by J R Hogan
“That it’s been far too long since you and I had one of our delightful conversations,” I responded.
She scowled. “We actually had enough firepower protect ourselves, and you gave it away,” Chastity hissed.
I looked toward the women in the distance. “Um, I don’t recall giving it away. We still have everything.”
“They have everything, Mark. We have nothing!”
I folded my arms. “You have the pistol you didn’t want to share, remember? Ling assured its safe return after your little accident.”
Chastity grunted in frustration. “You know exactly what I mean, Mark! Those weapons require experience, and they have none!”
“Jessica has plenty,” I shot back.
She gave me a confused look.
I sighed. “The cheerleader.”
Chastity rolled her eyes. “I’m sorry, Mark, but I just don’t see that walking Barbie doll as having the requisite firearm training.”
I shook my head. “Let me get this straight. You wanted me to keep all of the weapons for myself? I only have two hands, Chastity.”
She gave a hint of a smile. “We have four hands between us.” She raised her eyebrows. “And significantly greater capability.”
I rubbed my temples. “How can we keep them safe if they’re unarmed and we’ve got more than we can use?”
“Mark, in case of emergency, you always put on your oxygen mask before assisting the incapable,” she spat. “It’s basic survival, and you don’t seem to be appreciating the gravity of where we are.”
“Of where you trapped me,” I corrected.
She softened. “Mark, you’re noble to a fault. But you created an unlikely advantage for yourself and then instantly destroyed it.”
“This is the best way to protect the four of them,” I answered, my frustration growing.
Chastity brushed her fingers along my shoulder and then withdrew them. “Mark, you need to stop thinking that you can keep all of them safe. How are you going to deal with it when the first one dies?”
I felt sick. “The whole point is to make sure that never happens, Chastity.”
She sighed. “Mark… you need to stop living in a fantasy land and come back to reality.”
“You’re the one who tricked me out of reality and stranded us in a jungle filled with dinosaurs, Chastity!” The heat was rising in my chest, and I couldn’t control it.
“Not everyone can survive, Mark. It’s just a matter of time.”
We locked eyes and didn’t speak.
“I’ll be here for you when you see reason.” She slid her fingers through my hair. “Until then, I’ll be in your head, because you know I’m right.”
She turned and walked away.
By the time I thought of the perfect response, she was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
TOC
“Who am I going to sleep with?”
I nearly choked on the bottle of stream water I was drinking. “Pardon?” I asked Ling.
She cocked her head. “You have a bunch of camping equipment, and the sun’s getting lower. We need to set up a sleeping arrangement for tonight.”
“Ah,” I responded. “Right. Well, with one tent, one sleeping bag, one pillow, and one inflatable mattress, I think that we can each have a component of comfort.”
Ling nodded. “We could take turns. It’s worked for us before.”
She let her dark brown eyes linger on me for a second longer before moving toward the camping backpack.
“What’s worked for us before?” Jessica asked as she moved behind Ling.
“Division of labor,” I answered quickly. “I was actually hoping you could help me out with that. Ling, do you think you could work with Sarah and Daisy to set up our camp? I’d like to have a word with Jessica.”
“What should our sunny companion do to keep occupied?” Ling asked as we both glanced at Chastity.
She was sitting by herself, staring at the waves. She’d decided to keep her blood-spattered lab coat on; it had a jarring visual effect.
“She’s probably busy figuring out which secrets she’s going to barter in exchange for human contact,” I sighed. “Ling, do me a favor and keep an eye on her. But don’t be too harsh, she’s a sensitive soul.”
Ling folded her arms. “You tell me not to be harsh, and then point out that she’s sensitive? Is that a challenge, or…?”
I shook my head. “Just keep her away from Sarah and Daisy. I think she’s afraid of you.”
Ling snapped her head back to Chastity. “Oooh, I like that.”
“And please remember that I have to clean up any messes between the two of you.”
“Don’t worry,” she answered, not looking at me, “I don’t mind.”
I ran a mental analysis and decided that literally anything I said would make the situation more difficult, so I just shook my head.
“Professor,” Ling interrupted my thoughts and looked directly at me. “You might not realize it, but you like it when I’m a handful.”
That comment tied a knot in my stomach, because I prefer things to be straightforward. I found myself compelled to tell her that she was wrong, that I couldn’t be pulled in by emotional paradoxes, that my heart was won through my head and not the other way around. That compulsion was very intense and emotional, which was how I realized that Ling was right, and that she had gotten to me.
I didn’t like the fact that I liked the fact.
“Professor?”
I blinked. “Yes?”
