Burn for You: Outback Skies, Book 2 (4 page)

He’d spent the rest of the day at the beach doing everything in his power to appear indifferent to every word she said. Fought like hell to deny the effect those words—articulate and intelligent words about global politics, movies, sand, fish and chips, seagulls, animal rights and skydiving—had on him.

He’d refused to look at her, no matter how many times Tracey accused him of being rude. If he’d looked at her, there’d have been no way he’d be able to not gorge himself on the sight of her creamy light-brown skin, flat belly, toned limbs and curved hips exposed to his gaze by her black bikini.

By the time he and Tracey had left, Jenna staying behind to chat with the guy she’d met an hour earlier while splashing about in the waves, he’d known he was going to have a hard time not thinking about her.

The next time he’d seen her, she’d been dating the guy from the beach—Richard some thing or other—and he and Tracey had moved in together.

Despite his new living arrangements, he’d never truly been able to erase Jenna McGrath from his mind. And every time they were in the same room together, his gaze would move to where she was often, his ears would listen for her voice…his body would thrum with even the most innocent brush against hers…

To his unspoken but wholly unnerving shame, he’d thought of her more than once when the steel in his cock needed relieving. Jenna, not Tracey.

He never mentioned Jenna’s name unless Tracey was talking about her. He didn’t ask about her once, not even when months went by without Tracey spending any time whatsoever with her.

By the time Tracey had revealed she and Jenna had grown apart, Evan had been convinced he’d gotten over whatever it was he’d felt for his wife’s ex-friend.

The kiss on the helipad less than thirteen hours ago, however, had proved that years-long conviction nothing but a delusion.

As did the hungry want turning the blood in his veins hot now.

He stood motionless as he watched her close the distance between them. Ate her up with his stare.

He’d tell her to go as soon as he found his voice. He would. Tell her there was no story to be found with him. No reason for her to be here. Someone like her had no reason to be with someone like him.

But for now, he needed to look at her. Needed to exist in the same space as her, if for no other reason than to allow himself to be a man—even a broken, scarred man—in the presence of a beautiful, intelligent, sexy woman.

God help him, he was a masochist.

“Jenna.” Her name left him on a croaky breath. “You shouldn’t—”

“My producer wants me to interview you.”

Icy tension licked through him at her rushed declaration.

“A human-interest story,” she went on, the words almost tumbling over each other. She stood as motionless as he did, her stare locked on his eyes. “About the hero of Wallaby Ridge and how he was once a Sydney firefighter who—”

“I don’t do interviews.”

She flinched at his blunt interruption. Caught her bottom lip with her teeth and frowned at him.

With a ragged grunt, he pulled his cap from his head and pointed to the mess of scar tissue running the length of his face. “There’s no story in this either, Jenna. I got them in the accident that killed Franco. The same fire that saw twenty people perish. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, Google it.”

He turned for the front door. Reached for the knob.

“I have,” she said.

Her soft response stilled his movement again. His gut clenched.

“Then you know all there is to know about me. All that’s worth saying has already been said.”

Without looking at her, he tightened his grip on the doorknob and twisted it to the right.

“I disagree. There’s lots more that needs to be said. Like the fact that your efforts during the Mutawintji National Park were beyond Herculean. Like the fact you risked your own life to save the lives of five others. Like the fact you haven’t let what happened to you in the Blue Mountains fire destroy you. You’re an inspiration, Evan.”

Clenching his jaw, Evan pushed his door wide and crossed the threshold. “I’m not who you think I am, Jenna,” he said over his shoulder. “There’s nothing heroic about me.”

“Do you hate yourself that much?”

The question punched into him. His chest tightened.

Turning on his heel, he found her standing in the opening of his door. What little light there was cast her in a faint silhouette that only served to highlight how tall and exquisite her body was. A hot tension flooded his cock. Self-contempt flooded his soul.

