Jurassic Heart (18 page)

“I’ll check out your movie collection,” I said. “Not that I don’t like books, but movies are a bit more of a sociable activity.”

“There’s quite a collection,” he said. “Some of them are pretty modern too. Jacks has a VCR at home, and he still records stuff off the TV and brings it up here.”

With the dishes drying on a rack, I wandered back into the living room to browse through the selection of movies. Hunter had been telling the truth; I recognized several movies that were only a year or so old.

“Aren’t video cassettes horribly expensive to buy these days?” I asked as he followed me and wrapped his arms around me from behind.

“I don’t know. I think Jackson gets them from eBay.”

I selected a James Bond and set up the TV. Someone had even found cute “Be Kind, Rewind” stickers and stuck them to the top of each cassette.

“This feels awesomely retro,” I said as we settled on the couch. “Are we going to do the whole eighties thing of ‘watching a movie’?”

“What, putting a movie on and not watching it in favor of making out for a couple of hours?”

“Yeah.”

“Of course.”

A
FTER
TWO
hours of grinding on each other, we transferred our activities to the bedroom. I wasn’t opposed to having sex on the sofa, but it seemed rude since it wasn’t just Hunter’s place. He pulled the curtains closed while I turned down the bed, and we slid into the cool sheets together.

“Do you wanna fuck me?” he murmured as he fluttered his fingers over my bare waist.

I pulled away so I could look at him properly. “Seriously?”

“Yeah. It’s okay if you don’t want to.”

“But you’ve got such a big cock!”

He snorted with laughter and then collapsed into giggles. “Why would that mean I don’t like bottoming?”

“I don’t know,” I said, glad the darkness would mask the blush in my cheeks. “I just thought…. It seems like such a waste.”

“Oh, you,” he sighed, pulling me back into his embrace. “Like I said. If you don’t want to top, I won’t make you.”

“No, I don’t mind. I’m just surprised.”

I pushed at his chest a little, spreading my fingers over his smooth skin as my lips found his once more. This time I felt him submit, almost melting under my touch, allowing me to gently push him onto his back and straddle his thighs.

I’d never been particularly dominant, but this was a nice change. Hunter seemed to move with me rather than against me for once. The way he smiled when I lifted both his hands above his head and pinned them there made a little something tickle in the base of my stomach. I wasn’t prepared to explore my feelings in detail—those flutters and whispers were nice, but I didn’t want to think about what they meant.

I wanted to touch him. I wanted him to touch me. I wanted that hot, slick slide of my erection next to his as I rocked my hips back and forth, as he pressed his mouth close to mine and then licked at my tongue.

When I removed my hands from his wrists, he kept them above his head, clearly willing to behave. I kissed down the sensitive curve of his bicep, licked his nipples, then bit them to make him squirm, followed his gorgeous broad chest down to where his cock lay heavily on his stomach.

Hunter looked at me, a little plea in his eyes, not that I needed convincing. In one quick swoop, I caught the head of his cock in my mouth and sucked gently, rubbing my thumbs over his hipbones and down to the crease of his thighs.

He bucked his hips as I took more of his cock into my mouth, carefully working down until he was pressing against the back of my throat. His cock was too big for me to fit the whole thing in my mouth, and I worked the rest with my hand until Hunter was a big quivering mess. I found I quite liked it.

Clearly not willing to wait, Hunter grabbed the lube and a condom and passed them to me. “Please, Nick,” he murmured.

I pulled off his cock and smiled, flicked open the bottle of lube, and drizzled it over my fingers and down his crack, hastily massaging his hole until he relaxed enough to welcome me in.

I kissed over his stomach as I prepped him. Then he whimpered and begged again. After rolling on the condom, I sat back as he spread his legs wide, his feet propped up on the bed, and opened his arms to bring me closer.

Hunter laughed breathlessly as I pushed inside him, then moaned and dropped his head back, exposing the long line of his throat. It had been a while since I’d done this, and I wanted to make sure it was good for him, so I took my time, waiting until his body invited me in farther.