Jessica grinned. “I’ve been trying to get your attention, but you’re just staring into space.”
I blinked again.
“It’s okay,” she said, running her fingers up and down my arm, “girls are complicated. Don’t get too worked up if you don’t understand.”
That remark riled me, and I was about to give a passionate defense about how I wasn’t worked up when I realized the irony.
I turned and walked down the beach. Jessica followed at my side.
“I’m worried about the dinosaurs I saw today,” I began, shifting to a topic that I understood better than emotional entanglements. “It was a new species, Troodon. It attacked fast and retreated faster. I imagine that they communicate as a pack very well. Paleontological evidence suggests that it has the highest brain-to-body ratio of any dinosaur that ever lived, and could have been the most intelligent. That would make them even more dangerous, in their own way, than the Spinosaurus.”
She stopped and gave me a nervous look.
“There’s more,” I breathed. “Its eyes were enormous orbs. Jessica, I think it can hunt in the dark.”
She nodded slowly. “You’re saying you want me to come with you, now, to track them and discover what we can before nightfall.”
I raised an eyebrow.
“And you’re asking me not to tell the others, because you don’t want to panic them.”
I raised the other eyebrow.
She breathed out slowly. “Professor, I need to know something, and you have to be honest with me.”
The knot in my stomach pulled tighter.
“How many AR-15 bullets did you buy?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
TOC
“We’ll be back in a couple of hours,” I announced to Ling, Sarah, and Daisy as they unpacked my camping bag.
“Have fun,” Ling responded. Her smile made me nervous. It was too wide, too devious. I wanted to prod further, but Jessica grabbed my hand and pulled me into the bushes.
She had the AR-15 slung handily around her shoulder. I followed with a bamboo spear and the knife, which Ling had let me borrow. “You can use the shotgun,” she’d offered, but I insisted that we were just investigating and wouldn’t have use for it.
There was no need to cause panic.
“That’s a strange-looking dino,” Jessica noted when we arrived in the clearing where Sarah and Ling had been a
ttacked. “It’s like a Martian had a baby with a huge chicken.”
“Note the size of the head,” I explained, prodding the dead Troodon’s skull with the base of my spear. “There’s reason to believe that it had enough neural folding to yield unprecedented intelligence.”
Jessica stood by my side, resting her hand on the small of my back. “Professor Swift, you’re not worried about being outsmarted by a dinosaur, are you?”
My face got hot. I had opened my mouth to retort when she slid her finger up my spine, leaving a trail of ignited nerves in her wake. I forgot what I was going to say.
I turned my head to see her smiling as she moved up and down my back.
“Um. Let’s, ah, go hunting.”
She laughed and dropped her hand. My mind instantly cleared, and I shook my head. I must have sounded like an idiot.
“Come on, Professor, I think I see some tracks.” Jessica moved forward, and I followed her bouncing, swishing cheerleader’s skirt.
We moved for several minutes in relative silence. I stopped periodically to mark the trees with my knife so that we’d be able to find our way back. The omnipresent hiss of jungle bugs was only challenged by the soft footfalls of our shoes on the dirt floor.
I stopped when Jessica raised her hand, nearly colliding with her. She grabbed my waist and pulled me in eagerly. “Do you think we’re being watched?” she hissed into my ear.
I looked around in paranoia. “Um, I don’t think so. You’ve been following the tracks, right?”
She nodded, then closed her eyes and leaned her shoulders against my chest. I froze, so she grabbed my arms and wrapped them around herself, bringing them together above her waist. “I don’t think anyone is nearby,” she whispered.
I panted, my head spinning. She was pressing every part of her body against mine, and I felt compelled to resist. I wasn’t sure why, exactly, but it-
“Feels good when you hold me, Professor Swift,” she cooed.
Fuck. I wanted to be strong, but it was like fighting sleepiness when you know it’s a lost cause.
She leaned back and rested her head on my shoulder. Her impossibly silky golden locks caressed my neck; it felt like they were touching the nerves themselves, with every impulse making a beeline to the pleasure center of my brain. She leaned farther back so that our cheeks were touching, which was so warm and smooth, and then we were kissing.
I knew I’d intended to resist, but I was at a complete loss to understand why. My hands found her hair, and it was probably the silkiest I’d ever felt, as impossibly wonderful as the woman before me. Perhaps my hesitation came from the fact that part of me believed she was simply an abstract notion of the feminine ideal that my mind had conjured in a fevered vision of the impossibly perfect.