“There’s a lot to hate, Jenna,” he said, clenching the edge of the door. “My arrogance, my cockiness, caused Franco to die five years ago in the most horrific way. Burnt to death while pinned to the ground by a crashed helicopter. The helicopter I’d been piloting. I put Franco and me where we shouldn’t have been. My ego killed him. And my inability to forgive myself for that, along with the way I now look, drove my wife to end our marriage.”

He didn’t say Tracey had been sickened by the look and feel of the scars on his body. He understood his ex-wife’s repulsion. He felt the same.

“Evan…” Jenna’s soft whisper danced on the night’s shadows. “Oh God, Evan, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

He returned his cap to his head and let out a ragged sigh. He had to distance himself from her. He had to put a barrier between them. Because the longer she was here, the longer he could see her, the more he remembered how amazing it was to kiss her. And the more he remembered
that
, the more he realized just how
unheroic
he was. He’d desired Jenna while he was in a relationship with another woman. Not only had he caused his partner’s death and the end of his marriage, he’d also been unfaithful deep in his soul. What kind of man was he? Truly?

“I don’t deserve your sympathy, Jenna. Nor do I deserve your attention. Now if you’ll excuse me—” He began to swing the door shut.

The sharp slap of her hand against the closing door jarred up through his arm. “Tracey was sexting with my boyfriend when you two were still married.”

Icy shock ribboned through Evan’s self-disgust. He stared at her, his blood roaring in his ears. “What?”

“Tracy and Richard were sexting each other. That’s why I stopped being her friend. I caught them…it was before the Blue Mountains fire. I should have told you but…”

He stared at her. In his chest, his heart pounded like a canon, each beat bashing with punishing force. “They were sending text images to each other? Naked images?”

She dipped her head in a single, shallow nod.

“Did they…?” He stopped. He couldn’t ask the question. It stuck in his throat, a hot, sour lump.

Jenna chewed her lip again. “I don’t know. Richard swears they were just flirting. Harmless, he called it. But it…it destroyed me. Destroyed my trust in him.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t…I don’t know. Tracey told me you guys had a more
adult
relationship. And you were always so…so relaxed about the fawning and carrying on other guys did over Tracey when we were out. Like you were proud of it.”

Another invisible blow punched into Evan’s gut. A cold band of steel wrapped his chest. A dull roaring filled his head.

He ground his teeth, biting back a muttered curse. Jesus, he’d been such a wanker.

“I’m sorry, Evan.” Jenna reached through the open door and touched his jaw—the right side of his jaw—with gentle fingers. “I should have told you, even if you might have laughed at me. I should have told you. But instead, I took the chicken-shit way out and just ran away.”

He stared at her. Found her gaze in the darkness of his foyer. Saw grief shining in her eyes. Grief and regret and compassion.

And something else.

Something he couldn’t fight.

Not right now.

He would. When no longer reeling from her statement. But not now. Not right at this very second.

For at this very second, he needed the connection she offered. He needed the fantasy of the desire he saw in her gaze.

For this very second. If only this second.

Closing his eyes, he turned his head and pressed his lips to the centre of her palm, and in doing so, presented her an uninterrupted view of the left side of his face. Allowed her to see his mangled ear, the lobe fused to the side of his head, the outer shell barely discernable from the knotted flesh on his scalp. The mess of flesh that stretched over his jaw. The white and pink scars—so dense and thick they still seemed new and raw—wrapping the side of his neck.

He stood that way for four pounding beats of his heart—a lifetime. Jenna didn’t move her hand away. Nor did she say a word.

He stood there with his lips pressed to her palm and allowed himself the moment.

Allowed himself that which he’d denied himself for close to five years—another living being’s warmth.

“Evan…” Her soft voice caressed his senses.

Opening his eyes, he pulled away from her hand and turned to her. “Goodnight, Jenna.”

Without a word, she stepped over the threshold. Entered his home.

Cupped his face in both her hands and brushed her lips to his.

Chapter Four

She couldn’t let him shut her out.

It had nothing to do with the secret desire she’d harboured for him all those years ago. That desire seemed like a shallow high school crush compared to how she felt for him now.

That desire—a superficial attraction to his good looks and swagger—shamed her. Embarrassed her.

