Swept Away By The Seductive Stranger

Felicity pressed her hand to her mouth, a hot spike of concern needling her. ‘I was worried something was going down. You were gone so long.’

‘I stuck around and helped them stabilise him for transport.’

‘Of course.’ They’d have wanted to have everything as controlled as possible before they loaded him on the chopper to avoid any chance of midair deterioration. ‘What are his chances, do you think?’ she asked, folding her arms.

‘I don’t know. He’s not very stable at the moment. It’s a forty-minute chopper flight to Dubbo hospital and by that time he’ll be about ninety minutes post–cardiac tissue injury. He’s inside the window, so fingers crossed, with some tertiary management he should be okay. I’ll check on him when we get into Adelaide tomorrow.’

Felicity nodded. ‘I guess we’re going to be kind of late into Adelaide.’

‘I guess we are. Although Donald reckons they’ll be able to make up a lot of the time.’

‘I’m in no hurry,’ she said, and gave him a smile because she could stay on this train and look at him for a decade and it probably still wouldn’t be long enough.

He smiled back, his gaze locking with hers. ‘Neither am I.’

There was silence for a beat or two while they just stood and smiled at each other in some weird moment of shared intimacy as only two people who’d been through such a high-stakes ordeal could.

The train moved forward unexpectedly and jostled him inside the compartment, bringing him a step closer. He ducked his head down to glance out the window. ‘Looks like we’re off.’

‘Yes,’ Felicity said, as she half turned to find the darkened station platform appearing to slowly move.

When she turned back he was staring at her with heat in his eyes. They’d been flirty earlier but now they were just plain frank. His gaze dropped to her mouth as he took a step towards her. Her breath hitched. The atmosphere thickened and pulsed with promise.

She’d resigned herself to this not happening but suddenly it was on again.

‘So...’ She swallowed to moisten her suddenly parched throat as he loomed big and broad and close enough to reach out and touch. ‘Not a technical writer, huh?’

He cocked an eyebrow. ‘Not a public servant?’

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t want to be regaled with a dozen different medical stories or be canonised as some kind of saint.’

‘You’re forgetting about the lectures on the state of the health-care system.’

She laughed. ‘Those too.’

Felicity supposed she should ask him more about his medical background but right now she didn’t care. Not with her pulse fluttering madly at her temple and warmth suffusing her belly. ‘You were great out there.’

‘So were you.’

‘Not quite what I expected would happen tonight.’

He smiled. ‘Me neither.’ And then, ‘Are you...okay? It was kind of intense. The adrenaline was flowing.’

‘Sure, steady as a rock.’ Felicity held up a hand horizontally. It betrayed her completely by trembling.

‘So I see.’

Felicity glanced from it to him, conscious of the sway of the train. Conscious that she was far away from Vickers Hill.

It emboldened her.

‘That’s not from the accident.’

Her hand was trembling for reasons that were far more primal.

He regarded her for long moments before turning slightly and reaching for the door behind him to shut it. He turned the lock with a resounding click, the noise slithering with wicked intent to all her secret places.

They were truly alone now.

Darkness pressed in on her, the only light entering from the strip at the bottom of the door and the moonlight pushing in through the window. It was enough to allow her eyes to adjust quickly.

Enough to see Callum.

He turned to face her, stepped closer, so close his breath warmed her forehead. He reached for her hand, which had fallen by her side. ‘Maybe you just need to...’ he slid her hand onto his chest, flattening it over his heart, his big hand holding hers in place ‘...grab hold of something solid?’

Felicity dropped her gaze to their joined hands. Each thud of his heart reverberated through her palm, scattering awareness to every cell of her body. She’d never had a one-night stand or done anything so spontaneous. But on a night when she’d been reminded how precarious life could be she needed it.

She needed this. She needed him.

The clickety-clack of the wheels on the track faded. ‘Maybe I do,’ she murmured, the scent from his citrusy cologne filling her senses until she was dizzy with wanting him.

Like a slice of lime after a shot of tequila.

His kiss, when it came, was gentle. So gentle it almost made her cry. It was long and slow and sweet. It was everything she hadn’t known she needed in this moment.

