Jurassic Heart (12 page)

“There’s not a lot around here,” Hunter continued as he pulled away. “So I thought we could maybe go a town over. Apparently there’s a great Italian restaurant there, according to the woman in the gas station.”

“I like Italian food.”

“Good. Great.”

It was weird, and then it wasn’t. We argued through dinner, but most of it was good-natured; I would wave a piece of pasta at him on the end of my fork and tell him off, then eat it, and while my mouth was occupied, he took his turn to wave some pasta and tell me off. I could tell the waiters and other diners had no idea what was going on with us, and I actually enjoyed confusing them.

“No, you’re wrong,” I said emphatically as I finished my meal, threw down my napkin, and folded my arms. “We pass the results of our reports right on to the same people you get your information from. Changes in the environment affecting the soil are being recorded
by
the paleontologists and archeologists, and then your guys are using that data.”

“Your results don’t always tally with ours.”

“Sure,” I said. “That’s to be expected. We publish a report maybe six months, sometimes a year after the initial dig. Then it might take you six months to pick it up and read it and go out to verify. That’s eighteen months later. In a highly polluted area,
of course
you’re going to have conflicting results.”

“It remains to be seen if that’s enough time to make a difference.”

“Then you need to get there first,” I said. “Test the environment before and after we dig and compare those results. In fact, I’d help you with that. It interests me too.”

“I’m going to hold you to that,” Hunter said and took a sip from his glass of wine. Since he was driving, he’d only had the one, whereas I was working on my second.

“Please do,” I said.

A waiter approached. “Was everything okay with your meal?” he asked.

“The food was delicious,” I told him. “The company was substandard.”

I could tell he was suppressing a smile. “I’m sorry, sir, we can’t offer you any kind of compensation for that. You did come in with him.”

“I guess so,” I said with a dramatic sigh.

“I thought it was delicious too,” Hunter said.

“Would you like to see the dessert menu?”

“Yes, that would be great,” I said before Hunter could tell him no.

Once the waiter was a safe distance away, Hunter gave me a despairing look. “What are you, five? You want dessert?”

“Damn straight I do. Liking desserts is a completely grown-up thing.” I picked up my wine again and silently challenged him to disagree.

He rolled his eyes but sat patiently while the waiter returned with dessert menus.

“Do you want a moment to choose?”

“Mm… I’ll take the Amaretto chocolate cake, please,” I said. “Hunter?”

“Do you do a fruit salad?”

“Uh-uh,” I said. “No way. Pick something.”

“I just did!”

“Fruit salad is not dessert. He’ll have the….” I surveyed the menu again while Hunter glared at me and the waiter seemed to be trying to hold in his laughter. “Fig and pear tart. Thank you.”

The waiter nodded and returned to the kitchen. Hunter continued with his death glares.

“What?”

“Fig and pear tart has fruit in it.”

“Yes, but it’s still a dessert,” I said, explaining in the same tone I used when teaching small children about extinct animals.

Dessert, when it arrived, was as delicious as the rest of the meal had been, and I tucked into the sweet almond chocolate cake with relish, not missing a single opportunity to gloat that I got chocolate and Hunter didn’t.

“Did we run out of things to argue about?” Hunter asked, examining the back of his spoon and then licking the cream off it.

“No,” I said, scandalized and offended. “I’m just eating. There are plenty of things left to argue about.”

He chuckled lightly. “Good. I was almost worried there for a minute.”

We ordered another round of drinks and argued some more as the night grew on, the topic changing from science to literature, then to TV shows. It seemed whatever category we landed on, we had something to disagree about, which pleased me no end. It was fun to piss him off while bitching about the simplified and sometimes downright
wrong
science on
The Big Bang Theory
, and sigh dramatically while he proclaimed the wonders of country music.

When the check arrived, I immediately reached for my wallet and threw down enough to cover my half.

“You can let me buy you dinner, Eisenberg,” he said with a huff.

“No, I can’t. If I do that, then I owe you dinner, and that just can’t happen.”

“Fine.”

I made sure to leave a decent tip for the poor waiter who had been forced to listen to our bickering all evening. I was surprised at how cold and late it was by the time we walked back to the car.

When he drove me straight past the motel, I wondered if he’d forgotten where I was staying, but the glint in his eye told me he was not stopping on purpose, going on to wherever it was he was staying.

“Bit presumptuous of you, isn’t it?” I muttered.

“Tell me to turn back,” he said, the challenge evident in his voice.

I said nothing and could feel him silently gloating next to me. While he was still concentrating on the dark road, I sent a quick message to Boner so he wouldn’t worry. Two words—
Got lucky.
Then I switched my phone off so he couldn’t get through if he called. If I knew Boner—and I did, very well—he’d ask if he could join in. I got the impression Hunter wouldn’t be down with that.

“Who was that man you were kissing the other day?”

“What man?” I asked. “I wasn’t kissing any man.”

“Yes, you were,” he said. “That man with the long hair. The blond dreads.”

“Oh,” I said, laughing as I remembered. “That’s Boner.”

“Boner?”

“Yeah. It’s a nickname.”

“I guessed that much,” he said drily. “Why were you kissing him?”

“Because we had a disagreement about something, and we were making up.”

“Oh.”

“He’s my best friend. I kiss him a lot.”

“Is he gay?”

I gave him a look. “Does that matter?”

“No.”

“He’s bi,” I said. “Well, he claims he’s mostly gay, but he would never limit his options by claiming to be totally gay. If you have a problem with him, then we might have another problem right here.” The one thing I was never afraid of was defending my friends or my sexuality.

“I don’t have a problem. Trust me.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Why do you call him Boner?”

“Because of his stunning personality,” I said sarcastically. “Do I really have to answer that?”

