Red Hot Rebel - Olivia Hayle Page 0,44

get to sleep in the bed. This couch isn’t long enough for you. Won’t your feet hang off the end?”

His smile is crooked. “Nothing I’m not used to. It’s fine, Ivy.”

But it’s not, despite his protestations, and I can’t decide why. Why my heart is pounding quicker again, as if this entire evening hasn’t been nerve-wracking enough. As if my body doesn’t feel like it’s been locked in fight-or-flight mode.

I stand from the couch, pulling at my pajama shorts. “Come on,” I tell him. “It’s big enough for two. Besides… we’re friends now, right?”

Rhys rakes a hand through his hair again. “Yes, I suppose.”

“Even if I am just a model.”

He runs a hand over his face. “You know I just said that to get the other guys to shut up and stop objectifying you.”

“You chose a backhanded tactic.”

He snorts, rising from the couch. Glancing toward the bed. “I could’ve handled it better.”

“Yes. Now come on. No doubt we’ll be out like a light anyway,” I say, heading to the bathroom to brush my teeth. “Jet lag and all. Not to mention long flights, and a long day at work. And the wine.”

Shut up, Ivy, I think as I brush my teeth. My heart still hasn’t entirely settled down, and it certainly doesn’t when I slide under the cover. It’s thick and downy and this bed is heaven. How is it that hotel beds always feel better than your bed at home?

Rhys pauses by his side of the bed in nothing but a pair of boxers and a T-shirt. “You’re sure?”

“We’re just sleeping, Rhys.”

He snorts and reaches for the hem of his shirt. “I know that,” he mutters. Pulls the shirt over his head. I look away, but not before I’ve glimpsed the wide expanse of his chest, the dips and grooves of his stomach, the smattering of hair, the tanned skin.

I stare up at the beams in the ceiling wide-eyed.

Rhys slides into bed beside me and reaches for the light. A click and it’s out, the lodge submerged in darkness, the both of us quietly breathing next to each other. There’s still a veritable ocean of bed between us.

“You know what this means,” I say, because I can’t figure out when to shut up, and my brain has become scrambled eggs after seeing his abs.

“What?” His voice is everywhere in the darkness, and why hadn’t I noticed it was that deep before?

“I’ll have more questions for you.”

“Well, I’m sure I’ll be able to match that,” he says. “You haven’t exactly become uninteresting, now, either.”

“Right. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“You might regret opening this door, though. Because I might abuse it.”

“In what way?”

“I’ve never had a male friend I could ask questions about sex.”

Rhys sighs in the darkness. “Never thought I’d live to see the day.”

“No? I thought you’d thrive in the role of instructor. You could quote books and sound superior and ask people to call you sensei.”

He laughs. “Now that you mention it, that does appeal to me.”

“Good, because I have a lot of questions.” Things I’ve wondered but never been able to ask. Things guys have done or said that never made sense. “I’ve googled practically everything I want to know, but there are more intimate things. Guy things.”

A long breath. “All right. I’ll do my best to help you buy a ticket to Sexville.”

“Good.” I turn on my side, trying to stay the beating of my heart. In the darkness, he could be anywhere. “I’ll think of a few questions for the coming days.”

“God help me,” he murmurs.

13

Ivy

“Are you sure this is a good idea?”

Rhys looks over at me from the driver’s seat, and the look on his face is withering. I hold up my hands.

“Fine, fine, I’ll stop asking.”

“I’ve done this before,” he says, also for the hundredth time. So I settle back into the passenger seat and turn my face to our surroundings, because… wow.

We’re at the entrance to Kenya’s Nyiri Desert, on the outskirts of the national park where Rieler’s resort is located. Joy had told us earlier that day that it’s not particularly large, and laughed when I asked her what it was like compared to the Sahara.

“Like you next to a blue whale,” she’d said.

But that didn’t mean it wasn’t gorgeous. Beautiful red dunes beckon, sloping and rising in all kinds of formations, the wind rearranging them day by day.

It’s a foreign landscape, something out of a painting.

And I’m here—in a four-wheeler currently racing up the side of a slope, driven by someone who