“It’s…it’s good to see you—” she began.
“You’re looking good—” he said at the exact same time.
They both stopped. Nervous laughter bubbled up through her throat.
Evan smiled, the edge of his eye on the unscarred side of his face crinkling.
Silence descended once more as their gazes locked again.
Movement at Evan’s side scratched at Jenna’s brain. As did the muttered, “Get a room you two,” coming from behind her.
She started, blinking as the situation smashed over her.
People. Here. Wallaby Ridge. Fire. Reporting. Job.
Shit.
Behind her, Theo—her ever-present cameraman—snorted. On Evan’s left, Wallaby Ridge’s Senior Constable laughed. “Fuck a duck, eh. Evan Alexander actually smiling? I like you, Jenna McGrath, Chanel Eight News. You can hang around longer if you like.”
At his chuckled declaration, Evan stiffened. His jaw bunched, a second before he slapped the baseball cap in his hand back onto his head and yanked its brim low over his face. So low Jenna couldn’t see his eyes at all.
“I’ve gotta go,” he growled, head ducked, hands tugging the collar of his jacket closer to his jaw. “Haven’t taken a piss in over four hours.”
And with that, he walked away. Passed Jenna without any acknowledgement, head down, hands balled into fists.
The night devoured him as he stepped from the dimly lit helipad and headed towards the Wallaby Ridge Rural Fire Brigade station house.
Jenna stood stock-still, too stunned to move.
What just happened?
“So I take it you two know each other?”
At Charlie Baynard’s humoured question, Jenna jerked her stare to him. Her heart thumped hard and fast. A thudding pressure pounded in her temples. “I…”
“We goin’ after him, boss?”
She spun around to face her cameraman. “I…”
“She’s going after him, mate,” Charlie stated, rounding Jenna to slap Theo on the back with a smirk. “You’re staying here with me.”
A wide grin stretched Theo’s lips. “Makes sense.”
Jenna gaped at them both.
For a good half a second.
“Excuse me,” she gushed, as she kicked off her Manolo Blahniks, pivoted on her heel like a drunken ballet dancer and ran into the darkness after Evan.
Her tailored pencil skirt—the one that made her look five pounds lighter on television—hugged her thighs and calves, turning her barefoot sprint into an ungainly teetering.
She was half tempted to stop, rip the split running up the back of her legs open, but didn’t want to waste the time.
“Evan,” she called into the night. “Evan, wait.”
“Try the Land Cruiser!” Charlie shouted behind her.
She shot him a look over her shoulder without slowing her pace.
He and Theo grinned at her from the illuminated helipad. “The Land Cruiser,” he shouted, pointing towards the left of the stationhouse. “Try the—shit, he’s driving off already.”
Jenna turned back to the direction she was heading just in time to see a dusty, soot-covered Toyota Land Cruiser begin to pull away from the stationhouse.
“Fuck this,” she muttered. She stopped, threw her mic aside—what the hell was she still doing holding it?—grabbed the back hem of her skirt and yanked her hands apart, tearing the split wider.
The confining pressure of the designer skirt disappeared from her thighs instantly. She took advantage of her new freedom and burst into a dead sprint across the empty area between the helipad and the stationhouse. Directly into the path of the Land Cruiser.
Dust spewed up from the back wheels as Evan hit the brakes. She stood her ground, hands out, stare locked on the windscreen.
A heartbeat later, the driver’s door was flung open. Evan damn near threw himself from the cabin before slamming the door shut and storming straight for her. Despite the baseball cap pulled low over his face, she could tell he glared at her.
Oh boy. Oh boy, he was angry. He was angry with her.
He stopped right in front of her. So close she could see how twisted and dense and absolute the scarred flesh of the left side of his face was, how knotted and webbed it was running down the left side of his throat.
So close the hard muscles of his thighs touched hers.
So close the heat radiating from his body seeped into hers.
His stare locked on hers. His nostrils flared. “What the hell are you doing, Jenna?”