Hunter snorted. “I guess not,” he said pointedly.

“If you’re asking, in the most roundabout way possible, if we’ve had sex, then the answer is yes. We’ve had a lot of sex. He’s called Boner because he’s a paleontologist and it’s funny, and because his dick is massive.”

“But he’s not your boyfriend,” Hunter clarified.

“No. And I doubt he ever will be.” A half-truth. I justified it to myself with the fact we hadn’t fucked each other. Yet.

“Okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yeah.”

H
UNTER
HAD
an RV parked a little outside town, farther up into the park area. He had set up just back from a track I hadn’t yet explored, answering my own question as to where the hell he’d been staying.

“Nice setup,” I said, and it was.

The RV was the towing kind, which made sense since he drove the hybrid around town. I guessed it was probably more energy efficient and eco-friendly too, if I knew anything about Hunter at all. As we approached, I noticed the solar panels attached to the roof, angled to draw in the maximum amount of sunlight.

Inside, I was forced to admit this was probably at the top end of mobile living. Even though it wasn’t a luxury vehicle, it looked like someone (I suspected Hunter himself) had torn out and replaced nearly every surface.

At one end he’d placed a deep sofa upholstered in a tweed fabric and facing a good-sized TV. Next to that was a workstation for a laptop and a large office chair, then a kitchen area only slightly smaller than the one in the flat I’d been living in in London.

“Bedroom is back there,” Hunter said from far too close behind me, gesturing to the back end of the RV. “I’ve got a double bed and everything.”

“I’m… reluctantly impressed,” I admitted.

“Thanks,” he said with a laugh. “I bought it super cheap because there had been a kitchen fire in here and pretty much all the interiors needed to be replaced. There’s this company that renovates RVs after they’ve been damaged, and they let me buy it and do all the work myself.”

“Is there anything you can’t do?”

“Dig up dinosaurs?” he said with a little smirk.

“Keep your hands off my bones,” I said and wagged my finger at him. “They are gazillions of years old.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Do you want a drink?”

“Sure. What have you got?”

Hunter pulled open the cupboard closest to the fridge and lifted a bottle of rum. I nodded, and he poured two shots, added ice and Coke. Once he handed the glass to me, I knocked the drink back in one and gave him a level, challenging stare.

The drink intended for Hunter was ignored as he pushed my chest, then grabbed hold of my shirt, pulled me close, and pressed his lips to mine in a hard kiss. I retaliated by grabbing fistfuls of his shirt and giving back as good as I got.

Because he was taller than me, I was forced to tilt my chin and rise up on my toes to reach his lips. I swept the taste of hot man into my mouth and let him kiss me back as we pushed each other, trading kisses and little nipping bites to bottom lips and earlobes and the delicate curve of a jawline. If I was going to do anything with this man, it wasn’t going to be simple or even nice. We weren’t nice when we were together. He didn’t bring out the best in me.

For some reason, though, that didn’t matter. It didn’t bother me that he wouldn’t fall under the heading of a “nice guy.” In fact, that was part of the thrill.

I let him push me two whole paces until my back hit the counter on the opposite side of the trailer, and I laced my arms around his neck, kissing him deeper. It was a good kiss, but not a particularly sweet one; he bit my lip and roughly squeezed my ass. I retaliated by twisting his nipple and biting him right back.

When he grabbed my wrist again to drag me through to his bedroom, I pulled away first to down the second glass of rum and Coke. Once he’d pushed the door closed behind us, I started pulling at my clothes, wanting to take them off myself. The thought of him doing it for me felt strangely inappropriate. Hunter undressed too, removing his shirt, shoes, pants, and socks with precision, only breaking eye contact with me for the shortest time.

He pulled the curtains closed and then yanked down his boxers, and I was finally presented with over six feet of tall, tanned, muscled,
large
,
erect man. I pushed my underwear off and tried to stand—well, not tall, I’d never been that, but proud. And semierect.

“Fuck, you’re hot,” he said under his breath.

A little voice in my head had a
say what?
moment, and I tried to ignore it. If he thought I was hot, I wasn’t about to argue. I thought I was pasty and skinny, but hey, that did it for some guys.

He flipped me onto my back on the bed, and his mouth enclosed my dick in warm heat. I went from a semi to raging in zero-point-six seconds.

“Holy shit,” I muttered, pulling my glasses from my face and tossing them onto the nightstand so I could rub at my eyes. He was good—rough, thorough, working my balls with his hand while he sucked.

“There’s lube in the nightstand,” he said in a raw voice after pulling off my dick.

While he massaged my taint, I fumbled through the drawer until I found a bottle and a roll of condoms. He hadn’t asked for one, but I was damned if I wasn’t going to make him wear one if he wanted to fuck me. I tossed him one of those too and flipped over onto my front, spreading my knees wide to give him a good view.

I heard his moan and soft curse and felt a surge of pride that I—my body—could elicit that kind of response from a man such as Hunter.

He spread the lube over and just inside my hole using a finger to stretch and tease me, briefly dipping a second finger inside too. I was just about to tell him to forget that and put the goddamn condom on already when he pulled his fingers out and started to fuss with the wrapper.

There was a spare pillow that I could shove under my hips, so I did, wanting to keep my ass up high without straining my thighs. The time it took me to do that was about the same as it took Hunter to get that fucking condom on, and I braced myself, expecting something hard and rough and just a little bit painful.

He didn’t disappoint.

I felt the head of his cock poking at my hole, and for the first time, I wondered quite how we’d gotten to this stage without me getting that beast in my mouth first. It was too late for that, though, and I wondered if I would ever get the chance to go there with him or if this would be a one-time-only occurrence.