Something Wild

by Anna Martin

  Kit laughed and put his hand on Logan’s shoulder for leverage to rise up and kiss his cheek.

  “I’ll wait outside.”

  It took almost fifteen minutes for Logan to come out again, without the lead apron and with Dizzy clutched in his arm, held up close on his chest with her head on his shoulder.

  “Was someone a good girl?” Kit cooed.

  She sighed heavily.

  “We got there,” Logan said darkly. “We’ve definitely got one good image; the rest we’ll have to look at in more detail on the big monitor.”

  Kit had absolutely no idea what developing X-rays involved, but Logan apparently did. He transferred Dizzy into Kit’s arms while he fussed around the clinic. Kit took a seat on the counter and wrapped Dizzy up in his hoodie. She definitely liked that close contact. He was already writing a paper in his head about herd behavior and imprinting and how incredibly similar this was to baby bird behavior.

  “Kit?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Come look at this with me.”

  He carefully slid down from the table and went over to where Logan had blown up the images on the computer screen.

  “Here,” he said, pointing at the image of Dizzy’s hips. “That’s a deformation.”

  “Yeah,” Kit said. Because it was. “Could be congenital, but I wouldn’t rule out an injury.”

  “I have no idea how that’ll affect her as she grows.”

  He took the first image down and brought the next one up. “This is a little blurry, but you can see again…. Here. And here.”

  “Double jointed?” Kit asked.

  “I’m not sure. I need to have a look at the autopsy X-ray and compare. Though that’s going to be difficult since the autopsy was an adult male and she’s a juvenile female. Avian hips don’t look like this, though.”

  “I agree.”

  Logan shook his head. “There’s nothing we can do for her.”

  “I don’t know,” Kit said. “It might be something that affects her as she grows, it might not be. I’m pretty sure it’ll affect how quickly she can move.”

  “So it’s a good thing we got her off the island,” Logan said. “In terms of her survival.”

  “Yeah. I mean, there’s no way she would be able to move quickly enough to evade a predator. We’ll have all the problems of handling a hand-reared animal, though. Anything that we want to publish is going to have to be reframed in light of that, all the research—”

  “I’m not looking to research her,” Logan interrupted. For the first time, he looked angry. With Kit. In a very pointed move, he took Dizzy from Kit’s arms and cradled her close.

  “Well, it’s sort of inevitable, isn’t it?” Kit asked, his hands dropping uselessly to his sides. “We’re going to be close enough to her to observe this stuff. We might as well write it down.”

  “I write everything down,” Logan said. “Just because I don’t work in a fancy white jacket doesn’t mean my observations and research aren’t as valid as yours.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You implied it.”

  “I didn’t!” Kit insisted. “I’m sorry. Your work is incredibly valuable here; you know that. I just… sometimes I can’t help myself. My brain just goes off in a certain direction and my mouth follows it.”

  Logan was still frowning, but then the corner of his mouth twitched into a smile.

  “You’re an ass.”

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Kit held his hands out for Dizzy, and Logan carefully handed her back.

  “What do we do now?” he asked.

  Kit sighed as Dizzy butted her head up under his chin. “I want to keep her,” he admitted.

  “Me too,” Logan said in a small voice. “But she doesn’t belong here. And we’re going to get in so much trouble when management finds out.”

  “What can they do?”

  “I don’t even know,” Logan said and leaned back against the table, folding his arms over his chest. With his shirtsleeves rolled up, Kit couldn’t help but admire his arm muscles. “They could probably take her away if they wanted to.”

  Kit hummed. “I’m going to look into it.”

  Logan’s lips twitched into a smile.

  “What?” Kit demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s just… you probably know all the rules, don’t you?”

  Kit felt himself blush. “Not all of them.”

  “How about the no-fraternization one?”

  “Pssh. That’s the most unenforced rule out there. You know it’s not even legal either. I checked with my mom. They can’t stop grown, consenting adults doing as they please.”

  “Your mom’s a lawyer?”

  “Used to be, yeah. Now she’s a professor.”

  “And your other mom is an emergency room nurse.”

  “Again, retired, also now teaching. They both wanted to teach, I think, for a long time. They enjoy it.”

  “Huh. Interesting.”

  “Yeah. You can meet them when they visit, if you like.”

  Logan raised an eyebrow. “You want me to meet your parents?”

  Kit tried to play off his shrug as nonchalant. “They’ll want to meet you, I’m sure. And Dizzy.”

  Logan closed in on him slowly, smiling like a predator. “Is that so.”

  Kit took a step back, then another, then almost stumbled as he backed into a table. With his arms full of Dizzy, he had no chance to grab Logan’s arms like he wanted to, and felt himself flush with a sudden, intense arousal.

  When Logan leaned in to kiss him, he was laughing. It was that, and maybe the funny squawk Dizzy made, that turned Kit’s stomach into a field of butterflies.

  Chapter Twelve

  THEY DIDN’T get to see each other much over the next week. Logan was back in the field, even though his ribs were still healing and his wrist was still sprained, but he was stubborn and had cleared himself for basic field work.

