spray, the heat easing the soreness there as he thought about Selena. Waiting for him on the steps in her jeans and T-shirt. She’d been exactly what he’d needed to come home to after three days of heart-in-mouth firefighting. He’d wanted to stay right there on the stairs holding her forever.

  His teenage dream come to life.
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br />   Jarrod shook his head, rousing himself from his fantasy. He must be dehydrated or have low blood sugar or something. She was in Jumbuck Springs covering the fire, and here on his steps and in his house out of some kind of rekindled connection through circumstance only.

  It was just comfort. Solace. Relief.

  Or something …

  Whatever it was, he wanted it for as long as it was on offer.

  He just had to remember it was temporary.

  He lifted his face to the spray, shutting his eyes as it battered and stung his skin, attacking the layers of built up soot and grime. He scrubbed his hands over his face and the back of his neck and in all the nooks and crannies of his ears—bloody soot got everywhere. He spotted a build-up between his toes as he watched the water run dark and dirty down the drain.

  He placed his hands back on the tiles and ducked his head again, letting the water run over his neck, exhaustion tugging at his eyelids.

  Jarrod started as the screen door opened a couple of minutes later. He turned his head to find a buck-naked Selena saying, “You look like you could do with someone to scrub your back. Is there room for two?”

  Jarrod blinked as a certain part of his anatomy perked right up. That part was impervious to exhaustion. He looked her up and down, not sure if she was actually real. She was perfect, a mirage. Maybe he’d fallen into a hypoglycaemic coma and was hallucinating? “Ah … sure?”

  She smiled and reached for the soap. “Turn around.”

  Jarrod did as he was told, a tingle erupting in a spot between his shoulder blades as she pressed her mouth to it. Then she slid her hands onto him, warm and slippery, and it felt so damn good a groan slipped out unchecked.

  He couldn’t have stopped it even if he’d wanted to.

  “Feel nice?” she murmured as her hands ran from the small of his back all the way up to his neck.

  “God, yes,” he muttered, shutting his eyes, dropping his head as her fingers pushed into the hairline at his nape.

  “Good,” she said. “Enjoy.”

  Jarrod succumbed to the rhythm of her hands, slipping and sliding over his neck, back and buttocks then down the backs of his legs, then up again gliding over his flanks and along his arms, her fingers massaging deep into each muscle as she went. It was methodical rather than sexual but it didn’t stop his cock from standing to attention or the buzz that had taken up residence in his groin or the sweet ache low in his balls.

  How was it possible to have a huge boner and yet feel completely boneless?

  Her hands left him and his eyes fluttered open in protest. “Tip your head back.”

  Jarrod did as he was told, the aroma of Connie’s strawberry shortcake shampoo filling his nostrils before Selena’s hands were in his hair, rubbing and lathering then massaging with her fingertips. His eyes rolled back as each flex of her fingers drugged his senses and pricked his skin with goosebumps, despite the heat of the water.

  His cock stiffened unbearably, the ache in his balls intensified.

  “Rinse,” she murmured.

  Jarrod ducked his head under the water, letting it sluice down his back taking the soap she’d lathered all over his body away too.

  “Turn around.”

  Jarrod glanced at his erection. “Ah … I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”

  She slid a hand onto his shoulder and kissed his neck. “Turn around,” she repeated on a whisper.

  Jarrod turned, the sight of her wet and naked, her hair in strips, rivulets of water running down her belly and breasts, dripping off her nipples, pulled his belly tight.

  God, she was beautiful.

  Her gaze dropped to his cock. He looked at it too. “Sorry ’bout that,” he grimaced.

  She gave him a small smile. “Don’t be. I’m going to get to that.”

  Jarrod’s balls tightened at the sexy promise as she reached for the soap. She planted a hand in the middle of his chest and gently backed him up against the wall, the shower spraying directly on her now as she started massaging his front with the same methodical precision.

  His head lolled back against the tiles, his senses going into overload as she began at his neck and worked down over his chest to his belly and hips. Had he not been exhausted, he might have watched her soap him up, getting herself all wet and slippery in the process, but her hands on his body were delicious torture, and he succumbed to it with his eyes shut. Every glide of her hands erased the horrors of the day—the last three days—washing them down the drain.

  His eyes fluttered open when she sank to her knees, and he sucked in a breath as she looked up at him, drops of water clinging to her eyelashes, her mouth so close to the throbbing head of his cock.

  She ignored it though, moving down his legs all the way to his feet, running her soapy fingers between every toe, sending little darts of pleasure up to his calves, every muscle in his body gelatinous now as he struggled to keep himself upright.

