Free Breathless for You: Outback Skies, Book 1 by Lexxie Couper Page A

quickly.”
    “Tash.”
    “Fix your clothes up, Doc,” she said as she began walking away from him and the wing. “We’re going to be airborne…”
    The rest of the sentence died on her lips as a tsunami of giddy blackness crashed over her. She staggered sideways, her feet like lead, her limbs the same. Oh no…
    Her vision blurred.
    Dammit, she was so tired. Tired and weak and—
    Two arms wrapped around her. Pulled her close to a hard body.
    “I’ve got you, babe,” she heard Matt murmur through the foggy blackness of complete and utter exhaustion. “I’ve got you.”
    She slumped against him. Didn’t fight or protest when her feet were lifted from the ground and her body cradled against Matt’s chest. Couldn’t fight. She didn’t have the emotional or physical strength. “This doesn’t…” she slurred, incapable of opening her eyes. Oh man, she’d never felt so drained. “This doesn’t change anything.”
    He may have chuckled. He may have told her to shush. He may have kissed her temple. She wasn’t sure. Her brain, along with her body, had finally succumbed to the toll of her numerous asthma attacks and shut down. Defeated.
    The last thing she remembered was nestling her head beneath his chin, drawing his distinct scent into her lungs and thinking she’d never been happier…or sadder.
    And then all there was were dreams of soaring through the clouds, of screaming out to Matt as he plummeted through the sky, of black smoke and billowing flames and sirens and Matt’s fingers slipping through hers as they spun through a never-ending blue emptiness.
    And then there wasn’t even that.

Chapter Six
    The warm heat kissing her face and eyelids dragged Tash up from the void of sleep. Opening her eyes, she squinted at the golden ball of heat sitting low on the far horizon.
    Sun.
    Light.
    Heat.
    What time was it?
    Twisting on the quilted blanket spread out on the ground beneath her—one of Jen’s?—she pushed herself into an upright position and swung a look around.
    The King Air B200 sat silent a good fifteen feet or so from where she sat, bathed in soft dawn light. To the right of the plane, three kangaroos fed on the sparse green shoots of grass in its shadow.
    “They’ve been there for a while.”
    Tash startled at the sound of Matt’s low murmur beside her. The memory of collapsing in his arms a lifetime ago, of telling him that she was leaving, of telling him she loved him, slammed into her, and her heart skipped a beat.
    He sat on the blanket to her left, fully dressed, a strip of white bandaging wrapped around his forehead, his elbows resting on his bent knees as he gazed at the family of roos eating beneath her plane’s wing.
    Unable to find a word to say, she studied his profile.
    A slow smile curled his lips. She couldn’t tell if it was sad. “They were there when I woke this morning. Didn’t jump away when I got up to stretch.” He flicked her a quick look, his sunglasses hiding his eyes—his emotion—from her. “By the way, I’ve come to the realization that while I love sleeping with you curled in my arms, I’d rather do it in a bed and not on the ground out in the middle of the Outback after surviving a rather dramatic landing.”
    Tash opened her mouth.
    Still, words refused to come, damn it.
    Before she could make some kind of sound, he was smiling at the kangaroos again. “They’ve been munching on the grass for close to an hour now. It’s been therapeutic watching them.”
    “Matt…”
    His name. Uttered on a husky croak. That was it. Nothing else. It was something, at least.
    He turned back to her again, moving his whole body this time until he faced her completely, elbows on his knees, sunglasses-concealed eyes directed at her and only her. “I know what you’re trying to do, Natacha.”
    She sucked in a swift breath, not just at the serious tone in his voice, but the compassion as well. “Matt,” she repeated.
    “I get it,” he went on. “It took me a