Burn for You: Outback Skies, Book 2 (7 page)

“When the chopper crashed…” He stopped. Licked at his dry lips.

The nightmare of the crash lashed at him for a surreal moment. The smell of boiling petrol, burning trees, burning skin singed his sinuses. The screams of his partner drilled into his ears.

“When the helicopter crashed,” he continued, his throat scratchy, like it was lined with sandpaper, “Franco was pinned beneath the crumpled dash while I was trapped in my seat by my seatbelt. Petrol was leaking from the engine into the cabin, spilling over both of us. I’d done my best to bring the chopper down as far from the main fire as I could, but the wind had blown us about and we hit the ground in the middle of it. The chopper was surrounded in flames before we stopped moving. I managed to get out of my seat, breaking my shoulder to do so, but by the time I did, the fire had begun to consume the chopper. I tried to get to Franco, tried to get him out from under the dash. Half of me was on fire by then, but I had to get to him.

“I don’t know how long it took for the second-unit chopper to arrive at the scene. The head of the National Firefighting Centre told me it was only eight minutes. It felt like forever. By that time, Franco was entirely engulfed in flames. The second-unit guys had to drag me away. The chopper ignited just as they were running back to try and save him. I can still hear him screaming. I can still see him reaching for me as they pulled me away. Every fucking night, I relive that crash.”

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Evan’s chest tightened at the compassion, the sympathy in Jenna’s eyes as she looked up at his face.

“I read the report last night,” she went on, her voice husky.

“How?”

Her answering smile was apologetic and wry. “Being in the media allows me quick access to official government reports that are available to the public.”

His gut churned. “Great. So you already knew everything I just told you?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t know how horrific it was. The report didn’t relay that. Nor how you blame yourself. But I
do
know you were cleared of reckless endangerment, Evan. I read that. In fact, your actions that day, flying into that gulf despite the dangerous conditions, saved an entire ground crew. If you hadn’t done that, those ten men would have also died. You are a hero. I so wish you could see that. I so wish you could see yourself through my eyes. Through the eyes of all those you’ve saved. Instead, you reject yourself. Instead, you hate yourself. It just…it just makes me want to shake you and tell you to stop it.”

A sob cracked her voice. She scrunched up her face and sucked in a slow breath.

“I can’t bear to see you put yourself through this,” she whispered. “I can’t…”

“I’m done with rejecting myself, Jenna,” he murmured, hooking his fingers under the hem of his shirt. “And I’m done with hating myself as well.”

Opening her eyes, Jenna looked at him. Just as he tugged his shirt free of his body.

He dropped it at his feet, watching her eyes as she lowered her gaze to his torso.

She didn’t say a word.

Nor did he. Instead, heart wild, he moved his hands to his belt. Undid it.

He saw her chest swell, her sharp intake of air the only sound in the hotel room. Saw her lips part slightly.

Swallowing at the lump in his throat, Evan toed off his boots.

Jenna lifted her stare to his face.

A question burned in her eyes, one he desperately hoped he was strong enough to answer.

Jesus, was he?

Without breaking eye contact, he lowered the zipper of his fly, smoothed his fingers beneath the loose waistband of his jeans and then pushed them down over his hips.

The worn denim fell to a crumpled pile at his ankles and he stood before her in nothing but a pair of white cotton boxers.

Almost every inch of scarred flesh on display.

Almost.

There was still more.

For a second, just a second, terror seized his muscles. His brain screamed at him to stop. What was he thinking? The last person to see him naked had called him grotesque, had declared that the sight of him sickened her and that she could no longer be married to him. That he was too broken, too wounded to love.

No one had seen him naked since Tracey had left. No one.

Jenna isn’t Tracey, Evan. You know that. You knew that all those years ago when you first met her, when you spent all those nights thinking of her. When just the sight of her smile could make
you
smile…

“I suffered third-degree burns to over forty percent of my body,” he said, his mouth drier than the desert beyond the hotel walls. He stared at Jenna’s eyes, his gut churning as he watched her take in what he’d revealed to her. “Most of that, as you can probably tell, is on my lower body. The doctors thought they might have to remove my left leg.”

He stopped. Sucked a ragged breath into lungs that felt like they were being crushed.

