by Catt Ford
Was it so selfish to want more than one dream? He wanted Dingo more than anything. And he seemed to have him, just as Dingo had him body and soul in return. But he was aching to see the tiger as well. He took those moments with Dingo with pleasure and tried to alleviate the guilt he felt about wanting it all.
Dingo had commented that Tassie was leading them on a merry chase.
“Like a woman,” he said. “Wants to make you work for it before they give you a bit of the attention you want.”
Henry had stiffened when he said that. What was Dingo’s experience with women? He seemed to flirt with both sexes freely, although Henry had never heard him talk about past girlfriends, but he had seen the different men Dingo seemed to leave behind in every port.
But that wasn’t fair either. He had no evidence to one way or the other.
So maybe he wasn’t in the best of moods at the moment.
Distraction cost him again.
He felt, rather than saw, the slippery gravel under his feet. He had wandered too close to the edge Dingo had warned him about earlier. The sun blinded him when he turned around to face a gap in the bushes around the bend.
Henry lost his footing in the loose rubble and began to slide down the hill. He scrambled to catch himself, but the more his feet slid, the more the pebbles dislodged underfoot, showering into the creek bed below. With the weight of the rucksack on his shoulders and nothing to grab onto, Henry flung himself desperately at the edge of the cliff. The dirt crumbled under his hands, and he realized that a swift, ignominious descent was inevitable.
How come Dingo never has this happen to him? was his first thought as he slid the first ten feet on his tummy. He could feel pebbles working their way under his clothing and scraping the skin beneath.
As his center of gravity shifted and he found himself skidding downhill head first for a change, Henry thought, He’d better not laugh if he knows what’s good for him.
He landed half-submerged in the shallow creek, gasping with the shock of the cold bath. Pulling his head out of the water and gasping for breath, Henry was only grateful that it was all over and Dingo was far enough ahead that he hadn’t seen the entire thing. And for the fact that his glasses had remained intact and perched on his nose.
Groaning softly, he lifted his head and froze.
It can’t be.
Blinking owlishly through the water on his glasses that rendered everything into indistinct masses, Henry felt that he wasn’t alone.
And then his palm began to burn!
Chapter 20
Henry shivered, and it wasn’t just because of the temperature of the water. An orange blob moved ahead of him.
Carefully, oh so carefully, Henry removed his glasses and wiped them on the leg of his trousers, which luckily hadn’t joined him in the dip in the creek. Now the world was a complete blur, but it shifted into focus again when he pushed his glasses back on his nose, his palm itching all the while.
On a rock overhanging the creek, directly in front of him, approximately fifteen yards away, stood a Tasmanian Tiger.
The sun filtered through the leaves, lighting the caramel-colored fur but providing enough shade to perfectly camouflage the striped animal.
It shouldn’t be there, not at this time, but there it was. And it wasn’t spooked by him. It was almost as if it had been waiting there for Henry to make his inelegant descent down the slope into this small valley so that they could greet each other properly. The animal Henry had been dreaming about for so long, one he secretly had feared he would never get a glimpse of, alive and free, standing within its own territory and….
Laughing at him through gently grinning jaws!
And its huge grin was disturbingly reminiscent of Dingo’s!
His heart started to pound with excitement, and Henry pushed himself up slowly, sliding his glance away from the animal, remembering that dogs took a direct stare as a challenge. And yes, the thylacine wasn’t a dog, but most predatory animals shared that same trait. Above all else, he didn’t want to do anything that might cause the tiger to disappear into the underbrush.
“You’re a fair champion swimmer, if you can do a stroke in that bit of a bathtub,” Dingo mocked gently from above.
Henry raised one hand, not even looking behind him, making a dismissive waving motion. If Dingo scared it away….
Dingo’s laughter died abruptly as he followed Henry’s sightline to where the tiger stood. Moving slowly, Dingo climbed down into the shallow ravine. “Don’t make any sudden moves, Dash.”
