Moonflower Page 9

  He had put his arms around her. But not content to stop there, he pressed her chest to his so she could feel his heart thundering in her ear. He kissed the top of her head. Sophie raised her face and his lips grazed her forehead, the tip of her nose, and when she sighed deeply, he captured her lips with his.

  Sophie’s last rational thought was to lean the rifle against the nearest tyre. Then her mind was filled with Reuben as she ran her hands over the sinews of his bare forearms, felt the bristle of hair beneath her palms, the heat and muscle; so strong, so masculine. She melted against him, opened her mouth wider, hungry for the taste of him, clutching his shirt, fingers winding into the hair that curled at the nape of his neck. Then her hands found their way to his chest, down over his belly with an urgency fuelled by the adrenaline still coursing through her body. She began to pull the shirt from his waistband.

  With a groan he broke away, took a shuddering breath and ran a hand over his face. 'The others will come looking for us if we don't get back.’

  Sophie looked around, amazed that she’d been more than ready to make love to him in the middle of the bush while guests waited for their return. Right there in the long golden grass, in the shade of the vehicles. She frowned, shook her head to clear it and reached for her rifle. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.’

  ‘This part I understand, Sophie,’ he said, taking her arm so she couldn’t walk away from him. ‘Just promise me you’ll never confront a dangerous creature like that again.’

  Sophie couldn’t help it; she had to smile. 'I managed the situation as I’ve been trained to do. This is my office, Reuben.’ She gestured to the bush around her with not a little pride. ‘It isn’t my first encounter with wildlife and definitely won’t be my last.'

  'Damn it,' Reuben said, looking tormented.

  ‘I think you should be the one to explain to McTavish that he isn’t getting his hat back,’ Sophie said, striding off through the bush with a grin.

  Tables with the finest linen, crystal and china had been set out in the circular boma; its dirt floor swept, fire blazing, and shielded from the bush by a tall reed screen.

  Sophie ignored another suggestive remark from McTavish. The man was being a pest. Truth was, it was Reuben who was her biggest problem. Between McTavish’s unwelcome advances and her chats about wildlife conservation with other members of the group, she was finding it almost impossible to keep her eyes off their host.

  So often Reuben just happened to be standing close to her and it seemed he did not have to actually touch her to set her thoughts jangling and her nerves tingling. She saw his eyes, intent on her face, as she related a fact or answered a question while the group milled around the boma with pre-dinner drinks.

  Sometimes she’d catch herself, realise her gaze followed him and then he would stop, turn to look at her and it would take all her willpower to keep a smile from touching her lips. The sound of his laughter had the power to cause her to lose her train of thought completely and, all the while, Sophie knew the last thing she wanted was for anyone to know there was something between them.

  Particularly with Clarice’s eyes so often on Reuben, and her vigilance whenever he came within a metre of Sophie, which is what he’d done just that minute. Reaching past her to place his empty glass on a table, his arm brushing her waist, lingering there so it felt as if he’d dropped an effervescent tablet into her bloodstream that fizzed and bubbled all the way to the tips of her fingers and the roots of her hair.

  ‘I said, I like a girl who knows how to handle a big piece,’ McTavish said loudly, winking at Sophie, his speech giving away the first signs of drunkenness.

  Sophie bit back the retort on the tip of her tongue. She’d been dying to give this man a piece of her mind, but here, tonight, she was not a guest. She was a professional, a paid employee, so she held back.

  Reuben had moved closer to Sophie. She looked up and saw the stirrings of anger in his eyes; a small tick along his jaw.

  ‘I think dinner’s just about ready,’ Sophie said, heading out of harm’s way to the centre of the boma where Sipho stood beside the chef at the spit. The smile faded from her lips as she reached Sipho and turned to find McTavish leering at her backside, Reuben staring into her eyes with heart-pounding intensity and Clarice perched on the arm of a chair, gaze travelling from both men to Sophie.