Earlier, if she’d been asked how this would go down, she would have said fast and furious. But this was infinitely better. Burning slow and bright, building in increments that piled on top of the next, making her yearn and ache and want even as it soothed and sated.

His hands slid around her waist. Her arms snaked around his neck. He drew her closer. She lifted up onto tiptoe.

Their hearts thundered together.

When he finally pulled away, they were both breathing hard. His eyes roved over her face, glittering with the kind of fever that also burned in her. What was he looking for?

Permission. Submission?

He had it.

‘I knew you’d taste this good,’ he muttered, the low, husky rumble stroking right between her legs.

His next kiss wasn’t long and sweet and slow. It was hot and fast and dirty. Just as she’d imagined it would be. His lips were firm and insistent, his tongue seeking entry, which she gave him on a greedy moan. His hands slid under her T-shirt, tightening her belly and heating her blood to well past boiling.

She was so damn hot and horny she could barely see. She certainly couldn’t think. All she could do was feel. And surrender.

Her bra snapped open and she gasped and pressed into his palm when his hand cupped a breast.

‘God,’ he murmured against her mouth. ‘You feel good.’

Felicity moaned as his thumb taunted her erect nipple. ‘Don’t stop.’

He did, but only temporarily as he whisked both her T-shirt and bra off. ‘Oh, yes,’ he muttered, as he drank in the sight of her bare breasts, one hand sliding around her back, pulling her closer as he lowered his head to the opposite nipple and drew it deep into the warm cavern of his mouth.

Felicity sucked in a breath, her back arching, her hand sinking into the silky softness of his hair. His mouth tugged relentlessly at the nipple and it was equal parts delicious and dangerous. A tingling between her legs built with every hot swipe of his tongue as if he was licking her there instead.

Just then the train clacked loudly and jostled them apart as it got up to speed. Felicity held on to him, her hands curling around his biceps as their bodies lurched to the movement. His hard thighs bracketed hers, steadying them.

Hell. She’d forgotten she was even on a train. The noise of the wheels on the track and the sway was something she’d quickly become accustomed to.

And nothing outside the havoc of his mouth had registered.

‘How about we get horizontal?’ he suggested, his lips buzzing her neck, his big hands anchored to the small of her back. ‘Before we injure ourselves?’

Felicity laughed at the imagery of them being found by Donald in the morning sprawled on the floor, her still half-naked.

God, this was totally insane.

She couldn’t believe she was doing it. Getting down and dirty in her train compartment with a comparative stranger.

It was exciting and titillating and scandalous and there was nothing she wanted more.

She slid her hands onto his and eased them off her, keeping hold of him as she walked backwards the two paces required to reach her bed. The backs of her thighs hit her mattress and she sat down, looking up at him, their hands still joined.

She eased her legs apart slightly and was thrilled when he stepped between them. He released himself from her grip and cupped her face with both of his hands.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he murmured.

‘You’re not so bad yourself.’ There was a classic beauty to the angle of his jaw, the blade of his cheek, the cut of his mouth.

Lordy, that mouth.

He smiled, his fingers burrowing into her hair. ‘Lie back.’

Felicity shook her head as her gaze zeroed in on his fly, which was, most conveniently, at eye level. ‘Soon,’ she muttered, reaching out to walk her fingers along the thick bulge testing the strength of his zipper.

He sucked in a breath and a dizzying hit of sexual power surged through her system.

‘I don’t think that would be a good idea,’ he said, but the subtle increase in pressure through his finger pads on her scalp betrayed his true desire.

‘You don’t like?’ she asked, blinking up at him with as much innocence as she could muster.

‘Oh, no,’ he said with a shaky laugh. ‘I like. Probably won’t last too long, though. It’s been...a bit of a dry spell.’

Felicity didn’t understand why that titbit of information should make her so happy, but it did. She liked the idea of being the one to break his drought.

He was breaking hers after all.

‘Just a little taste.’ She smiled as she reached for his belt buckle.

He dropped his hands and let her have her way. Triumph pulsed through her system, rich and heady, quickening her heartbeat and tingling at the juncture of her thighs.

