Page 30 of The Rival in South Africa
Oh,that five a.m. wake-up drumming was the worst. At least this time, I hadn’t woken up to Alex jerking away from me. Instead, he’d had an arm around my waist, his body hard and pressed against me as we started to stretch and grumble.
We had stumbled around, getting our gear ready for the ride and drinking our hot tea. Once I’d had a few sips and moved around enough to wake up, I looked back at Alex, and he gave me a shy smile. It was like a dream. Had that all really happened?
And then he leaned over and kissed me again, and yes, yes it had.
Bundled up in the back of the Jeep, I fell asleep against Alex as we drove into the morning. He carefully nudged me awake when we had our first sighting.
After we snapped photos and Thomas moved us on, Alex leaned toward me, his breath against my ear making me shiver. “Do you think we need to hide this? From everyone else?”
I pushed my lips to the side, thinking. “I don’t see any reason to. I mean, these people are only going to be in our lives for a few more days.”
“Ah, well, I meant when we get back home.”
“Oh.Oh. Oh my god, our mothers are going to be unbearable.”
Alex chuckled next to me. “What, you mean they’ll be proved right, and we’ll never hear the end of it for the rest of our lives?”
“Exactly.”
We bounced along quietly for a moment before I spoke what was on my mind. “I mean…what is this?”
Alex twisted in his seat to look at me fully. “I want to take you on a date when we get back home.”
“A date?” I asked, eyebrows raised.
“A date.” He nodded as the Jeep bounced. “To start.” His eyes darted to me, and a slow smile tugged at his lips. I held his gaze, my own cheeks flushing.
And Alex reached across the seat and tangled his fingers with mine.
* * *
We bumpedalong the road on our afternoon drive. In the backseat, I leaned my head on Alex’s shoulder. Despite literally sitting all day, my stomach was starting to rumble, so I hoped we were getting close to our sunset cocktail location.
So far, we’d seen elephants, giraffes, jackals, hyenas, all sorts of birds, a dung beetle rolling his pile of poo (which was very, very entertaining), and an elusive leopard camped out in a tree, difficult to see despite the lack of foliage.
All in all, quite the day.
Alex kissed the crown of my head and rested his cheek against me. Sitting in the back with him all day had been lovely; lots of hand-holding, our shoulders and thighs pressed together in the cold of the morning, but once the air warmed up and we put the blankets away, it was only my thigh against his. At one point, I’d tucked my left foot under my right leg, letting my knee rest on Alex’s lap, and he’d gotten to learn every single bit of my inner thigh—at least, the appropriate parts. When he got up to the hem of my shorts, I reliably shivered, and he strolled back down again so casually, gazing out the open car into the wilderness.
After a few passes, he let his pinky finger slip under my shorts, meandering along.
I shifted, lifting my head up to rest my chin on his shoulder.
“Just out of curiosity, do you have any condoms?”
The pinky went still. Alex turned to look at me as best he could. “No, I don’t. Do we need some?”
“Well.” I waggled my head. “Monkeys ate my birth control.”
His lips flickered, suppressing a smile. “One only requires birth control if one is having sex.”
“Oh, is that how it works?” I deadpanned. “Good god, I’ve been using condoms wrong this whole time.”
Ah, then he did laugh, that big wide smile that was new and familiar at the same time. “Okay, so we don’t have condoms. Should we try to find some?”
I bit my lip and dipped my chin. “I think we could do other things.”
Alex’s lashes fluttered, and he squeezed my thigh. “I like other things. I like other things a lot.”