“This,” she answered, a second before she pulled his baseball cap from his head, buried her hands in his hair and captured his lips with hers.
He stiffened against her, a statue of hard warm muscle. The beat of his heart smashed against her breast in a rapid tattoo. His lips remained unresponsive to hers.
For a heartbeat. Just one.
And then a low groan tore from his chest and he snarled twin handfuls of the back of her shirt, yanked her to his body and plundered her mouth with his tongue.
Concentrated pleasure and stunned joy rushed through Jenna. She hadn’t meant to kiss him. She hadn’t. She’d just meant to tell him she was happy to see him again, to ask if he’d have coffee with her before she flew back to Sydney, not as a reporter, but as an old acquaintance. And then his heat had wrapped around her body, his stare had connected with hers despite the darkness of the night surrounding them, and she’d been powerless to fight her long-suppressed desire for him.
She melted against him, giving herself over to the raw hunger of his kiss. His tongue mated with hers, wild and almost desperate. He pressed his hips harder to hers, the long, rigid pole of his erection mashing to her groin telling her he was as affected by her as she was him. She moaned into his mouth, rolling her hips to stroke the curve of her sex against the solid shaft.
He bunched his fists tighter in her shirt and took utter possession of the kiss, of her lips. There was no hesitancy or uncertainty. He kissed her as if she was his and his alone. As if the reason for his existence and hers was the joining of their lips and tongues, the mingling of their saliva, the clicking of their teeth.
Liquid heat pooled in Jenna’s core. Her breasts grew heavy with achy want. Her nipples beaded against his chest.
She moaned again, undone by the surreal moment.
She was kissing Evan Alexander.
And he was kissing her back.
With a hungry ferocity she’d never experienced in her life.
Oh boy, is this real?
Yes. It is.
The delirious thought shot through her mind a second before Evan dragged his lips from hers.
She whimpered in protest, balling her fists in his hair, and then gasped in relief as he charted a path of wicked nips down the side of her neck.
“Oh yeah,” she said breathlessly, rolling her head to the side.
He took her offering without delay, nibbling on the sensitive curve of flesh where her neck became her shoulder. His teeth grazed her skin. His tongue soothed the point of contact.
A shudder of base need quaked through Jenna. Her pussy grew moist with eager juices.
If he tore her clothes from her body right there and then, she wouldn’t care. If he threw her against the bonnet of the 4WD and buried himself to the hilt inside her, she would cling to him and beg him not to stop.
She would—
He grabbed her arse, hauled her from her feet and flung her legs around his hips as he spun to the Land Cruiser behind him.
“Oh God.” She panted as he deposited her onto the bull bar and lodged himself between her thighs. “Oh—”
He captured her cry with his mouth, once again taking utter possession of her lips with a hungry kiss. She surrendered to it, to him, uncaring the dirty metal bar beneath her butt would no doubt stain her white linen skirt. Uncaring anyone around could be watching them. Knowing her cameraman, Theo was most likely filming this, even in the low light. The man had little morals and even les
s professional ethics.
She didn’t care about that either. All that mattered was Evan’s lips and tongue and teeth and hands and the unmistakable steel of his engorged cock rammed to the soft folds of her pussy.
All that mattered was he wanted her.
There was no denying he wanted her.
He kneaded the backs of her thighs, tugging her closer still to his trapped erection. A low rumble vibrated in his chest as she raked her nails over his shoulders, down his back.
“Fuck, Jenna…” he ground out against her lips, shocked desire turning the words to a rough caress of sound.
She kissed him silent, rolling her hips as she did so, wanting to feel the impressive pole of his cock against her pussy.
He groaned, sliding his hand higher up the back of her thigh until the tips of his fingers brushed over the sodden crotch of her G-string.
Jenna’s head swam. Jolts of tight excitement sank into her core. She gasped, bucking against him on the bull bar even as she locked her ankles behind his back.
He continued to worship her mouth with his. Continued to propel her closer to an edge she’d not imagined before now—orgasm from a kiss alone? Who knew it was possible?
