Chapter 31
CHAPTER 31
Ash
I was having such pleasant dreams. Petal was rubbing up against my leg and I was stroking her. Her fur felt a little different in my dream though, coarser, not as smooth and silky, but it still felt good. I began to wake up, drifting from unconsciousness to semi-consciousness, to full consciousness, and when I did, I was still stroking Petal. I slowly raised my head. The pillow I was lying on was very uncomfortable, and my leg felt trapped between something heavy, yet weirdly familiar. But when I raised my head fully, the true gravity of my situation was revealed.
“Morning,” Max said casually, staring up at the ceiling.
I had been using Max’s chest as a pillow, not to mention stroking a little patch of his chest hair.
“Sorry.” I pulled my hand away quickly and he smiled.
“Not a problem, I enjoy being called Petal.”
“Seriously?” I asked.
“When did you start talking in your sleep?” He turned his head towards me.
“Don’t know.” I pulled the duvet back and looked down at my leg. It was threaded through Max’s. He bent his knee and I pulled my leg out and apologized once more for having slipped it between his.
“We used to sleep like this,” he said, sitting up and turning his back to me as he swung his legs off the edge.
“Like octopuses,” I said, a memory coming back to me.
“Exactly.”
That’s what we’d called it. Going full octopus, when every single one of our legs and arms were tangled up in each other.
“So corny,” I said, feeling slightly embarrassed by our childhood phrases that now sounded so na?ve and ridiculous.
“Corny but cute,” he said, standing up and raising his arms above his head in a stretch.
My jaw dropped on the floor. Exaggeration, it didn’t drop on the floor, but when had he gotten so many muscles? They rippled as he stretched his arms, muscles that basically begged to have a hand run over them. I quickly sat up and climbed out of the bed.
“What time are we leaving for the next location?” I asked, trying to steer us away from being tangled up with each other and back to business. But it was hard to focus on work when he’d just turned to face me, shirtless, and was now stretching his chest.
“At ten.” He hung down from the waist, put his hands on the floor and started bobbing up and down.
“What are you doing?”
“My morning stretches.”
“You do morning stretches?” I asked, not hiding the amusement in my voice.
“I like to keep supple,” he said, swinging from side to side. The word “supple” made my heart race a little, not in a comfortable way.
What was he keeping supple for, and why? And just how supple was he?
“And you?” he asked.
“And me what?”
“What new little things do you do now that I don’t know about? Besides talking in your sleep.”
“I try to meditate sometimes,” I said.
“With that racing brain of yours?” He smiled at me.
“I went through a patch where I was struggling to sleep, on account of said racing brain, and my doctor told me to try meditating, so I went to some classes and sometimes I try and meditate.”
His smile grew. “Ash, the meditator.”
“Max, the stretcher.” I pointed at him. His arms were up in the air again and he was swiveling his body from side to side, various muscles rippling.
“So many things have changed,” he said, coming to the end of his stretches. We stood and looked at each other, the large bed dividing us. “But so many things have stayed the same too.” He gazed at me meaningfully. The gaze was loaded, but it was way too early for loaded gazes and muscles.
“How’s your snake bite?” He pointed and I looked down.
“Seems fine.” I rubbed on the plaster to see if I could feel any pain. “Truthfully, I’m a little embarrassed about last night.”
“You were bitten by a snake and thought you were dying!”
“But I was rather dramatic, wasn’t I?”
He chuckled. “I would have probably acted the same way.”
“You’re just saying that to be nice, meanwhile Bongani is probably going to laugh with the other rangers over this, telling them how I rolled on the deck screaming that I didn’t want to die and I wanted to swim in the Maldives and—” I cut myself off quickly. I should not have gone there, and I knew it the second I saw the look on Max’s face.
“Have you really never had good sex?” he asked, walking round the bed towards me.
“No!” I held out my hand to block his approach. “I didn’t mean it like that at all.”
“Then how did you mean it?”
“Not in the way you think I meant it,” I blasted back.
“I don’t know, Ash. A statement like that doesn’t exactly seem to have another meaning. It’s a pretty clear, definitive statement.”
“I meant lately. Lately . Recently. Not never. Never would be ridiculous.” I forced a laugh. It sounded fake and stupid and— why the hell had I done that? I changed tactics.
“Max, I have a lot of work to do today. I’m already seriously behind, so I cannot talk about this now. In fact, I cannot talk about this ever, and especially not with you.” He stopped walking, but didn’t erase that smile from his face.
“I would never want to keep you from your work, Ash.” His words totally contradicted the look in his eyes, just like my words had totally contradicted the feeling that was rising up inside me. This is exactly what I’d come here for at 3 a.m. But in the sober light of morning, after a dramatic snake bite or two, I was not so sure this was a good idea anymore. He continued his approach, walking slowly and deliberately. His walk said man on a mission . Shit, I knew exactly what mission he was on right now.
“You said never last night.”
“Yes, well, people say strange things when they think they’re dying.”
“Like that they’ve never had an orgasm either?”
“I . . . I . . .” I couldn’t get the words out, because Max had stopped his approach, and was now standing right in front of me. God, why did he have to be so good-looking? I blamed all of this on the fact that he looked the way he did. A man had no right to look this good, ever. It was unfair. Women stood no chance with a man like this, standing there with all those muscles and bare chest and eyes . . . eyes that ate you alive.
“You what?” he asked.
I shook my head, drowning in this cruel and unusual sexual spell he was casting over me. If I didn’t swim to the surface now, I feared I would get sucked right under . . . him.
“I have to work, Max.”
He took a step back, and I had this irrational urge to grab him by his hair and pull him back.
“Fine. But don’t think this conversation is over, Ash.” He took another step back, and with each step, the spell seemed to dissipate ever so slightly.
“Because this is something that we are . . .”
He paused, smiled, and then looked at me with the most sexy, filthy look I think I have ever been looked at with before. My entire body felt like it had been set on fire.
“. . . coming back to this.”
Oh God!
“Uh . . . right.” I scrambled for my slippers on the floor. “I need to find my . . .” I swung my head around, scanning the room, looking anywhere but at him, because if I did, I feared that my clothes might accidentally come off.
Fuck, too much coming.
“I have to go now,” I declared loudly, and then didn’t even bother with things like slippers, and made a run for it.
He gave me a small wave as I went and just as I was about to exit he called after me one last time.
“And that’s a promise. I assure you.”
I dashed out the door and ran as fast as I could back to my tent. One last look over my shoulder revealed to me that he was standing on the walkway watching me run, all naked-chested and sexy, smoldering eyes and hushed lusty tones.
He was definitely going to bring this up again. He was not going to let this go. Well, in that case, I would simply just have to avoid him for the rest of this journey, and for the rest of my life . . .
Or not. Because right now, my body seriously disagreed with that statement.