‘Don’t mind me.’ She could hear the grin in his voice.
She tried to smile back. To appear as nonchalant as Tama sounded, but her heart was hammering and her lips felt frozen.
She knew this sensation. Kind of. She’d only ever experienced a pale imitation of this, however. Lust, pure and simple.
She didn’t mind. Far, far from it.
She wanted more.
Heaven help her, but she wanted that touch on her thighs without the barrier of clothing, and she wanted it as fiercely as she had ever wanted anything in her life.
‘Now I clip your harness to mine,’ Tama was saying.
‘Like this. And I tell you to put your arms around my neck.’
He was holding her steady. The way he would be holding a patient so that they could both be winched up to a hovering helicopter.
So close Mikki could feel the whole, hard length of Tama’s body.
Could feel a strange, humming sensation that went through the layers of clothing and then skin and muscle to settle in her bones with a liquid warmth so exquisite Mikki had to bite her lip to prevent the escape of a soft, appreciative sigh.
Tama stood very still. Silent. For just a heartbeat too long.
Long enough for the undercurrents to be shining like neon lamps.
There was no way out of this unless Mikki could pull back far enough to see Tama’s face and then say something. Anything. A stupid question about the carabiners linking their harnesses would do the trick. Something that sounded professional enough to diffuse this tension.
Mikki managed the first part of the plan but then the words failed to form and she found herself staring into Tama’s eyes and the tension rocketed up. They were so close.
Way too close. When Tama’s gaze dropped from her eyes to her lips, she knew he was thinking about kissing her. It was like that moment in the diving pool, with the major difference that they were alone here. No audience. Nobody would know.
No way could Mikki produce a single word now. Neither could she move enough to even take a new breath. She didn’t want to break the spell.
She wanted Tama to kiss her.
Any resolutions about avoiding the pull of an attraction that could cost her this career opportunity were relentlessly crushed. There was no way she could resist this man. If he wanted her, she was here. A more than willing partner.
And he did want her. She knew it. Maybe it had always been a matter of ‘when’, not ‘if’, and the moment had arrived.
How long had they been like that? Staring at each other? Not long enough for Mikki to feel a desperate need for a new supply of oxygen but it was long enough to feel like for ever.
Long enough to provide a background where the slamming of a side hangar door had all the effect of a gunshot.
Steve had arrived for work and, as the sound of the metal door closing faded away, their pagers sounded.
It hung between them. That almost kiss.
Like a strand of something solid. A connection Mikki could feel with varying degrees of intensity from that moment on.
So strong to begin with as she climbed into the helicopter with the adrenaline rush of her first callout, having been promoted to second crew member but fading as they arrived at a medical centre an hour’s drive from the city where an eleven-year-old was suffering a life threatening asthma attack.
She would not have expected to notice it with the full on effort of keeping this child alive until they reached the hospital. The aggressive drug therapy they instigated was still not enough and in mid-flight the panicked child went into respiratory arrest.
The back of a helicopter had never seemed so cramped or their supplies so awkwardly packed and hard to access. Mikki was at the head of the stretcher, with her arms around their seated patient, her hands on his small rib cage, helping the exhausted boy in his efforts to expel air. Tama was doing his best to secure a second IV line. They both felt the exact moment the child gave up the struggle to breathe and for just a heartbeat the two medics made eye contact with each other.
The boy needed intubation and Mikki couldn’t stop herself remembering her failure in a situation that had been this urgent. The first time she had been under Tama’s critical evaluation for her clinical skills. They would have to swap positions if Tama was to do this intubation and it would take time they didn’t have if they wanted to save this child.
And there was that connection again. Not remotely sexual. It was deeper. Stronger.
It told Mikki that she didn’t need to move. That he trusted her. That he was here and would assist but this was something she could do. That she needed to do.
He was right on both counts. Five minutes before they landed on the rooftop helipad of the biggest hospital in town, Mikki had secured the tube that would keep the boy’s airway open and she was carefully ventilating him to avoid damaging lungs that were still far from being able to function normally. The paediatric team, including an anaesthetist, was waiting for them in the emergency department and Mikki watched as they adjusted settings on the machine that would take over his breathing, put monitoring lines in place and arranged transfer to the paediatric intensive care unit.
Tama stood beside her and when the admitting team finally nodded their satisfaction at the stability of their patient’s condition, Tama looked down and smiled at Mikki and she could feel the strength of that connection all over again.
‘Shall we go and visit Josh before we head back to station?’
‘Of course.’ Concern for their colleague came back in a rush and Mikki realised what an emotional roller-coaster this day was presenting. No wonder she was feeling a little strange.
Vulnerable.
And no wonder the relief of seeing a smile on Josh’s face brought tears to her eyes. ‘Hey, I’m not dead, Mouse.’
‘You could have been. Thank God the wheel went over your foot and not your head.’
‘He would have been fine in that case,’ Tama growled. ‘Not much to damage at that end, is there, mate?’
Laughter chased away the threat of the silly, feminine tears and then something new got thrown into the emotional cauldron of Mikki’s day.
Pride.
‘You should’ve seen Mouse on this last run,’ Tama told his partner. ‘Intubating a kid in respiratory arrest. Mid-air. Have to say, if she wasn’t heading for war-torn countries in a few months, your job might not be there to come back to.’
‘Hey, I can do a threesome. You wouldn’t get rid of me that easily.’
The nurse who had come in to check Josh’s IV and the attached self-administered pain relief looked up and grinned.
‘Threesome, huh?’ She raised an eyebrow at Mikki. ‘Lucky you.’
‘Yeah.’ Mikki returned the grin, still bursting with pride from Tama’s praise. Feeling closer to both these men than she ever had to any work colleagues.
She loved this job.
She loved them.
For the first time in her life she was exactly where she wanted to be. She belonged.
And then she made the mistake of catching Tama’s gaze, and that strand of connection was like liquid fire. There was nothing professional about this non-verbal communication. It was purely sexual. There would be no ‘threesome’, his look told her. This was between the two of them.
The