Chapter 54

When I got back to the store, one heavily loaded rucksack on my back and the other, for Kathryn, dragging behind me on its tiny wheels, bouncing and scraping across the dusty track, Jonas and Adriano were gone, and Kathryn was having some sort of animated discussion in Portuguese with the storekeeper, both of them grinning and waving their hands as they spoke.

She glanced over as soon as I entered and winked before turning back to the conversation. It finished a moment later and she bid him goodbye (I assume) and turned back to me. "Is that everything, then?" she asked with a grin.

"Yep - had to make some tough choices but I think that's pretty much all we need for now," I said, dragging the second pack round in front of me and proferring its handle to Kathryn. "So how many languages do you speak?"

"Oh, you know, just the normal ones," she said with a shrug.

"Which are..."

"French, Spanish, Portuguese - which is pretty similar to Spanish to be honest, a couple local dialects here and there..."

I nodded, unable to prevent a smirk from spreading across my face.

Kathryn noticed it right away. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," I said. "Just... y'know. People are reasonably impressed with me when I can only speak conversational French."

"I didn't know you spoke French," Kathryn said, raising her eyebrows.

"I didn't know you spoke French, Spanish, Portuguese and a couple of local dialects," I countered, my smirk turning into a grin. I bent a little to lift her rucksack up for her to turn and slide her arms into it.

Kathryn turned, stooping a bit and spreading her arms to help the pack on. I slipped the straps over her hands one at a time, trying not to inhale the scent of skin and bug spray and failing miserably.

The walk back would take at least four hours laden with our packs. Though we'd left at first light we would still have to push quite hard to make it back in time. And, of course, there was the mid-afternoon rainstorm; as much as I was sure Kathryn would be fine tramping through torrential rainfall I wasn't sure I was looking forward to being soaked through.

We didn't talk much as we hit the road - well, track - back toward the camp. Kathryn seemed distracted, her mind elsewhere, and I assumed that her thoughts were with her son. She had mentioned that Jonas had expressed some fondness for me before leaving and I couldn't help but be touched by the fact. He was a good kid, and the fact that we got along was something I was glad of, though I could tell it gave Kathryn pause.

The way was hard, though, and so it was perhaps unsurprising that there was little in the way of discussion, particularly after it began to rain. In about thirty seconds we were soaked through; I thought about asking to stop but realized the futility of it. For some time we trudged onward until Kathryn stopped, mid-step, and turned to me, rain dripping down her face. "This is going on too long. It should've stopped by now."

I raised my eyebrows - she actually sounded worried. "So... What do we do?"

"It's probably best if we stop and take shelter until it dies down," she said, looking around for a clear spot to put down our packs.

Frowning, I glanced around too - we didn't need much in the way of space for the tiny 'pop-up' tent we'd brought for such an eventuality, but finding anywhere around here that wasn't going to destroy local flora wasn't going to be unproblematic. Eventually after nearly twenty minutes of searching we found a small bare patch next to the path where we could set up the tent. Kathryn busied herself doing just that, while I stood huddled over our packs, already covered with their own fitted tarpaulins to keep them from getting waterlogged - although they would likely keep their contents dry even soaked-through they would be considerably heavier to carry that way.

The tent itself was a reasonably quick set-up - it snapped up by itself and had a built-in groundsheet, but had to be pinned down with deep pegs to help prevent slippage on the forest floor. Kathryn, apparently well-used to it, made short work of it and was soon gesturing to me to get our packs inside, her holding the tent itself still until it had a bit more weight in it to keep it in place.

And then we were both inside. It wasn't the tiniest tent ever, but it was certainly smaller than our tent back at the camp, and I couldn't help but be aware of how close Kathryn was as she maneuvered herself into a comfortable position, propping herself up on one of the packs. I did the same, unzipping it, sticking a hand inside and rifling around. "We have towels in here somewhere, right?"

