Rescue Heat (16 page)

“Just wait until I start ordering oysters, then we’ll see who’s volunteering.”

“Babe you can order every oyster in Australia, and I’ll happily pay for each one,” said Matt.

Matt laughed as he watched the gorgeous woman, sitting across from him, enthusiastically order from the menu. He liked the way she made eye contact with the waiter, who was barely out of his teens. So many people ignored the staff at these sorts of places, unless something went wrong, in which case they complained fervently. Brigid, however, engaged with everyone around her. He had seen her take a strong interest in her patients and colleagues, but he was beginning to realise she took an interest in all people who inhabited the world around them.

“So now you’ve watched me completely over order, are you unhappy you agreed to lunch?” Brigid asked. The warmth in Brigid’s voice, made it clear that she had no real fear of an answer in the affirmative.

“It’s a terrible sacrifice I’m making, having lunch with you. The place is nice, you’re beautiful and after Afghanistan, fresh seafood is very welcome.”

“So a landlocked, hilly enclave isn’t the best place to order fish, what a massive surprise!” Brigid quipped.

“Fun facts about the Middle East brought to you by Matt Roberts.”

“Apart from the obvious advantages of having someone do your washing for you, why did you last so long in the army? You already had your education and,” Brigid gestured to the expensive surrounds, “you obviously didn’t need the combat pay.”

Brigid had asked the question with such obvious candour that Matt decided to answer with the same.

“I joined because I was searching for something more than the life already mapped out for me. I stayed because my skills meant I was really needed.”

“Why did you leave again?” she asked. Her question made it obvious that his earlier explanation hadn’t satisfied her.

The arrival of Brigid’s oyster platter granted Matt a brief reprieve. She was distracted, as she thanked the waiter and gestured to Matt to help himself from the platter.

Just as he was about to put the first oyster in his mouth, Brigid said, “I’m not sure if we need any aphrodisiacs. Anything more than our natural chemistry and we might break your very sturdy bed.”

Matt burst out laughing. “I’m glad I didn’t have that oyster in my mouth. Are you trying to choke me?” he said, after finding his breath.

Brigid’s eyes were sparkling, sharing his amusement. “Just putting it out there.”

There was an honesty about Brigid, that Matt found desperately appealing. As colleagues, they didn’t seem to play games.

Brigid interrupted his thoughts. “So don’t you think the imminent arrival of my lobster is going to distract me from the fact that you didn’t answer my earlier question,” she said, as she downed another oyster.

“I left because I was getting to the point where I was angry at the world,” said Matt, ?“and I wasn’t liking who I was becoming. I realised there was only a finite number of soldiers I could treat and see the kind of injuries that humans can inflict on each other. There was only a finite amount of bad news I could break and still be myself.”

Matt found himself worrying about Brigid’s possible reaction. Some of what he was sharing was a weakness that he had barely even articulated to himself.

Her expression was serious, as she leaned in, “Looks like you left at the right time then.”

Matt must have looked taken back, because Brigid put out her hand to cover his. “Knowing when to leave is how you survive the intense jobs, like yours. I, for one, am glad you had the self-preservation to leave before you hated all medicine. Now our patients can benefit from your skills.”

Brigid’s calm understanding of Matt’s story unleashed something tight in his chest. He had lived with that tightness, for so long, he hadn’t even been aware of it. The guilt of walking away had embedded in him, deeply and painfully.

They ate the rest of their meal in surprising relaxation. Matt waited for the desert menu and watched the waiter walk away before he asked, “So are the oysters working yet?”

There was a pause and then Matt felt Brigid’s toe run along the curve of his calf, through the cotton of his pant leg.

She gave him a lazy sensual smile and said, “I think we’ve already covered the fact that I don’t need any extra reasons to want you.”

“Cheque please!”

Brigid lowered her voice, “Just a few things. One, I still want my desert. The deserts are excellent here. Two, we’re over an hour from home and I’m a little old for sex in the backseat.”

The idea of having Brigid in the backseat of his Range Rover, gave Matt a blast of heat. However, he tried to keep his mind on the rest of what she had said.

“Two things,” he replied. “One, I’m sure they do take-away deserts. Two, correct me if I’m wrong but this is the dining room of a resort and I’m pretty sure they have beds here.”

