His Brand of Beautiful (16 page)

No soap.
Didn’t stockmen ever wash?

Non‐perishable food staples adorned the left‐hand shelf. A handful of onions withered to papery husks. There were pots and pans—blackened and bent out of shape—a camp oven, a solitary saucepan lid with a hole where the handle should have been; a wooden spoon, potato masher and set of tongs jammed in the gap between the shelf and the cladding.

The right‐hand wall held stuff to fix a fence or patch a hole. Shovels. Pliers. A block splitter. A first‐aid kit swung from the inside of the door as she closed it behind her.

“Seen enough?” Tate called.

“I am woman. Watch me snoop.” She crossed the sand towards Sunshine and unhitched the mare’s girth.

“Is this what you were looking for?” He held up three mauve‐coloured miniature bottles and a pretty packet of soap, an innocent expression on his face. “Bree said you’d appreciate these.”

Shampoo. Conditioner. Moisturiser. Soap. “That woman’s blood’s worth bottling.”

****

Later, Christina sat on Stonehenge in a soft cloud of lavender scent with the afternoon sun and the fire to toast her bare legs and the bubble of rabbit stew simmering in the camp oven. Tate killed the bunnies, she cooked them.

A pair of smaller birds—she didn’t know what type—dive‐bombed something big and black, probably a crow. It fled to the branches of a runty tree and qua‐arked discontent.

Lily Malone

She dropped her chin to her knee, hugged her shins and rocked, staring into the fire.

Letting herself dream.

A baby with Tate.

Mama
Christina
.

She pictured ten perfect chubby fingers and toes. A thatch of sweet hair on a newborn head. The special baby smell she’d read about on every pregnancy blog.

The distant sound of approaching engines made her stand up so fast, she almost knocked her seat from the circle.

Two bike riders approached the hut from the scrub, coming in on an angle almost perpendicular to the road. When they met the road, they picked up speed.

It was Tate’s turn in the shower, and she wished he’d hurry up. It was more than a little unnerving facing two helmeted strangers in the middle of nowhere.

Then the riders braked, shut down the bikes, took off their helmets, and Christina felt the stiff set to her shoulders relax. The first thing they did was flash her huge surprised grins.

The senior of the two, ginger‐haired with a blast of freckles across his nose, hooked his leg over the back of the bike, puffed his chest out, and stood tall in khaki shirt and jeans as he introduced himself as Corky. He indicated his mate with a thumb. “This is Douglas.”

“Just Doug,” the younger man said, getting off his bike and smiling in a way that showed every tooth. “Hope we didn’t give youse dem heart attack. Youse jumped up like a snake bitcha.”

He was at least three‐part Aboriginal, if not full‐blood. She didn’t know enough to be sure. Taller than Corky, he was wiry with a broad flat nose and arms so straight and thin they could have toasted marshmallows.

“I’m Christina. I rode out with Tate Newell. We’ve brought you fresh horses. They’re in the yards over there.” She indicated the four animals who’d returned their heads to the chaff bins once the noise of the motorbikes had died out.

“Ain’t seen Tate in dem bloody long time,” Doug said. The words rushed in unfamiliar rhythms and Christina had to lean forward to hear. But she was certain she heard him pat the seat of his bike and say: “We don’t need no horses. We got these.”

Both men started rolling their bikes toward the stockyards and she followed them.

Tate’s taking more time in the damn shower than I did.
She was sure he could clear up all this confusion quick smart.

“I thought you were checking fences and you needed fresh horses,” she said.

Corky looked at her as if she was the school slow‐learner. “We been checking the fence, sure. But we do that with bikes. We do most things with bikes. We only use the horses when we pen the steers to go off farm. Like when they go to market. It doesn’t stress

’em out so much before they get loaded on the trucks.”

Tate Newell had some explaining to do. She was going to find that piece of her mind Corky obviously thought she was missing, and
boy
, was she going to give it to
him
.

The bra, knickers and jodhpurs Christina had washed that afternoon hung pale from the improvised stockyard clothesline. Corky’s eyes flicked to her underwear like he thought it might sit up and dance.

She made a mental note to shift her stuff.

Christina rubbed her bare arms, cooling quickly away from the fire. “How long have you guys worked at Binara?”