"Maybe? Being dry is not always a priority here," Kathryn replied, leaning back.

"I could swear I packed- ah!" I caught the corner of a likely suspect and pulled out a small towel, immediately shifting to sit crosslegged, bending and wrapping it around my hair - it only took a moment to towel dry it, short as it was, and I then proferred it toward Kathryn.

She accepted it with an amused look, leaning forward to dry her own hair. "Thanks," she said, her voice slightly muffled.

"God, I'm soaked..." I commented needlessly, finally taking the time to look myself over. The only part of me that had been sheltered from the rain was my back and that was soaked through with sweat from wearing a pack.

"Mm," was all she said, though she finished with the towel a moment later and looked up, grinning at me. "Me too. I suppose we could change clothes, if we're going to wait it out in here..."

My stomach plunged at the idea. It wasn't that we hadn't dressed in the same room before - we had on several occasions over the part two weeks - but every time I'd been standing, back to Kathryn, concentration on what I was doing and not on the undressed woman in the same room with me. In here there was really nowhere to 'hide'. "I... suppose that's probably a good idea."

"All right, well... okay." Kathryn twisted, opening her pack and delving inside it for a change of clothes. "Of course, we have no way of drying the ones we're wearing."

"I guess we ball them up and leave that 'til we get back," I said after a beat, about to unzip the other pack automatically before I realised that our clothes were all in the same place. Kathryn seemed to realise this too, tossing appropriate items of clothing in my direction as she found them. "It doesn't feel like anything's been properly dry in days anyway..."

"True enough," she agreed with a nod. Kathryn apparently then decided there was no time like the present to change, and, turning away from me as far as she could began to peel the wet shirt she was wearing over her head.

My insides flipped over. I meant to look away - I was about to look away to attend to my own change of clothes - but I didn't. Right there, in the confined space of that tiny tent, Kathryn dragging first her wet teeshirt and then the sports bra beneath it off, all I could do was stare, taking in the smooth, toned lines of her back, the curve of her waist and hips, the slight hint of the side of her breast where she wasn't totally turned around, and even in my exhaustion, even soaked to the skin, even insect bitten and badly slept, that familiar sensation travelled from my stomach downwards, followed by a tingling in my arms and thighs that I knew didn't just come from the water cooling on my skin, and I wanted nothing more than to kiss her - no, not just to kiss her, to... everything. My mind took me off to a place where we lay together, limbs tangled, nothing between us but skin, where I got to feel what her neck, breasts, stomach, thighs felt like beneath my fingers and my mouth, to be on top of her, beneath her, to be inside her.

In a matter of seconds, all the past few months of restraint, all the time and effort I'd spent meticulously packing up how I felt about Kathryn Sinclair and putting it into a safe little box at the back of my mind, had been completely undone, and I wanted her more than I ever had then.

She didn't put her shirt on straightaway and I wondered why; after a minute I realized she was talking to me. "...as any to check for ticks and leeches, don't you think?"

She glanced over her shoulder at me, raising an eyebrow . "Alex?"

I blinked, willing my head to clear. "I... um... we haven't been through any water," I offered, vaguely registering the word 'leeches'. My voice was impossibly husky, thick with the sudden arousal that had hit me like a ton of bricks, apparently unaffected even by talk of parasites.

"Well, ticks then. Are there any on my back?" She had an arm pressed across her breasts as she turned to look at me more fully.

"Um, not..." I cleared my throat, "not that I saw."

"Good enough, I suppose." quickly she turned back around and shrugged the t-shirt on, fussing with the hem for a moment before looking back at me. "Turn around and I'll check you now."

Heart hammering in my chest, my ears and neck hot and I'm sure flushed, I shifted round as best I good in the tiny space and with trembling hands pulled my shirt off - for my part I hadn't worn a bra since we got here, so I immediately felt completely exposed, despite my back being turned, and I fought the urge to cover my own small breasts.

