Rescue Nights (21 page)

As they were speaking, he had been inching his hand higher, enjoying the texture of denim and firm thigh under his hand. He turned his attention from the road for long enough to note her pupils dilating, just a little.

‘All about you, huh,’ she said.

Contradicting those words, Kate stretched one foot up to the dash to give him better access.

Because he was getting genuinely distracted, Andrew decided that driving with both hands on the wheel might be the option preferred for safety reasons. After a definite sound of protest from the back of her throat at the ceasing of his attentions, whatever his well thought out reasoning, Kate decided an exploration of the zipper of his jeans was suddenly of great interest.

His vision went a little blurry around the edges and he had to stop his hips from thrusting further into her hands.

‘I know I started it,’ he said. ‘But for future reference, for the safety of all passengers, all hands should be kept to oneself while vehicles are moving more than twenty miles per hour.’

A lingering squeeze had him seriously considering the propriety of pulling to the side of the road and taking her there. Laughing eyes made him so glad that he had pushed her to let him accompany her to the doctors, even if he hadn’t been perfectly sure that he was going to get laid sometime in the next quarter of an hour.

Pulling in to the parking space, he wrenched open his door and turned to Kate. ‘You’ve been practicing your jogging — run, don’t walk,’ he ordered.

He wasn’t entirely sure what the other guests who saw them might have thought at the sight of a couple in their thirties chasing each other through the tropical paths. All he knew was that bursting, winded, through the door, all he could think about was how desperately he needed to be inside Kate, right now.

Andrew barely cared enough about the outside world to shut the door behind them. Luckily, Kate didn’t seem to have any protests about the lack of romance as her hands were already under his t-shirt, as she eagerly tried to push the cotton material over his arms. Andrew decided that getting him undressed was secondary to seeing her skin. With that in mind, he crowded her back towards the kitchen island bench and with two hands around her waist lifted her clean off the floor onto the marble surface.

Lying with her back on the flat surface, Kate made the most of the opportunity that enabled her to wrap her legs around him. His breath was audible as a giant exhale as she locked her heels to the small of his back.

It was only then that their mouths fused, and Andrew’s arousal had him jack-knifing against her as he clenched the cold stone, trying to get some control. Because that control was rapidly slipping when Kate returned the passion in her kiss.

‘Top off,’ said Andrew.

He didn’t have the patience to undo what looked like twenty buttons himself. A half-smile softened her mouth as she watched him shed his own shirt, jeans, and boxers. Even in his haste, he didn’t forget the foil packet that he scrambled to remove before he dropped his clothes to the floor and kicked them away.

Kate parted the sides of her shirt shyly, revealing a conservative tank. ‘I knew he was going to examine my ribs. I didn’t want to look like I was there to seduce the doctor.’

Andrew decided that if she had enough time for explanations he wasn’t doing something right, so he leant down and ravished her mouth with his.

His cock rode against the denim she still wore and the roughness of the zip had his eyes almost rolling back into his head. Bitting down on her neck the way he knew she loved, Andrew waited until he felt the involuntary shiver of her body underneath him.

Laid out below him, she was like a feast ready to be devoured. For the first time, he didn’t feel like he had to be gentle and he was making the most of that. He didn’t even bother unclasping her bra, just pulling it straight over her head before filling both hands with her generous curves. Two days of beard growth scraped against the tender soft skin as mouth met nipple and then suckled, to Kate’s loudly expressed pleasure.

Andrew forced himself to move away from her body long enough to be able to wrestle the tight denim and panties down her long legs. With her legs finally bare, his mouth followed a path from breast to stomach to wet heat.

A strong kick almost brained him as his tongue hit a pleasure centre. As her body began to quake, Andrew stood up and pressed against her to luxuriate in the sensation of finally being skin-to-skin.

His throbbing cock was actually causing him pain so he pulled her hips to the edge of the bench and with hands embarrassingly shaking, he covered himself in protection. Knowing that she was well and truly ready for him by the dazed sheen to her gaze, he drove himself in to the hilt and marvelled in the slick warmth of her body, sheathing his.

