by Anna Martin
“Nah, I already took stuff out to make dinner.”
“That sounds awesome. Kit said you make manapua….”
She stuck her head into the family room, laughing. “Are you angling for something, Dr. Beck?”
He grinned radiantly at her. “Only if you were offering, Ms. Kahoa.”
KIT WAS happy to sit back and watch Leilani flirt outrageously with Logan as she made dinner. She barely eased up while they ate, either, and she was very accepting of Logan’s offer to help wash dishes.
Leilani wasn’t normally a flirty sort of girl, and Kit knew she was only being that way with Logan in an effort to wind Kit up. The more he smiled mildly and let them get on with it, the worse they behaved. It was highly entertaining.
“Did you get caught in the storm today?” Leilani asked.
“Just a little,” Logan said drily.
“It was a doozy.”
“Thank you for cooking.” Logan leaned against the counter, subtly flexing, well, everything. Kit pressed his lips together to stop himself from laughing. “I don’t get a home-cooked meal all that often.”
Leilani shook her head, clearly trying to hide her own laughter too. “Come and sit down. And behave. That goes for you too,” she added, waving a finger at Kit.
“Does your family come to visit?” Logan asked when the four of them were settled in the living room, Dizzy taking advantage of the extra fuss Leilani was willing to give her.
“Sometimes,” she said. “I’ll go home more often. My parents don’t think it’s safe here, no matter how many times I tell them otherwise.”
“Where’s home?”
“The North Shore of O’ahu. Nearly all my family still lives there.”
“I’ve never been to Hawai’i,” Logan admitted.
“You know we have a story about these islands?”
“No. Will you tell me?”
Leilani grinned. “Well, we’re a culture of storytellers.”
“Go on,” Kit said, encouraging her.
“The way my tutu tells it, Maui tricked all the thunder lizards onto these islands. Then, with the help of the Hawaiians and their hokule’a village outriggers, Maui pulled the islands all the way out into the oceans to keep Hawai’i safe. Hawaiians call these islands Aina O Kaio’e, which means Land of the God-Lizards.”
“I knew there was something about lizards in there,” Logan said, making Leilani laugh.
“But they’re the ancestors of modern birds, Dr. Beck,” she said, teasing him back.
“These are modern stories?” Logan asked.
Leilani nodded. “Well, from the time when the Archipelago was first discovered. Hawaiians have sailed these oceans for centuries—for trade or war or just curiosity. I mean, now we know about wind and currents and why it was impossible to find the islands without satellites, but I have a feeling my people needed to explain why they weren’t here first.”
“It’s a shame,” Logan said. “I think the Hawaiian name is much more beautiful than the South Pacific Archipelago.”
She grinned. “Aina O Kaio’e. You can use it, if you like.”
“I just might.”
Kit watched Logan glance at the clock, then over to Dizzy, who was wearily patrolling the living room.
“I think I need to get her home,” he said, sounding genuinely regretful.
“I thought you lost your apartment keys?” Kit said.
“They’re in the truck somewhere. I just have to dig around enough to find them. Anyway, it’s stopped raining now.”
“Okay.”
Kit wanted to ask him to stay the night, but the words caught in his throat. Logan leaned over and kissed him soundly, then whistled for Dizzy.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, lifting a hand to wave at Leilani.
“Later,” Kit echoed and locked the door behind them.
When he got to the family room, he grabbed his phone and shot out a message before he could stop himself.
Stay Saturday night?
Leilani looked at him over her mug of tea. Judging.
“What?” Kit asked.
“You love him.” She sang it, teasing.
Kit rolled his eyes. “I do not love him, Leilani.”
“You like him like him. And you don’t like anyone.”
“That’s not true,” Kit protested. “I like you. And my mothers and my grandparents.”
“Family doesn’t count.”
“I have friends,” he insisted.
“And now you have a boyfriend.”
“All right.” Kit saw no benefit in arguing with her. “Maybe I do.”
