Lani smiled. “Me, too. It’s like our home away from home.”
Aurelio spent the afternoon catching wild game then roasting the birds over a campfire. That evening they had a cooked meal for the first time in days and it left them all licking their fingers.
“Tomorrow we head back down to the village,” Aurelio said. “But today we rest.” And, as if taking his own advice, he wandered off to disappear inside his tent.
That left Lani and Ridge to their own devices and it was only six o’clock. “So what do we do now?” Lani asked.
Stupid question. Of course Ridge had a ready answer for that one. “I can think of one thing that’s sure to keep us entertained,” he said with a wicked grin.
She only chuckled and shook her head. She wasn’t going to go there with him, not at this early hour. And definitely not while Aurelio might only be half asleep. “Want to take a dip in the river?” she asked. “I’ll race you.”
“Nope,” he said from where he lounged on the ground beside the campfire-cum-barbecue pit.
“Oh, stop being so lazy,” she chided. “Let’s go take a swim.”
“Seeing that I don’t wish to be eaten by alligators I’ll just skip the river run and stick to the little stream we used last time.”
Lani gave a snort. “Coward.”
“Mmhmm,” he conceded. “A coward who plans to live to see another day.”
Well, since you put it that way…” She got up and ducked into the tent then came out with a towel and a change of clothing. “Come on, then. What are you waiting for?”
Minutes later they were by the stream and although Lani had played brave, at the last minute she chickened out and told Ridge they would have to bathe separately.
Shaking his head, Ridge went off to sit behind the rock, as instructed. “You are so weird,” he mumbled, looking none too pleased that he’d been banished until she finished her bath.
Little did he know that it had nothing to do with her being shy about him seeing her naked. Quite the contrary. It had everything to do with her seeing him in the nude. She was so turned on by his body that she was liable to jump him right there in open air. And she couldn’t afford to do that, not with the possibility of Aurelio walking over and seeing them in an intimate, not to mention very embarrassing, position.
Lani bathed and changed clothes in quick time then she called Ridge who came from behind his rock and began stripping before she even got the chance to take up her position in the spot he’d just vacated. “Hey, gimme a chance, will you? I’m not at the rock yet.”
In answer, he shrugged out of the sleeveless undershirt that clung to his body, outlining every ripple and cut of his abs. “I’m not shy,” he said. “I don’t mind if you take a look.” And then he laughed like he knew exactly what he was doing when he hooked his thumbs in the bottom of the undershirt and whipped it over his head in one smooth move, exposing his glistening, perfect abs to her view.
That was Lani’s sign to get the heck away and off to her rock. They’d already had a scare out in the wild and if she didn’t take herself away she’d be all over him and they would probably find themselves right back in that unsafe, lust-laden situation.
Ridge had been at his ablutions only a few minutes when there was a sudden crack of lightning. Lani jumped, so startled she leapt from behind her safe spot. And then she remembered something that made her race back to the stream, shouting Ridge’s name.
“Get out of there,” she yelled. “That was lightning. You shouldn’t be in water when there’s lightning.”
Obviously Ridge didn’t need to be told twice. In a flash he was out, giving her a full-frontal view of his nakedness, the sight she’d been trying so hard to avoid.
But now, in the urgency of the moment, it didn’t matter. She just wanted him out of the water and safe.
“Let’s get back to camp,” he said, dragging on his clothes, but before he was done there was another lightning flash then the sound of a tremendous crack and the sky broke right open and gigantic drops of rain began tumbling down.
“Come on,” Ridge yelled. “Let’s get back to the tent.” He grabbed her hand and ran, practically dragging her along with him. With his long legs it was hard to keep up so she wasn’t surprised when he got frustrated and swung her up and into his arms then picked up speed as he barreled toward the safety of the tent.
They got back pretty fast but it still didn’t make any difference. By the time they scrambled into the tent they were both soaking wet, their clothes clinging to their skin, hair pasted down on their faces.
And they were laughing.
“Goodness, that was scary,” Lani said, shaking the raindrops from her arms. “I thought you might get electrocuted.”
Ridge wiped the back of his hand across his forehead, pushing the wet strands off his face. “Thanks for the warning. It happened so fast I didn’t even know what was going on.” Then he caught his shirt between thumb and index finger and pulled the dripping fabric away from his skin. “This is no good,” he said, and without ceremony he began to peel it off his body. In quick time his damp trousers were gone, too, leaving him in nothing but his shorts and even that didn’t look too dry.
He looked over at her. “Is that how you’re planning on going to bed? Soaking wet?”
Lani shook her head. She’d been so busy watching him that she hadn’t even been paying attention to her own sorry state. Still kneeling by the sleeping bag she grabbed the edge of her blouse and pulled it up and over her head. And since she hadn’t bothered to put on a bra that left her br**sts open to his unwavering stare. That did not deter her. Like Ridge, she shucked off her pants so she was soon kneeling on the ground in nothing but her panties.
And then as the rain pounded on their tent Lani and Ridge stared at each other, the one kneeling on the left side of the sleeping bag and the other on the right.
Ridge was the one who broke the spell. “What say we finish what we started in the mountains?”
Lani smiled. She had no objection to that. She never took her eyes off him as she climbed on top of the sleeping bag and even when she pushed her panties off her h*ps her gaze still held his. With the coming of the rain and the clouds blocking out what was left of day, inside the tent was pretty dark but that did not stop her from seeing the desire plain as day on his face. Ridge wanted her bad and that knowledge was enough to turn all her burners on.