Even the cold of the bench below her wasn’t enough to distract Kate from the intense pleasure that had her holding back her own climax. Andrew was above her, head thrown back, almost roaring his approval.

For once, he wasn’t checking her reaction, checking to make sure that she was fine, that she didn’t feel the slightest bit of discomfort. There was a freedom in that. There was a freedom in the pinch of the bench where his thrusts were so vigorous, she was sure that any lesser furniture would fall apart under the sheer force. There was a freedom in the way his body raced to its own climax and hers was left to find its own way, something that didn’t seem to be causing her any problems. In fact, she bit her arm in an attempt to delay the inevitable, wanting to watch the man with her in his moment of lost control.

He towered above her, muscles corded in stark relief, as every atom in him sang as if desperate for that moment of satisfaction. Then the moment fractured and Kate’s own vision clouded as she came.

For long minutes, Kate lay winded trying to bring her body back into one dimension. Andrew dropped a kiss to her stomach as he brought his weight off where he had collapsed over her body.

‘Please tell me you are still intact?’ he asked.

‘Depends on what you want to call intact.’ Kate pushed herself up on her elbows and touched her head with a smile. ‘Concussion may be involved, but boy was it fun.’

She joked, but this had, more than anything, made her feel herself again. Though she had to admit such brilliant, shiny sex had been far from her pre-Andrew norm. Nevertheless, feeling strong and at home in her own body was something both deeply missed and now truly celebrated.

She put on Andrew’s t-shirt that he had thrown in her direction. He had kept the pants and was now fishing in her villa’s fridge for a beer. Somehow, this was the place that they always ended up. Probably because she was more likely to have been shopping for groceries, even if for the last seven weeks he had been the one who had insisted on carrying each and every grocery bag.

That memory of Andrew’s attentiveness brought Kate back into the world. She realized that she had at least a few phone calls to return, a few anxious family members to soothe. Everyone had been waiting for the outcome of her appointment today. Everyone had been so kind, not mentioning what would happen if her injury meant another delay, not mentioning what would happen if she couldn’t completely recover. They all deserved the courtesy of her news now.

‘I’ll be ready for the fitness test tomorrow,’ she stated with absolute certainty once she got her mother on the line.

‘You need your sleep,’ said Andrew, interrupting her contemplation of the stars as she stood staring out, leaning against the French door frame in her bedroom.

When she turned, he was lying facing her, wordlessly holding up the blanket in invitation, waiting for her to come and settle against his warm skin.

As she fitted her body against his, it was hard not to think in terms of the love word. They hadn’t spoken of a future, but surely with such consideration and passion there was the possibility for one.

‘Three more like that.’

To be approved again for active duty as a rescue paramedic you didn’t just need a doctor’s certificate from one of the city’s premier consultants. You also had to prove that you could perform any number of manual tasks, in front of a necessarily critical audience. The stakes were too high for you to fail on the job, you needed to be an unbreakable link in the team.

That was why she was climbing a rope in order to hit a bell for the seventh out of ten times.

‘Come on Kate, you can do it twice as fast as that,’ came a call from Joe.

Even with her arms burning as if acid had been poured into each joint, Kate almost managed a smile. That was before she remembered the progressive pain of the beep test up next.

‘Strength test, beep test, skills test completed and passed. Final test is a drag and hold, but first you can have a twenty minute break for a drink.’

Kate listened to the tester and tried to hide the sheer exhaustion that came from pushing for hours at a time. Because she had been injured in a workplace accident, Queensland Rescue had brought in an outsider to certify her, not wanting emotion over her reported bravery to sway the decision. Cairns Command had accepted the protocol and tried not to look insulted at any questions of impartiality.

‘I’ll hit the locker room then,’ Kate walked out with a ramrod straight spine.

In the change rooms, as if pre-arranged, Andrew sat on the long wooden bench.

‘Afternoon tea of champions,’ he said, tossing her a coke and a packet of lollies. ‘I’ve heard only good things from the gym.’