Leilani threw her head back and laughed. “Good. I’m pleased. He’ll be good for you.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“I do,” she said, still grinning.
Chapter Thirteen
LOGAN SPENT most of the next week working closely with Jenna. She would only be with them for a few more months before she reported back to her research position, and he wanted to make sure she got the chance to work whatever areas were the most interesting to her.
Logan didn’t take many interns; that sort of thing happened more often in the labs. He was very specific about the sort of person he would agree to work with, and he’d set up a lengthy application and interview process to weed out anyone who wasn’t genuinely interested in the work. In the first year he’d offered the program, he’d had thousands—literally thousands—of applications from people who just wanted a free pass to go and look at the dinosaurs.
The program had evolved significantly over time, and Logan continued to make updates with each new intern who came through. His intention was always to tailor the program to each individual’s interests, rather than having a set plan. Jenna wanted to be a dinosaur veterinarian. She’d confessed that to him in secret, knowing there was no veterinary service on the Archipelago. Maybe that would change someday. Logan definitely wasn’t going to try and put her off.
They spent three days in the field, tracking and monitoring the different dinosaur species. Jenna had come into contact with most of them already. Now they were on a mission to track down some of the more elusive species.
“It’s a miracle some of these animals are still here,” Jenna said. They were parked on a ridge on the North Island. It was close to dusk, and they were watching and hoping for one of the big predators to pass through.
“It’s a miracle any of them are still here,” Logan said mildly.
“Oh, I know that. The size of them just fascinates me.”
“They’re all a lot smaller than the true Cretaceous giants, though. I mean, look at the saltasaurus.” The long-necked dinosaurs were grazing near a lake a kilometer or so away from them. “It’s hard to imagine, but diplodocus was more than twice the weight of a saltasaurus, and double their length. These guys are just babies compared to the sauropods we know from the fossil record.”
“They’re still almost forty feet long,” Jenna said with a laugh.
“Right. And look at the carnotaurs. They’re terrifying animals, but most of them are only seven or eight feet tall. T. rex would have dwarfed them.” Logan reached for his water bottle and took a long drink. “I’m not an evolutionary expert—they’re all back at the labs. But it’s pretty obvious that natural selection only allowed the smaller dinosaurs to survive here. There’s a pretty good population balance between the predators and prey.”
Jenna slapped his arm just as Logan was about to launch into a rant about his theories on the food chain on the islands. She silently pointed out the window to the other side of the lake, where the sauropods were grazing.
“Is that…?”
“Could be.” Logan lifted the binoculars from around his neck and leaned forward in his seat. The carnotaurs were well camouflaged, but he’d caught a glimpse of their distinctive dark red feathers through the rustling trees.
“He wouldn’t try and launch an attack on them, would he?”
“I don’t have
a clue. I’ve never seen these two species interact before.”
Even though they were too far away for the carnotaur to hear or smell them, they still spoke in hushed whispers. From their position on the hill, they had a pretty perfect view over the valley.
The carnotaur came into view a few more times, but he barely looked interested in the saltasaurus herd.
“They’re too big,” Jenna said. “He couldn’t take them down on his own.”
“I think so too.” Logan leaned back as the carnotaur disappeared back through the trees.
“Does that mean the saltasaurus have no natural predators here?”
“I doubt it. That was a juvenile carnotaur, maybe three or four years old. This might be his first season away from his mother.”
Logan wasn’t worried about the carnotaur; it looked healthy enough. It was probably still hunting the smaller dinosaurs for now, though Logan wasn’t surprised he was tempted by a bigger treat.
“That was amazing,” Jenna said with a laugh, pressing her hand to her chest. “Oh my God.”
“Are you okay if we head back now? We’ve got a long drive ahead of us.”
“Of course.”
They hadn’t worked all the way through Jenna’s wish list yet, but there was still time.
