Mountain Ash (19 page)

And he silently prayed
he
could.

Jodie was burning. His touch was igniting every part of her. His scent was sending her nerves into complete disarray. She barely knew whether she was standing up or sitting down, so drunk was she on the passion surging through her veins. It had once been like this with Rhys. It had not been like this with Alex.

Nate was gazing down at her. She felt his hands come up to cup the nape of her neck. Sky-blue eyes crumpled slightly at the edges. He was coming for her and she knew she wouldn't and couldn't resist. An Akubra was tugged off and tumbled into the grass as his lips touched hers. Softly at first, then deeper, harder, wandering, searching, then plundering. Oh God, it was like she was drowning in the sweetest wine. So dark, so warm, so beautiful.

She barely felt him draw her down to the swag so delicately spread among the flowers and weeds scattered on the banks of the silvery river. She barely knew he was covering her body
with his own. So much care, so much strength and beauty in the way he did it all. The arc of his neck seemed so vulnerable as he traced the opening of her shirt and slowly pulled at the press-studs with his teeth. She wiggled and moaned as his tongue found her nipples beneath a lacy scrap of a bra. Sucking and gently pulling the rosebuds up through the satin. She felt as though she was expanding out of her body, so enormous were the sensations he was creating. Felt her hips rise of their own accord towards the man who was sending her senses wild. Crazy. Out of control. The warmth of his breath nuzzled her body as down he went. His intent was obvious. Her shorts. Teeth and lips tugged at the button and zipper. Warm hands smoothly slid the denim fabric out of the way.

He was back almost before she missed him. Boots off, jeans off. Long, hard, muscled bare legs warmed her. But he still had his shirt on. She wrestled with the buttons. Yanking at them so hard one popped off and spun out into the night. She now had access to the broad chest smattered with dark hair that had been teasing her all night. Jodie pushed her hands deep into the dark fabric, forcing the shirt off the shoulders of the cowboy above her. He smiled. It was a nice smile too. So warm, so appreciative. It made her feel beautiful, and allowed her to forget the pregnancy lines patterned lightly on her tummy and hips. Creases that had so offended Rhys … but she wasn't remembering Rhys. She wasn't remembering anything other than how to enjoy this moment.

Oh God, he was doing it again. Nate had dodged her hands on their searching mission across his chest and grabbed hold of her arms. Gently forcing them above her head with one hand, he set his mouth to her breasts. He let her arms go and Jodie was loath to move them on her own, so supplicant and pliant
did she feel. Male hands gently pushed the lace aside this time and a warm tongue was now lapping her nipples to red peaks. Jodie arched back. It felt so good. She felt herself flush between her legs, wet with lust, with need, with want. She had never been so entirely ravished. She wanted this man. Above her, inside of her, soaking her whole being. Nate must have sensed her need. Chuckling softly, he plundered further south. Down and down he went. Until he was there. Right there. A tongue brushed against satin. Then the scrap of material was gone, swept away by fingers, warm lips, soft breath. Jodie moved with his lips, seeking something, anything, some sort of release from this bittersweet torment.

Reaching down she pulled and tugged at broad shoulders, revelling in the feel, the plane of muscles flexing under her fingers. Nate moved upwards, slithering his body along hers, making sure to stay in warm contact with her skin. Heat moulded her body like pliant clay to his. Curves following curves. They were a perfect fit.

Suddenly Nate mumbled something about protection and moved to the side. She keenly felt the loss of warmth. But then he was back and all at once the world stood still, poised in the second before he joined with her. His entry into her was slow and beautiful. Together they moved as one, him leading, her following. Then the other way around, sending them both higher and higher. It was Nate who finally drove them somewhere up high among the stars, further than she'd ever been before, until she was a gasping, begging mess. ‘Now, oh God, now, Nate …' she mumbled. The man thrusting above her smiled, a slow languid movement of his lips as he reared his glorious body above her and then he let go. The world ignited, sending them both over the edge and flying into the most intense pleasure she'd
ever felt. She glanced up and saw her cowboy gritting his square jaw, pulsing veins in his long neck standing to attention, his eyes creasing then closing with the intensity of the moment. She could feel him throbbing inside her, draining the last of the pleasure. She gripped herself around him and felt him buck, half laugh and then smile down at her. She saw the remnants of wonder on his face too as he slid to her side and gathered her to him. It was an incredible feeling, this being one with Nate the Cowboy.