Kate shrugged and tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed his absence. It wasn’t that he had been involved in any call-outs because she had spotted Joe and Ben observing all day.

‘I bloody hate this enough normally,’ she confessed. ‘This time I’ve only been running again for the last three weeks. I thought my lungs were going to burst.’

Embarrassed at admitting to such weakness, Kate did a double check as to the emptiness of the toilet and shower stalls before sitting down beside Andrew. His hand inched over to rest a bare centimetre from her own. So close, she could feel the warmth of it radiating.

‘It is fine. You’ll be fine,’ he said.

That was it? Kate wondered why a usually verbal man was suddenly so reserved on the reassurance.

The pause went so long she found herself filling it. ‘The skills lab. Well, that quite frankly is a little humiliating. I know I had minor concussion but did they think it was brain damage? Because my CPR skills and assessment techniques hadn’t suddenly fallen out of my brain during the last two months.’

Kate had six more minutes of her break left but she could feel herself moving into babbling territory. Andrew stood as she did. As she went to leave, he leaned over and put his mouth to hers. It was pure instinct that had Kate responding to his kiss before good sense and a strict understanding of workplace propriety took over.

‘Not here,’ she said, pushing at his chest. ‘You know that door is unlocked. Even if everyone here knew about our relationship, making out here would still be definitely off the table.’

‘That’s fine,’ said Andrew, in clipped tones, running his hand through his shortly cropped blond hair.

Kate just shook her head at the man who was no longer meeting her gaze. ‘Now I have to go and drag someone twenty metres and hope no ribs pop out.’

‘I’m coming,’ he said.

As pissed off as she was, Kate couldn’t help but be glad that he was finally showing some support today.

Kate received another set of instructions for what felt like the fiftieth time today.

‘We can’t have any staff directly paid through Queensland Rescue to participate directly in our assessment. However, as Dr Wentworth here is employed through Queensland Health we are lucky that he has volunteered to play the body.’

Kate had to stop herself from visibly wincing. Andrew was six-foot-two and made of pure rangy muscle. Dragging him the full twenty metres mandated was going to be painful and near impossible. At last year’s standardized testing for the whole team, the body had been one of the admin girls, so what the hell was Andrew playing at, agreeing to put her in this position?

For a female paramedic, this was one of the single hardest physical tests to pass, and the one that guaranteed the most failures. The reality was that it was something that was unlikely to be replicated in the field so they did it, got it over and done with, and tried to make it as easy as possible.

As Andrew lay down at the end of the helicopter tarmac, with the temporary markers laid out Kate was still bewildered by the motivation that would have induced him to volunteer. Surely, he would have acknowledged to himself that he was making her journey back to work harder.

‘Ready, set…’

At the tester’s ‘go’, Kate made her run along the hard surface. With the outside location, the whole base was watching and she hoped like hell that they won’t going to be watching a failure.

Under her arm was the rigid ski onto which she had to manipulate Andrew’s body.

Reaching him, where he was lying face down in the prone position, she went to grab his shoulder. When she went to pull on it, in order to get him shifted over to where she could start getting him strapped down to the unrolled ski, she was shocked to find his body rigid.

There was an unspoken understanding within the industry when undergoing these sorts of tests. A loose flexible body was infinitely easier for those being assessed to deal with, and as such, no-one volunteering for these tests would be anything but loose.

Most of the time, Kate had to stop whoever was playing the body from actually helping her by moving and getting her disqualified. As she went to pull on Andrew’s arm for the third unsuccessful time, it looked like that wasn’t going to be today’s problem. Really the man was so rigid, that he would be lucky to survive the next few minutes without an ‘accidental’ kick to the ribs.

‘Is this about the kiss?’ she asked, in a voice so low that it wouldn’t reach even the most sensitive of ears beyond Andrew. ‘Because, if so, fuck you.’

Andrew’s jaw clenched down harder but finally he went lax enough for her to struggle his body into position. Even without taking his full weight, this portion of the challenge was taxing.