by Anna Martin
The carnotaurus was still under the effects of the tranquilizer, but Logan didn’t want to risk staying around any longer. With predators, there wasn’t any way of knowing what they’d be like when they came out of the sedation.
The animal was in a good position, which was unlikely to cause it discomfort, so Logan grabbed the spent darts, went back to the Jeep, and slipped into the passenger seat. Kit had the engine running and was staring out over the dashboard, his jaw set.
“Go,” Logan said.
Kit deftly turned them around and headed back the way they’d come, toward the beach and relative safety. Marie wound her window back up and took the darts out of the handgun, put the safety on, and stored it in the pocket next to her seat.
“Are you okay?” Helena said softly.
“Fine,” Logan told her. “That was textbook.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Kit said tensely.
“Yeah, probably,” Logan said, and there was a soft snort of laughter from the back seat.
Kit seemed to have the whole escape-driver thing down pretty well, so Logan worked on securing his samples and packaging the gloves, needle, and darts to safely dispose of them later.
“That was seriously the most Indiana Jones thing I’ve ever seen,” Helena said.
“Is that on the regular tour?” Marie added.
Logan laughed. “No, it’s not. Nor will it ever be.” He tipped his head back against the headrest and closed his eyes. “Shit.”
“You doing okay?” Kit asked.
“Yeah, fine. Adrenaline crash.”
They drove in silence for another twenty minutes or so, until Logan deemed it safe to get out of the car. They weren’t quite at the beach yet, but he needed to store the samples in the special compartment in the trunk. Dizzy was sleeping on Helena’s lap, unaffected by the morning’s drama.
It didn’t take long for Logan to store his samples and take the driver’s seat back from Kit.
“Do you still want to go looking for infant saltasaurus?” Kit asked as they got moving again.
Logan tapped on the brakes and looked back into the car. “You guys want to go on a wild saltasaurus chase?”
“Definitely,” Marie said with conviction.
“We might not get back until late,” Logan warned her. “I have a picnic and some emergency supplies, so we’re good for food, but you’re probably not going to get a decent meal today.”
“That’s fine,” Helena said. “It’s not like we get this opportunity every day.”
“Okay.”
Logan reassessed his plan in his head as he turned the car and headed farther up the coast, away from the bridge to the South Island. He’d never seen a carnotaur in this area before, which didn’t mean all that much. The predators were harder to track, though they’d be able to follow this one now that the tracker had been put on him.
The saltasaurus were grazing animals and mostly stuck to the interior of the island where the vegetation was denser. Logan had a hunch on where their nest would be based on a few different assumptions. It was an inexact science, though, and the chances were, he really was leading them all on a wild chase.
“We’ll stop in about an hour to stretch our legs and grab something to eat,” Logan said. “I know of a good spot.”
Chapter Sixteen
“A good spot” turned out to be on the edge of a cliff with a stunning view of the South Pacific Ocean licking at the rocks. Kit felt his jaw drop as they edged through the trees, somehow surprised that Logan had managed to surprise him again.
“Wow,” Helena breathed from the back seat.
“It’s pretty, huh?” Logan said. “We’re safe out here too. I’ve stopped here a few times before.”
Kit wasn’t sure what Logan’s definition of “safe” was anymore. It seemed to mean leaving the car doors open and a gun in both Logan and Kit’s mama’s hands. They sat on the grass, Dizzy grazing between them and butting at Logan’s knees for bites of whatever he was eating.
“Can she digest that?” Kit asked as Logan let her nibble some quinoa salad from his palm.
“I guess so,” he said with a shrug. “It’s a grain, right? She’s fine with most grains.”
Logan had called Bruno and asked him to pack them a picnic lunch, meaning it was delicious and ridiculously extravagant. There was a delicate little mixed salad each, plus a sandwich on sourdough bread, chips, and strawberry lemonade, then thick slices of cake for later.
Unlike the spot where they’d found Dizzy on the North Island, here the trees gave way to scrubby grass that quickly turned into a steep cliff and a truly terrifying drop-off. Kit wasn’t great with heights, so he stayed back, closer to the car.
This was the first time they’d let Dizzy wander around on one of the islands, and Kit wondered if they should get her some kind of leash. They couldn’t know if the smell of her would attract predators, and if she wandered off, it would be almost impossible to find her among the thick vegetation.
But Dizzy seemed more than content among her human “herd,” wandering between each of them to sniff out bites of food. The tub of food Logan had prepared for her remained largely untouched, which wasn’t that surprising, since everyone was happy enough feeding her by hand.
“Who else comes out here?” Kit’s mama asked Logan.
“Me and my team.” He set down his sandwich so he could swig from his water bottle. “The rangers work in pairs, so there’s currently eight of us including me and my intern. Sometimes Jenna works with one of the other groups, though. I largely work on my own.”
“A lone wolf,” Helena teased.
“I guess. I’m used to working my own patch, though. I’m happy to have Jenna or another intern with me if I’m teaching something specific, but it feels weird to have someone with me when I’m patrolling.”
“You do that often?”