When they made it back to the South Island, it was almost midnight. Logan dropped Jenna off at her apartment block with a promise to review everything they’d learned so far on Monday morning. Logan didn’t want to take the Jeep back to the main compound, so he parked it in the small lot behind the apartment buildings and walked back to his apartment, where Kit had been babysitting Dizzy all day.
She was asleep when he got home, on a pile of blankets on the arm chair.
“Don’t wake her,” Kit said in a hushed voice as Logan toed off his boots by the front door.
“I won’t.”
He went over to the couch and kissed Kit thoroughly.
“Good day?” Kit asked.
“Saw the juvenile carnotaur eyeing up the saltasaurus. He didn’t attack, but he wanted to.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah. We also saw a bunch of troodon hunting an ornithomimus.”
“You’re making my job sound boring now.”
Logan chuckled and tucked himself up on the couch with his head on Kit’s shoulder.
“Your job is boring,” he murmured. “Was she well behaved?”
“I think she gets bored with me. I don’t take her to all the interesting places you do.”
“She adores you.”
“Well, yes. That too. I should get going.”
Logan stopped him with a hand on his arm. “Why don’t you stay?”
Kit raised his eyebrows. “Oh.”
“You don’t have to,” Logan said quickly, embarrassed. “It’s just late. You can stay over if you want. I’ll sleep on the couch.”
Kit reached up to cup Logan’s cheek in his hand. “You don’t have to sleep on the couch.”
“I don’t want to push.”
“You’re not pushing. Yeah, I’ll stay.”
Logan leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Okay. Let me go take a shower.”
Logan made quick work of the shower. It hadn’t been a rolling-around-in-the-dirt kind of day, so he didn’t have to worry about scrubbing mud out of his hair. Thank God. He was usually comfortable with his own nudity, but he wasn’t sure how that would be appreciated by Kit. So he pulled on underwear before he walked through to the bedroom, quietly pleased when Kit glanced over, then did a double take.
“You should warn me before you do that.”
“Do what?” Logan said innocently. He stretched his arms over his head, appreciating the way his shoulders popped.
“You know exactly how good-looking you are when you do that. You narcissist.”
Logan just laughed and crawled onto the bed.
“I’m definitely not that. You think I’m good-looking?”
“Mm-hmm,” Kit hummed, running his hands over Logan’s shoulders. “Now you’re fishing.”
Logan hid his smile in Kit’s shoulder. “I don’t think of myself that way.”
“Well, you should. You’re gorgeous.”
“I have stretch marks,” Logan murmured. He had no idea why he was admitting that. Kit liked him, and he was trying to put him off. It was ridiculous.
“So?”
“They’re everywhere, Kit. On my sides and my thighs and my butt.”
“Logan, I don’t care. I think you’re attractive because of your dumb pretty face, as well as your incredibly fit body.”
“You don’t care about the scars?”
Kit ran his fingers over the one on Logan’s chest. “No.”
“Oh,” Logan said, feeling stupid. “Exactly how tired are you?”
“Very.” But Kit was teasing and yawned theatrically.
He’d stripped down to just his tight black boxer briefs and his T-shirt. Logan decided it was a very good look on him.
Wondering what reaction he might get from Kit’s perpetually uptight posture, Logan pushed up the T-shirt and licked a wet stripe over Kit’s stomach.
Kit twitched.
“Too tired?” Logan inquired.
“Maybe I can be convinced.”
Logan moved up Kit’s body and brushed his lips over Kit’s neck. When Kit hummed softly, Logan did it again. Kit spread his legs a little so Logan could settle between them, balancing his weight on his hands.
“Where did this come from?” Kit asked, rubbing his thumb over Logan’s nipple to wriggle the hoop he wore through it.
“Double-dog dare.” Logan shuddered. The hoop made his nipple super sensitive.
“Really?” Kit laughed.
“Yeah. My brother dared me, and I’d had maybe three beers, which is definitely enough for me to be stupid enough to take a double-dog dare seriously. I think I won in the end, though, ’cause it feels good.”