Her hands trembled as she undid his belt then popped the button. She glanced at him as her fingers toyed with the zipper tab. He was watching her, his eyes hooded, his mouth full and brooding.

She couldn’t wait to feel it on her again. Her mouth. Her neck. Her breasts.

Lower.

But for now it was her turn. Her mouth.

Felicity’s pulse tripped as she slid the zip down and the fabric peeled back to reveal his impressive girth stretching the limits of his briefs. She looked up at him, her pulse skipping a beat to find him still watching her intently. Locking her gaze with his, she slid a hand up his thigh, inside his underwear and grasped the steely length of his erection.

He shut his eyes and groaned as she pulled it free. The sound was low and needy, sluicing over her like warm rain. His hand slid onto her shoulder and squeezed before his eyes drifted open again.

She made sure he was focusing on her before she transferred her attention to the solid weight of him in her palm and thanked whoever was the patron saint of trains for that strip of light at the bottom of the door allowing her a visual she was never going to forget.

He was big and hard and perfect. Thick and long. And for tonight—what was left of it—hers.

She leaned forward, placed her lips against the rigid perfection of him, kissing him there like he had first kissed her. Slowly and gently, testing things out, discovering his contours and the heady aroma of him, teasing him a little with her light kisses.

It wasn’t until his quad started to tremble beneath her palm that she realised the level of control he was exercising. She glanced at him, seeing it in the taut planes of his face, feeling it in his grip on her shoulder. So she shut her eyes and let him have it all, leaning forward, pleasuring him with her mouth, taking him in as far as she could.

‘Yes-s-s,’ he hissed, sliding both hands into her hair. ‘Yes.’

His gratification spurred her on and she went harder, revelling in the husky timbre of his breath and the utter hedonism of giving oral pleasure to a man she barely knew while she was topless in the privacy of a luxury train compartment.

She felt wild and reckless and completely wanton.

So freaking James Bond.

And she was never going to forget this night as long as she lived.

‘Oh, God,’ he groaned. ‘We have to stop.’

But Felicity barely heard him. She was swept away in the moment, her pulse roaring through her ears.

It wasn’t until he said, ‘Stop,’ again and pulled away that Felicity tuned back in.

‘Sorry,’ he panted. ‘I’m too close...’

His forehead was scrunched, his lips tight. He looked in pain and completely undone, looming over her almost fully dressed, still potently aroused but somehow achingly vulnerable.

He didn’t look like a man who was used to that state of being. His vulnerability hit her hard in the soft spongy spot that was never too far from the surface. She’d give him just about anything right now.

‘What do you need?’

‘To be in you.’ He ducked down and kissed her hard. ‘Now.’

The compartment tilted as the dizzying effects of the kiss continued even after it had finished.

Him in her? Now? That she could accommodate.

She shimmied back on the bed, dragging her yoga pants and underwear off in the process, aware of him watching the jiggle of her breasts with laserlike focus.

‘Well?’ she said as she wriggled to the centre of the bed, her nipples responding blatantly to his unashamed gaze. ‘Am I the only one getting naked?’

‘Nope.’ He grinned, immediately toeing off his shoes and hauling his still-buttoned shirt over his head.

Watching him strip was sexy. Him watching her watch him strip even more so.

Felicity salivated at the perfection of his chest. It was wide at the shoulders, narrow at the waist. The muscles of his abdomen were defined but not excessively. Tanned and smooth, there was only a fine trail of hair trekking south from his belly button.

She wanted to kiss his chest. Smell it. Lick it. Stroke her fingers over the hills and valleys of his abs, trail them between his hips and watch how it turned him on. Feel the weight of it as he pressed her into the bed.

He stripped off his trousers and underwear together, revealing long, lean legs—more athletic than meaty. Before kicking them away he quickly retrieved his wallet from his back trouser pocket and plucked out a foil packet.

‘Condom,’ he said, as he took the two paces to her bed.

Felicity smiled as she let her gaze roam over every inch of his body. He was six feet plus of lean male animal and he was hers. ‘Just the one?’

He put a knee on her mattress, tossing the packet near a pillow. ‘We’ll improvise.’ He smiled.

