When Adam Met Evie

by Giulia Skye

  He took his time to answer, then slowly, he leaned in and kissed her. “We get back to camp before we change our minds.”

  This was happening. Evie sat on the bonnet of the truck.

  “Take off your T-shirt,” she said. The night was quiet, clouds covered the moon and stars. The campground was still empty and they’d parked far away from the entrance, secluded and private. She watched Adam whip his top over his head and throw it somewhere on the truck’s roof and ran her hands along the curve of his pecs, having waited long enough to explore. “You’re so hard.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I mean your body. It’s a masterpiece.” She circled his flat nipples with the tips of her fingers. “You must need to work out every day.”

  “Um … pretty much.”

  She slipped a hand along the middle crevice of his chest, molding her fingers into the grooves of his eight-pack abs. “Have you always been in this shape?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She splayed both hands against his chest. “Do you—?”

  “Evie,” he hissed. “Do you have any idea what you’re doing to me right now?”

  Her lips parted. She’d been too busy exploring him to think about it. “It’s just … your chest … it’s—”

  “My turn.” He hooked a finger in the collar of her vest. “This can come off now, too.”

  Evie arched her back as she removed her top and sports bra, her rosy nipples brushing his chest. Adam smoothed away her fuzzy hair, the messy bun sagging to the nape of her neck as he tilted her face up to his.

  “You’re beautiful. That day in the shower … I didn’t think so at first. It was just dirty clothes, big eyes and ugly hair.”

  She should have been offended but instead she laughed. “You have a way with words.”

  “I’m distracted.” He lowered his hands to play with her breasts, slowly strumming her with his thumbs. “I’m so turned on I can’t think straight.” He cupped her breasts, gently rolling her nipples between index finger and thumb. Finally, he went in for the kill and sucked her left nipple into his mouth. She melted into him, a lush pool of basic human desire. He enjoyed her body, and the next time Evie became aware of anything other than his mouth on her, she was completely naked, lying on the truck’s bonnet with him standing between her thighs.

  He pulled back. “I don’t want to assume anything here,” he said breathlessly. “But I don’t have any condoms.”

  Evie pushed herself up onto her elbows, charmed by the agony in his voice. “I’ve got some.” She liked the way he wasn’t expecting this, with her or anyone else, and hoped she didn’t give him the impression that she had. “They were handing them out like sweets in a club in Airlie Beach.” She eased herself off the truck and rummaged in her bag, then noticed her hand was shaking. This wasn’t a fantasy. This was real. Evelyn Blake was about to have sex. Sex with a man she’d known for six days. Sex with a man who wasn’t Zac.

  What was she doing?

  The night was stifling but she froze, holding a three-pack of condoms like she didn’t know what they were, let alone what they were used for.

  Adam came up behind her. “This is a bad idea, eh?”

  “Really bad.”

  His hands were on her hips now, hot and firm. His hard-on pressed against her bum. “Our Kimberley tour …”

  “This could ruin it.”

  “If we let it.” He bent his head and nuzzled her neck, and she remembered how he’d held her hand walking back to the truck. How he’d looked both nervous and excited. “I want you to know I don’t sleep around. I’m not like my father.”

  Realizing it’s what she’d been waiting to hear, she turned around and they started to kiss again, slow and tender. He gathered her, set her on the bonnet and picked up from where they’d left off. She handed him the condom. A few seconds later, he was on her again, taking her nipple into his mouth, gently teasing it between his teeth as he sucked. She kissed him when he released her, her body taut and ready like his. I want this now. I want him. She gripped his hips. He eased himself into her, thrusting, driving—seeking out the pleasure spots that would send them both spiraling.

  Later, once they’d showered and eaten the simple pasta meal Evie had cooked, they lay on the double mattress looking at the cloud covered sky.

  “I’m told clouds only mean one thing at this time of year,” Evie said.

  But it didn’t look like it would rain, and so they’d sleep out in the open, next to each other, not on opposite sides of the truck.