“As little as possible,” Logan said. “These two islands cover the same amount of space as Puerto Rico and Jamaica. And you have to remember, there’s no roads here, no clear paths through the jungle. In twenty years, the ranger team has only documented a tiny fraction of the islands. There could be dozens more species here that we don’t know about.”
“Do you think that’s possible?” Kit asked.
“I don’t know.” Logan shrugged. “I have a feeling there’s more species out there, probably smaller dinosaurs that live in the trees or deeper in the forest. I think we’re getting a better idea of the dinosaur populations now, but your colleagues are constantly bugging me to get more samples of birds and insects and plants. In the past few weeks, I’ve moved Jeff and Artem onto botany specifically.”
Kit frowned. “Who signed off on that?”
Logan laughed. “Don’t worry, Dr. Sterling, you’ll still get the data you need. I’m going to look into recruiting a new pair of rangers later in the year.”
“Isn’t that counterintuitive, though?” Mama asked. “I thought you were trying to preserve the islands, not get more people out here.”
“You’re right,” Logan said. “It’s why the rangers go through so much training before I set them loose on their own. They know exactly what we can and can’t take from the islands, and how to handle any of the dinosaurs. Most of them have worked with animals their whole careers.”
“Do they know about Dizzy?”
“Yeah.” Logan gave a self-conscious kind of laugh. “Tony wasn’t too impressed. But they understand why me and Kit took her, even if they all don’t exactly approve. We work very hard to disturb as little as possible. But without my team here documenting and collecting samples, the labs don’t have anything to work with.”
“The work my team is doing is constantly changing,” Kit said. “Every time I think we’re set on a course of study for the next few months, something else comes in. And I’ve constantly got requests landing in my in-box from people who want to do research into a very small, very specific area.”
“And you let them?”
&nbs
p; “Sometimes,” Kit said, flashing a grin at Logan. “When the rangers let us.”
Logan started packing things away, making sure all their trash was in one of the containers to go back to the South Island. Kit and his moms stretched their legs, and Kit led Dizzy over to the tree line so she could relieve herself.
“I thought you said you don’t leave any trace that you’ve been here,” Marie said as they packed up everything into the Jeep.
“We don’t,” Logan said.
Marie nodded at an area farther along the cliff edge. “That looks like there was a fire.”
Logan looked over to Kit sharply.
Poachers.
He didn’t need to say it aloud.
“Finish up here,” Logan said to Kit. “I’m going to take a look.”
He passed Marie the handgun again and shouldered his rifle. Kit scooped Dizzy up from where she’d been butting against his ankles and cradled her to his chest, watching as Logan made his way through the denser areas of undergrowth.
“Kit?”
“It’s okay, Mom,” he murmured.
They finished packing everything neatly into the trunk of the Jeep, and Kit carefully circled the area they’d been using. There was no trace that they’d been there.
“Okay, let’s move out,” Logan said as he strolled over.
This time, Kit let Dizzy sit in the back seat between his mothers, where she’d likely be fussed over until she fell asleep. She’d like that. Physical contact was still a big thing for her.
“Are you going to tell us what you found?” Helena asked as Logan pulled out of the clearing and back into the jungle.
Logan took a deep breath, then sighed.
“We think there are poachers on the islands,” Kit supplied.
“Poachers?”
“Yeah. There was a briefing a few weeks back about fake dinosaur leather items being sold on the black market. The administration here is writing it off as fakes and any press inquiries are being told it’s crocodile leather. But every request I’ve put in to get an item to test has been rejected.”
“So no one really knows for sure,” Marie said.
“Right,” Logan replied. “My team has been told to stay alert for any sign that people who shouldn’t be on the island have been here. But we don’t really know what we’re looking for. We haven’t yet tagged the entire dinosaur population, so we can’t tell if an animal is taken, and the international no-fly zone is protected by peace treaties and laws, not physical barriers.”
“So what was in the clearing?”
“Evidence of a fire.” Logan sounded weary. “I’ve taken pictures and some video, so we’ll see if that’s enough for management to sign off on getting some of this so-called dinosaur leather for Kit to test. In the meantime I have to figure out how the hell I can try and protect the islands with a team of eight.”
The rest of the afternoon was uneventful. They ran into a herd of protoceratops, grazing peacefully in a large clearing near the lake, but none of the saltasaurus they’d set out to find. The views were stunning, and Kit was sure his mama got some incredible photographs, but the evidence of a fire Logan had found hung like a dark cloud over the rest of the day.
They headed back to the safety of the South Island after that, making slow progress through the jungle. By the time they were back in the village, the three in the back seat were asleep; his mom resting her head on Mama’s shoulder, and Dizzy curled up between them.
Logan dropped them back at their apartment, then drove around to his own, not questioning whether Kit wanted to come with him. Kit did, of course. They had a lot to talk about.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Logan said as he climbed out of the Jeep.
“Okay.” Kit grinned at him and gathered up Dizzy from the back seat, carefully checking around to make sure there wasn’t anyone watching before taking her inside.
“Do you need to go log those samples?”
Kit shook his head. “The box in the trunk will keep them until the morning.”
Logan pushed the door closed and locked it securely, then toed off his boots and left them at the door.
“Come on,” he said.