That desire didn’t move her to enter his house and kiss him.

The raw ache churning in her very soul,
that’s
what propelled her.

The unquestionable necessity to show him he wasn’t the failure he believed himself to be.

The undeniable
need
to heal the wounds in his heart.

She cupped his face in her hands, the skin beneath her left palm healthy and dusted with stubble, the skin beneath her right knotted and containing a world of pain, and let him feel everything she felt for him in the tender touch of her lips to his.

His shaky inhalation, coupled with his light grip of her wrists as he pulled from the kiss, sent a sharp pang of torment through her.

“Jenna,” he murmured, shaking his head, eyes closed. “You don’t want this. You don’t want me. I’m not who I used to be. I’m not that guy anymore, the one you first meet on the beach.”

She drew closer to him. Close enough their bellies touched.

“I’m not kissing
that
guy, Evan. I’m kissing this new guy I only just met yesterday. I like him more, even if he doesn’t think it’s possible.”

He drew in another breath, this one not as shaky and so much deeper. His gaze searched hers. His fingers circled her wrists, grip loose.

“It’s not…” He shook his head. “I can’t…”

Before he could say anything else, she brushed her lips to his again.

The urge to deepen the kiss flooded her body in a powerful wave of heat and need. To take possession of his mouth in the way he had hers back on the helipad. She could. He wouldn’t deny her. His breath burst from his nostrils in ragged exhalations, fanning her top lip.

She could feel the potent desire and need in him in the way he still held her wrists, in the way his stomach hitched as their breaths mingled. In the way his groin nudged hers with an undeniable spasm as she touched the tip of her tongue to his bottom lip.

She could seek out his tongue with hers and he would surrender to her.

But she needed him to surrender to himself.

He had to accept her desire for him. He had to believe in it.

And yet his lips remained unresponsive.

Dismay shot through her. A churning weight knotted in her belly. She drew back slightly, preparing herself for the empty loss of his lips on hers.

Preparing herself to walk away from him.

His grip on her wrists tightened. Grew painful.

And then, with a low, raw groan, he hauled her to his body and plundered her mouth with his tongue.

She moaned into the possession, instantly on fire with an elemental desire beyond any she’d experienced. This kiss was powerful, demanding, hungry, desperate, frustrated, ravenous and sorrowful all at once.

It undid her.

Just a kiss.

She broke her wrists free of his hands and cupped his face for fear he’d tear away from her.

He didn’t. He deepened the kiss even as he captured her right hand, removed it from his jaw and yanked it behind her back.

He ground his cock to the curve of her sex. It was hard and thick and impossible to ignore.

She didn’t want to ignore it. She wanted to touch it. Feel it. Impale herself on it.

Rolling her hips, she stroked its turgid jeans-trapped length with her soft flesh, cursing their items of clothing separating skin-to-skin contact.

He growled into her mouth. Caught her bottom lip with his teeth. Sucked on the wound and then rained a slew of hot kisses over her throat, her collarbones.

Her knees trembled. Her belly clenched. Her pussy fluttered. Fluttered. When had it last done that? Not with just-harmless-flirting Richard, that was for certain. Not with any of the guys she dated after him.

In fact, the last time her pussy had behaved the way it was now, contracting and constricting around a cock not there, had been on the helipad over twelve hours ago, when Evan had perched her on the bull bar of the Land Cruiser and almost kissed her to the brink of an orgasm.

And the time before that had been the last time she’d seen Evan while he and Tracey had still been married, when she’d still been Tracey’s friend and the three of them had gone swimming at Manly Beach.

He’d been the epitome of physical excellence back then.

But now…now he was more.

Meeting his passion with equal hunger, she tangled her hand in his hair and lashed her tongue over his. His grip on her wrist behind her back tightened. His cock pulsed against her mons.

When he dragged his lips down over her chin, when he smoothed his free hand up her ribcage to palm her breast through the silk of her shirt, it was all she could do to not melt into a puddle of pleasure.