  Adam hadn’t considered sharing a bed with Evie, hadn’t considered her occupying his space. But before he could properly assess what this meant, Evie’s hand began to wander across his chest and down to his navel, and he was again powerless to resist. Unearthed and exposed.

  Soon, She straddled him, and he became incapable of thinking about anything other than how she looked coming on top of him, riding him—driving him—until he exploded inside her.

  Afterward, breathless and sweaty, they lay side by side neither saying a word. Adam eventually got up to deal with the condom.

  When he returned, Evie was sitting with her back to him, staring out into the darkness. The silence stretched out between them. He should ask her if she was okay, tell her the sex was great. Tell her he wanted more. A lot more. But instead, he pulled on his shorts. He wasn’t any good at speaking to a woman, let alone to a woman’s bare back. He rubbed his face. He was an idiot. He didn’t need this entanglement. The sex had been a bad idea. But there’d been that first kiss, the way she’d looked so hurt and rejected when he’d pulled away. He couldn’t have left her like that. He was—

  Fooling himself.

  Adam could pretend he’d had sex with her only for her benefit as much as he liked, but he knew the truth. He’d been unable to stop himself. For all of his sexually challenged ways, he’d wanted her.

  Evie lay back on the mattress, her creamy, untanned breasts reflecting what little light there was. She covered her face with one arm. “Is it going to be awkward between us in the morning?”

  He sat on the corner of the mattress. “I don’t want it to be.”

  “Neither do I.” She moved quickly to sit behind him. “So what do you want?”

  Ah. The big question. Wasn’t that what he’d been trying to figure out since he’d retired? He gazed at the sky, dark clouds shifting over a blanket of stars. “I want a vacation. I want a break.”

  There was a pause. “Alone?”

  “No.”

  “With me?”

  “Yes.”

  Evie slipped her arms around him, her breasts skimming his back. He leaned into her. So what now? Did he have to tell her his real name? Did he have to tell her they were going to have one of those no-strings attached affairs that carefree men had with carefree women?

  But as they lay down next to each other, he listened to her making plans for their day tomorrow and was reminded of how grounded and realistic she was. There would be no need to point out that they were just two sexually starved people getting it out of their system, that this was little more than a holiday romance. That whatever they’d started tonight couldn’t exist in the real world.

  She wanted to see the Kimberleys. He wanted time out of his life. It seemed to him that over the next four weeks, they’d both get what they wanted, and so, by the time she’d fallen asleep, he’d convinced himself that there was only one thing to do.

  Sit back and enjoy it.

  CHAPTER 20

  Ten days later, Evie clutched her map before it slid off her lap, her body jerking from side to side in the truck as she and Adam made their way over the roughest terrain they’d encountered so far. They were now at the other end of the Gibb River Road, a couple of hundred kilometers northwest of the lively, booming town of Kununurra, on a strictly four-wheel drive, high-clearance-vehicle dirt track loc
ally known as the Damsel Road. It led to Damsel’s Hole, a freshwater pool not featured on any of the tourist bus routes. And for good reason. It was remote and extremely rugged—even by Kimberley standards.

  “Man, this road’s rough.”

  Evie gripped the grab handle with both hands and let the map fall into the footwell, no longer needing it now they were set on this path into the wide unknown. The line of dirt scoring the earth in front of them was the only thing resembling a road out here. She watched Adam change gears, slowing the truck to a mere walking pace. It had taken them an hour to cover just twenty kilometers, and they had fifty more to go. “Should we turn back?”

  “Nah, it’s fine. It’ll just take a little while longer to get there.”

  But the crease lines of concentration between his eyebrows weren’t as reassuring as his words. These past ten days, Adam had proved that he really was keen to explore the Kimberleys, but maybe now he was proving it a bit too much. Evie had mentioned Damsel’s Hole to him the other night, having first heard about it from the Glaswegians in Derby who’d described the track as “challenging”.