“Three years this comin’ Christmas,” Corky answered, speaking for his mate with another flick of his thumb: “Doug here just on two ’n a half.”

“Had a brudda work for Shasta too, but he in Queensland now,” Doug said. “He on a Brahmin station near Mt Isa now. He says dem big sods dem Brahmin steers. Nasty buggers too, dem Brahmin bulls. I go up there some day. I like to ride one of ’dem Brahmin bulls.”

His face lit up like a puppy but the smile was over Christina’s head. It wasn’t for her.

Her pulse bounced as she turned.
Before
she even turned.

It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen Tate in jeans. He’d worn jeans for the last three bloody days. But these were stone‐washed blue, faded, worn to three thick strands above one knee. Clean. And they hit every muscle on route from arse to ankle so that part of her almost sniffed the air to see if she could smell denim from where she stood—smoking denim—he was that hot.

Her irritation over his trick with the horses was banished by a wave of pure—or not so pure—lust. For a second, guilt nagged at her belly over the course she’d been plotting tonight. But now, he’d lied to her too, so perhaps that made them even. Christina ignored the pointed voice that told her setting out to get herself pregnant without telling the potential daddy was a bit worse than a lie about horses and motorbikes.

She turned away as Corky and Doug went to greet him. Turned before Tate’s eyes could find hers.

The bra strap snagged because she yanked it off the stockrail instead of easing it and then she snatched at the jodhpurs even harder so a tuft of cotton caught on a splinter.

She stopped only to ditch her clean clothes in the tent and pull on leggings and a jacket. At the last minute she jerked socks over her feet. Out here, who cared if she paired sandals with socks?

Lily Malone

A far‐away howl raised the hair on the back of Christina’s neck. Corky stopped staring into the fire and lifted his head to gaze into the hovering night like a hound on point. Grease glistened on his chin.

“We seen dingo tracks all the way along the fence,” he said to Tate.

“Have you ever heard a dingo bark?” Tate asked, dropping his plate to the sand.

Corky snorted. “Pull the other one,” at the same time Doug said: “Dingo don’t bark, mate.”

“I saw it on YouTube. Fair dinkum.” Tate’s accent was as rough as Christina had heard it. “Some guy filmed it on a camcorder. It’s a dingo alright and you hear it bark. Filmed out this way too, west of the Simpson, but up nearer the French line.”

“Ain’t never seen no YouTube. Ain’t never heard no dingo bark.” Corky ended the discussion and patted his stomach. He used his rock as a back‐rest rather than seat and his boots stretched for the glowing coals.

Doug yawned. “I’ll wash, man, you dry.”

Corky flicked sand at the younger man’s boots.

The two stockmen scoured the camp oven, cutlery and plates while Tate banked the fire. Christina’s pulse had been in overdrive all evening, now it soared. She was glad Corky and Doug were there for distraction, any time Tate looked at her, panic rattled through her bones.

Corky and Doug spread swags on the opposite side of the fire, said goodnight, and in less than five minutes their snores floated across the embers like traffic on a distant freeway: one truck‐exhaust loud, the other a four‐cylinder purr.

“Take a walk with me?” Tate’s shoulders blocked the stars. He held out his hand and as she took it, she knew a bridge had been crossed. There was no going back.

Sunshine’s white mane and tail shone but the other horses in the stockyard were a jumble of dark shapes with the odd slash of white fetlock or blaze, all of them herded close.

One huffed an accusation, as if annoyed at being disturbed.

“You’d think I’d have had enough of the smell of horse to last me years,” she said as Tate’s steps thudded softly in time with the two‐step beat of her heart. “I almost miss it.”

The world whirled.

He waltzed her in a tight circle on the sand. Her knee bumped his shin and his lips made a warm circle on the cold crown of her head. He inhaled her as if she was a drug.

“It’s only lavender shampoo,” she blurted, trying to control the tremor in her knees.

“Not lavender.” His voice throbbed like Springsteen in a smoke‐filled bar. “You smell like
you
. You smell incredible. I want to be inside you so much I can’t think straight.”

Her lips parted in a shallow gasp. He had
such
a way with words.
Why not just lift my
skirt? Fuck me right here standing up on the sand. I’m ready. I’ve been ready all day.