In the kitchen he grabbed another tub of food for Dizzy and scattered it around the room so she could pick at it at her leisure. There had to be a better way of feeding her that didn’t involve eating off the floor, but Kit would work that out later.
“I’m exhausted.” Kit took his own shoes off and curled up into a corner of the couch. “And I didn’t really do anything today.”
“We started early,” Logan said generously.
He left Kit in the living room watching Dizzy and went into his bedroom to change, then emerged a few minutes later wearing sweatpants and a tight T-shirt.
Logan caught Kit staring and winked. “You want a beer?”
“Sure,” Kit said, even though he didn’t drink beer that often. Since he’d already been caught once, he purposefully kept his eyes elsewhere while Logan got two bottles from the fridge and twisted the tops off. When he brought one over to Kit, Kit decided Logan wasn’t wearing underwear under the gray sweats.
And dear Lord, wasn’t that a thought.
“I don’t know what to do,” Logan said as he took a seat next to Kit. “If I go to management without enough evidence, they’ll dismiss all of it and I could get fired. If I wait to find more, it could be weeks or months before I have something to actually report.”
Kit shook his head. “I don’t know. If there are poachers on the islands, you know management is going to do everything they can to keep that out of the press. The last thing they want to do is admit we have security issues. Even though we clearly do have security issues.”
“I know. I’ll brief my team on Monday morning.”
“You can trust them?”
Logan nodded. He tipped his head back to take a long pull from his beer, showing off his throat, then wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist.
“I think they’ll understand more than most people here. We have more contact with the dinosaurs than anyone else.”
“That doesn’t mean the rest of us don’t care.”
“No,” Logan said. “But you’ve seen for yourself—it’s different when you get up close.”
Logan lifted his arm, making space for Kit to curl up against his side. Kit was aware their relationship had developed quickly, probably much faster than if they had met out in the real world, where there were more distractions. Here it was easy to spend all their free time together, seeing as there wasn’t that much to do outside of work.
“Kit?”
“Hmm?”
“Can I give you a blow job?”
“I’m not going to turn down a blow job,” Kit said, laughing as he ran his fingers over Logan’s cheek. “Especially not from you.”
“Awesome,” Logan said, then leaned in to tongue at that spot under Kit’s ear that he’d figured out made Kit squirm. “Wanna go to my bed? It’s more comfortable.”
“Sure.”
They stumbled blindly through the dark apartment, gently shushing each other. Kit’s hand was secure in Logan’s. He was happy to be led. He was more than happy with the decisions that had brought him to this point. Something sweet fluttered through his belly.
“Here,” Logan said and turned on the lamp on his nightstand.
Kit kicked off his shoes and socks and crawled onto the bed, letting Logan roll him over and effectively pin him to the bed. Logan settled with one knee between Kit’s, his hands planted either side of Kit’s shoulders, and all Kit could do was melt into it, savor this, let Logan do what he was clearly so good at.
Logan was thick and broad and muscled and… not fat, definitely not that, but big. The term “barrel-chested” suddenly made sense. His waist was chunky—big enough to completely cover Kit’s whole body practically with his chest alone.
He kissed up the side of Kit’s neck, nosing at his ear, then licked down the side of Kit’s
jaw before kissing him, loose and easy. Kit put both his hands on those thick pecs and groaned into Logan’s mouth.
“That’s so fucking hot,” Kit murmured.
Logan winked at him. The bastard.
Kit threaded his fingers through Logan’s messy hair and wrapped his hand around the back of Logan’s neck, pulling those kisses into his mouth and gently taking them with his tongue.
“You’re so gorgeous,” Logan mumbled against Kit’s lips, spreading his hand over Kit’s chest. “I’ve had a crush on you for so fucking long.”
Kit hummed, not really having any other response to that, and tugged Logan back for more kisses. This was rapidly becoming a familiar thing between them, though Kit was sure he wanted to ride the thrill of I really like you for as long as he could.
With surprisingly dexterous fingers, Logan unbuttoned Kit’s shirt and trailed his fingertips over Kit’s exposed skin. If there was anywhere on his body Kit was self-conscious about, this was probably it.
Logan didn’t care. He leaned in and pressed his lips to those spots Kit had always hated, not just touching but carefully teasing, taking pleasure and giving it right back.
“Fucking, just, ugh,” Kit stuttered. He pushed Logan back, then took it upon himself to strip out of his clothes. Logan watched for a moment, wide-eyed, then got with the program and undressed himself too.
“I promised you a blow job,” Logan murmured as he covered Kit’s naked body with his own.
“I’m not saying no to that.”
Logan fixed his lips to Kit’s neck, having figured out just how much that turned Kit on, and licked his way down to Kit’s collarbone.
Kit got an idea.
He wriggled out from under Logan and got comfortable on his side, nudging Logan until he was lying facing him so he finally got an up close and personal view of Logan’s cock, and Logan—
“Oh.”
—figured out for himself what Kit was after.
“I can’t believe I haven’t done this yet,” Kit said as he gently took hold of Logan’s cock and stroked it. Logan wasn’t all the way hard, but he was definitely getting there.
