‘Are you sure?’
‘Very, very sure,’ I say, and then gasp as he lifts my own top.
A few deliciously filled minutes later, he carries me over to the bed and we put it to the exact use it must have been made for, and it’s truly spectacular.
12
DOMINIC
We’re woken after what must have been a very short sleep by a loud banging on the door. I have my arms full of soft, naked, warm Flavia and I cannot imagine a better place to be in this moment.
Although… as I wake up fully and gather my wits, I think how incredibly stupid to have jeopardised all sorts of things including our fledgeling friendship by sleeping together. However good it was.
And also… someone’s saying something outside. It’s Judith.
‘Sorry. I missed that?’ I call.
‘We’re setting off in the jeeps in just under ten minutes,’ she says.
Bugger.Bugger. We’ve obviously missed breakfast.
‘Coming.’ I look at the deeply asleep Flavia and wonder how she’s going to wake upandhave a shower within ten minutes.
‘Flavia,’ I say quite loudly into her ear. Her arm rises a little and kind of bats at me and then she snuggles back into her pillows.
‘Time to go,’ I say, even more loudly.
Even though we should not be in bed together at all, I allow myself to kiss the base of her neck, as she partially opens her eyes, very slowly, looking adorably confused, before I repeat, ‘We’re setting off on the safari in basically five minutes.’
‘Mmmph.’ She flails her limbs a little, lifts her head, and then flops it back down onto the pillow, eyes closed.
Watching her,adoringher as she does that, I feel something shift inside me. Something that should not, in fact, have shifted. It’s uncomfortable and a little alarming.
I don’t have time to think about that, though; we need to go.
I kiss her cheek, very tenderly, because I can’t help myself, and then say, ‘We have to get up.’
And she repeats, ‘Mmmph.’
Resisting the urge to kiss her again, because time is ticking fast, I say, ‘Okay, you’rereallygoing to have to haul yourself out of bed. We have to be in the jeep in five minutes. Don’t make me play “Dance Monkey”again.’
Flavia swears, thrashes her limbs around again for a bit, and then suddenly sits up and shakes her head, and says, ‘Oh. My. Goodness. Today is going tokillme. I need to sleep.’
And then she lies back down on the pillow and I just watch her, in full adoring-fool mode, until I suddenly realise that I’ve gone mad in more ways than one, and one of those ways is that we’re going to hold the entire safari up.
‘Upnow,’ I holler in her ear.
Two minutes later, I’ve had the fastest shower known to man and am brushing my teeth with my eyes closed so that I can’t see Flavia in the shower behind me and get tempted to do anything else that we shouldn’t.
And only four minutes after that, we make it out of the room and to the lodge entrance.
‘I’ve never got ready so fast in my life.’ Flavia still has a wide-eyed, zombie-like, partially asleep look.
‘I’m a miracle worker,’ I say.
‘Iknow.’ She shoots me the naughtiest, most suggestive look, and I blink, suddenly very uncomfortably turned on again, just as Maxim entirely gratuitously – he knows very well who we all are and can easily count to twelve – holds a clipboard up and ticks our names off.
‘I brought you both some bagels and ham,’ Judith whispers as we join her and Mike in our jeep.
