Jurassic Heart (26 page)

While he fumbled for condoms in the nightstand, I returned the favor and sucked at the head of his cock, where he was most sensitive, until he gently pushed me away. I took the lube and carefully prepped myself with two inquisitive fingers while he rolled the rubber down his cock. Then I spread more lube over the top and shuffled up the bed.

“Are you sure?” he murmured against my lips when I leaned in for another kiss.

“Yes,” I said and pressed our lips more firmly together. “I want you, Hunter.”

He steadied my hips with his strong hands while I reached back and angled him against my entrance, letting pressure and gravity lead the way as I sank down on his cock, inch by deliciously agonizing inch.

For reasons I couldn’t fathom, he felt bigger like this. It seemed to take forever for me to finally bottom out, feeling my ass resting against his thighs. When he squeezed my waist, I looked down at him, wondering what he saw when he looked up at me. I felt like I was floating, flying.

“My God, Nick,” he murmured. “You’re so fucking beautiful.”

I smiled, letting his words fill me up as I started to move, carefully rocking my hips and then finding a deep, rolling, grinding rhythm. Hunter didn’t move much, didn’t thrust up into me. Instead, he matched each movement of my hips, lifting his body to meet mine so we were rarely parted.

This wasn’t the kind of sex where I wanted the kinky, ass-slapping side of him, nor was it really the same as when we made love. This time was about bodies and cocks and two men, the sounds we made together, the smell of his skin and my sweat and the sharp tang of cum.

I startled when he suddenly sat up, lifting and folding my legs around his waist. Our chests were pressed together, and he could kiss me like this, down my neck and across my jaw. His lips sucked another tiny bruise into the skin near my shoulder.

He wrapped his arms around my back, keeping me steady since this position had changed the angle of his cock inside me, and I was now convinced my body would never be the same again. I dug my heels into the mattress for leverage, and my cock was trapped between our stomachs, desperately leaking precum and sticking us together.

I was so, so close, but I’d been so close since before he was inside me, and I knew I could hang on, wait until he was there too.

“Nick,” Hunter growled next to my ear.

I clutched at his shoulders, my fingers surely gripping tight enough to leave bruises of my own, and I threw my head back as my orgasm pulsed out of me while nothing touched my cock at all. Hunter’s growl turned into a whimper, and I felt him shudder and shake underneath me for a moment. Then he was rolling his spine back onto the bed, taking me with him.

Even as my heart rate returned to normal, his arms didn’t loosen from around my chest, and breathing was more awkward than difficult. There was no way I’d tell him to let go. He moved soon enough, possibly too soon, nudging me onto my side while he disposed of the condom. Then he pulled me back into his arms.

I yawned and curled into his side, aware that I’d had very little sleep in the past twenty-four hours. I guessed he hadn’t slept much either.

“You okay?” he mumbled, stroking my messy hair back from my face.

“Yeah,” I said, my voice rough. “I’m good.”

Hunter leaned down and brushed his mouth over mine. “Me too.”

W
ITH
MORE
bad weather predicted over the coming weeks, leading into what the weather girl had predicted would be a wet fall, we were forced to make the decision to close down the dig earlier than planned. Too much rain would flood our trenches, damaging any fossils still in the ground.

The problem was my partially exposed raptor. There was no way we could leave it, not with how much publicity we’d had since the night Boner got shot. We had to prepare for the fact that local people and fossil hunters would descend on the site during our off-season, and we wouldn’t be there to stop them.

We also had to protect any bones that might be just under the surface. The rain could erode them over a number of months, so all the topsoil that had been removed needed to be put back. It was the second messy, dirty job of the dig—the first being taking all the dirt off in the first place.

Sadly (but not really), I was excused from that duty while Boner and I worked like madmen trying to do delicate, fiddly work at super speed. We had to get the skeleton out of the ground. There was no way around that. And because of the tight space it was lodged into, there wasn’t room for more than two of us to work down there at the same time.

To try to buy us more precious time, Raven started the refilling process at the top of the hill and worked steadily down toward us. It had taken a long time to get all of the dirt out of the ground, but it was only a couple of days before they were creeping up on us. I was exhausted.

Finally, finally, we started lifting the bones out of the ground, preserving and labeling them so they were ready to be transported back to the lab where the other finds—the ones the university had made—were being stored. The difference between my skeleton and the others was I had at least two-thirds of the raptor’s body. For that fact alone, it was pretty unique.

I hated leaving the dig in this state of rush and panic; I wanted to work farther down and see if there was anything left to find, but there was no time. I wanted to stay behind after everyone else had been dismissed and keep going on my own, and that idea was stupid.

“Fuck,” Boner said, wiping the sweat from his face as we packed up the last of the bones ready for transportation in solid plastic boxes and thousands of foam peanuts.

“I know.”

It had been fucking tough, but we’d done it. He gave me a goofy grin, and I pulled him into a hug.

“Congratulations,” I said, rubbing his back, carefully avoiding where his arm was still bandaged. I wasn’t convinced he was fit enough to be working, but nothing was going to stop him helping me get the Boneraptor out of the ground.

Someone had bought a bottle of champagne to toast our departure from the site, and it was a nice way to go out, all the team together one last time. Well, the team and Hunter. But Hunter was starting to feel like an honorary member already. I had even let him consult with Raven on how best to restore the site. Then I made him write up paperwork, just like everyone else, just because I could.

“A toast,” I said, lifting my plastic cup with a few inches of bubbly in it, “to an incredibly successful season, some once-in-a-lifetime finds, and mostly, to the Boneraptor.”