  It didn’t last long, though, as her magical hands worked their way up his legs again. His quads tensed as she drew slippery circles on his upper thighs, moving ever closer to ground zero.

  Anticipation cranked everything to an unbearable tightness.

  Finally her hot soapy hands slid onto his balls and he sucked in a breath as his eyes widened. “Holy fuck,” he muttered as he glanced down at her.

  She didn’t look up this time, just concentrated on lathering, rolling his balls around and around with both hands, coating them in white, bubbly soap, making them contract and his cock jump every time her pinkies brushed the muscles of his inner thighs. He shut his eyes, his breath thickening in his lungs as she pleasured and tortured in equal measure.

  When her hands claimed his cock he groaned deep and low.

  “Selena,” he muttered, his fingertips digging into the tiles at his side.

  Again she didn’t look at him, just ran her hands up and down the length of him in an agonisingly slow rhythm, gliding her thumbs over the plump head, which was screaming for release with each pass.

  “There,” she said when he was panting hard, “that ought to do it.”

  Jarrod opened his eyes to find her sitting back on her haunches, admiring her handiwork. Ought to do it? He’d never been so bloody clean in his life. Selena had missed her calling—she should have been a nurse. Or one of those special sex workers for guys who couldn’t get it up.

  She glanced at him, her pink-tipped breasts sitting high and perfect. “Rinse,” she said again, shuffling back a little to give him room to immerse himself under the spray.

  Jarrod was excruciatingly conscious of how close her mouth was to his cock as he bowed his head, letting the spray hit his neck first before sluicing down his back. Their gazes met and held as soap and bubbles slid off until the water rinsing down the drain came away clean.

  “Now what?”

  Chapter Eight

  ‡

  Jarrod’s blood pounded thick and slow through all his pulse points as he waited for her next move.

  She smiled as she rose up onto her knees, the flat of her palm sliding onto his belly urging him backwards again. Tiles, still warm from his most recent stay, hit his shoulder blades and ass as she shuffled closer. Her gaze dropped to his cock then she was leaning in, her hot mouth sliding onto it, claiming it in one fell swoop as her hand cupped his balls.

  “Fuck,” Jarrod gasped as sensation zapped from the root of his cock all the way up his spine then back down again, one hand automatically ploughing into her hair, the other hanging onto the tiles for dear life. She took as much of him as she could, going for maximum stimulus, before sliding all the way off him then taking him in deep again.

  Christ. It felt un-fucking-believable. He had to lock his quads to stop his legs giving out.

  He looked down at her as she set a devastating rhythm with the hot, firm suction of her mouth, one hand planted on his thigh, the other rolling his balls. The urge to meet the greedy suck of her mouth rode him hard and before he could counter it, hi
s hips rocked, thrusting his cock deeper.

  She moaned around him, her hand gripping his thigh harder, his hips automatically picked up the rhythm she’d set.

  God, he loved the way her lips looked around his cock. He always had. From the first time they’d fumbled through a blow job, and every time after that in those few months they’d had together. And it had never been the same with anyone else.

  There was something primal that stirred in his chest looking at Selena’s mouth on his cock. The intimate bob of her head as she worked him was something that still felt … exclusive all these years later and the urge to claim her rippled through his belly and sunk hot claws into his ass.

  Hot claws into his heart.

  She added in a sexy tongue swirl around the taut, plump head of his cock and he groaned out loud, the back of his head hitting the tiles as his neck became completely incapable of supporting it properly. His eyes drifted shut as the stimulus spread out from his loins in low velocity pulsations that gathered momentum.

  Fuck. He was going to come. He felt like a teenager. Like that first time with Selena when he’d blown his load in record time.

  Hadn’t she always known how to bring him to his knees?

  But this wasn’t how he wanted it to be. He wanted to be in her.

  He remembered her taunt from the car the night of the centenary celebration. I swallow now too. But he didn’t want that. Not right now. He wanted to feel her hot and tight around him, he wanted to look into her eyes as he came.

  “Selena,” he panted, gathering all his willpower to pull his cock out of the hot slide of her mouth.

  She frowned up at him, her grey eyes glazed, her mouth almost red from sucking him, water spraying on her face and running over her breasts.

  She’d never looked so goddamn sexy.

  “Wha—”

  Jarrod didn’t give her a chance to finish, to protest, to query, just yanked her up, his hands sliding onto her waist as he turned her, backing her into the tiles, sandwiching her as he bent and claimed her mouth in a wet, slippery kiss.

  He groaned as she went up on tippy toes, opening her mouth wide to him and stroking her tongue against his. He revelled in the wet press of her body along the length of him and the warm slide of water over his back. He pressed a hand to the side of her thigh, urging her leg up, anchoring it against his hip with a hand at her knee.