  “We could try it,” Adam had said. He was always eager to head for the quieter, more remote spots. “This would make up for not going to the Mitchell Falls.”

  She’d been touched that he’d remembered her disappointment about not being able to make the two-day drive to the Mitchell Plateau. The trip just wasn’t worth the risk at this time of year, the waterfalls would be dried up by now and tackling those conditions in such extreme heat was just asking for trouble.

  So they’d asked at the tourist office in Kununurra about the Damsel Road and were told they’d have to gain permission from the Aboriginal owners first, which they’d had to do at the roadhouse and fuel station on the highway. They’d paid a small fee, signed for a key to open the gate at the beginning of the track, and now they were here, getting shaken to bits.

  Evie gripped her seat. So far, the roads they’d taken, though mostly unsealed and corrugated, hadn’t been too tricky for a high-clearance vehicle like theirs. The drives to the gorges they’d visited off the Gibb River Road had been relatively smooth, proof that the main attractions of this vast and rugged area were becoming victims of their own popularity. This well-trod tourist trail was becoming less exclusive now which was why she’d wanted to travel here out of season in the first place, and why she’d been intrigued by Damsel’s Hole—to experience the true, true outback.

  But reality now dawned.

  Out here, remote also meant highly risky. The area was breathtakingly beautiful, but it could also be deadly. Disaster could strike at any time—and it could strike in an instant. A fact she’d taken for granted until now. “Um … I’m happy to turn back if this is too much.”

  “This isn’t too much.”

  She winced as they revved over another deep corrugation. “You’re absolutely sure you can handle the truck out here?”

  “Yeah, I can handle it.” His eyes left the road for the briefest of moments to look at her. “It’s just that … I’m having trouble remembering which gear is which, and these pedals—the brake is the one in the middle, right?”

  She swatted his arm. “Oh, you’re so funny.”

  “Then trust me,” he said, his face turning serious.

  Had her lack of faith in his driving skills offended him? She’d ask but didn’t want to distract him right now to find out, not when sharp rocks were jutting out like shark’s teeth from the arid ground and the track was getting bumpier. A lot bumpier. In places, the corrugations looked to be a meter deep as the track curved and dipped with the land. Steep inclines and declines of dried up waterways.

  Evie kept her concerns to herself, failing miserably in trying not to think about how isolated they were. The thing was, if something bad were to happen to them, they had no backup. In peak season, they could possibly have relied on other tourists passing by to help, but their only safety net of sorts now was the satellite phone—a call for help which wouldn’t come immediately. Far from it.

  And the expense! The gray nomads had said it had cost someone $10,000 for a tow. Evie mentally added up her savings and waved goodbye to buying Zac out of his share of their old flat.

  Then trust me.

  But she did trust him, didn’t she?

  Evie clutched the grab handle again, recalling that day after Windjana when they’d visited Tunnel Creek National Park, home to Western Australia’s oldest cave system. Dazed and sated by the sex the night before, she’d been smiling all morning, joking and laughing with Adam until she’d entered the cool dark mouth of the tunnel, her head torch not throwing out as much light as she would have liked.

  The 750-meter long tunnel had been formed by a river wearing away the soft limestone rock as it flowed underneath. Evie had stuck close to Adam as they’d waded through calf-deep water, grateful that it wasn’t at chest height like she’d read it sometimes could be after the heavy rains of the wet. But she’d hesitated just the same—not liking her inability to see where she was stepping. “I can feel something nipping my ankles.”

  “Probably an eel,” Adam had said.

  Evie had tried not to scream. “I don’t find the word ‘probably’ very reassuring.”

  Adam had stopped abruptly then. She’d been so close that she’d bumped into the back of him. “Why are you scared of the dark?”

  Despite her jitters, she’d straightened her shoulders. “I prefer the term ‘uncomfortable.’”

  “You big baby.”

