Moonflower Read online

  ‘You do things to me…’ she told him, shaking her head, feeling close to tears as he unbuttoned his trousers. ‘I just don’t—’

  ‘Know if you can take it?’ he finished for her. ‘And you torment me, Sophie.’ He looked fierce as he reached forward, his hand moving between her legs, massaging her there. ‘Why do you torment me? Does it give you pleasure, Sophie?’

  In answer, she took him in her hand, ran her palm along his length, up over the bulging head. He moaned, sat back on his heels.

  Sophie stood quickly on trembling legs and fumbled beneath her skirt to pull her knickers off. Then she knelt again, lifted her skirt and he guided her hips over his. She sank down onto him, and it felt as if he’d filled her entire being.

  They moved together slowly at first. He holding her hips, she kissing his mouth, his cheeks, his chin. And then there was no control anymore, as they dipped and rose on wave after wave of sensation, helpless against the strong current. Unable to do anything but hang onto each other as if their lives depended on it, until the tumult ended in the burst of a tidal wave that washed them up onto the warm, soft sand, contentment lapping at their feet.

  Reuben’s arms circled her and held her against his chest for the longest time. Then he took his shirt off and laid her gently on top of it, lying down beside her. They held hands, gazing up at the moon between the trees.

  Reuben sighed deeply, and at that wonderful sound of contentment, Sophie turned on her side and curled up beside him. ‘I didn’t think you wanted this anymore,’ she said softly against his chest.

  His fingers brushed her forehead, disappeared into her hair. ‘What made you think that?’ he asked, almost dreamily. ‘I thought I was being pretty obvious. You should know by now I can’t help myself around you.’

  Sophie raised herself on an elbow, her hand caressing the hair on his chest. ‘You seemed in a hurry to leave the hut this morning. Didn’t even wait to say hello.’

  Sophie frowned at the recollection.

  ‘Well,’ he said, running a finger along her nose, ‘you didn’t seem particularly happy to see me. And then you turned your back on me. Rather pointedly, I thought.’

  ‘I was teaching a class, Reuben.’

  He leaned forward and kissed her gently. ‘That still doesn’t explain why your usually sunny disposition turned cloudy the minute I walked into the room.’

  Honesty was not an option for Sophie; it was part of who she was, so she had to tell Reuben how she felt, even if it meant laying her soul bare to him. Did she trust him that much? Yes. Here and now she trusted him with everything she was.

  ‘I decided while you were away to return our relationship to one that is strictly professional.’

  Reuben frowned. ‘It never was strictly professional. If you remember, the first time I laid eyes on you, you’d revealed yourself to me in your bra and we’d known each other for less than hour when you pulled me on top of you under that wall hanging.’

  ‘A slightly biased take on events,’ she said, grinning at him.

  ‘So why did you decide you would not make love to me again, Sophie?’

  A sizable lump had formed in her throat, but she forged on anyway. ‘You said all you could promise me was what we had here and now. And when you left, here and now was over.’

  ‘But I came back,’ Reuben said, brushing aside a curtain of hair that had fallen forward to obscure her face.

  Sophie shook her head. ‘I’m not a sophisticated woman, Reuben. I can’t take a lover for my own needs and walk away when it no longer suits me. I was fourteen when I decided to be a conservationist. It isn’t the easiest career choice for a woman, and I’ve had probably more than my fair share of challenges and curveballs, but I’ve never once thought of giving up or doing anything else. That’s the kind of person I am.’

  She sat up suddenly. ‘You know, I still have the same pair of hiking boots my parents gave me when I was sixteen and got my first job as a monitor on a game reserve. I’ve had them re-soled many times, but I can’t bring myself to throw them away for a fancy new pair.’ Sophie shrugged. ‘I’m the same with the people I care about.’

  Reuben stared at her. She gently rubbed a finger along the small crease that had appeared on his forehead.