And then he was lying on his side next to her, his head propped on his hand, his other hand trailing down her neck, through the valley between her breasts, down to her stomach, swirling around her belly button before continuing south all the way down through the soft curls of her pubic hair, stopping just before he reached ground zero.

Felicity’s breath hitched as his finger hovered, taunting her. She doubted she’d last long either if he were actually to touch her.

She groped for the foil packet and thrust it at his chest. His totally freaking awesome chest. ‘In me. Now. Remember?’

He smiled, his finger circling just out of reach. ‘I can play a little first.’

She shook her head. ‘It’s been a while for me too.’

He regarded her for a moment before taking the condom and easing onto his back to roll it on. It was a position Felicity couldn’t resist, taking advantage of his momentary distraction to move on top of him, straddling his hips, his fully sheathed erection sliding deliciously through the slick heat between her legs.

‘God,’ he muttered, his hands drifting up her belly to her breasts. ‘You look magnificent.’

Felicity smiled as she arched her back and rubbed herself up and down the length of him. ‘I feel pretty damn magnificent right now.’

His thumbs brushed her nipples and she shut her eyes, revelling in the heady glow of sexual abandonment for a moment or two.

But it just wasn’t enough.

Her eyelids fluttered open to find him watching her again with an intensity that practically melted her into a puddle. She held his gaze as she leaned forward, tilting her pelvis and grasping his girth. His hands fell to her hips as she guided him to where she was slick and ready.

Where she needed him to be.

The feel of him there, so thick and big, was incredible. His eyes on her as she slowly sank down and he filled her—stretched her—was a whole different level. Felicity gasped as she settled flush against him, leaning forward with outstretched arms, bracing her hands on his shoulders, steadying herself as she took a breath.

‘So good,’ she muttered.

‘God, yes,’ he panted.

And it was. So good. Too good to just sit and do nothing. Too good not to move. Not to flex up and down and back and forth and round and round. Too good not to find a rhythm that was perfect and would drive them both towards a conclusion that had been building between them all night.

Her fingernails curled into his shoulders, his fingers gripped her hips like steel bands as they did just that, staring into each other’s eyes as the tempo picked up, finding a rhythm and an angle that tripped her switch. His fingers slid between her legs again, not teasing this time but going straight to the spot she needed it most and rubbing sure and hard.

Nothing fancy. Just merciless pressure.

‘God, yes,’ Felicity gasped, drumming her feet behind her on the bed, riding him harder, faster as the fabric of her world started to tear from the inside out. Her thighs trembled, her nails dug in a little harder, her belly pulled taut.

Her orgasm hit hard roaring from a tiny quiver to an all-consuming pleasure storm within seconds.

‘Yes,’ he muttered, working her harder, faster, vaulting upright to press his lips to her neck, whispering, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ as she slid her arms around his shoulders and came apart in his arms.

He flipped her on her back then, his forehead pressed into her neck, driving in faster and faster, sustaining her pleasure as he reached his own, groaning long and low into her ear as he came hard, sweat slicking the valley between his shoulder blades, his biceps trembling, her name on his lips as he spent himself inside her until he had no more to give and they both lay panting to the rock and sway of the train.

CHAPTER FOUR

CALLUM WAS EATING breakfast the next morning when Felicity finally put in an appearance. He’d left her sleeping two hours ago when the train had pulled into Broken Hill and woken him. It hadn’t woken her and he’d told a hovering Donald not to wake her for the tour she’d been booked on or for breakfast.

‘Of course,’ he’d said, nodding his head. ‘It was a late one, wasn’t it?’

Callum’s smile had been noncommittal. Little did Donald know just how late it had been. They’d enjoyed two more rounds of ‘inventive’ sex due to lack of protection. He’d only managed two hours’ sleep.

But, then, insomnia had been part of his life for the last two years. He’d learned that lying around in bed, willing himself back to sleep, was counterproductive. Ignoring the tour options, he’d showered and gone through some more of his reading, as well as contacting his ride to let her know to delay her pick-up.

‘Good morning,’ Felicity said as she sat in the empty chair opposite him. Callum had been staring out the window, watching the scenery flash by, as he sipped his third cup of coffee. He had his sunglasses on to deal with the excessive sunlight flooding in through the glass because the view was too good to pass up.