  She’d been prepared for his teasing, a big man like him, but before she could defend her waning courage and prove to him she could get through this, he took her hand and gave it a little squeeze. Then the beam of her head torch reflected a pair of shiny eyes—the shiny eyes of a freshwater croc—and she’d yelped and lost her footing.

  Adam pulled her up before she’d splashed belly down in the water. “Easy there. It won’t hurt us. We just need to give it a wide berth.” He swooped her up and carried her over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift. “Tell me why you’re so uncomfortable of the dark?”

  “I don’t like not seeing what’s there.” She’d gripped his T-shirt, enjoying the novelty of feeling so feminine and delicate. Her mother would go nuts.

  “You’re a control freak.”

  She’d tried to deny it but, giddy from being draped over his shoulder, she’d surrendered to giggling like a schoolgirl. How had he gotten to know her so quickly? “I just like to know what’s going on around me, and it’s hard to do that when I can’t see.”

  “Damp walls of ancient rock are all that’s going on.”

  “But I’m cursed with a very vivid imagination. My brain fills in the blanks, and believe me, it can come up with all sorts of things.”

  He spanked her bum.

  “Hey! What was that for?”

  “Just giving your imagination something else to think about.”

  Evie smiled at the memory now. They’d covered a lot of ground since then, exploring caves and gorges, as well as each other. She felt safe with Adam, and after spending every minute of every day with him, she’d gotten to know him. And not just as a lover.

  She’d often sneak glances at him while they walked or drove or simply lazed about in the shade, noticing things about him. Like how he took his time to absorb his surroundings, touching rocks and stones, and how he liked to watch the flight of birds, often stopping to listen to their calls.

  “Did you know,” he’d said, early one morning as he mixed powdered milk for their cereal, “birds fly in a tight formation when they’re heading for water? When they’ve had a drink, they fly back a little more scattered. It’s one of the ways you can find water if you’re ever stranded.”

  “Where did you learn that?”

  He shrugged. “I read a whole bunch of survival stuff before we left Derby.”

&nbs
p; “In case we got stranded?”

  “Mainly to prevent it.”

  They were revving up a hill now, spurting plumes of red dust as the tires lost their grip. Adam jerked the steering wheel, his feet working the pedals as he shifted gears. Up, down. His body taut and alert as he focused on the track. One mistake, they’d be well and truly stuffed—stranded—following the flight of birds for water while they waited days for someone to come by and pull them out of a hole.

  But not once did Adam flinch. Not once did he look scared or unsure of himself.

  How could someone like him, who drifted and swayed, keep his cool under such pressure?

  He inched the truck over the hill’s rocky crest, stones crunching underneath the tires as they began to descend. The path had become very, very narrow, the track edges had worn away, and with a spinning head, Evie looked below to where rocks had slid and lodged to form piles among the thick tops of bushes.

  Trust me.

  She held her breath and squeezed her eyes shut, and before she knew it they came to a stop at the base of the hill.

  “Aw, damn,” Adam muttered. “We’ve got a flat.”

  “A flat tire?”

  Adam switched off the engine and turned to her. “Now, Evie,” he said just as calm as he’d been before their dicey ascent and treacherous descent. “You’re not going to repeat everything I say again like you did that first time, are you?”

  He stepped out of the truck and when she joined him at the back, her eyes darted along the trail of tire marks they’d etched in the dry dirt, her mouth dropping at the depth of each corrugation they’d driven over, and how close they’d been to the edge. One slip and it would all have been over, the truck, among the bushes and rocks at the bottom of the hill.

  Evie wiped her forehead, her hands shaking. “Wow.” She blew out a long pent-up breath. “You really do know how to drive this beast.”

  Adam paused midway of pulling out the new jack and stared at her. “Didn’t you believe me? I wouldn’t have risked our lives if I wasn’t a hundred and ten percent sure I could make it.” He reached for the tools, a flicker of hurt tightening his lips.