To Love, Honour and Disobey

Hours later, still awake, she heard the splotch, splotch, splotch. Recognised it immediately and registered the quickening tempo. It hadn’t rained often on her trip, but when it rained, it really rained. It only took three of the super-sized drops and you were saturated. She shut her eyes and cursed the weather gods. But not even she could leave him out there to drown in warm mud.

She flicked on her torch and unzipped the canvas. ‘Seb. Get in here.’

He was only a few yards away and already sitting up, muttering beneath his breath.

‘Come on, hurry up.’

He was in sooner than she would ever be ready for. His big frame took up the bulk of the space and he stuffed his sleeping sheet in too.

‘Damn.’ With one swift movement he whipped his shirt up over his head.

‘What are you doing?’

He tossed the tee into the corner. ‘What does it look like?’

‘You’re…’ Oh, my. He was amazing. She remembered the muscles—back then she’d been amazed too, had wondered how a man who spent so much of his life in a suit got muscles like those. But now he was even leaner, his body even more defined. The six-pack was rock-hard and her fingertips begged to trace the shape of the muscles in his arms.

‘Taking off my wet clothes, yes.’

He was undoing his shorts, his big hands working smoothly. She remembered the feel of them on her. How close he’d pulled her to him. The heat of the night and the beat of the music. The madness that had swept over her, making her sigh yes, yes, yes.

‘You know there are scorpions around—you might get bitten,’ she snapped.

He looked amused, took his time about peeling off his shorts and revealing the brief boxers beneath. ‘I might get bitten by something a lot bigger than one of those.’

She flicked the torch off.

‘Hey.’ He reached across and flicked it back on. ‘I want to find my sleeping bag, you know.’ He chuckled. ‘You wouldn’t want me making a mistake and getting into the wrong one, would you?’

She looked at the way his eyes were dancing; the old Seb shone out at her—the joker, the tease. He made it too easy, so much fun. Oh, yeah, she and every other woman on the planet could do nothing but say yes to that smiling good humour.

She curled her legs up under her big sloppy tee and dived into the silk liner of her sleeping bag. Boiling already.

As she stared up at the roof of the tent, her legs drawn up, the silence was agony. She could hear every rustle. Her own breathing was too loud, too fractured. How the hell was she going to sleep when her whole body was wired? It was as if he was this great source of power that made her hum when he got within ten feet. Now within one foot she was just about floating off the ground hoodoo-voodoo style.

She closed her eyes and counted as she breathed, trying to think of something—anything—but him. But as the rain pelted down the futility of it got to her and she started to laugh. Once she started, she couldn’t stop.

And he laughed too. Deep and rich and loud. That wonderful warm sound sliced through her tension, freeing her to feel a weird kind of relief. She loved the sound of his laughter.

And then suddenly she was filled with tension again. That stupid yearning as she remembered hours of rolling and laughing with him in what she’d thought had been the affair of a lifetime.

She sobered completely. ‘Did you have to come all the way to Africa, Seb?’

‘Yeah,’ he sighed, sounding as if he regretted it as much as she. ‘I did.’

Chapter Three

WHEN Ana opened her eyes Seb was sprawled next to her, taking up far too much of the tent to be fair. She was cramped up between him and the top of her pack. And from the sound of his regular breathing, he was still asleep. Carefully she rolled towards him, leaned a fraction closer to study his face in a way she wouldn’t dare when he was conscious and could catch her. But stealing a look now could do no harm.

Wrong, because there was his scent, curling around her—the suddenly familiar heady scent of Seb. How could she have forgotten that? Her heart thumped in her chest. Tension mixed with something else as she remembered sensations she’d forced from her memory months ago. He had stubble on his jaw—she remembered the feel of that beneath her fingers, tickling her stomach, gently abrading her upper thighs…

She breathed out. Don’t go there—

But his lips were full and she remembered how they’d felt, how they’d drawn everything from her. She looked down from them. His chest was free of the silk sleeping liner, his shoulders broad and bared and so incredibly muscular. Every cell in her tightened at the sight. He was still the most handsome man she’d ever known.

‘Ana.’ It was the tiniest whisper but the husky note plucked deep within her.

Slowly she turned her attention from his torso to his eyes. A hint of drowsiness lingered, but something else glinted in their depths. A seriousness. He knew she’d been looking—all too hungrily.

For an instant neither moved.

‘I’m on breakfast duty.’ She was too close. Her fault. She yanked on her shorts and grabbed her bikini top. She’d slip it on under the sloppy tee behind a tree or something. Just as he sat up she escaped, ignoring him when he called her name again.

But she trembled as those senses she had thought had been dulled roared back into life: sight, smell, sound, touch.

Taste. She ached to taste.

How could she still want to? How could she when she knew getting close like that before had meant nothing to him and everything to her? When she’d been through something so terrible because of her affair with him? How was it possible?

But her body wasn’t listening to her brain, wasn’t interested in those memories. No, the muscles were remembering something else. The weight, the sensation, the pleasure that his body had pulled from hers haunted her now. Her body yearned for it again. Uncaring of what the consequences had been before.

She walked to the heart of the campsite where Bundy already had the fire going and the billy boiling. She poured a cup of tea and drank it hot and black, wincing at the burn on her lips and the roof of her mouth. The superficial pain was a good reminder—that she didn’t need any more of the real kind.

Breakfast was over in a rush. She didn’t look at Seb. Her muttered ‘thanks’ barely audible when she saw he’d packed up the tent and had her pack ready alongside his.

The Jeeps arrived to take them to the rim of the Ngorohgoro Crater. She jumped up from the grass and walked towards them, but Seb was beside her before she’d taken two paces. His eyes danced as he tossed everything of theirs into the back.

Ana fidgeted, longing to fall back on her old defence—to run. But here there was no escape—not when he held the door and then climbed in right beside her.

The road was the most appalling surface she’d ever been on. Craters instead of tracks, cavernous potholes, mud dried harder than concrete all combined to jerk the Jeep from side to side and had them all suspended in the air above their seats several times. Seb simply reached up above and held onto the frame of the Jeep, and put his other arm around Ana, pulling her into his side, steadying her. But she’d have been better off bumping against the steel frame, because he felt harder, more solid than any metal framing.

Finally they got to the campsite near the top of the crater rim. The Jeep pulled up and they spilled out. Tomorrow they’d go in and see the wildlife. Ana could hardly wait—she had some live lion feed to toss over the side.

Seb stretched the cramps out and watched Ana walk a distance towards the lounge facility. He couldn’t stop walking after her as he saw her take off her tee shirt. Wearing just a bikini top, with low-slung cotton shorts, her incredible body was open to view. How could she possibly think those legs were too long?

He lengthened his strides, took them faster, reached for her arm and turned her. Her cheeks were lightly flushed. The blue of her eyes shone bright and deep and she watched him as slowly, deliberately, he looked down her length.

‘What is that?’ He cleared his throat. Hadn’t realised he was hoarse.

‘What?’

He pointed a finger at her belly button. ‘That.’

‘Oh.’

He watched with masculine pleasure as the colour deepened under the skin of her cheeks. ‘A navel piercing.’

Yeah, he knew that, but it felt damn good to see her react to him like that—knowing she still felt something too. Because his body was going out of control. ‘When?’