Wandering Minds

^*^*Two Weeks later*^*^

"Bella," he whispered in my ear, I refused to look at him though and kept looking out at the dancing couples. "Bella, baby. Baby Bell." I bit my lip to stop from smiling. I shook my head as I felt his lips brush the skin under my ear. "Dance with me, Baby"

"I'm no good at dancing, Jasper, I told you that." I responded, rolling my eyes. "And I honestly don't feel like making a fool out of myself in front of all these people," he laughed.

"Please, baby? I promise I won't let you fall." he told me and I couldn't stop the smile this time and he grasped my chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned my face to look at me, "pretty please?" he batted his lashes teasingly and pouted at me, I shook my head and him and pulled my face away, but offered my hand when his eyes dulled a little.

He grinned at me and half yanked me up to my feet, he led up out on to the dancefloor pulling me into his arms. We danced for a minute in silence and Jasper tried not to wince and I stepped onto his toes, I sighed and pulled away from him after the third time. He pulled me back and wrapped his arms around me tightly. "You're not going anywhere," He said, "I finally got you out here, I'm not letting you go that easily."

"I'm so terrible at this," I muttered, watching my feet intently. He pulled my face up to look at him.

"Don't look at your feet, Bell." he whispered. "Just keep your eyes on mine, don't think about what's going on down there. Focus on just me." I did what he asked, he mumbled steps to me as we moved, always keeping his eyes locked with mine. "You're dancing," he teased lightly after two songs had finished. The last one came to a close and we clapped with all the other couples as the band came off stage.

"We're gonna head back down," Rosalie told me as we made it back to the table, I nodded.

"We dock at ten, make sure you're up there by then," I reminded her and she just rolled her eyes, but Emmett promised they'd be up by then before pulling her away downstairs.

"Come on," Jasper said grabbing my hand and pulling me towards the outside deck. "Are you looking forward to docking tomorrow?" he asked as we walked around, our hands swung between us as we walked side by side. I shrugged.

"Sort of, I kind of like it out here though." I admitted with a sigh. "I feel like the outside world doesn't effect us out here and when we finally touch back on dry land, the weight of the world will just crash down." we stopped and looked out at the dark ocean.

"You know, I had never left the US before this trip. The furthest I had gone was New York and that was for college. I never thought I ever would. You know, with the company base being in Seattle. I think I had just accepted that my life was pretty much always going to belong to the company." I took a deep breath and Jasper wrapped his arms around me as I shivered. "Being out here though, I feel like I can finally breath and my life is my own for once."

"Maybe you should talk to your father, tell him how you feel." Jasper suggested.

"I didn't even know I had these feelings before I got on this ship." I tried to explain. "I feel like I'm going crazy thinking about everything I have to deal with when this ship reaches home. In a way, I just wish we could stay on here forever."

"Then just don't think about it, keep your mind focused on the here and now. All those problems can wait. Just lock them all away, in the back of your mind and focus on me." I felt him press a kiss against my hair and smiled.

"I think I can do that,"

"Welcome to South Africa," Rosalie groaned at the loud voice of out tour guide and I laughed nudging her. Emmett had kept his word and they were there at exactly ten, Rosalie looked half dead of course, but they were there.

"Thanks, excited to be here." I answered shaking his hand. We all carried small duffel bags, the tour would take ten days and would take us across the bottom of South Africa, we will be linking up with the the ship again in Zululand.

"We'll be traveling to, Oudtshoorn this morning. If you'll follow me," we all nodded and followed him over to a large jeep looking thing, there was four other people standing by it with what looked to be another tour guide. The guy took our bags from us and stashed them somewhere in the back while the four people came over to introduce themselves.

Jasper threw his arm over my shoulders and whisper a joke about having sex while camping in my ear, I shot him a glare and elbowed him playfully in the stomach. He just grinned cheekily at me and continued whispering inappropriate jokes in my ear as I tried not to laugh.

"Hi, I'm Benjamin" the guy was short and had a slightly accented voice, I couldn't pick up where it was from though, "and this is my girlfriend, Tia." He pointed to a cute brunette girl, leaning on the car. She waved with a smile, "That's Amun and Kebi." the girl and guy he pointed out both gave small greetings, Benjamin seemed to be the more outgoing one of the group.

"Well, I'm Emmett," Em introduced enthusiastically. "This beautiful girl next to me is Rosalie" he continued and Rose just rolled her eyes, "And that's Bella and Jasper," Jasper waved and I just sent them a small smile. "Where are you guys from?" he asked.

"Egypt originally. We've just left Yale though, decided to travel a little before settling somewhere." He explained. "What about you all?"

"Well, we're Americans unfortunately," Emmett joked, "We're traveling on the Princess Cruise,"

"Sorry to interrupt," the tour guide said stepping between us. "We're set to leave now, so if you'd all like to board now," we all nodded and piled into the jeep, we took the back, and the other four took the middle. Emmett was like a little kid as he bounced in his seat, it got worse when he finally spotted wild animal .

"Holy crap, it's an elephant." He exclaimed pointing to, what was actually a group of elephants, I had to admit I thought it was pretty awesome too. I grabbed my camera from my bag and pulled myself up with the frame to start taking pictures. Emmett called out every time he spotted an animal and we all joked with each other, taking silly pictures and talking about random things.

When we finally made camp in Oudtshoorn it was just past dusk. The tour guides set up a camp fire as we tried to set up the tents. I ended up tripping into one of them, snapping one of the poles and almost setting another on fire before Emmett picked me up and sat me on the ground, he picked up a stick and drew a circle around me. I couldn't stop laughing the whole time as he was talking, telling me I wasn't allowed to come out of the 'circle of disaster' until everything was set up.

The others were all laughing a teasing me as I sat in the circle and they set up the rest of the tents. Now that I was out of the way it didn't take log to get the rest of the tents up and Jasper came to get me. "Let's go make some s'mores," he told me. We all sat around the fire, roasting marshmallows, drinking beer and telling stories.

"This one time, Bella and I went to Forks, it's this small town near Seattle" Rosalie explained, "and we decided to go cliff diving,"

"No, Rose. That's embarrassing, don't tell that story," I interrupted. Jasper cover my mouth though and told her to continue.

"Anyway," she drawled out, glaring at me. "We go to jump, I go over the edge, but Bella here, hesitated, slipped and ended up stuck, holding onto the side of this cliff and scaring the shit out of all of us. Jake finally ended up convincing her to push off the wall" Rose finished laughing, everyone else did too and Jasper released my moth wrapping his arms around me.

"Aw, my poor baby." He whispered teasingly in my ear and I rolled my eyes.

"Shut up, Jas." I joked.

"Speaking of embarrassing stories..." Emmett started and Jasper threw him a glare. "Jasper here, graduation day. Trips on his graduation gown and goes head first in to a fountain, taking our headmistress with him." we all laughed and Jasper buried his head in my neck.

"Okay," Jasper said finally, "I'm taking my girl to bed, or sleeping bag as the case may be." He stood up and pulled me with him. I gave my goodnight and ignored Emmett when he yelled out that the tents weren't soundproof, so keep it down. Jasper flipped him off though and told him to take his own advice.

When we finally lay down comfortably, my head was on his chest on his arm wrapped around me. I was out of breath and Jasper had a red mark on his shoulder where I had bitten him in an attempt to stay quite. He said he liked it though, like I had marked my territory. I just slapped his arm playfully.

I wanted to stay in this moment forever.