“You going to have a go? It’s like heaven.”
Hell, yeah.
He grunted and stuffed the camera back into his pack. He needed more than a shower—he needed a bucket of bloody ice. Brandt handed her the gun, still not meeting her eyes. “Wait here. Keep an eye on the plain.”
Brandt edged past her, trying his damnedest not to make contact.
* * *
Dalilah fingered the weapon in her lap, her hair drying quickly into a mass of thick curls around her shoulders. She jumped as something touched her bare foot. Looking down, she was startled to see an oddly shaped mouse with a long nose like a trunk. She smiled—elephant mouse. More of the strange little creatures peeped out, scurrying suddenly over the ledge on which she sat. One started to drink from a tiny puddle of water that had dripped from her hair.
As she watched the mice, she noticed red ants attacking a writhing insect struggling to escape, while along a deep crevice in the rock more ants bustled back and forth in a straight line ferrying gelatinous white eggs.
It struck Dalilah that the bushveldt on the micro level was as violent and intense as on the macro level. Life. Sex. Birth. Death. A constant fight for survival.
Looking up, she saw vultures dropping from the sky in the distance, and she thought of the wild dogs ripping apart the impala, the baby elephant being dragged to muddy depths by the crocodile. The crazy bull elephant. The dead leopard and motherless cub. She was a part of it all, living in the moment.
Alive.
Vital.
More so than she’d ever felt in her entire life. More than she’d felt in New York.
She thought of Haroun and immediately her head began to hurt.
Dalilah leaned forward around the rock, checking to see if Brandt was almost finished. Her breath caught in her throat.
He was still under the waterfall, naked. And clearly physically aroused.
Her pulse began to race. Unable to tear her gaze away, Dalilah watched Brandt reaching for the shampoo. He squeezed some into his hand and worked up a soapy mass of bubbles with which he washed his hair, his biceps flexing his lion tattoo as he washed his hair and lathered the soap down his arms. Then his hands worked over his washboard abs, going lower to soap the dark blond hair between his legs. The size of his arousal was startling, his bare thighs deeply tanned, rock-solid.
A wild white heat seared into her belly and a desperate desire rose in Dalilah to straddle him, fill herself with him, press her breasts and belly against that solid, lean torso.
He stilled suddenly, as if he sensed he was being watched.
Slowly, his head turned, and he caught her eyes. Panic sliced through Dalilah. She couldn’t swallow, breathe. Couldn’t hear, could barely see as her vision narrowed onto him.
He held dead still, his eyes pale slits as he met her gaze for several long, slow beats. Then slowly he turned, continued washing.
She let out a whoosh of air and sat back against the rock, her cheeks flame-hot, her hands shaking. What had just happened here?
Embarrassment shot through her.
When he returned he was dressed. He held out his hand for the gun and said, “Your stuff is dry. Go change back there. Call me when you’re done and I’ll give you a dry splint.” His voice was hard, ice-cold. Emotionless.
She opened her mouth to speak, mortified by what had transpired between them. By the raw need awakened in her own body.
“Brandt, I...” Her voice came out hoarse, then caught in her own throat.
He turned away, hefting the pack up onto his shoulders before she could manage to finish her words.
“Sun goes off like a light switch around six-thirty—we’re running out of time.” He shrugged the pack onto his back, buckled it up tight. “We need to get up onto that plateau and find a place to hole up for the night before dark, or we won’t live till dawn.” Then he met her gaze, paused. “And you won’t live to see that wedding of yours.”
Dalilah swallowed. It was a harsh reminder, a snipe at her—or himself. She wasn’t sure, but it made her feel small and humiliated. And angry. She wasn’t the only one turned on here. And he had no idea what it felt to feel that kind of sexual attraction and to have never been able to act on it.
Chapter 11
The sky was a riot of violent pinks and the evening sun was sinking fast in a giant orange ball to the horizon. Already Brandt could feel the cool fingers of the coming night in the air as they traveled along the rim of the cliff. He began to move faster over the scrubby, rocky ground hoping he hadn’t made a mistake, praying the old airstrip was here somewhere.
Relief washed through him when he caught sight of what used to be a wooden arch that marked the entrance to the airfield. The old customs building—essentially a one-room square—stood in ruins in the middle of empty scrubland not far from the old archway. As they neared, Brandt saw that burned and blackened rafters were all that remained of the thatched roof. Coppery-orange streaks from mud and rain stained the sides of the once-whitewashed walls. Windows and doors were long gone. But it had been built from brick and the four walls stood solid. It would keep them safe from night predators.