It was beautiful.

No, Jodie decided as she snuggled into a warm, strong chest, muscled arms around her.

It was beyond beautiful.

It was heaven.

Heaven wasn't what she thought about the next time she woke. Even though dawn was on the horizon, overhead the majestic red gums on the riverbank were still silhouetted by the moon. That at least gave her a clue as to time and place. She couldn't exactly work out what had woken her. But she knew there was a heavy arm across her middle and she was cupped against a man. And it wasn't just any man. Having a vague recollection of the significant quantity of liquor she had consumed after the raft race, she was grateful for that. Judging by the slivers of memory she had of the night before, the strong arm and the Queenslander high-topped hat she could see buried in a nearby thistle, it was, at least, Nate, and not some random cowboy, who was currently using her body as a teddy bear.

Oh. Dear. God. What had she done?

Okay, so there was a condom wrapper flung into the mustard weed beside the thistle. That was something, because she sure as hell hadn't been prepared for this eventuality. And the timing, if she was her own regular self, was not ideal. Why she and Alex …

Oh fuck. Alex.

How could she face Alex?
Live a little. Just one night.
Stacey's voice echoed in her mind.

Well, she had sure done that. But now? What now exactly? If she stayed and he woke up, he'd want more sex, she'd probably like him more than she should, and then …

‘
I get an itch to get back on the road.
'

… he'd get in that bloody ute and drive away.

Never to be seen again. No, siree. It wasn't happening again to this little black duck.
She
was going to do the leaving this time. She was going to wiggle out of these arms, out of this swag as quietly as she could, get dressed and find Stace. Convince her that they needed to leave
straight away.
Right now, before this cowboy here even looked like waking up. They could be on the Barry Way and heading home before Nate found his jocks, which she could now see were hanging off the lowest branch of the closest old red gum. This little grove could have been planted by God expressly to shelter assignations. She wondered how he'd found it in such a short space of time. Then again, if he was one of those sorts of bloke, the love 'em and leave 'em kind, his mind would be tuned into picking places like this. He'd probably seen it during the raft race and thought, Bingo.

Thing was, she'd been the bing who'd had a go at it. Shit, shit, shit.

But among all the self-recrimination, Jodie couldn't help but remember snippets of the love-making from the night before.
The beauty of it was slowly coming back to her. The look in those eyes, the suffusion of passion. His desire to give pleasure before taking his own. The throbbing burn and then the final tip over the edge. The explosive fizz of nerve endings screaming their delight in climax followed by the drugging torpidity of fulfilment. It had all been exquisite. It was something she had never felt before. Even with Rhys. Certainly not with Alex.

But Alex won't ride away into the sunset.

And good sex – well, make that great sex, okay,
incredible
sex – wasn't everything.

On that thought she took a deep breath and gently raised the arm pinning her to the mattress. A few mumbled words near her ear had her halting in mid-lift. Then Nate chose to roll the other way, over towards the river. She let out the breath she'd been holding and snuck from beneath the blanket. Nate had obviously woken at one stage and pulled some coverings over them, God bless him. No! She wasn't supposed to be liking him any more than she already did. He was a no-go zone and she had to extricate herself from this situation quickly.

She quietly rummaged through the grass and found her clothes. Nate, bless him again, must have got up and found a few of her things, which he'd piled on top of her discarded boots to stop them getting completely wet from the dew on the grass.

Once she was dressed, she turned to the man who had made incredible love to her last night and sighed. In sleep he looked vulnerable. The square jaw had softened, dark lashes fringed closed eyelids. She wondered if his eyes would be sky-blue in this light. His mouth slowly turned up in a slight grin. Whatever he was dreaming, it was obviously good. In a perverse way she kind of hoped he was reliving their love-making. Because, yes,
now more was coming back to her, and it had been beautiful. Sublime even. It turned her on just thinking about it.

Enough of this. She was just prolonging the inevitable. She placed a light kiss on her fingers, leaned down and barely touched his cheek. Whispered goodbye on the early morning breeze. And was gone.

Like a will-o'-the-wisp.

‘And just remind me why we're leaving at the crack of dawn if it was so good?' said Stacey, rubbing bleary eyes as the Barry Way was eaten up by the six-cylinder ute. Jodie, who was driving more carefully now she'd hit the gravel, kept her eye on the rear-view mirror. It was just pure instinct: that's what you did when you were running away.