“And my scrotum.”

And before she could respond, he hooked his thumbs into the wide elastic waistband of his boxers and removed the last item of clothing from his body.

Jenna’s stare roamed over the full extent of his scars, a soft gasp escaping her. “Oh God,” she whispered, eyebrows knitting.

He couldn’t move.

His head roared. The room seemed suddenly devoid of air.

A tear slipped down Jenna’s cheek.

She took in his scarred hip, lower abdominals and legs. The scarred left side of his scrotum, devoid of any pubic hair.

The scarred flesh of his penis.

Evan’s stomach rolled. “This is me, Jenna. This is me showing you I’m not scared to let you in.”

“Oh God.” She hugged herself tighter, her knuckles white as she gripped her upper arms, and then raised her gaze to his face. Another tear fell down her cheek. She shook her head, her forehead furrowing. “I’ve never…” She shook her head again, palm pressed to her lips.

An invisible punch slammed into Evan’s gut. He clenched his jaw. Nodded. “I understand. It’s not…I’m not—”

“Oh, Evan.” She stepped towards him, a wry smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “I really do think I’m going to have to shake some sense into you.”

He frowned.

“I won’t lie to you,” she went on, her smile soft, “and tell you I’m not shocked. I’ve never seen such scarring. I can’t even begin to fathom what you have endured. But I’ve looked. I’ve seen. I’m aware. And I’m not repulsed.”

He swallowed. “You’re not?”

“No.”

And with that, she grabbed at the hem of her T-shirt and yanked it up over her head to stand utterly naked before him.

Evan didn’t move.

For a heartbeat.

In that heartbeat, he drank in the sight of her, feasted on the beautiful curves of her hips, her breasts, wondered at the flawless coffee cream of her skin, at the mocha-brown of her nipples. In that heartbeat, his gaze found hers and every fear of rejection that had kept him imprisoned since the chopper crash, every doubt of self-worth that had crippled him, that had damn near turned him into a hermit, shunning life, shunning happiness, disappeared.

Incinerated in a second by the pure desire he saw in Jenna’s eyes.

He moved to her, and she met him halfway, wrapped her arms around his neck and captured his lips with hers. She claimed his tongue with fierce swipes of her own as she pressed her body to his. The curve of her sex aligned perfectly with his groin, the downy-soft curls of her trimmed thatch an incredible caress.

He groaned, a tsunami of raw pleasure crashing through him.

She was there, with him. Her naked body against his. Her perfect skin like velvet on his scarred flesh.

Hot blood flooded his cock. Stiffened it. Lengthened it.

Thickened it.

Jenna groaned, rolling her hips to stroke his growing erection with her mons.

Evan’s head swam.

Five years he’d been without physical contact.

Five years of believing he’d never experience the sensation of another person’s body moving against his again.

And then the woman he’d once believed could only ever be a fantasy to him had proved him wrong.

Undone by the sheer rapture of the realization, he tore his lips from hers. “Jenna,” he groaned her name, aching for her on a level beyond comprehension. “Jenna…thank you. Thank—”

She silenced him with two steady fingers on his lips, a molten heat burning in her eyes. “Thank yous come after.”

Before he could ask after what, she lowered herself to her knees before him and took his erection in her mouth.

“Ah fuck!” he burst out, throwing back his head as Jenna laved the hypersensitive flesh of his scarred length. “Fuck, that feels so good. So good.”

She cupped his scrotum with a gentle hand, kneading the engorged globes with gentle pressure.

Fresh bolts of concentrated pleasure sheared through him. His spine bowed. His toes curled.

At his knees, Jenna sank lower down his engorged cock, her mouth a warm, wet exquisite seal.

He trembled, every muscle in his body thrumming.

She took him deeper into her mouth, sliding her tongue over his ridged flesh, her fingers worshipping his sac.

Over and over, she slid up and down his length, flooding the very core of what made him a man with liquid heat. Sometimes she would moan around her mouthful, the humming sound sending delicious waves of vibrations through his groin. Sometimes she would nip at the tip of his cock. Sometimes she would lick his flesh. Sometimes she would blow a cool stream of air over his wet length.

He groaned her name. Fisted his hands in her hair.

