The Things I Lost In The Desert

Chapter 4 - Patience Is a Virtue

Here's the thing about having a creative mind; when you're stuck in a dark cave, it starts playing tricks on you. We were probably two hours away from sunset but because the storm was so thick, the cave was already dark. There was virtually no light coming through and cold promises of the night were starting to whisper.

"What was that?" I could swear on my life I heard something scurry across the floor.

"Relax."  I almost jumped out of my skin when I heard Raheem's deep voice behind me. I was expecting him to be in front of me. He pulled out his phone and switched on the torchlight, shining the light over my head and pointing it ahead of me.

The cave was so much more scarier now that I could actually see it. The white light exaggerated nooks and cranny's along the cave walls, creating shadows that looked suspiciously familiar to bats. I wasn't trypophobic but the entire texture made my skin crawl. From where we were standing, it looked like the cave went deeper. The flashlight could only show us so much, the rest was a dark abyss. It was like looking down a well.

My eyes were stubbornly so wide, trying to see something. I had to be living a scene out of a horror movie, the howling wind outside? The deathly quiet cave? The dropping temperature? The fact that the cave was a lot deeper than we'd ever know and that literally anything can come barreling towards us? Yeah this was definitely a James Wan movie waiting to happen.

"Hold this." Raheem handed me his phone then went to the camels who were now seated. He removed the saddle and all the draping. He placed it against the camel's side in a way that, I assumed, would be comfortable for us the lie down. I watched him in silence at he got to work, trying to make a comfortable seating arrangement. There was something so...erotic about a man putting together something for your comfort. Must be a primal urge or something, I get why medieval women wanted men who could build houses.

I shivered, but not from my dirty thoughts. It was actually starting to get cold and I could feel it. The sound of my teeth chattering caught Raheem's attention.

"Rome," He rose to his full height, and walked towards me. "are you wet?"

"Excuse me?!" How presumptuous of him! He frowned in a why that told me he didn't understand what I was saying. "That's disgusting!"

"What are you are you talking about? I need to know if any of your clothes are wet because we are in for a cold night." He repeated, slowly this time as if I was the idiot.

"And why the hell would I be wet?" I shot back, slightly embarrassed that I had made yet another incorrect assumption about him.

"Sweat. It was quite a hot day," Raheem began removing his shirt and I childishly looked away. "while the sun is still up, we can dry any damp clothes."

I looked back to see him laying his shirt out on a still warm rock. The muscles in his back flexed with every movement, under his perfectly taut and golden skin. When he turned back around, I flicked my eyes up to meet his. I would rather run into that sandstorm outside than let him catch me gawking at him.

"So, are you wet?" Well, I was now. Both in the perverted sense and the sense he was talking about. Now that he mentioned it, my back was slick with so much sweat that my shirt was stuck to my skin and my shorts were damp from thigh sweat.

"Uh, my shirt underneath and my shorts." I said quietly.

He raised a brow. "Then what are you waiting for? The sun is going to set."

I bit my lip in thought because I knew he was right. Damp clothes make it hard for your body to regulate heat and in the cold of the desert night, hyperthermia was very possible. I knew that much but the thought of being half naked with this handsome stranger scared me a little more than hyperthermia did.