He smiled at her. She looked fresh from the shower in jeans and a T-shirt, her wet hair pulled back into a ponytail low on her nape. An image of her riding him last night, honey-blonde strands flying loose around her bare shoulders, slid into his mind unbidden.

‘It is,’ he agreed. ‘A very good morning.’

A small smile touched her mouth before a blush stole across her cheekbones and she dropped her gaze to the tablecloth briefly before raising it again. ‘You’re kind of chipper for someone who didn’t get a lot of sleep.’

Callum shrugged. ‘Some things are worth losing sleep over.’

‘Absolutely.’ She looked like she was about to say more but one of the wait staff interrupted, filling Felicity’s cup with coffee. ‘About last night...’ she said after they departed, spooning in some sugar and stirring absently.

She seemed wary and unsure suddenly, staring at the circling spoon, reluctant to meet his gaze. Alarm bells rang in his head and his hair prickled at his nape. Was she going to suggest that they make it something more? Was she going to ask for his number? Or a date? Was she going to morph into some kind of clingy, bunny-boiler who wanted some kind of relationship?

Because, as incredible as it had been—and it had been incredible—he just didn’t have time and space in his life at the moment for a romantic entanglement. He was trying to get his life back on track and last night had purely been the inevitable end to a couple of hours of flirting and one massive adrenaline hit.

Hadn’t it?

Hell. He didn’t even know her last name.

‘I don’t...’ She placed her spoon on the saucer and glanced at him. ‘I don’t usually do this kind of thing.’

Callum nodded. There wasn’t one part of him that thought she did. ‘Yeah. I got that.’

‘Not that I think,’ she hastened to add, ‘there’s anything wrong with hooking up. It’s just not...me, you know? Well, of course you know because I’m totally screwing this up in a very unsophisticated way, exactly like I’ve never done this before, but look...I live in this small town where everybody knows everybody else and they’re all in each other’s business and all the guys my age there think of me as Flick so I don’t often get the opportunity to...’

He waited for her to continue but she appeared to have run out of steam. Callum couldn’t figure out where she was going with this. Was the reason she was telling him she was a small-town girl her way of saying her daddy had a gun and he was now part of the family whether he liked it or not?

‘Oh, God, sorry.’ She grimaced, covering her face with her hand before dropping it again and shaking her head. ‘I’m babbling. I swore I wouldn’t babble.’

Callum laughed, which surprised the hell out of him. She really was quite cute when she was flummoxed. ‘It’s fine, don’t worry about it. I’m not judging you and there were extraordinary circumstances last night.’

‘Sure.’ She picked up her cup and sipped, her gaze zeroing in on his. ‘But you and I both know we were heading to bed even before our adrenaline-induced recklessness.’

There was no point denying that one. In fact, he was damn certain they’d have done it more than three times had their flirting not been so catastrophically interrupted.

‘You’re very direct, aren’t you?’ He liked that.

She laughed. ‘Usually yes. Although not so much right now. It’s the nurse in me.’ She glanced out the window for a beat or two before looking at him again. ‘What I’m trying to say—very inelegantly—is that I hope you don’t think...I mean want or expect even...that this is anything more than just last night. Just two strangers on a train, in a...bubble almost. Indulging in something spontaneous. I mean, I like you but...hell, I don’t even know your last name or where you live or what kind of doctor you are or even if you’re going on to Perth.’

Callum opened his mouth to tell her it was okay. He got it. He felt exactly the same way about what had happened between them. About spontaneity. About getting out of his head and just not being himself for a night. But she held up her hand to ward it off.

‘No. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know any of it either. I’d kind of like to keep this whole thing as a big, delicious secret. This...crazy thing I did once that’ll make me smile whenever I think about it. Maybe...’ she smiled ‘...scandalise my grandkids about it one day.’

Grandkids. Of course there’d be grandkids. And kids. With honey-blonde hair and grey eyes. She was young and, despite what she said about the guys in her town, he had no doubt someone would snap her up.

Whereas he couldn’t even look that far ahead.