Dropped his stare to watch her through a fog of heady pleasure.

Her gaze met his, and for a perilous moment, he feared the undeniable desire he saw in her eyes would push him over the edge. A tingling pressure began at the base of his spine. His heart slammed faster, harder in his chest.

“I’m going to come, beautiful,” he ground out, knees quivering. “If you keep doing that, I’m going to come.”

Stare still holding his, Jenna slowly sucked her way up the length of his cock. Lips ringing the distended crown of his organ, she flicked her tongue at the tiny beads of pre-come he knew were seeping from his tip.

“Oh fuck, Jenna,” he groaned, a shudder rocking through him.

Five years of being untouched, and now this…

“I can’t…I can’t hold off any longer. I can’t…” His eyes fluttered closed. His heart thumped faster. Every muscle, every fibre of his body thrummed.

Jenna released his cock from the seal of her mouth with a gentle pop.

He opened his eyes, incapable of finding breath as she rose to her feet, sliding her naked body up the length of his.

She rubbed her breasts against his thighs, his hips. For a giddy moment, his balls nestled between the perfection of her breasts, and then it was her belly moving over his sex as her lips and tongue charted a path up the centre of his abs.

She licked at the scarred nub of flesh that had once been his left nipple.

A rush of euphoric disbelief shot through him as the nerve-endings of his damaged skin reacted to the warm caress. He gasped, his hips bucking forwards in base, unconscious response.

And then her lips were leaving his chest, moving over the scar tissue covering his neck, his chin, his jaw, her pussy drawing level with his groin.

“This is me,” Jenna whispered in his ear as she wrapped one long thigh around his hip. The cream-slicked lips of her sex kissed the underside of his engorged cock. “Showing you there is nothing grotesque or repulsive about your body.”

His head swam. He sucked in a ragged breath. “Jesus, Jenna…”

She brushed her lips over his, cupping his face in the palms of her hands. “I want you inside me. Please. Now. I need—”

He hauled her off her feet, carried her to the bed and lowered her gently to the mattress.

When he tried to slip his arms free from her body, she shook her head, her lips curling as she tightened her grip on his shoulders.

He let out a wobbly chuckle. “I have to get a condom. I think…I think I might have one in my wallet, but God knows how old it—”

“
You
, Evan,” she said, shaking her head again. “I want
you
inside me. Your skin sliding against my skin. Your flesh moving against my flesh.”

A raw groan tore at his chest. He stared into her eyes.

“This is me showing you how much I trust you, Evan.” She tugged him down to her body, tangled her fingers in his hair and drew his head closer to hers. “This is me showing you
everything
about you, every scar, every bump, every ridge is everything I want.”

She wrapped her thighs around his hips, arched on the bed and aligned the head of his cock to the wet seam of her sex.

The tip of his erection nudged her pussy lips. Parted them.

Another rush of dizzying euphoria surged through him. He froze, his weight supported by his elbows on the bed.

Five years…

“I…I won’t…” he rasped. “I…I won’t…last long. I can’t…you’re too…” A strangled laugh burst from him. “Fuck, you have no idea how long I’ve wanted…this…you…”

A smile curled her lips. The smile of his long-harboured dreams and unspoken fantasies. “Evan Alexander, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were making excuses.”

His chuckle was ragged. “You could…you could say that. You’re probably right. It’s…been a long time.”

She cupped his face in her palm. “Don’t be scared.”

“Scared?” His own smile warmed his soul as surely as hers did. “No. I’m
not
scared. Scarred? Yes, but scared? Not anymore. Thanks to you.”

Jenna’s eyes fluttered closed and she raised her hips higher, taking just a little more of the tip of his cock past her moist folds. “Oh God, keep talking like that and I think I’ll fall in love with you.”

Another laugh rumbled in his chest. “I think I’m okay with that.”

Jenna’s eyes widened. Her lips parted. She touched her fingertips to his left cheek and trailed them down his face to his jaw. “Can I quote you on that? Or is it off the record?”

“Totally on the record,” he murmured. “You can tell the world if you like.”

“I wanted you for a long time,” she whispered, watching the path her fingers took over his scarred face, “but the man you are
now
…he’s the man I’m falling for. He’s the man I’m going to tell the world about. Understand?”