When he trailed his fingers over her pussy again, stroking its fleshy seam through the drenched silk of her G-string she couldn’t stop her cry. Couldn’t stop herself throwing back her head, his name bursting from her as she tightened her thighs around his hips.
“You touched…” She panted, eyes closed, head shaking. “Oh God, Evan, if you…if you touch me again there, I think…”
His hands on her body stilled. “Jenna…” Her name left him on a raspy whisper. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go so far. I shouldn’t have—”
His ragged exhalation opened her eyes. “Don’t you dare apologise. You have no idea how long I’ve fantasied about kissing you. No idea.”
An unreadable light flared in his eyes. His nostrils flared. “Since the day we first met?”
Her chest constricted at his low question. Her heart smashed faster into her throat.
He ran a thumb over her bottom lip. “Because that’s how long I’ve thought about kissing you.”
Jenna’s heart choked her. Her lips tingled. Struck dumb by his confession, she stared at him, feathering her fingertips over his shoulders, his throat, his jaw.
His cheek.
She traced the knotted web of scar tissue stretching over his cheek.
“How did you get these?” she whispered, at a loss for anything else to say. Her brain wasn’t working properly. How could it, when her world had suddenly and unexpectedly been thrown for a spin? “They look so—”
He pulled away from her. So abruptly she had to grab at the bull bar to stop herself from falling off it.
Without a word, he spun on his heel and hurried to the Land Cruiser’s driver’s side door. Yanked it open.
Jenna blinked. Cold confusion bit into the euphoric heat throbbing through her. “Evan?”
The 4WD shook as he climbed behind the wheel and slammed the door, jolting her from her tenuous perch on the bull bar.
By the time her feet hit the ground and she’d steadied herself, Evan had kicked over the engine. By the time she’d hurried around the nose of the 4WD, heading for the driver’s side door, he’d thrown the vehicle into reverse and was speeding backward.
Stunned, she stood in the billowing dust and squinted into the glaring beam of the headlight, tracking his rapid retreat.
She watched him spin the 4WD in a 180-degrees turn with seamless precision and then disappear into the darkness of the Outback night.
Obviously getting as far away from her as he could.
3
The Mutawinjti National Park fire took another twelve hours to defeat. Evan had never in his entire life as a firefighter been glad a fire existed. Nor was he glad for the inferno razing the dense bush and scrubland seventy-five kilometres away from Wallaby Ridge. But he was more than happy for those twelve hours.
Those twelve hours of fighting the blaze from the skies meant he didn’t need to face Jenna McGrath again.
She would be long gone by the time he climbed out of his chopper. He had no doubt of that. She’d be gone, returned to Sydney and whatever news story deemed worthy of big-city media attention.
Sure, he’d touched down twice to refuel. Once, he’d even allowed himself five minutes to use the loo and relieve his body of what fluids he hadn’t sweated away. He hadn’t seen her either of those times.
That his chest ached with a tight disappointment at the fact only pissed him off.
He didn’t do people any more. His mates in the Ridge—Charlie, Ryan and Matt—were as close to a relationship as he allowed himself these days. In the four years since he’d moved to the Ridge, they’d never judged him or pitied him. They didn’t make him think of his past. They accepted him for who he was—a quiet, mostly withdrawn member of what the townsfolk had dubbed the Outback Skies Fly-Boys’ Club.
He shouldn’t be disappointed Jenna hadn’t made another appearance at the helipad in the last twelve hours. It was better this way. Whatever…spark they’d shared, whatever sexual chemistry that had ignited between them, it couldn’t lead to anything.
He didn’t do people and he didn’t do sex. Not anymore. Not for five years. And the way he’d kissed Jenna…the way she’d kissed him back…
The way she’d given herself to him. The way she’d melted into his arms…
There was more than just sex in her kiss, in her touch.
But what about the way she’d touched your scars? The way she’d looked at you with pity?
A soft thud vibrated through his body as, almost subconsciously, he brought the chopper to a rest on the helipad. It dragged his thoughts from the woman and his unsettling response to her.