  He sighed and sat up. Looking away from her, he said into the darkness, ‘I have around fifteen thousand people in my employ across various companies. People whose families rely on me for a living. The grit of business is a breeze compared to that responsibility. Do you think I keep going with it all because I want to make more and more money? No, I keep grinding away to keep a competitive edge because I have a responsibility to keep the jobs going that so many families rely on.’

  Sophie had seen the fear and fatigue of an animal that had been trapped in the bush. She saw similar emotions in Reuben’s face and felt great tenderness for him. She gently brought his face back to her. Kissed his forehead, rose on her knees, took him in her arms and cradled his head against her neck.

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she told him. ‘The pressure you must be under. The responsibility, all the expectations. And that it never lets up. My poor Reuben.’

  He looked up at her then, studied her face as if he were seeing her for the first time. There was an intensity in his eyes that she could not read. It was impossible to know what he was thinking.

  His hand slipped to the back of her neck and he kissed her slowly, deeply.

  Then he pulled away from her, and it was as if a cloud had passed over the darkness of his eyes. He broke eye contact with her, peered down and rubbed her elbow. ‘Look at you,’ he said. ‘I think we should get you into a shower.’

  They got to their feet, put on their clothes and once they’d cleared the orchard, ran hand in hand across the lawn, being pelted by the sprinklers, around the rosebushes and the lake. They snuck along the path and reached the cottage, breathless and very wet. As soon as the door closed behind them, he lifted the sleeveless shirt over her head.

  ‘Don’t you want me to make us something hot to drink?’

  ‘Now you tease me, woman!’ he told her, unwinding her wrap-skirt with a flourish.

  Sophie smiled mischievously, bit her lip. ‘Oh, I haven’t even got started yet, Mr Manning,’ and she pulled his shirt over his head, not bothering to undo the buttons.

  Reuben loosened her bra, let it drop to the floor, and pulled her against him, pressing her breasts to his naked chest. He kissed her face, her lips, her neck, and that’s how they made their way to the bathroom.

  It was amidst torrents of hot water and steam, back pressed to the wall, legs wrapped around Reuben’s waist, that she came a second time, in shuddering spasms.

  They eventually crawled naked into Sophie’s bed. She pulled the sheet up over them.

  ‘Don’t cover yourself,’ he told her. ‘I want to see you when I open my eyes.’

  So they lay entwined in each other’s arms beneath the mosquito net.

  ‘Reuben?’

  ‘Mmm,’ he said contentedly.

  ‘Do you have any idea where we go from here?’

  He gave no immediate response to her question.

  ‘I think it’s pretty obvious I’m crazy about you,’ she prompted. ‘But we really are poles apart, aren’t we?’

  The hand that had been caressing her shoulder was suddenly still, and he was silent for the longest time, then he sighed. ‘I don’t know, Sophie. I just don’t know.’

  Her heart ached for reassurances, guarantees that what she gave to him so fully and so freely would not simply be discarded, would not hurt her to the point of bitterness. But, if he had asked her the same questions, she would have given a similar answer.

  She nuzzled his neck as he stroked her hair.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or the next day. Only thing I can tell you, Sophie, is that I’m not giving you up. I can’t. Not right now.’

  Sophie nodded and laid her cheek against his chest.

  ‘Da
mn it, Sophie!’ he said, suddenly, rolling her onto her back. ‘Why couldn’t you have been a novelist or a model? A bloody event planner for all I care! Just something you could have done anywhere. I’d put you on the first plane to London.’

  ‘Or,’ Sophie said, shaking him gently, ‘you could have been a London vet who was just waiting for a chance to look after animals on a game farm in Africa.’

  Sophie laid her head on his chest again. It was then she allowed the fatigue of the day to overtake her. They wouldn’t give each other up, not just yet. Tomorrow they would spend together. And for tonight, that was good enough.

  Chapter Eleven

  Sophie did not speak to Reuben again about their future after that night. There seemed no reason to; things were almost perfect as they were.

  The lovers fitted comfortably into a routine. Rising early, they would head out into the bush. Reuben was learning quickly about the plants and animals around him, and Sophie was amazed at how keen he seemed to be to throw off his corporate gear and get his hands dirty.