“Oh G-God…oh…f-fuck…Ev-Evan…that’s…that’s so…” The rest of her exclamation dissolved into a choppy groan as he dragged his thumb over the pebbled tip of her breast. For a woman known in the television news world as being more articulate than anyone else, she was having great difficulty speaking.

She pushed her hips harder to his, the steel pressure of his erection flooding her core with impatient heat.

He nipped at the length of her neck. Sucked on the sensitive skin at the base of her throat, just above her collarbone. She whimpered, and then moaned louder when he pinched her nipple through her shirt and bra.

Her whole body thrummed with need.

Need
he’d
created in her. Need he was going to tend to. Now.

Yanking her wrist free of his grip, she buried her hands in his hair—knocking his cap from his head as she did so—and jerked his face up to hers. She fixed her stare on his, not remotely trying to hide how affected she was by their kiss. Nor how much she wanted him.

“Fuck me, Evan,” she demanded, grinding the curve of her sex to the engorged pole of his cock. “I want you inside me.”

His nostrils flared. “Jenna. I—”

She bunched her fists tighter in his hair. Shook her head. “For six years, I fantasied about making love to you. Do you really think I care about anything at this point in time but having you inside me? Do you think I’m so shallow a few scars are going to turn me off?”

A dark fire danced in his eyes. His jaw bunched.

She drew closer to him, wishing to hell the light was on or the moon was full. She needed him to see the truth in her face as well as hear it in her voice. “I. Want. You,” she said, holding his stare. “You.”

He grew motionless. The muscles in his jaw knotted again. She saw his Adam’s apple slide up and down the strong column of his throat and then, before she could register what he was doing, he slammed her to the wall.

Pinned her there with his hips, his thighs, and ravished her mouth.

She gave herself over to the anger of his kiss. He was angry, but with whom she didn’t know. Himself? Tracey? Her?

It didn’t matter. Not in that second.

In that second, what mattered was Evan was surrendering to the need inside him. His need for her.

She clung to his shoulders, feasting on his lips as much as he did hers. When she smoothed her hands up his neck to cup his jaw, he growled into her mouth.

Hard fingers wrapped her right wrist, yanking her hand from the left side of his face. He rammed her wrist to the wall beside her head, his kiss growing hungrier.

He rubbed his cock against the curve of her sex in powerful strokes that sent her blood rushing straight to her clit, her pussy lips.

She fisted her left hand in his hair. Clung to him as he dry-humped her against the wall. With every thrust, her body craved him more. Her juices turned the crotch of her G-string wet. She cursed her decision to change into a pantsuit to come see him. She’d been determined to wow him with her professionalism. If she’d kept to the pencil skirts she normally favoured, like the one she’d been wearing when she’d run after him on the helipad, he’d be able to penetrate her quicker.

Now, time would be lost with something as inconvenient as stripping her pants from her legs. Damn it.

He explored her chin and throat and collarbone with his lips again. Held her right wrist to the wall, preventing her touching him as he sucked on the base of her neck.

She gasped, driving her shoulder blades to the wall behind her as she ground her pussy harder to his groin. “Oh yeah…”

She’d have a hell of a time hiding the love bite during her next report but didn’t give a rat’s arse. So what if she wore a scarf?

He growled against her flesh again, nipped at her skin with his teeth before scoring a hot line of kisses over her chest to capture her nipple through her shirt.

He sucked. Hard.

Pleasure and pain sliced through her from her breast down to the junction of her thighs. “God,
yes
! Again.”

He complied, this time kneading her breasts as he did so.

She rolled her head against the wall, eyes closed. Her pussy throbbed. Her clit ached. “Again,” she begged.

Once more, Evan suckled on her flesh through her shirt.

A squirming tension bloomed deep in Jenna’s core. She whimpered with the need to feel his cock part her folds, to have him buried inside her. “Evan…” she moaned. “Please…make me come…”

Without a word, he stepped away from her.

She cried out in protest. And then sucked in a ragged pant as he reached for the door—still open, she realized—and shut it.