“To the Boneraptor!” the team chorused, laughing.

I leaned into Hunter’s side, thinking of plenty other things I’d achieved over the past few months that were definitely worth toasting. Stepping out of my comfort zone. Allowing someone in. Letting him love me and working on loving him back.

While the others finished their drinks and discussed the projects they were moving on to, Hunter and I walked over to the edge of the site.

“It looks so different,” he murmured. “It’s crazy to think that only a week ago, this place was tunnels and trenches.”

“I told you I’d put it back properly,” I said. “I told you.”

“You did,” he said, smiling at me indulgently. “So, do you know where you’re going next?” he asked.

I nodded. “I had a call from Sam earlier. He’s landed a dig in Argentina, and he wants me and Boner to go straight down there.”

Hunter hummed low in his throat. “Is that so? I wonder what sort of policies the Argentinian government has on environmental protection around paleontological digs. I should do some research.”

“Hunter—” I started, but he silenced me with a hard kiss.

“I’m coming with you,” he said firmly, his eyes locked on mine. “Don’t argue with me, Nick. I’m coming with you.”

“Okay,” I said. “You should know we can’t pay you, there’s no budget….”

“When did you ever worry about that before? Don’t worry. I’ve got backup plans.”

“That’s good.”

“Do you want me to come?”

It was a big question. Did I?

“Yes,” I said softly. “Yes.”

He pressed his lips to mine again, completing the promise. Hunter kissed me, and was coming with me, and it was going to be good. I didn’t know much, but of that I was sure.

One year later….

I
SQUIRMED
in my seat in the dark, dusty lecture theater, trying to get comfortable. It wasn’t my fault—the chairs were crap, and we’d been sitting for
hours
. Still, I was there for Hunter, so I tried to concentrate.

Boner shot me a look, clearly irritated by my fidgeting, and sighed. Next to him, the future Mrs. Dr. Tsakoumis looked bored too, so I didn’t feel quite so bad. If Raven couldn’t concentrate, there was no hope for the rest of us.

When the season in Argentina was over, we were immediately sent back over the equator to a site in Wyoming. We had become a close unit—me, Hunter, Boner, and Raven. No one would have guessed we’d end up working so well together.

Although I had initially been skeptical of Hunter’s presence on our digs, it turned out he was more than a little useful. There were areas we were never going to agree on, no matter how often we argued it out, and we argued a lot. In a strange way, all that professional arguing was good for our relationship. It meant we didn’t do it nearly as much in our personal lives.

Hunter was good at raising funds for research and development. It was how he’d managed to work for himself for so long. After the season in Alberta and then in Argentina, he had enough material to start drawing up proposals for how the eco-conservationists and paleontologists could work together rather than against each other. A lot of his ideas were considered controversial from both sides of the debate.

Hence why we were sitting in a dusty lecture theater, listening to him give a presentation to both his peers and mine.

Due to the way we’d been living and working together for the past year, Boner, Raven, and I were heavily cited in his work, and Mim had weighed in with several opinions when Hunter approached her for them. She hadn’t been able to make it out to New York for the presentation but had made sure we knew to go visit her as soon as we could.

Suddenly the room burst into applause and Hunter stepped away from his podium, the PowerPoint presentation now displaying a blank screen. I didn’t feel too bad about missing most of his speech; he’d been practicing it on me for weeks, so I knew it almost as well as he did.

The lecturer leading the talk stepped onto the stage and asked for questions, and I sighed internally, shuffling in my seat again and preparing for a longer wait.

Hunter was all dressed up in a suit, which was a pleasant change from his usual casual attire. He wasn’t wearing a tie, though, not even one of the bow ties I’d offered him from my collection. He looked hot wearing a navy jacket and pants and white shirt, courtesy of Hugo Boss. I’d convinced him to grow his hair out and it looked good, loose around his shoulders.

I had a fantasy of standing up, raising my hand, forcing his attention back to me. It was silly and stupid. So, of course, I did.

“Dr. Eisenberg,” the lecturer said, nodding at me to ask my question.

“Nick, what the fuck are you doing?” Boner hissed next to me.

“Mr. Joseph,” I said, my voice calm and clear, “what would you say was the most rewarding part of this experiment you’ve been doing with the paleontologists? Did you learn anything?”

Hunter smirked at me, and I felt the weight of the gaze of the hundred or so other scientists in the room on me. Normally I’d find it intimidating.

“I learned a lot, Dr. Eisenberg,” he said slowly into the microphone. “I think many of my preconceptions were revealed and ultimately proven incorrect. I was lucky enough to be accepted by a group of people with whom I share very conflicting views. We learned to work together and I think we have all come out of the arrangement with something we didn’t have before. Something better.”

I smiled and blushed and pointedly ignored Boner’s snort of laughter. “Thank you, Mr. Joseph.”

“No, thank you, Dr. Eisenberg.”

The lecturer moved on to the next question, but Hunter’s gaze lingered on me as I sat down.

“It was my pleasure, Mr. Joseph,” I whispered.

A
NNA
M
ARTIN
is from a picturesque seaside village in the south-west of England and now lives in the slightly arty, slightly quirky city of Bristol. After spending most of her childhood making up stories, she studied English Literature at university before attempting to turn her hand as a professional writer.

Apart from being physically dependent on her laptop, Anna is enthusiastic about writing and producing local grassroots theatre (especially at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where she can be found every summer), going to visit friends in other countries, baking weird and wonderful sweets, learning to play the ukulele, and Ben & Jerry’s New York Super Fudge Chunk.