“Expensive date,” Brigid commented with a raised eyebrow. “First the seafood lunch and then a room in one of Australia’s most expensive hotels.”

“Didn’t your mother teach you not to discuss money in social situations?” Matt teased. “Anyway, I’m lucky enough to be able to afford your expensive tastes. So can you get someone to watch Moby?”

“I offered to pay for the lunch, the resort is all you and I have indulgent neighbours who can take care of the dog.”

Matt found the resort to be very accommodating, although he supposed that booking a twelve hundred dollar-a-night room brought a lot of helpfulness.

A bellhop carrying two chocolate mousses on a tray, led Brigid and Matt along a well-manicured path through the surrounding gardens, fragrant with exotic scents. Matt held Brigid’s hand in his own, his body humming with desire. The sight of the room, designed with decedent sex in mind and complete with a four-poster bed and champagne, had Matt pressing a fifty into the bellhop’s hand with unseemly haste.

When Matt turned around, Brigid was checking out the rest of the stand-alone pavilion. “Very glamorous. We have an inside/outside bath, and our own spa and plunge pool.”

“My calculation has us leaving the table twenty minutes ago, so we have forty minutes to justify us booking a room,” Matt joked, or half joked, as Brigid walked towards him.

He immediately sensed a crunch in his plans, when Brigid slowed down and sat on the cream leather sofa. She reached for the silver platter containing the chocolate mousse.

“Matt, I think you have under-estimated how much I wanted to finish my meal on a perfect, light-as-air mousse,” she said, as she delicately and deliberately twisted her spoon and with agonizing slowness brought the chocolate to her mouth.

“Can I have a bite?” Matt hated the slight break in his voice, but damn her mouth was distracting. Brigid held out the spoon, as he sat beside her. However, Matt moved his head around it, and gently bit and then licked the base of her neck.

“I’m a guy and we like savoury things. So a woman always tastes better than chocolate.”

Brigid’s hands weren’t so steady, as she put the desert down.

“Turnabout is fair play,” she said, as she begun unbuttoning his shirt.

The hands, which he had seen work so efficiently at accident scenes, proved just as adept in dealing with his shirt. Matt remained pliant. He enjoyed watching Brigid get close, as she worked his shirt from his shoulders and wrists. Once it was off, she put her mouth to his chest and flicked his nipple with her tongue. Matt had to work hard to keep his body relaxed, as the pressure built behind his zipper.

“Not a bad taste,” Brigid said. “But I’m a girl, so I like a bit of sweetness with my man.”

Matching words to action, Brigid dipped her fingers in her desert. Matt’s skin stung with the arousing sensation of the cold of the mousse and the heat of her mouth.

The provocation was intense but Matt decided to allow Brigid to play. After she removed the final bit of chocolate from his chest, with a leisurely swipe of her tongue, he picked her up and hitched her hips flush to his, before depositing her on the large four-poster bed.

This time, Brigid seemed unwilling to concede control of the pace. Using her strong legs, she brought him down on the bed beside her and manoeuvred herself on top of his body. Matt couldn’t restrain a groan as his erection settled in the soft hollow between her thighs.

This was not going to be slow, controlled or restrained lovemaking Matt realised as Brigid quickly shoved his pants and underwear to mid-thigh. Obviously, not wanting to lose her position on top, Brigid pushed the wisp of her panties to the side.

All barriers removed, Brigid protected Matt with latex and sank down, taking him into her warmth.

The sex felt strangely elicit with both of them still half-dressed in the anonymity of the hotel room but the words she whispered in his ear, as she rode him, were deeply personal. “Since we first kissed all I’ve thought about is being with you. And it’s even better than I imagined.”

With those words, Matt felt his erection harden further inside her. He could no longer be satisfied with the pace Brigid was setting. He rolled her under him and quickened his thrusts. Braced on his arms above her, all his senses were completely focused on this woman. The previous feeling of anonymity, dissolved into something deeply emotional. She was beautiful, uninhibited and flushed with arousal. Even below him, she moved her hips to meet his thrusts.

Their bodies strained together and Matt saw Brigid’s eyes dilate in a wave of pleasure, as she came and pulled him over the precipice into bliss.