  Reuben’s brother was watching the whole lot of them, grinning ear-to-ear, while Sophie felt like a buck caught in the headlights.

  Outwardly the evening had gone well for Reuben. His guests were still enthusing about the bush walk, the delicious meal and the canopy of stars few of these city-dwellers had ever experienced in such intensity before. But inwardly Reuben was feeling the strain.

  McTavish wouldn’t leave Sophie alone. He’d had too much to drink, and when most of the guests had been driven back to the house by Isaac and Sipho, the man showed no sign of letting up.

  What added additional fuel to Reuben’s anger was that he could see that Sophie was making an enormous effort to handle the situation diplomatically. She’d either ignored the drunken man’s comments or made light of them, but he saw the flash of defiance in the green eyes and he was painfully aware of the effort it was taking her to continue to be polite to the man. And why the hell should she? Rich he might be, but Sophie had more class and courtesy in her little finger than McTavish had in his entire body.

  The others were doing nothing to help the situation, either. Clarice looked on edge, and Mark was grinning as if he were enjoying the whole thing. Reuben had had enough. He couldn’t put Sophie through this anymore.

  ‘Let’s get you back to the house,’ he said, taking McTavish’s arm. But the man shrugged him off.

  ‘Come now, Reuben,’ he slurred. ‘Can’t you see I’m talking to my girlfriend here?’

  Reuben kept his voice level. ‘We’re heading out at the crack of dawn for a game drive, so it’s time we all headed for bed.’

  ‘No objections there,’ McTavish said, lurching towards Sophie. ‘That part of your job description?’ He grabbed her backside in one big hand and squeezed.

  Sophie froze, her eyes enormous in the firelight.

  Reuben stepped towards the man, wanting nothing more than to punch that leering face, break the hand that groped Sophie. His Sophie.

  ‘Get your hands off her, McTavish.’ Reuben spoke very quietly, but his voice buzzed with the threat of violence.

  ‘Come on, old boy,’ McTavish leered. ‘I bet you’d like a piece yourself. She’s only the hired help, man. She’d probably enjoy a bit of humpy.’

  With the strength of an entire evening’s frustration, Reuben grabbed McTavish by the scruff of the neck, his other hand gripping the front of the man’s shirt. He tore him away from Sophie, whose eyes were wide with surprise, and began to frogmarch him towards the remaining vehicle.

  Mark and Clarice sprang forward together. Pushing in between the two men, Mark loosened his brother’s grip on McTavish’s shirt. ‘What the hell’s going on with you? Take it easy,’ he said, putting a restraining hand on Reuben’s shoulder.

  ‘I will not tolerate behaviour of this sort on my farm; I don’t care who he is,’ Reuben thundered.

  ‘You know McTavish,’ Mark said. ‘He’s often like this. Just laugh it off like you usually do. Don’t let him get to you like this. The guy’s an idiot. He’s so drunk he won’t remember a thing in the morning.’

  ‘A very rich idiot and on the board of Consolidated Investment Group,’ Clarice said, standing beside the chair that Reuben had dropped McTavish into. He’d passed out.

  ‘It’s time someone put their foot down,’ Reuben said. ‘Humouring him like this is sick.’

  ‘You’re not his moral guardian,’ Clarice said, not bothering to disguise her irritation. ‘But he is an important man and,’ she looked pointedly at Sophie, ‘his behaviour’s never bothered you before.’

  ‘I will not stand by while the man paws my employees.’

 
Employees. Sophie’s stomach took a dive.

  Clarice placed a beautifully manicured hand against Reuben’s chest. ‘Your mother’s always said you’re unusually protective with your possessions. Let’s just take care of this and go to bed.’ The way she looked at up at Reuben, the seductive tone of her voice left no one in doubt that it was meant as an invitation, to Reuben and her bed.

  ‘She’s right,’ Mark said, going over to McTavish. ‘Let’s just get the old fart back to the house. This is doing my head in.’

