Chapter 12

 

John—Beast, ah to hell with it, she could think of him as John if she wanted to. He’d never know. All she had to do was make certain she didn’t call him it to his face. Not unless she wanted a repeat of their earlier kiss—and Belinda wasn’t exactly sure that was a deterrent. Anyway, she had more important things than their explosive chemistry to think about—like where they were going to sleep.

John had called a welcome halt to their trek into the jungle, saying they had a couple of hours before the sun set. They had enough water to last the night, but finding more would be their first priority in the morning.

Belinda’s feet ached, and she was sure there were at least a couple of blisters from where her borrowed shoes rubbed. She was still grateful. They were a whole lot better than trying to walk in her heels. Her skin was dry from the caked mud covering it, she itched all over from mosquito bites and she was sure there were ants in her hair. To say she would have killed for a shower would be to put it mildly.

She watched as John kicked the rocks from the tiny clearing he’d found, trying to make the ground smoother for them to lie on.

“Don’t bother,” Belinda said. “We can’t sleep on the ground. Every insect and creature that comes out at night will be all over us.”

He stopped and put his hands on his hips. “What are we supposed to do, then? Climb a tree?” He cocked an eyebrow at her, which implied he would be able to climb the tree but she wouldn’t have a hope in hell. Or maybe she was inventing conversations again. It had become a habit over the last few hours because John rarely answered her when she spoke to him.

She shook out the stained sheet she’d taken from their hut. “We make a hammock. It will be cosy, but it’s our safest option.”

“Okay. Timeout. Who do you think you are? Bear Grylls?”

“Oooh, I love that guy. He is so cute. I did a UK chat show with him and he was adorable. But he has a weird obsession with drinking urine. I mean, he filters it through his socks first, but it’s still all kinds of wrong.” She shuddered.

John pinched the bridge of his nose. “Seriously? What are you doing? Where is this all coming from? The bamboo water, the hammock, the white-faced pig things, the flies who lay eggs under your skin? Every time I turn around, you have another piece of information to throw at me. Tell me the truth, right now—where’s this all coming from?”

“Does it matter?” She pointed to one of the many rope-like lianas hanging from a nearby tree. “Cut some of those and test them for strength, will you?”

With an irritated grunt, he did as he was told. Meanwhile, Belinda shook out the sheet, inspected it to ensure it was hole free and folded it in half, lengthwise. By the time she was done, John was back, holding out the jungle ropes. She scrunched the end of the sheet together, wrapped the rope around it, then folded the end of the sheet over the rope coils and wrapped it again to make a tight loop. The last thing they needed was for the sheet to slip free during the night and for them to land on the forest floor.

“Tie this tight.” She handed it to him. “You’re stronger than I am.”

Without a word, he did as she instructed while she repeated the process with the other end of the folded sheet. The resulting hammock wasn’t wide, but it would work. Belinda tried not to think about just how familiar she was about to become with John’s body. She already salivated just looking at the man. How she was supposed to sleep plastered against him, she didn’t know.

Together, they strung the makeshift hammock up between two trees, making sure it was well off the ground but not so high that they couldn’t get into it. The light was fading fast, and Belinda worked faster.

“Cut more ropes, will you?” She pointed to the length of the hammock. “We need one to tie above the hammock, for us to drape the mosquito net over.”

They tied a rope between the trees a couple of feet above their bed, and Belinda threw the tatty mosquito net over it to make a tent. The net was big, covering the hammock with enough spare material for her to tie knots over the tears.

She stepped back to look at her efforts. Ugly, smelly and probably full of germs. But it was practical.

“What about these?” John handed her the last of the lianas.

“Tie those two above the rope with the netting, side by side, but about a foot apart. Then if you could grab some palm leaves to rest on top of them, that would be great. It will give us a little shelter if it starts to rain.”

With a shake of his head—in awe at her genius, she presumed—he helped her tie off the ropes. The light was dim now, and the noise of the forest had amped up several notches. Belinda heard animal sounds she hadn’t heard before the birds fell silent. Owls called to each other; small creatures began to scratch their way along the forest floor; bats squawked above them. The forest had turned sinister with the fading light.

“Better go use the facilities before it gets too dark to see,” John said with a hint of amusement in his voice.

She didn’t see what was funny about it. Belinda didn’t like using the facilities in the jungle. Peeing behind a tree meant baring her bum to the wildlife. Unfortunately, she’d drunk a lot of water and there was no way she could sleep on a full bladder. Still, the forest was looking pretty darn dark. Earlier in the day, John had gone behind another tree at a distance from her, but she didn’t like the thought of losing sight of him in the dark.

“Will you guard me?” Yes. She was that pathetic.