Jessica guided my hands under her skirt and I could swear that her thighs were made of butter, paradoxically firm yet perfectly yielding all at once. She hooked my thumbs inside the waistband of her panties and we dropped them together, letting the soft cotton fall to her ankles. She stepped out of them and kicked them aside. I could feel the smile on her lips.
“Um,” I said through my haze as I pulled my mouth from hers, “this – well – you didn’t draw straws, so you can’t-”
She stuck out her lower lip. “I know it’s wrong to cut in line, but will you still have me if I’m a bad girl?” Jessica was being intentionally dramatic, because she thought it would affect me.
It affected me. “Um. Yes?” I answered before she grinned and kissed me again, more aggressively this time. She grabbed my dick hard enough to cause pain. I gasped. “Wait,” I said in a moment of brief clarity, “wait, there might be Troodons near, this could be very dangerous-”
“Fuck, say that again, Professor!”
“Pardon? That this very dangerous?”
She clenched her teeth and ripped open my fly, only pulling my pants down far enough to free my dick from the jeans. “Ow – careful, be gentle-”
“No,” she hissed, pushing me against a tree. “Now hold still, I’ve got live ammunition.” She dropped to her knees and grabbed my dick authoritatively. As a result, I was already gasping when she slid my half of my cock into her throat on the first gulp.
“Oh, shit,” I whispered as her skilled tongue danced acrobatics that could win Olympic gold. “Fuck, Jessica, how are you able to do this-”
She pulled her head back and looked up at me. I fell into her wide, green eyes as she stroked my dick right next to her mouth. “Play with my hair, Professor,” she demanded.
I slid both hands deep into her locks, twirling them between my fingers as she slid her lips down my shaft. Jessica pumped the base of my dick with her right hand while sliding her left beneath my shirt. She pressed her nails deeper, deeper, deeper still until I could feel the flesh on my abs nearly tearing. I moaned ever louder, but could not longer form words. The pain just made everything impossibly better, like salt on chocolate.
She pulled her head back again. “Why are you being such a wuss, Professor? Pull my hair like a man if you like what I’m doing.”
That’s when I simply gave up on hoping to understand her. She wanted me to pull her hair with the same aggression she had unleashed?
Then her fingers dug deeper into my side. The pain was no longer risky or flirtatious; her cut was searing and genuinely painful. I winced and yanked her locks. She responded with a moan that would have been a shout if her mouth hadn’t been filled with my cock. So I squeezed her hair tighter and pushed the back of her head into my hips, watching nearly all of my dick disappear between her soft lips.
Jessica’s tongue worked furiously against my intrusion as I approached the point where I’d no longer be able to hold back.
Then Jessica pressed both hands against my hips and pushed away. She took in great lungfuls of air as I teetered on the edge, agonized that she had stopped.
Jessica turned to face me, jaw hanging low, face hungry and gaunt.
For a moment, I was afraid of her.
Then she stood, placed her hands on my shoulders, and forced me into a squatting position. I obeyed wordlessly. She stood between my legs, turned her back to me, lifted her skirt, and lowered herself onto my lap.
Sweet fuck.
The only thought in my head was that Jessica’s pussy must have been the original mold the Greek gods crafted to convince our species to procreate. Every part of her was perfectly wet, hot, slick, and tight in just the right ways to spin my head so profoundly that I lost all sense of gravity and time. She had positioned herself so that she was in my lap and we were both squatting on the ground as I leaned against the tree. She bent her head back, our cheeks pressed against one another while we both looked forward.
She smiled. It was golden.
Jessica moved with the strength and precision of a boa. I tried to keep up, but my thighs quickly burned to numbness. Instead, I wrapped my arms around her waist so that I could pull her down harder and move myself deeper into her.
She yelped the first time. Then she kissed me. “More. Like. That. Faster.”
I squeezed my arms and slid my dick as far into Jessica as physical space would allow. She moved her hand behind the back of my head and wove her fingers through my hair, pulling tight.
“Split me apart, Professor Swift.”
I saw nothing but red.
I was pumping my hips to comply with her request when I froze.
Thirty feet away stood a Troodon.
“Don’t slow down now,” Jessica whispered.
My focus shifted in and out, but I was aware enough to surmise that another pack member was nearby. I followed the gaze of the one before us, turned around, and saw it.
We were flanked on both sides.
“Jessica, we’re being watched.”
“That’s so fucking hot,” she cooed.
“No,” I panted, “we’re being hunted.”
“You want to eat me out?” she gasped.
“You started this fire, you’re going to put it out, Professor,” she snapped, pulling my hands away from her.
“Jessica, the Troodons! They’ve come for us!”
“Well they’re just going to have to wait their turn,” she whined. “Professor, your dick is-”