When he started pushing back against me, rocking his body up to meet mine, I moved with him until we created a familiar thrust and grind. It was still easy and slow, but I didn’t feel self-conscious anymore, the result of Hunter’s expressions and his whispered words of filthy encouragement.

“Is it good?” I demanded, pushing into him again.

“Yes! Yes. So good.”

It was what I needed to hear, the encouragement to pick up the pace and fuck him harder. With his legs now wrapped around my waist, I leaned forward with my weight on my arms, the perfect position to bite at his lips and jaw until he kissed me properly.

“Please, Nick. I’m close,” he murmured, gripping my biceps as I tried to aim my thrusts more toward his prostate.

I was close too but determined to hold out for him to come first. Since he wasn’t making any move for his cock, I grabbed it for him, harshly stroking in time with my shaky thrusts until I felt him spurt over my hand. The suddenly intense clenching in his ass was enough to tip me over the edge, and while he was still crying out and shaking from the intensity of his orgasm, I joined him.

My elbows gave way, and I collapsed on top of him, which only made him laugh. Hunter kissed the top of my head and moaned in deep contentment.

As soon as I caught my breath, I pulled away to dispose of the condom properly, then resumed my position snuggled on top of him. Hunter wrapped his arms loosely around me, and I could hear the still-unsteady beat of his heart through his chest.

“That was pretty incredible,” he said softly.

“Mhmm.”

“Have you changed your mind about topping?”

I chuckled softly and propped myself up to look at him. “I don’t mind it,” I said. “I just prefer the feeling of someone inside me.”

Hunter combed my hair back from my face, smiling at me with a stupid expression, then ran his thumb over my lips until I gave in and kissed it.

“Do you want a shower now?”

“I really do,” I said.

“Wanna share?”

I hesitated, wondering if that was a good idea, then gave in. “Sure.”

W
E
SPENT
the next two days hiking and eating and watching movies and fucking like rabbits, which made the hiking more difficult. We had sex outdoors, and Hunter admitted he’d never done that before, which surprised me.

All the things I thought I was going to miss—Internet connection, take-out food, TV—I found myself not missing at all. And I shocked myself at enjoying being in one other person’s company for nearly three days straight.

Hunter surprised me by telling me he’d been a history major for two years before switching to geography and environmental sciences. He’d been self-employed for over fifteen years, writing articles, doing government studies and surveys, and lecturing at universities for extra cash between assignments. However much I hated to admit it, and I knew my admission would come back to bite me in the ass, Hunter clearly knew his shit.

In postcoital, blissed-out brain fuzz, I admitted things to him I rarely spoke about: coming out, being an academic success but an absolute social and romantic failure, disappointing my parents because I hadn’t found a nice Jewish girl to settle down with. How expectations had surrounded me my whole life and I’d grown used to having them there until he’d come along and completely wiped them all away.

I told him about how I had been convinced for years that my sister was my parents’ favorite, that she’d been showered with gifts and love and attention in a way I had never been. As a teenager, I was forced to watch Esther take for granted what I’d craved. When I grew up, I forced myself to stop giving my parents such a hard time for the sake of my relationship with them. Mim had told me older parents often treated their children differently, and her words had resonated.

There were a few pictures of Hunter’s family around the cabin, mostly of him and his brothers as kids, although there were a few of older couples. I found his parents with relative ease; he took after his mother. That, and they were the only mixed-race couple I could find.

“My mama’s family didn’t like it at first,” he said when he caught me looking at the picture in the round gold frame. “That she was dating a First Nations man.”

“Really?”

“Mhmm. They got together in the sixties…. I suppose things weren’t as bad then as they had been ten years before, but it was still taboo.”

“You look more like her than your dad,” I said.

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

In the photo, Hunter’s mom had long dark hair pinned back from her face on both sides. She was slim, wearing high-waisted jeans and a light-colored T-shirt tucked into them, and layers of bracelets and bangles at her wrists. The young woman beamed into the camera, gently clutching the wrists of the tall man standing behind her with his arms wrapped around her waist.