But Riverton was far behind them, she reassured herself, and so was Nate. Jodie finally felt she could relax. Except for the pesky, pointed questioning that was being aimed at her by her co-pilot.

‘You're not answering me, Ashie.'

No, she wasn't answering because she didn't really know the answer herself. Liar. Liar, liar, pants on fire …

‘Ashie!'

Jodie shook her head at her friend. ‘I just don't need that kind of complication, Stace.'

‘Probably should've thought of that
before
you slept with him then.'

‘Excuse me! Who was the one who told me to live a little?'

‘Yeah, well, I didn't know you were going to take it to heart.'

‘And what's that supposed to mean exactly?'

Stace rubbed her eyes again. In her peripheral vision Jodie saw her mate take a deep breath. ‘What I mean is, you were supposed to just bonk him and leave it at that. Not spend half an hour or so waxing lyrical about his sexual abilities and then in the next breath flog yourself for enjoying it.'

She hadn't been doing that, had she?

‘And what's more, you aren't
really
in a relationship yet with Alex, so I can't see why you can't get out and have some fun.'

She hadn't told Stacey she'd slept with Alex. And fun? That was the problem. She wasn't supposed to have
fun
. Not like Stacey, Ange and Mel. She was a mother with responsibilities, whether she liked it or not.

Jodie heaved a great sigh as she sent the Holden ute around a corner, past the Teacup and Saucer Lookout. ‘I just shouldn't have done it, that's all.' No, she shouldn't have. She should be home with her daughter playing with her own teacups and saucers, being a responsible,
grown-up
woman who was happy to quilt with the CWA and then campdraft to get her thrills. Not go to wild piss-ups with raft races, dancing, drunken orgies – or anywhere else cowboys were found loitering.

‘
Fuck!
' yelled Stace a second before Jodie realised what was on the road in front of them.

Instinct took over. She threw all her weight behind the brake, steering with the skid, knowing she had nowhere to go. The drop down to the right-hand side was steep. Oh. My. God. They'd had it. The three deer were looming closer and closer
in the windscreen until there was a rack of antlers the size of a good tree branch almost on top of the bull-bar. Holy. Fucking. Hell. They weren't going to be able to stop.

‘
Aaaargghh!
' screamed Stacey, throwing her hands in front of her face.

Jodie desperately tried to wrestle with the skid. First the vehicle swung towards the huge drop down to the right. Next they were heading towards the dank and dark bank rising up from the left. In the middle stood the family of deer, poised, startled like frozen sculptures in a Thomas Kinkade painting. The ute hit the edge of one, the stag. The vehicle ricocheted back towards the middle of the road and then, with Jodie's grim guidance, headed towards the dirt bank. Momentum kept driving them forwards. And she hadn't been going that fast in the first place. Don't look at the tree, don't look at the tree, she kept telling herself, knowing if that was where she looked that was where they would end up. The ute tray swung this way then that, the bonnet ploughed on. ‘Stop, damn you,' she yelled. Stacey was still screaming.

It was slowing. It was careering back towards the edge. Now towards the bank.

It was slowing more.

The vehicle came to a halt with the bull-bar buried in a scrummage of tree ferns, the plumage of fronds shaking like a flock of cranky birds. The engine stalled.

Stopped.

All was quiet.

The animals that had caused the crash stood stock-still in shock. A split second later the deer took off. The doe was followed by her little fawn. The stag went last, making sure his family were up the slope before he limped away, his antlers dipping sideways at the ungainly gait.

Jodie slumped to the steering wheel, hands over her face. She had only one blinding thought.

Three times she'd tempted fate. Three times in the last few weeks she'd come close to losing it all. The campdrafting accident, sleeping with a damn stranger, and now this. They could have been sitting at the bottom of the gully. And they would have been dead. She peered through her fingers at the other side of the road and shuddered.

She lifted her head and stared at Stacey, who by now had tears running down her face.

‘That was close,' Jodie said.

Stacey nodded, managed a slight smile. ‘You did good,' she said. ‘You did great.'

‘Yeah, lucky I guess.' Jodie grimaced back.

Minutes passed, which may as well have been hours, each girl lost in her own thoughts.

Jodie finally got out of the ute and checked the state of the vehicle. Stacey sat where she was. She couldn't move on account of the dirt bank kissing the passenger side door. And Jodie guessed, looking at Stacey's white face tilted back against the head rest, that clambering over the gearstick and exiting the driver's side were beyond her friend's capabilities for the moment.