The cross‐bar of the stockyard rail prodded her kidneys. Tate tipped her chin with his finger and when his mouth lowered to hers she hoped all he could taste was rock‐salt and rabbit, not guilt.

His hands stole under her jacket and up her ribs. She’d washed her only bra and it left nothing to slow his fingers except the thin material of her dress. Her nipples swelled, ached for the skin of his bare hands, his mouth.

“Lie down with me, Christina,” he said, voice wild, thumbs rubbing her nipples.

“God yes.” It was a whisper against his lips.

She lost a sandal, stopped for it, casting about in the sand, found she could run faster in her socks and kicked off its partner; hair flying about her face, forearm jammed under her breasts.

Tate stopped to snatch up his swag and she ran on alone before she could change her mind, sandals flapping in her hand like a pair of hooked fish. She stumbled to her knees on the sand, fumbled for the tent zip. It was like trying to catch a cake of soap.

Tate’s steady arm slipped past her waist. The zipper buzzed and she risked a glance at the stockmen. Their snores didn’t hitch. She fell forward into the tent on hands and knees, slipped on the sleeping bag, came up disoriented in the near‐black and grazed her nose on the canvas wall. Tate followed her, rezipped the tent, kicked‐off his boots.

Socks snaked from her feet. A button tore on her jacket and the tent filled with the sound of breathing, of clothes scraping canvas and nylon slipping, slipping; on her knees now, cotton in her fingers, ripping the tunic up—

Strong fingers trapped hers on the hem. “Let me.”

He let the cotton brush the small of her back, tease the swell of her breasts, trace every curve as if she was a precious statue he had all night to unveil. Once, she slapped the back of her foot on the tent floor. Then the dress suctioned around her ears and with a static hiss her head popped free. He sat back on his heels long enough to whip off his shirt and singlet. In those few seconds she missed him and her hand stretched across the void.

Warm skin met her fingertips, his muscles solid and strong. She nibbled a path along his jaw, felt whiskers sting her lips and leaned in close to press her breasts against him. Her nipples grazed his chest.

“
Christina
.”

This time his lips slammed hers. One hand hooked behind her head, the other held hard to her arse, pulling her into heat that was like a furnace. Desire exploded through her thighs, darted in and out of her pussy like a questing tongue.

This is what I need. Just like this. So much that I can’t think about what comes next.

She sucked his tongue into her mouth, heard his groan. Her fingers flew to the fly of his jeans, popped it—

He grabbed two handfuls of her backside, lifted her as if she weighed nothing and shuffled her forward until his hips tucked between her open thighs and her arms wrapped around his neck and she didn’t know if she wanted to rock against the hard ridge beneath the denim or grind against it or squeeze, and nothing else mattered anyway except every point of white‐hot heat where their bodies joined.

He lifted her long enough to peel the leggings from her hips then laid her back, breaking her hold on his neck. He rolled the fabric down her calves, kissed the exposed flesh of her thigh where it dimpled above her knee.

Her hips squirmed figure‐eights on the sleeping bag, the inside of her thighs slick.

“Hurry,” she said, when he sat up to kick out of his jeans. She reached for his thigh in the dark, explored crisp hair, the texture of his skin. She stroked the base of his cock.

“How do you expect me to hurry when you’re doing that?”

The tent was thick with the scent of her sex; creamy with it.

Christina’s hair skimmed his knee. Nylon slipped as she edged higher, crawling to her knees beside him and he felt her cheek on his thigh, butterfly kisses from her lips and he knew where she headed, thought about her wet mouth, her tongue lashing him; sucking—

Christ
. He had two seconds to stop her. “Wait, sweetheart. Don’t.”

Lily Malone

“Don’t tell me
don’t
,” she murmured.

“Slow down.”

“No.”

He reached for her chin. Got her mouth, lips already open for him. He slipped two fingers inside and rolled them and heard her moan and when she sucked he felt it all the way through the back of his balls.

Using the lubricant of her own saliva he circled her nipple, first one, then the other, tweaked the tips into hard buds until she arched her back and offered them to his mouth.

She tasted like rain.

He cupped her pussy through thin cotton and held her there, hard, while heat poured into his palm and her hips bucked against his hand and her legs shuddered. He pressed her back to the nylon.