“It does, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Logan found Kit’s lips and finally, finally, sank into the kiss he’d been desperate for. Because, oh God, Kit’s lips. And his tongue. And his long, long eyelashes that tickled at Logan’s cheeks now Kit had taken his glasses off.
Logan ran his fingers through Kit’s fine, pale hair again, disrupting the floppy fall of it. Kit carefully closed his teeth around Logan’s bottom lip and tugged.
Just as Logan was getting into the rhythm of this, figuring out just what Kit wanted and preparing to give it to him, he was disrupted by the softest exhalation. When he looked over, Dizzy was sitting on the floor next to the bed, her head cocked, very definitely watching them.
“For fuck’s sake,” Logan muttered, burying his face in Kit’s shoulder as Kit shook with laughter.
“She’s curious.”
“She’s a fucking voyeur.”
“I’m not letting her watch us, Logan.”
Logan sighed heavily and hauled himself off the bed. He scooped Dizzy up, feeling weird that he was naked and at least half-hard, and took her back to the living room.
“Give us, like, half an hour,” he said, settling her down on her blanket nest. “Maybe not even that.”
She honked at him.
“Thanks. You’re a good roommate.”
Kit was still laughing when Logan got back and pulled the door firmly closed behind himself.
“The clock’s ticking,” Kit said and stuck his tongue in his cheek.
“You heard that, huh?”
“Come here.” Kit laughed.
“What do you want?” Logan asked as he did as he was told. “I know what you said before, about not wanting to rush things.”
“I don’t feel rushed,” Kit said, running his hands over Logan’s chest and shoulders again.
“Okay. That’s good.”
“It’s weird. I know we’re moving quickly, but it’s different.”
“Maybe because we’ve known each other for so long.”
Kit brushed his lips over Logan�
��s jaw. “Maybe all that arguing we’ve been doing for years was actually foreplay, and we didn’t even know it.”
Logan groaned. “Dr. Sterling, you’re driving me fucking crazy.”
Kit laughed brightly and planted a soft kiss on Logan’s lips. “Good.”
Logan decided he could take charge, even if it was only in a small way, and helped Kit out of his underwear before kicking off his own. Kit was hard, his cock flushed pink at the tip, and Logan waited for Kit’s nod before swooping down and taking it into his mouth.
Kit bucked his hips, and Logan relaxed, comfortable that he knew exactly what he was doing. He licked a stripe up the underside of Kit’s cock, then circled his tongue around the head, taking too much pleasure when Kit trembled and moaned.
“You keep that up and I won’t last long,” Kit said.
When Logan opened his eyes, Kit had his hands fisted in the bedsheets, his forearms corded with tension. “What do you want?”
“Fuck me,” Kit said. He’d developed a dark flush on his cheeks and chest, and his normally pristine hair was all ruffled out of position.
“Oh, I can do that,” Logan murmured and reached for the lube.
Kit opened up around one, then two of Logan’s slick fingers, groaning and gasping when Logan pinched his nipples too.
“Come on.” Kit bucked his hips up. “I don’t want to wait, come on, Logan.”
Logan wasn’t about to wait for a second invitation. He grabbed a condom and rolled it over his cock, fingers only trembling a little, then covered the latex with lube.
“Like this, or do you want to flip over?” Logan asked.
Kit responded by spreading his legs and grabbing his cock.
“Okay, like this is good.”
He took it easy at first, letting his cock breach Kit’s hole slowly. Kit was breathing hard, his fingers digging in hard into the muscles in Logan’s arms. Logan nudged his nose against Kit’s throat, then kissed a slow, wet line up to his ear.
“Doing okay?” he murmured.
“Yeah.”
Kit loosened his hold on Logan’s arms, then trailed his fingers up and down the sensitive skin under Logan’s elbow. While Logan rocked his hips, slowly easing his cock into Kit’s hole, Kit tilted his head and stole kisses from Logan’s lips.