What little moonlight there’d been spilling through the open doorway vanished. Darkness wrapped around them both.

Heart wild, breath ragged, she checked the wall beside the door for a light switch. Saw one. Reached for it and let out a gasp when Evan snared her wrist, stilling her hand.

She could barely see him. Just a hint of his shape, a glint of light reflecting in his eyes. “Evan, let me see—”

He silenced her by tearing her shirt open.

She squealed, the shocked sound turning to a cry of rapture as he hauled her to his body and reclaimed the side of her neck with his mouth.

Waves of wanton pleasure rushed over her. She rolled her head, the fierce pressure on her skin detonating liquid heat in her sex. Oh God, it felt so good. So good.

“Evan,” she moaned, rubbing the curve of her sex to his trapped erection.

He released her hand, hooked his fingers beneath the lacy edge of her bra and tugged the flimsy cups from her breasts.

“Feels…” she rasped, incapable of anything else. Her vast vocabulary, her sophisticated sentence structure? Shot to hell by his mastery of her pleasure. “So good…please…don’t stop…”

He didn’t. With a raw growl she felt all the way to her soul, he tore the zippered fly of her pants open and slipped his hands between the crisp linen and her hips. He snagged the side strips of her G-string and shoved both the tailored pants and lacy undergarment down her legs.

She couldn’t stop her excited cry.

A cry that turned to a hoarse moan as he roughly palmed her thighs and stabbed at her pussy with his tongue.

Fresh pleasure—tight and wicked and somehow exhilarating—flooded through her. “Oh God, Evan. You…have no idea…how much…you…”

As her breathless pants burst from her lips, he moved.

Removed her pants from around her ankles.

Rose to his feet and walked her backward through his dark house.

She didn’t fight him.

Didn’t protest or try to navigate the unfamiliar territory herself.

She allowed him to direct her through the deep shadows. Trusted him to do so.

It wasn’t until she heard the distinct click-click of her stiletto heels on tile flooring she realized he’d lead her to the kitchen.

Her butt bumped something hard and immobile—her brain told her it was the kitchen counter—a second before Evan circled her waist with his strong hands and lifted her feet from the floor.

He perched her on the edge of the counter, gripped her hips with his hands and yanked her spread pussy hard to his groin.

She whimpered her approval even as she buried her hands in his hair.

Once again, he captured her right hand and removed it from the left side of his head. He held it to her side as he rolled his cock against her sodden folds.

“Oh God, yes,” she groaned, and it
was
a groan in every sense of the word—a low, deep sound uttered in pain and desire. She
was
in pain. She wanted Evan’s cock
inside
her, not just rubbing at her labia. She desired him more than she believed possible and was in pain because of it. Every touch of his denim-clad erection was torturous pleasure and exquisite agony.

“Oh God…” she repeated. “Evan…”

With a shaky breath, he ran his hand over her hip, her ribcage and up to her breasts. Shards of delicious heat sank into her belly. Her pussy contracted. She arched into his touch, another groan slipping from her.

“Your breasts are gorgeous, Jenna.” He dragged his thumb over her nipple, his voice a husky caress of her senses.

She whimpered. “Suck it, Evan. Please?”

“Hard?” He circled the puckered nub of her nipple with his thumb. His cock pulsed against her folds.

“Hard. So fucking hard I come.”

The command burst from her, raw craving in the words. She’d never spoken with such wanton crudity before. But then she’d never been with Evan before, and with Evan she seemed to have no filter…or barriers.

Surprisingly, a low chuckle danced on the shadows. “Done.”

He closed his lips around her nipple before her sight could register he’d moved in the kitchen’s darkness.

“Oh, fuck, yes!” she cried out, slamming her pussy to his erection.

He pressed his palm to her back, supporting her weight as he drew deeply on her flesh.

Sensation ripped through her, stealing her breath and clearing her mind of all but him. Evan.

He worshipped her breast with his mouth, teasing her nipple with his tongue, his teeth. When she writhed on the counter, the mounting tension in her core close to eruption, he switched to her other breast.