  Sophie, despite the storm of emotion that swirled inside her, insisted on driving them back to the house. She was the only person who had had nothing to drink. She sat alone up front, McTavish propped between the two men and Clarice curled into Reuben’s side.

  Standing beneath a cool shower helped a little. Stories of foreign visitors groping female rangers were commonplace; but Sophie wasn’t a ranger, she was a conservationist with a post-graduate degree who’d worked incredibly hard to make it the first few steps along her career path. As essentially a field researcher, thieving baboons were all in a day’s work, but groping guests were not something she thought she’d have to deal with. And now that she’d experienced it, she had no intention of repeating the performance.

  With the dust and events of the day scrubbed from her skin, she wrapped a towel around her, tucking the ends between her breasts, her wet hair in another, and went to the bedroom. She stopped at the bed, looked down at the empty expanse of it, and thought she was unlikely to get much sleep tonight. The events of the day had sent her brain into overdrive. Images and words swirled inside her head.

  She went to stand at the window; but the blackness outside offered nothing to distract her from the image of Clarice’s hand on Reuben’s chest, the invitation to his bed. Were they locked in each other’s arms this minute? The thought caused Sophie such anguish that she sank to the floor, wrapping her arms around her middle, eyes tightly shut against a simple image that had the power to tear her insides to shreds.

  When a knock came at the door, she was determined she would not be tormented by anyone else tonight. She ignored it. But whoever was knocking would not go away.

  She sprang to her feet, moved quickly across the room, flung open the door, and stepped back quickly as Reuben pushed it wide so it banged against the wall. He strode inside, kicked the door shut and swept Sophie into his arms, holding her tightly against him, face buried in her neck.

  ‘I’m sorry, Sophie,’ he murmured. ‘So sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ she said, caressing his hair, delighting in the silkiness that trickled through her fingers.

  He shook his head, rubbed his lips against the tender flesh of her neck. Sophie shivered, clung to him.

  ‘You shouldn’t have had to go through that. The man’s a bastard.’

  Why did he want to speak about that horrible man when arousal trickled through her body like heated, golden honey; moist and sticky?

  ‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ she said fiercely, pushing his face away from her neck so she could find his lips. And as she plunged her tongue into his mouth it felt like an act of penetration. Reuben opened his mouth still wider. The hot taste of him caused a sudden ache and spurt of moistness between her legs. Sophie gasped and moaned; a ferocious need inside her that made her feel entirely possessed, as if her very nature had changed to become something wild, dangerous even.

  The towel twisted around her head fell to the floor, spilling damp tendrils of copper over her shoulders. Reuben tangled his fingers in her hair, kept kissing her. His lips crushing hers, but it was what she wanted, the pressure, the savageness of it.

  She began to tear at his clothing. Reuben helped her, and when he at last stood naked in front of her, she feasted her eyes on the largeness of his arousal, the magnificence of the man she had fallen in love with, and realised there was absolutely no shame in any of it.

  Her breaths came in small sharp gasps as he pulled the towel from her body, cupping her breasts, his thumbs rubbing her swollen nipples until she thought she would fall in a desperate, aching heap to the floor. All the while his gaze ran over her body, devouring every inch of golden skin.

  Sophie placed her hands over Reuben’s, resting them lightly there for a moment as his palms moved over her nipples. Then she moved them along the sinews of his forearms, moving higher over defined biceps, to his chest, where she mirrored the movements of his thumbs on her nipples.

  Air hissed sharply through her teeth as his thumbs were replaced by lips and tongue. Moments later, Sophie did the same; flicking her tongue over his small, hardened nipples. Slowly he moved along her body, missing not an inch of her, stopping only as Sophie imitated his movements. Every action becoming deeper, quicker, more urgent.

  At some stage, they made it to the bed, but Sophie couldn’t remember when or how. Time no longer passed the way it usually did. The universe had altered without warning. Her world was Reuben Manning, and it was a place she could lose herself in without ever wanting to be found.