Apart from a slight dent above the front driver's wheel arch, they'd fared reasonably well.

Jodie shakily got back into the driver's seat and muttered a prayer. As she keyed the motor, she said under her breath, ‘C'mon, c'mon. Don't fail us now.' It was miles back to help and she was guessing the phone service was dodgy, if not non-existent. Thankfully, the motor rumbled to life on its second attempt. Jodie breathed a huge sigh of relief. Now to get out of
the scrub. She slowly backed away from the bushes and set the ute on the road proper.

Stacey flapped her hands. ‘Want me to drive?'

Jodie snapped a glance at her mate. ‘I'm right. That's unless you don't want me to?'

Stacey grinned weakly. ‘Lead on, McDuff. I'm just going to close my eyes and pretend that never happened.'

Jodie nodded as the ute trundled forwards, back on its way home to East Gippsland.

She was going to try to forget it had ever happened too. In fact she was going to pretend
the whole weekend
had never occurred. No leaving her daughter, no fun road-trip with the girls, no Singer treadle sewing machine and a funny old man, no hilarious raft race, no drunken sex with a handsome, bewitching, sexy-as-hell cowboy. Nothing. Nada. Diddly zip.

Nate woke to the sound of a motor. First he thought it was the buzzing in his head. Then he realised someone had obviously decided early on Monday morning was a great time to use a bulldozer to push up blackberries and boxthorn on the opposite side of the riverbank. He groaned and rolled over.

Realised his arms were empty.

He put out a hand. The blankets next to him were cold.

She was gone.

He languidly stretched. She'd probably be at the loos. He felt the need himself and rolled out of the swag. His bare feet hit cold ground. He moved behind a wattle to do his business. The bulldozer had stopped, and as magpies warbled their good morning to all above his head, Nate considered his manly appendage.
Thank God for that condom in the glove box. The one Wal
hadn't
found. That protective little packet his father had forced onto him years ago had delivered Nate the best night of his life. He'd never felt so involved, so intent on giving, so passionate, so alive, so committed, so … His mind tried to wrestle his feelings to the ground as he gazed out across the river. A fish jumped, snagging a tiny, fluttering dragonfly. Mosquitoes loitered and zipped their way across the water. But Nate wasn't seeing an aquatic ecosystem. In his internal sightline were only silvery-blue eyes. He didn't know what to call his feelings for this blonde-haired beauty. All he knew was he had to have more of it. Of her. Ash was something else and it wasn't just the sex. She was gorgeous but that was just the start. He'd never met a woman who was so mature without being stodgy, settled without being dull, confident without being arrogant. All that packaged into one stunning individual was worth pursuing.

He finished and considered getting back into the swag and waiting until Ash returned.

But what if she doesn't? whispered a little voice. He shook his head. He didn't want to contemplate that. He'd get dressed and if she appeared he could always undress, couldn't he?

But by the time he was up to donning his boots, he realised either she wasn't coming back or she'd gone to her friend's ute.

Oh well, he'd just roll up the swag and meet her there. It was near his LandCruiser anyway and he should check on Wal. Make sure he had made it back to his bed in one piece. A bit late now if he hadn't, but Nate was philosophical about that. Hell, this morning he felt so good he'd be philosophical about anything. Anyway, the old fella was as tough as the leather he sewed. He'd survive. Nate would too, if he could have more of last night.

He finished pulling on his Ariats and rolled up the swag. He gathered up the practically empty wine bottle and the cups and dumped them in the half-20-litre drum. He added a discarded foil packet. Went to pick up the used condom lying in the grass … Stopped. Peered closer. Gingerly picked up the rubber using two fingers. Fuck it. Use-by dates were obviously there for a reason. There was a gaping hole in the slack latex. Nate groaned. So much for Alex McGregor's last gift to his son. He stared at the condom for a few more minutes. Sighed and shook his head. There was nothing he could do about it now. Being a modern go-get-'em girl Ash'd probably be on the pill. He'd best mention it though.

Dumping the sorry-looking mess into his makeshift bin, he stuck the drum under one arm, humped the swag onto his back and set off towards the main camping area of the showgrounds. He'd trash the drum and go find his woman. The beautiful will-o'-the-wisp with silvery-blue eyes. A river nymph with a smile and dimples that made you feel like you'd gone to heaven.

Ash.