Henry nodded, resisting the temptation to roll his eyes. Hadn’t that been what his dismissive hand gesture said before?
The thylacine sat down on its haunches with its tongue hanging out, watching the two men with interest, as if such entertainment had not often come its way and it planned to enjoy it to the fullest, having time on its hands.
“Sit up very carefully,” Dingo instructed.
Henry did so, realizing that his top half was completely soaked and most likely everything he carried in his rucksack as well, but it was worth any discomfort to be in the presence of such a noble animal.
“Back up to me.”
Henry moved to Dingo in a crouch, relieved to be out of the water. “What do we do now?”
“Watch her. She must have a litter nearby.”
“How can you tell?”
“The pouch—it’s stretched out but empty. She must be suckling.” Dingo grinned with pleasure. “Dad’ll be so pleased to hear that they’re actually breeding. Her mate is probably with the cubs while she hunts.”
Henry could tell from the exalted expression upon Dingo’s face that he was experiencing the same joy in beholding the thylacine, even though he must have seen the tigers many times before. It was one of the things that made him feel closer to Dingo, this shared wonder over an animal whose fate was so uncertain.
“Should we—should we—follow her?” It was funny how now that they had found them, a new uncertainty had developed within him. Everything before had been a pipe dream; the reality seemed so alien.
“Maybe. We’ll see.” Dingo reached into Henry’s pack for the waterproof camera, carefully snapping several shots of the tiger. “If the cubs aren’t weaned, we can’t separate them, you know.”
“Dingo,” Henry said urgently. “We might have found our breeding pair! We have to locate their den.”
“Slow down, Dash. We’ll see what we shall see. Then we’ll decide.” Dingo lowered the camera. “Clever of you to spot her, although you might have come down to investigate a bit more quietly.”
“I fell on my arse, and you know it.” Henry grinned when he said it, no longer worried that Dingo thought him incompetent. “I doubt I could have spotted her from above.”
“Are you hurt?” Dingo asked gently.
Henry lifted his shirt, and Dingo winced at the raw grazes that now patterned his stomach.
“It’s okay,” Henry reassured him. He turned to look back at the thylacine. “It’s okay.”
The tiger cocked its head, as if hearing some far-off call, and within an instant it was back on its feet and had melted away into the brush, as if it weren’t part of this earth.
Henry shivered again, although he wasn’t sure if it was from the wet or the fact that his palm no longer burned. What had Jarrah done to him?
“There’s still a little bit of daylight left,” Dingo told him. “We’ll set up camp in a clearing a little way from here, and then you can get out of those wet clothes, and I’ll build you a fire. It may be a long night.”
He stood and offered Henry his hand. He took it gratefully and stood up. The two men followed the track of the tiger deeper into the forest.
The farther up the mountain they trekked, the colder it got. Henry was stuck with the uncomfortable realization that even though he was sweating from the humidity and the exertion of climbing, he was also cold. Damp, sweaty clothing wasn’t helping with that either. The high he held from his contact with t
he tiger was only just beginning to dissipate, and the scrapes on his side were raw from the rubbing of his shirt.
He had seen a thylacine in its natural habitat. How long had he stroked the pelts in the archives back in England, trying to imagine the creature alive, wondering how it moved? It seemed like his memory of their meeting was already fading, and he couldn’t distinguish between what he had actually seen and what he was now filling in with imagination or supposition. He wished he could record his memory like a motion picture, something to be committed into concrete reality forever.
Next time he saw the thylacine, he would be more observant and less dumbstruck. He snorted to himself. Next time? There was no guarantee of a next time.
But he had seen it. If that were all he came away with, wasn’t it enough? Wasn’t it worth it?
Of course it was. But the heart of the true adventurer always craves more. Once you succeeded at one goal, you just moved on to the next one. Otherwise you would stop moving, and what else would there be?