“From what?” His lips twitched. He was playing with her. Teasing her. So now it was okay not to be serious and focused on their mission.

“I’d really like it if you stood in front of me, with your back to me. You can put your fingers in your ears, so you don’t hear anything, but keep your eyes peeled in case something decides to take a bite out of my backside.” There. That should be clear enough for him.

His eyes crinkled and his lips went suspiciously tight. She could have sworn he was trying not to laugh at her. “Put my fingers in my ears?”

“I’d really rather you didn’t listen to me do my business.”

His lips twitched again.

“And don’t look. At me, I mean. Look at the forest.”

He turned from her, but she caught his grin before he managed to hide it again. “Come on. We wait any longer and we’ll both get eaten.” He swatted at his neck. “By more than the mosquitoes.”

They walked behind a giant kapok tree, with its strange roots. The buttress root “walls” were taller than she was and came out from the tree at an angle, making wedge-shaped spaces between them. Belinda pointed to one of the cubicle shapes made by the buttress roots. “I’ll go there. You stand at the entrance.”

“With my fingers in my ears. I know.”

She watched him until he turned his back on her. He made no move to put his fingers in his ears. “Joh—Beast!”

“Fine.” He lifted his hands to his ears.

There was no time to lose. Belinda undid her stolen jeans and, with her back to the tree and her front to John, squatted. And nothing happened. Her bladder was full, but it didn’t want to cooperate. Not while she knew he could be listening. There was only one thing for it. She started to sing. Loudly. And the only song she could remember in that second, was “Row, Row, Row Your Boat.”

John started to turn back towards her. “What the—”

“Don’t look!” she screeched.

He jerked back around. “Why are you singing?”

“I don’t want you to hear. I need cover noise. Put your fingers in your ears and let me get on with it!”

He stuck his fingers in his ears as she began to sing again, but she could have sworn that his shoulders were shaking. Once she was finished, she took a tissue out of her tiny bag and thanked the Lord that she didn’t have to use a leaf to clean up. Then she used a wet wipe to wash up her hands. She was done.

She took a few steps forward and tapped John on the shoulder. He didn’t jump, which made her think he hadn’t blocked his hearing after all.

“I’m done.”

“What a relief.”

“Do you want me to guard you?” Belinda felt it was only polite to offer.

His grin was wide. “I think I’ll manage, Hollywood.” And he sauntered towards another partitioned area under the tree.

Belinda grumbled about men under her breath as she stomped the few feet back to their tiny camp. It wasn’t fair that they could do their business standing and didn’t have to bare their backsides to the world. Belinda had long thought that men would be a whole lot more sympathetic if they were the ones who had to sit down to pee. Let them sit on a public toilet seat and deal with the trauma. That kind of experience softened a person.

While John was gone, Belinda toed off her shoes and shrugged out of her jeans and dress. She hung everything, shoes included, over the rope above the hammock, but under the mosquito net. The last thing she wanted was to wake up to shoes full of bugs.

Wearing only her underwear, she sat in the hammock, under the netting, and used a precious wet wipe to clean off as much dirt as possible while she waited for John. Fortunately, a lot of the mud had dried and was easy to brush off. The rest, the stuff she couldn’t remove with one measly wet wipe, she would have to live with.

Night was falling fast now, and Belinda double-checked that everything of importance was stored safely under the mosquito net. Their makeshift water bottles, or balloons, were hanging off the rope above her, along with her handbag and the plastic water bottles. The rifle was wedged into the ropes holding one end of the hammock up, allowing for easy access should they need it. It was the best she could do. It was cosy, some would say claustrophobically crowded, but she had never been more grateful for her shelter than for anything in her life.

Night hadn’t dropped the temperature any. Her whole body felt clammy with perspiration. She almost wished it would rain so that she could stand in it and wash the salt off her skin. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference, though, because as soon as she was clean, the humidity would make sure she was sweating all over again. Even now, when it was almost fully dark and she could barely see, the heat was stifling, making each breath she took thick with moisture.

She made out the shape of John as he walked towards her, and instantly felt reassured by having him closer. He might be annoying, he might even think she was dumb, but he was still a mountain standing between her and trouble.

“Take your shoes off and I’ll hang them over the rope inside the netting. Your clothes, too. Hopefully they’ll dry out a little before the morning.” She didn’t think so, but she was keeping her fingers crossed. Wearing sweat-soaked clothes was no fun at all.

The shadowed outline that was John stopped dead. “You got undressed?”

“Well, duh. It’s about four hundred degrees and I’d really like my clothes to air out before I put them on again tomorrow. If the mud dried, so I could shake it off, that would be a bonus too.”