I could almost feel Kathryn's eyes moving over my bare skin. "It looks like you escaped unscathed as w- oh, no, I spoke too soon. Do you want me to get it?"

"Ugh." Well, that killed the mood a little. I made a face, twisting round a little even though there was obviously no way I was going to be able to see wherever she was looking. "Could you? Do we have any tweezers?"

"Never go anywhere in the jungle without them," she quipped, reaching into one of the front pockets of her bag and fishing out the implements. "Just hold still..." I didn't realize how hard that instruction was going to be until I felt her hand on my lower back a moment later, steadying me. "It's just below the waistband," she murmured, her other hand sliding further down my back until she was able to tug my cargo pants a few inches lower. "There's the bastard."

I swallowed, resting my hands flat on the groundsheet either side of me. It made sense, of course, that a tick would choose there rather than the open planes of my back - I really shouldn't have been surprised. "All right," I murmured.

"Don't worry, I'm a pro at this," she told me then, leaning closer still. "You won't feel a thing."

Thinking how little she knew, I braced myself, although, of course, Kathryn was quite right and I barely felt it as she unattached the offending creature and leaned to unzip a few inches of the door to throw it outside. I hurriedly moved to pull on a dry shirt, feeling slightly less exposed by the time she had closed the tent flap. My ordeal was not over yet, however.

"I guess we can do our own tick-checks from here on down," Kathryn remarked, hands going to her belt buckle.

"I, um..." If we could check ourselves, why the hell were we doing it in this tiny little tent?

"Unless you want me to check you..." Was it my imagination, or did her voice catch just slightly?

"No, no, I'm okay," I muttered, turning away again as I hurriedly pulled off my boots and socks and then unbuttoned my own shorts, stripping off quickly, all my attention on the sounds of Kathryn doing the same. I ran my hands lightly over my skin in a rough check for parasites, mercifully finding none, keen to be fully clothed again as soon as was feasibly possible.

My companion, however, was not so lucky. "Shit. Hand me those tweezers, will you?"

I began to turn, automatically, then froze, realising that not only was Kathryn presumably still naked from the waist down but I was too. I reached out a hand beside me to grope for the tweezers, holding them out behind me in Kathryn's general direction once I'd found them. "Um. Here."

She took them easily, which must've meant she was looking, which made me fumble even more with my trousers as I pulled them up past my ankles, then my knees. As I hitched them awkwardly past my hips I heard her unzip the tent again and I thought about just putting myself out of my misery and throwing myself outside along with the ticks, but a second later the chance had passed and Kathryn was once again next to me, her bare leg brushing against my arm as she reached for her shorts.

"Looks like we might be here a while," I murmured, mainly to break the silence as it was a pretty obvious statement - the rain was showing no signs of letting-up.

"Mm... hmm. Looks like."

I fought the urge to shift out of the way, now paranoid that if I did I would make my preoccupation all too clear. She lay back, and I could feel her lifting her hips to slide her shorts up only inches from where I sat. I closed my eyes, bit my lip until it hurt, and didn't move until I was quite sure that Kathryn was clothed.

"Well. So. What shall we do with ourselves?" Kathryn cleared her throat, balling up her clothes and searching for a plastic bag to store them in.

"I might have a pack of cards in there somewhere," I offered lamely.

"I think I might be all carded out," she replied, making a face. "Sorry."

"Yeah. Me too," I said, lying back against my pack and sighing. "I didn't bring any books."

"Neither did I."

I glanced over at Kathryn now that it was safe to do so, smiling apologetically. She smiled back though she seemed somewhat distracted - perhaps it was that she was missing Jonas already.

"So... we're still on schedule," I offered then in an attempt to give her an opportunity to take her mind off any troubles she might have.

"Hm? Oh, you mean with the work... yes. We are."

"What I else would I mean?" I asked with a slight smile.

"I... don't know," she said with a chuckle, shaking her head. "You're right."

Right about what? "Right."

 

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