How can I go back home, after everything I’ve seen?
He silenced that thought.
“You’re being quiet,” Dingo called over his shoulder.
“I’m thinking.”
“You’re always thinking.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
“No,” Dingo said, surprised. “It’s a good thing. Some people don’t think enough. So there have to be people like you to take up the slack.”
Henry grinned. How was it that Dingo always knew the right thing to say? “You’re a thinker, yourself.”
“Sure I am.”
Dingo’s brain was always ticking over. In fact, Henry could tell that even now he was deep in thought about something. “What is it?”
Dingo stared ahead of them into the forest. “Weather’s worsening,” he said. “And the dark is coming in earlier than yesterday. We should make camp.”
“Already?”
“Yep. Don’t like the look of it, to tell you the truth. We may be in for a rough night.”
Henry shivered. “Great.”
“The bad thing is it means the animals will probably stay in as well.”
Henry swallowed his disappointment. “You never know. We could get lucky.”
Dingo seemed disappointed as well as he didn’t even fall for the obvious double entendre he could take from that. “I think we’re going to get mist as well.” Then he grinned. “Don’t worry, Dash. I’ll keep you warm.”
Shivering a bit in his clammy clothes, Henry hoped he would.
As they were pitching the tent, the mist started to roll in. It was like a living thing, blanketing all that lay in its path.
“Told you it would be a bad night. We’ll not be able to see much in this pea soup,” Dingo said, sounding pleased he could read the weather correctly and yet doom their surveillance all at the same time.
Henry was beginning to appreciate how Dingo’s expertise enabled him to size up the terrain and position the tent where it blended best into the site, so that one had to be almost on top of it to even know it was there. Dingo cleverly used existing rocks and tree roots to tie off to; a quick yank and the slipknots could be released and the tent bundled away without one realizing it had ever been there.
The tent was being made differently tonight, the space within being smaller so that the canvas could be wrapped around to provide both groundcover and flaps. “Trying to conserve the heat,” Dingo told Henry.
“You know,” Henry said, trying to sound nonchalant, “you told me before that there is one way to conserve body heat.”
Even though he already knew, Dingo wanted to hear him say it. “And what would that be, Dash?”
“Sleeping naked,” Henry now said boldly.
“I like the way you think,” Dingo said, bending down and hiding his face so that Henry wouldn’t see his smile. “For purely scientific reasons, yeah?”
“Of course,” Henry replied.
Dingo’s head shot up. “Oh?”
“But it’s fortunate that it will also have… pleasurable side-effects in this instance… for us to study,” Henry concluded.
And it did. Later that night when Henry came back to the tent after relieving himself, Dingo was already under the blankets waiting for him.
“Now, you strip for me,” Dingo commanded.
It must be being out in the wild that does it, Henry thought fleetingly as he started undressing without shame. He felt like there were no boundaries out here, and with Dingo he felt more alive than he had ever been. He even felt his worth as a sexual being. So he turned his disrobing into a slow tease for Dingo, who made his appreciation known with a slow whistle.
However, there was no way a man could strip off while on his knees due to the size of the tent they were in and manage to pull off his boots and still look alluring. Trying to kick one off, he lost his balance and collapsed upon Dingo, who gave an undignified ooomph as the breath was expelled from him.
“Need a hand?” Dingo grunted.
“Maybe,” Henry said. “I still seem to be wearing clothes.”
“I’ll be glad to help you with that,” Dingo smirked. His bare bum rose into the air as he came out from under the blankets and rolled his thumbs under the waistband of Henry’s drawers. Without warning, he yanked them down, and Henry was fully exposed.
“Well, what have we here,” Dingo said.
“Get my boots off, first,” Henry protested.
Dingo laughed and struggled to wrestle them off. Henry only had to watch him to start getting hard.
“Is this exciting for you, Dash?” Dingo teased.
“Anything you do is,” Henry admitted.
“What about this?”