The fire was almost out. That’s what he had to focus on. The fire was almost out.
So why the fuck are you feeling so hot?
Biting back a growl, he yanked his headphones from his ears, threw them onto the dash in front of him and turned his stare to the sight beyond the chopper’s smoke-grimy windshield.
Smoke from the dying fire smudged the western horizon, a dark bruise that stretched across most of the sweeping sky.
He sat motionless in the cockpit, studying it.
Once upon a time, when he was the cocky hotshot once considered to be the best pilot the National Aerial Firefighting Centre had on their books, he would have celebrated his victory over such a blaze with a wild party, crazy monkey sex with his girlfriend and too many scotches to count.
That had been his modus operandi. Glory and ego had propelled him to risk more than any other aviation firefighter back in Sydney, and glory and ego had propelled him to celebrate thusly.
But then came the Blue Mountains firestorm. The crash. The death of his co-pilot.
The pain. The months in hospital.
The skin grafts.
The scars.
The retreat into himself.
And then, almost a year after that, had come his wife’s rejection of their marriage. His wife’s denunciation of him as a man, as someone worthy of her heart.
He’d moved to Wallaby Ridge to escape the emotional wounds the day he’d scrawled his own signature on divorce papers already signed by Tracey. To escape the constant stares of people on the busy Sydney streets, in the crowded Sydney shopping centres. He’d been successful in escaping the stares and the crowds. The emotional wounds, however, were a different matter.
Mouth dry, Evan removed his baseball cap from his head and dragged his hand through his hair. His fingers scraped over the scar tissue marring the left side of his scalp, reminding him once more of what his unkempt shaggy hair and cap hid from the world.
The scars on his face were bad—bad enough to make people who’d only just met him unconsciously wince in pain when their gaze encountered them—but they were nothing compared to the scars on his body.
Scars no one but himsel
f ever saw.
Scars he kept from the world.
What would Jenna do if she were to see those scars? Would repulsion replace the pity her eyes?
He let out a grunt and replaced his cap to his head. “Don’t have to worry about that, do you?” he muttered, adjusting the peak low.
With another long look at the smoke in the western sky, he opened the chopper’s door and dropped down to the helipad. Unless a freak windstorm blew up and whipped the dying flames into a frenzy again, the job was done.
He’d never been so bloody exhausted.
Slamming the door shut behind him, he turned his face to the high morning sun, closed his eyes and drew in a long, slow breath. For the first time in almost a day, it didn’t smell of burning trees.
Instead, it smelt of Old Spice.
“Reckon you need a beer, mate.”
Turning to the wearer of the iconic aftershave, Evan gave Ryan Taylor a soft grunt. “Reckon you might be right,” he said, affecting Ryan’s very Outback Australia drawl with a small smile.
The last time he’d seen Ryan, the man had been covered in soot and sweat and fighting the Mutawintji blaze on the ground along with the rest of the Wallaby Ridge Fire Brigade volunteer force. Now, he stood on the helipad showered and—surprise surprise—shaved. The beaten-up cowboy hat he normally wore had been replaced with an Akubra in such perfect condition Evan wondered if it had only just been removed from the box it came in.
Ryan held out his arms and pivoted on the spot. “Yeah, yeah. I know how I look. Fucking hot, right?”
Evan chuckled. “If I was gay, I’d buy you a drink and invite you back to my place.”
Ryan snorted, shoving his hands in his jeans’ hip pockets. “If you were gay, I’d be doing you right now inside the chopper. You’ve got the whole wounded-hero look going on. It’s as sexy as hell.”
“All right, all right.” Evan waved a hand at him. “I know you want me. Now tell me why you’re all dolled up.”
“The Ridge is celebrating, mate.” Ryan tipped back the brim of his hat and grinned. “And while I highly doubt I’m going to get lucky tonight, that’s not going to stop me pulling out the fancy duds. Besides, with all the big city media types running around sticking cameras in everyone’s faces, who knows what might happen?”
Burn For You: Outback Skies, Book Three Page 3