I guessed that Hunter took a lot of his physical characteristics from his dad, but there was something about his mother’s expression I could see reflected in his, an open, trusting, simply happy nature.

“She was a first-generation French immigrant,” Hunter said as he flicked through photos on his phone to show me more pictures of her. “I think she was about fourteen when her parents decided to immigrate to Canada. My great-aunt and uncle moved here in the forties sometime. My aunt was a dressmaker, and she set up a shop in Montreal.”

“Did they bring you up to be bilingual, or did you learn French when you were older?”

“No, Mama always spoke French to us around the house, and Dad spoke English. She’s fluent in English, but it was important to her that me and Garrett and Jacks could all speak French. Dad barely understands a word. Sometimes she would scream at him in French, and afterward he’d ask us to translate.”

He laughed and shook his head. “I can remember getting a smack on the head when I asked what
salaud
meant.”

I raised an eyebrow in question.

“Bastard,” he said with a smile.

I laughed. “You love her very much.”

“Yeah,” he said softly. “I do.”

I wasn’t surprised when, a few hours later, I caught a snippet of a conversation in French when Hunter was sitting out on the front porch. I guessed our conversation had made him miss her.

We grew confident enough in each other’s company to wander around nearly naked, and after learning he liked my body, I felt better about showing it off. Once we’d had sex for what felt like the twentieth time since arriving for the weekend, I sprawled over his body, enjoying the skin-to-skin contact.

“I’m not sure I want to go back,” I admitted.

Hunter ran his hand over my hair down my back to quickly squeeze my ass. It was a comforting gesture, and I lifted into his touch.

“Well, you said yourself we could survive out here for months without needing to call in reinforcements. But I don’t think you really want to do that.”

“Oh?”

“No,” he said and shook his dark hair out of his face. I found a hair elastic on the nightstand and passed it to him. “Thanks. I think you’re enjoying being out of the spotlight.”

“I like the spotlight, thank you very much.”

He laughed. “Not in that way. I mean, there’s a lot of people back there who are relying on you for guidance on the dig. It’s a lot of responsibility, and let’s face it, you’re pretty young.”

“I’ll be thirty-three soon enough.”

“And I’m nearly forty.”

“No way,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows. “You’re shitting me.”

“I shit you not,” he said, still laughing.

I smoothed my hand over his hair, now contained in a sleek ponytail. Sure enough, on closer inspection, I found two or three gray hairs.

“I’m so jealous,” I said. “I found gray hairs on my chest when I was nineteen.”

“Wow.”

“I know. I need to know your secret. Did you find the fountain of youth? Did you follow Johnny Depp there? Do you have his phone number?”

“No, to all of the above. I’m sorry to disappoint you.”

“What, then?”

“Good genes?” he offered. “A French mother who, in the absence of daughters, impressed upon her sons the importance of moisturizing, exercising, and eating vegetables?”

“I want to meet your mother,” I said, deadpan.

Hunter gave me an even look. “I’d quite like for you to meet her too.”

Before the weekend, that sort of statement would have sent me running for the hills. Now, I pulled Hunter into a long, sweet kiss, awkward because of the angle, but I didn’t care. He broke away first and gave me a sharp slap on the ass.

“Come on. If you want to make it back to Deacon before it gets dark, we’re going to have to get moving.”

I nodded and, with a huge effort, rolled off the bed and to my feet.

While Hunter secured the cabin, checking the drains and the tank and the solar panels, I packed. It didn’t take long, but Hunter didn’t need my help, so I wandered out to take pictures of the cabin and the area with my phone. It was nice to have some permanent reminder of the time we’d spent together.

W
HEN
WE
approached the town, Hunter gave me a quick look and turned the stereo down. “Do you want me to take you back to the motel?”

It was a clear offer that I could spend the night with him again if I
wanted.

“I should,” I said. “It would be nice to stay out, but….”

“Don’t worry. I get it.”

I nodded, not sure he did, but I let it go. When he pulled up outside the front of the motel, I leaned in for a kiss, sure that he’d give me one. His lips curved into a smile as they pressed against mine, and that was all I needed for reassurance things were okay.