Henry didn’t even have time to reply, as all that came out was a strangled moan as Dingo threw aside the boots and took him into his mouth. He allowed himself to be played like an instrument as he ran his hands along Dingo’s arching back. Dingo ran a finger tantalizingly behind his balls and along his crack, and Henry began thrusting upwards with wanton abandon. As he began to feel himself race to release, Dingo pulled free.
“I want to see you,” he said. He picked up Henry’s hand and guided it to his prick.
Henry couldn’t stop himself from gasping; this was an all-new level of intimacy, for Dingo to watch him pleasure himself. “You too,” he whispered.
Dingo nodded and scooted back slightly. His cock bobbed along with him, and he confidently took himself in hand. “Come on, Dash.”
Their eyes glued to each other, they began stroking. Slowly, teasingly, displaying themselves for their lover.
Henry came first, Dingo’s name upon his lips. He closed his eyes briefly, involuntarily, but then they flew back open so he wouldn’t miss Dingo doing the same.
Dingo began to pump himself more furiously, the tip of his tongue showing between his lips and guttural cries sounding. Even though he was slightly sore, Henry continued to stroke his softening cock, excited still as he watched Dingo come in furious spurts while crying his name. Sweating, Dingo fell back, his knees in the air. Henry pulled them down and climbed on top of him, Dingo’s half-hard cock resting against his arse. They kissed slowly as their bodies cooled rapidly in the night air.
With their mouths still touching, Dingo reached into his pack with one hand, somehow finding the bottle of tea-tree oil. He began to massage a bit onto the scrapes that adorned Henry’s torso.
Henry sighed with immediate relief.
“It has an antiseptic quality,” Dingo murmured.
“Any number of uses then.”
Dingo nodded. “No room to pack a variety of medicines and remedies.”
Henry felt a bit guilty, thinking that Dingo probably had no need of medicines or remedies except that he, a greenhorn—
A scream rent the silence of the forest, and Henry jerked away from Dingo.
“Shh,” Dingo whispered. “It’s just the devils. We probably woke them up with our own call of the wild.”
&nbs
p; Henry chuckled and kissed Dingo’s chest. “Who would have thought such a sound could exist in an animal?”
“Are you talking about us or the devils?”
Henry considered this for a moment and answered, “Both.”
Remembering that he was here to observe all that he could, Henry reluctantly crawled away from Dingo’s warmth, and, bare-arsed, he positioned himself by the flap of the tent so that he could peer out.
“See anything?” Dingo yawned, reaching for the blankets.
“Nothing,” Henry said, disappointed.
He felt the blankets being draped over him and then Dingo crawling beneath them and beside him.
The unnatural-sounding screams continued, and Henry was glad that Dingo was with him. Even though he never would have admitted the devils won their name justly, as they brought every childhood fear of the dark back to him.
It moved so fast it was almost a blur, but a small dark creature streaked past the front of their tent, its teeth a brief glint in the moonlight.
“You just saw your first devil,” Dingo said.
“It was so small,” Henry breathed. “How could something so small sound like that?”
“All the creatures here are miracles,” Dingo said sleepily. “Even the scary ones.”
Henry let the flap of the tent fall down.
“Better get dressed. It’s nippy tonight,” Dingo said.
Henry did so reluctantly, watching as Dingo did the same and regretting the necessity, but it did seem much colder than it had been so far.
Dingo had already closed his eyes when Henry wrapped the blankets around them like a cocoon and snuggled closer.
Chapter 21
Morning came quickly, and rain had been falling all through the night. Heavily. Dingo wasn’t next to him. Henry rubbed at his face blearily and pulled open the tent flap.
Dingo was standing in the rain, naked. Water coursed over his skin, down the back of his neck, and broke off into branched rivulets over the slight hair on his buttocks and the thicker hair of his legs. He bent over, and Henry realized that he was soaping himself up and treating the rain as a natural shower.