“You’re naked?” He sounded strangled.

“I kept my underwear on and my feet are caked in mud, so I’m practically wearing socks.”

He definitely made a strangled noise. “I think it’s best if I sleep out here.”

“J—Beast.” Damn it, she could not get used to calling him Beast. “You can’t sleep out there. It isn’t safe.”

“I’m not sure how safe it is in there with you, either,” he muttered.

And it hit her. She almost laughed. John was worried about sex, when she felt less sexy than she’d ever felt in her life. Even after her valiant effort to clean up, she was streaked with mud and sticky with perspiration. There were bites on every piece of skin that had been exposed to the elements, and leaves in her hair, and in place of brushing her teeth, she’d chewed a piece of gum she’d had stashed in her bag. Yeah, sex was totally on her mind.

“I hate to disappoint you,” Belinda said drolly, “seeing as you are obviously so desperate to get your hands on me, but there’s no way we can have sex in this hammock—even if we wanted to. And trust me, I don’t. Now, if you were offering a shower, that I’d take you up on. But sex, no. Apart from the fact I feel gross, there’s no room in the hammock to get physical. Plus, we’d probably break it if we tried. So, get your backside in here before a jaguar gets you. I promise to keep my hands to myself as best I can, given that we’ll be sleeping squashed together.”

“This is a bad idea.”

“This is a bad situation. We’re making the best of it. Now stop screwing around. You need to get your clothes off or they’ll rub all night and cause you more pain tomorrow. You can’t sleep in clothes that stick to you.”

He muttered a whole string of things she couldn’t catch, but she heard the rustle of material and knew he was undressing. A minute later, something was thrust at her. “Here. My clothes and shoes.”

“I wish we had a flashlight.” Belinda felt her way as she hung his things over the rope above her. “Tomorrow, if we’re still out here, we need to make camp earlier so we can do everything before the sun sets and we can’t see. And we need food. I’m hungry.”

“I want the gun where I can reach it,” John said.

“I put it above us at the head end of the hammock. Please tell me the safety’s on?”

The answer was stony silence, which she took as an affirmative. Once everything was stored, she turned in the blackness, to face the edge of the hammock where John stood. Their surroundings had disappeared in the inky night and the volume of the jungle seemed to have been turned up. There were noises she hadn’t heard during daylight, deeper calls that seemed far more sinister in the dark.

“Come closer,” she ordered him. “Give me your hand and help me get out of here. If you climb on top of me, I’ll suffocate. It’s a better idea if I get out, then you get in and I climb on top of you.”

She heard a strangled groan, which she ignored. The air shifted and his hand landed on her arm. She moved it so she could take hold of his hand. It didn’t take long to get out of the hammock. She held up the net to let John under, showing him where to go with their joined hands.

“Don’t move around too much. I’m worried the thing won’t hold us.”

He muttered some more.

“That muttering is a really bad habit. You should work on that.”

He muttered even more, and Belinda found herself grinning.

There was the sound of material shifting and trees creaking as the hammock took his weight.

“I’m in.” His voice was a deep growl that made it clear he was not happy with the situation.

“Good.” She didn’t wait for him to have second thoughts. Instead, she scooted under the net and climbed into the hammock—right on top of a solid bed of hot muscle.

She stilled, not quite sure where to put her hands or legs.

He let out a strangled groan.

“To hell with it,” he said. “If we’re going to do this thing, we might as well stop screwing around.”

She felt his hands at her waist, and he lifted her, shifting her to suit himself. When he was done, she found herself lying plastered to his side with one arm over his waist and her head on his shoulder. Their bodies were wedged tight together, his arm wrapped around her and their feet tangled. It was as intimate as two people could get without making love.

“Comfortable?” he said in that deep, rough voice of his.

Belinda cleared her throat. “Yes.”

Comfortable wasn’t the word for it. She was insanely aware of her breasts pressed against him and his thigh wedged between hers. The heat of his body, coupled with his solid muscles, made her want to wriggle against him. If she’d been hot on her own, she was now in a furnace.

They lay stiffly together, listening to the noises of the forest growing louder around them. Strangely, she felt secure in their tiny hammock, with John at her side—secure and hyperaware of every inch of her skin that touched him. This was a new kind of agony. The man made her want to touch and taste and tease. Instead, she had to lie still and pretend his presence wasn’t turning her on more than other men had managed when they were putting the effort in. It was a sensory hell that she both loved and hated at the same time.

“This is awkward, isn’t it?” she said into the silence.

John froze and then burst out laughing. He laughed long and hard. Belinda pressed her ear to his chest and let the sound rumble through her as she relaxed, safe in his arms.