  At around nine o’clock they’d head back to the house; Reuben to his study where he’d spend hours with his telephone, e-mails and reports, while Sophie would see to any admin that needed doing, check equipment, order in supplies, work on her grid analysis of the farm, and train Isaac and Sipho.

  On the rare occasion he wasn’t still buried in his study at midday, they would have lunch together, the staff accepting with surprising nonchalance that there was something going on between them. They simply gave them their space, after their own fashion—Patience pretending she saw absolutely nothing out of the ordinary, and Beauty dissolving into fits of giggles whenever she saw them together.

  Sophie was determined there’d be no awkwardness, so she made sure she broached the subject with Sara. She was at pains to explain that they had feelings for each other, it was not a casual fling.

  ‘Rolf and I had a second daughter; she died of cancer,’ Sara said, checking the gleam on a polished table.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sophie said. ‘I no idea.’

  Sara went on without a trace of self-pity. ‘She was eighteen when she died. She would have been about your age now. And I like to think she would have lived her life as fully as you do, and with as much kindness and humility.’

  Sophie felt her eyes prickle; she swallowed.

  ‘Thing is, Sophie; life is sometimes far shorter than we think it is. If you hurt no-one and try to do what you know is right, you should grab happiness wherever you find it.’

  Impulsively, Sophie had hugged Sara and left the room with a lightness in her step.

  Even Mr Solomon seemed to approve, although she couldn’t for the life of her figure out how he could possibly know about the affair.

  ‘Hmm,’ he would say to her, and nod with approval, when they came face to face in the garden. Or, when in a more expansive mood, ‘Ah-ha! That rosebush was not dead, my girl. Not by a long chalk.’

  The first consignment of animals arrived just after five one morning, before the heat of the day could beat down on the container trucks delivering the male giraffe and two young females.

  Reuben waited beside Sophie in the area she’d chosen as their home range: six hectares of golden grassland and acacia trees in the north corner of the farm.

  As they heard the trucks begin to rumble in the distance, Sophie grew silent and eventually the conversation between Rolf and the two rangers died away. While all other eyes strained for a first glimpse of the enormous vehicles, Reuben’s never left Sophie.

  High colour had flushed her cheeks to summer peach, and her hair, which although tamed in a tight knot, had broken free in tendrils and wisps of burnished copper that blew around her face in the light breeze. Her lips had parted a little and her breathing was steady.

  As the trucks came into view she squeezed his hand, turned to look at him, and the excitement in the green eyes and the lovely smile made him helpless to do anything but revel in her obvious joy. Then he was forgotten as the trucks came to a halt.

  Sophie strode to the first vehicle that had backed into the orientation pen that would hold the giraffe for a few days while they got their bearings. She had a brief conversation with the vet, who had travelled in the convoy, then waited at the back door while Dr Steyn administered a sedative to the male. At his signal, Sipho and Isaac quickly lowered the door while Sophie scrambled in and scooted past the prone giraffe’s back to secure a blindfold around the animal’s head. The vet monitored the young male’s vitals while Sophie worked quickly to secure ropes around the neck. At her signal, the rangers dragged the giraffe on padded tarpaulin down the ramp and the vet administered the reversal drug.

  Reuben watched helplessly as Sophie and Rolf hung onto one set of ropes on the left, with the rangers on the right as the one thousand kilogram animal staggered to his feet.

  Suddenly, he dipped and swung his head, his long neck connecting with Sophie’s side, sending her flying to the ground.

  By the time Reuben had reached her, she was on her feet again, covered in dust, the rope still in her hand. In a well-choreographed move, Rolf dropped one rope and Sipho the other to guide the giraffe further into the pen with a rope strung out behind the hindquarters. Reuben had taken the rope dropped by Rolf and hung on next to Sophie.

  Dr Steyn removed the blindfold, the ropes were loosened and fell to the ground, and the animal cantered away towards the cover of acacia trees.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Reuben asked when the others were briefly out of earshot.