Hours later, Matt lazed in the outside bath in their very private walled garden with Brigid’s back to his chest. The scent of night-flowering jasmine filled the air as they luxuriated in the warm deep water. Massive in scale, the bath had jacuzzi jets sending bubbles to the surface.

Brigid reached her hand above her head to touch his cheek. “Great food, great sex, and now this. Matt, all other weekends are going to seem positively pallid in comparison,” she said, satisfaction evident in her tone.

“Yeah, well, it’s set a pretty high bar for my own happiness.”

Matt’s words might have seemed to be light flirtation, but only he knew the very real truth of them. To distract Brigid from such a revelation, he grabbed a bar of fragrant soap and ran it along the curve of her breast.

The sound of her approval was almost a purr. He had thought himself almost fully sated with Brigid’s body, but the tremble in her thighs, bracketed by his own, had his cock nudging her behind.

“Really?” she asked, obviously noticing.

“Really,” he confirmed.

Despite his arousal, he was happy to take his time. There was pleasure to be found in the languid leisure of their moments together.

“I’m officially spoilt now,” said Brigid. “You’ll always have to be my personal washer.”

“I’m thinking we can keep coming back here, just for the bath,” said Matt.

“I might not have seen the bill before you handed over your credit card, but I do know a few weekends here could easily lead to bankruptcy,” Brigid joked.

“Darling, you’ve seen my house. I paid cash for that. So it would take more than hotel bills to bankrupt me.” Matt gently bit, her ear, “Hey, are you using your psych rotation tricks on me, to find out all my secrets?”

“It’s called intellectual curiosity. Or just plan nosiness, where I come from,” Brigid said.

The thing was Matt believed her; there was nothing grasping about her. She was one of the very few people with whom he could feel comfortable talking, even teasing, about his wealth.

“If you can talk, I must be doing something wrong,” Matt said, as he ran his hand down her smooth stomach.

Matt revelled in the flinch he felt, as he played with the soft folds between her legs. He took the white washcloth, which had been so intricately folded, and brought it down to add to her pleasure. Both his hand and the texture of the washcloth soon had Brigid twisting in his arms. A wet, naked, slippery woman, humming then pleading her desire, had Matt gritting his teeth in an effort to hold back. He got his reward when she fractured, almost levitating in orgasm.

The next morning, Matt and Brigid walked hand in hand down to the resort marina. Matt had to admit to himself, when he called the resort concierge to book the snorkelling, this was an attempt to break out of the bubble of intimacy he and Brigid seemed to have wrapped themselves in.

Last night, after another bout of athletic sex, they had ordered room service and curled up on the couch with a movie. Matt had not realised that the advantage and danger of staying in a resort, was that he got to wake-up with Brigid in his arms.

The contentment he had felt in that moment of waking had been enough to trigger a second-guessing panic in Matt. The affair was supposed to be only long enough to slate his sexual need. It was definitely not supposed to open him up emotionally. Matt had kept that thought in mind, as he had untangled himself from Brigid’s limbs and called upon the concierge to create a day of distraction.

“Ahoy there,” a call, brought Matt out of his musing. Standing next to a shiny white cruiser was a boy in his early twenties. He looked like he had just stepped out of a Ralph Lauren ad, so sharply pressed was his uniform, so blond was his hair. Matt wasn’t sure he liked the look of appreciation in the young man’s eyes, as he took in Brigid.

“Welcome to the Lady Blue. My name is Jason and I’ll be your first mate,” he said, before offering his hand to help Brigid hop on the boat. Feeling an unfamiliar surge of jealousy, Matt put his hand on Brigid’s hip, in a clear gesture of possession. Looking at Brigid, Matt could hardly blame the younger man for the lapse. She was dressed in the clothes sent up from the resort shop, at Matt’s request. The clothes were more revealing than she would wear in her normal life, short white shorts and a floating transparent kaftan, over a brief multi-coloured bikini. Matt had gotten lucky, as he had been provided with board-shorts and a t-shirt in his size.

“Seeing as you booked the whole boat, we can get going as soon as you’re ready,” Jason said. At Matt’s agreement, the boat took off, over the sparkling crystal waters of the Outer Reef.