  Reuben slipped behind her, his knees fitting against her long limbs. With an arm around her, he rolled half onto his back, holding her tightly, and entered her that way. It felt to Sophie as if every sense, her mind and spirit too, were filled as she spread her legs and allowed herself to be carried by his strong arms. He moved maddeningly slowly, not thrusting, but pressing into her. His fingers teased the small territory between her legs that was ablaze with sensation.

  Through the rolling waves of desire, Sophie came to know that they’d been made for each other. How else could they fit so perfectly together? Why else did they move as if one creature, not two? And how could they know the intimate desires of the other’s heart? Because, yes, Sophie did know this man. The guests in the house might know things about him: dates, occasions, names, places. But Sophie was convinced in that moment that only she had ever truly known Reuben Manning’s heart.

  Chapter Eight

  It was as the sun began to rise behind the curtains that the first doubt found its way into the sanctuary of Sophie’s cottage. Reuben slept beside her. She should wake him so he could get back to the house before his guests began to stir.

  But, for the first time in her life, Sophie felt paralysed with indecision and could not see her way forward. She was utterly conflicted, with no idea how to revolve a situation that became harder for her to understand with every interaction she had with Reuben. Was he like this with every woman he had sexual encounters with? Despite Sophie’s inexperience, what they had seemed far more than just sex. To her mind there seemed to be a cosmic connection between them, and great tenderness.

  She would not have turned away from a single moment spent with him, but she was beginning to fear the price she would have to pay. He had been straightforward with her about the nature of the relationship between them, and he had given her no indication that anything had changed. But Sophie sensed that it had. Or were those feeling hers alone?

  Looking at his sleeping face beside her, she was overtaken by panic. It was she who wasn’t being truthful with him. She was in love with him; loved him with a passion she hadn’t known existed until he’d shown her its beautiful colours. She should tell him how she felt so he could withdraw from the arrangement if he wanted to. The honest thing was to wake him and tell him now so they could both move forward. But would she have to leave Labour’s End when he told her, with pity in his eyes, that she simply did not fit into his life but he had appreciated the distraction? Was she ready to lose him, and perhaps her job, at this particular moment in time?

  She touched his shoulder; he sighed in his sleep and her heart was filled with tenderness.

  What was it that Mr Solomon had said to her? Roses did not question the motive of the sun or complain about the rain. They flowered wherever they had the chance to because it was their nature to bloom. And so, Sophie decided, it was with love.

  They took the group on a game drive at seven that morning and, much to Sophie’s delight,
were rewarded with plenty of sightings. There were no gate-crashing baboons this time to mar the outing, nor McTavish, who had been too hung-over to attend. Clarice had not appeared either.

  Reuben had opted to sit up front with Sophie, driving the vehicle so she was free to point out things of interest around them. At a particular moment during the drive, as the light began to settle over the bushveld, Sophie realised that she had never been so happy before in her life; a contentment felt at the deepest level.

  She focussed on the feeling so she would remember it, and be able to recall the particular angle of light on the horizon, the fresh morning air against her skin, as fragile and fleeting as her connection with Reuben. Their relationship hung by a very slim thread and that thread was the farm. There was no ‘them’ outside this context. He was due to fly back to England today for three weeks. For all she knew, this might be the last time they were together in this way. It was fully within his rights to change his mind about her while he was gone or decide never to return to the farm.

  The thought made her incredibly sad, but she reminded herself of the old eland on the farm who, with great dignity, and, against the odds, had survived many a storm to stand proudly in his habitat and lead his herd without fretting about what the next day would bring.

  The game drive over, they stopped at the house to unload the guests, and Reuben chose the moment to cover her hand with his. Sophie looked into navy blue eyes that seemed a little sad, and her heart was filled with a mix of joy and despair. Joy that he cared enough to feel sadness at their parting. Despair that this might be his way of saying goodbye to her.

  ‘We’re leaving right after lunch,’ he told her quietly. ‘I’ll try to get to the cottage before we leave. Wait for me there?’