  ‘Fine,’ Sophie said, curtly. ‘You shouldn’t have done that.’ She strode away.

  After a short breather, they released the two young females, then withdrew from the orientation pen to give the animals some peace in which to recover.

  Reuben had already made up his mind. It was one thing to watch animals of this size from a luxury game viewing vehicle, but Sophie had been just a foot or two away from a one thousand kilogram animal’s thrashing feet, and he’d heard the sound that huge neck had made when it connected with her. The African bush was not a safe place and he intended to do whatever it took to get her out of it.

  ‘You could have been seriously hurt,’ he said, once they’d offloaded the equipment at the garages and Sophie had set off in the direction of the cottage to change her clothes.

  ‘It’s my job,’ she said irritably, not bothering to look behind to where he followed her along the stone path.

  ‘Risking your life has nothing to do with your job.’

  ‘You’re overreacting,’ she told him, unlocking the cottage door.

  ‘No, I’m not,’ he stated, closing the door behind him.

  ‘The odd knock comes with the territory, Reuben. I’ve had far worse.’ She bent to pull off her boots and socks.

  Reuben caught her arm, turned her to face him. He undid the buttons of her shirt. Sophie watched him with narrowed eyes.

  ‘I heard it, Sophie,’ he said, spreading her shirt open. Already a large bruise had begun to spread across her stomach and right side. He touched it with gentle fingertips. Sophie drew in a breath and Reuben sank to his knees. ‘Any harder and you could have had serious internal damage,’ he said, fiercely. ‘You mustn’t put yourself in danger like this!’

  He grabbed her hands in his. Could she really be this blasé about such a dangerous event, or was she trying to hide her fear from him?

  ‘I got a thwack, Reuben, that’s all. It’s a bruise. A little bit of Arnica oil and there’ll be no sign of it in a week or two.’

  Reuben shook his head. ‘How can I ever get something like that out of my mind?’

  He touched his lips to the bruise, kissed her gently; followed the first kiss with a trail across her stomach, down to her smooth abdomen.

  Sophie’s fingers slipped into his hair. Encouraged, he unbuttoned her trousers and moved his tongue along the path of fine golden hair that disappeared beneath her knickers. ‘I don’t want you to put yourself at risk again like that,’ he mur
mured against her skin, fingers massaging the tender flesh of her buttocks.

  ‘Did I tell you, once I almost got run over by a buffalo?’ He heard the smile in her voice, but he thought it was no laughing matter.

  He quickly scooped her up in his arms and carried her to the shower. With a twist of the wrist he turned on the cold tap and stood her under it.

  Sophie shrieked as the freezing water hit her and quickly reached for the hot tap. ‘You’ve wet my clothes,’ she said, standing under the torrent of water and scowling playfully at him. ‘Now you’d better get them off.’

  ‘At your service, Ms Kyle,’ he said, already pulling at his own clothes.

  They sipped celebratory sundowners that evening on Reuben’s patio before dinner.

  Sophie chatted away happily about her hopes for successfully breeding the South African giraffe—there were fewer than twelve thousand left in the wild.

  ‘You seem preoccupied tonight,’ she cut in when he failed to respond to her banter. ‘You aren’t still mad about this morning, are you?’

  Reuben sighed. ‘No. And I wasn’t mad; just understandably concerned.’

  It was far more than the events of this morning that concerned him now. An e-mail had popped up on his laptop after lunch from Dr Benjamin Duval, the highly respected conservationist and Sophie’s former boss on the African Wild Dog Project.

  Dear Mr Manning,

  In light of Sophie Kyle’s exceptional dedication and research excellence, along with the unique opportunity your game farm presents, my wife, Caro, and I, would like to propose a research project to be carried out on your farm over a four-year period and managed by Sophie.

  The focus of research would be the reintroduction of species that have for some time been extinct in that particular Western Cape region. The findings of the research could prove to be invaluable to the conservation fraternity, not to mention a boost for Sophie’s career, which she so greatly deserves.