  Dizzy now went with him everywhere, still hidden from prying eyes. Kit had an awful feeling it wouldn’t be long until they were caught with an illegal dissimosaur on the South Island. Sure, she was small and cute now, but she would grow quickly and wouldn’t fit in Logan’s pocket forever.

  Thunder rolled through the air, thick and heavy, and Kit cracked open the window in the family room. He loved the smell of ozone in the air, the warm breeze that ruffled through his curtains and spread the sense of urgency from the imminent rain.

  It rumbled again, and Kit smiled to himself as he walked through to his bedroom to pull on the fluffy socks his moms had bought him the previous Christmas. There was something about a rainy afternoon that demanded thick socks and comfortable pants.

  He’d left work early, after lunch, not making any excuses for himself. No one kept track of his hours anyway, and he’d done enough unpaid overtime to take a whole year off work if he wanted. He was going to blame this impulse on Logan. He’d figure out the logic behind that later.

  A soft patter against the windows told him the downpour had started, and he almost danced back to the family room, grabbing a book on the way.

  He was a chapter or so in, with the storm increasing in ferocity with every minute that passed, when a knock sounded from the front door. He put the book down because, surely not? And it sounded again.

  Kit rushed to the door and flung it open to reveal Logan, drenched, with Dizzy squawking maniacally in his arms.

  “Sorry,” he panted. “We got caught, and I can’t find my keys, and I saw your light on….”

  “Come in, come in,” Kit said, stepping aside and letting Logan nudge the door closed with his hip.

  Dizzy was struggling in Logan’s arms, clearly unimpressed with her current situation. They were both entirely, utterly drenched. Logan’s T-shirt stuck to his skin in a heavy slick of fabric, and his hair was plastered to his forehead, dripping into his eyes.

  “Let me grab some towels,” Kit said, snort
ing with laughter as he dashed into the bathroom closet.

  “Don’t laugh,” Logan called after him. “It’s not funny.”

  “It is, a little bit,” Kit said, handing Logan one of the towels and gesturing to take Dizzy from his arms.

  Dizzy was definitely bigger than she had been the last time Kit had picked her up. He decided to sit, using the fluffy towel to roughly rub the water from her skin, carefully smoothing her feathers back into place. She preened at the attention, rumbling softly in her chest.

  Logan, meanwhile, was stripping out of his T-shirt, boots, shorts—oh fuck—socks, and his underwear was, yep, as Kit had expected, soaked through.

  Logan wore tighty-whities. Tight. White. Soaked.

  See-through.

  Holy shit.

  “Do you, uh, have anything I could borrow?”

  Kit swallowed his lust and attempted to hide his childish giggle.

  “You have to be kidding me,” he said. “You are literally twice my size.”

  “Underwear? Anything, seriously, Kit.”

  Kit let Dizzy go—she was comfortable enough here to explore unsupervised, and she happily trotted off toward the kitchen.

  “I’m not sure that aversion to rain is an instinctive dissimosaur trait,” Kit said. Logan offered him a hand, and Kit took it, letting Logan haul him to his feet.

  “It’s not. She just doesn’t spend any time out in the rain, so she was never taught how to deal with it. Now she’s decided she doesn’t like it.”

  He followed Kit through to the bedroom while Kit desperately ran through his mental clothing inventory for anything that might fit Logan. It was a short list.

  “Here,” he said, rummaging through a drawer until he found a pair of boxers that were loose on him, the elastic almost all the way broken.

  “Thanks,” Logan said, rubbing the towel all over himself. Kit stared for a moment, then realized he was doing it and shook his head quickly.

  Kit turned away, as Logan stripped out of his soaked underwear, and went to the drawers built into his closet.

  “I don’t think any of my pajama pants will fit you.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Or my shirts. Aha!”

  He came out of the closet with an old sweatshirt, loose and worn with age.

  “This was an ex-boyfriend’s.”

  Logan scowled and folded his arms over his—fucking hell—gorgeously thick chest.

  “It’s that or go around naked,” Kit said. The boxers were hilariously tight on him, the bulge of his soft cock still straining against the cotton fabric.

  “Fine,” Logan said, taking the sweater and pulling it on. “Do you have any socks?”

  “Oh, yeah. Socks I can do.”

  The sweatshirt didn’t really fit Logan; it was too short. That meant there were a few inches of tanned belly between the hem of the shirt and the start of the boxers, and Kit was going to hell for staring.

  “I have a dryer,” Kit said. He tucked his tongue into the corner of his mouth and smirked.

  “Yeah? What’s it gonna cost me to borrow it?”

  Kit chewed at his bottom lip, amused when Logan’s eyes darted to watch the motion.

  “A kiss?”

  “I can do that,” Logan said, advancing on him.

  Kit found himself backed up against the wall, neatly bracketed by Logan’s arms either side of his shoulders as Logan leaned in, so very slowly, and brushed his lips against Kit’s.

  “That sort of kiss?” he murmured, his voice rough and low.

  “That’s a good start,” Kit told him. He threaded his fingers into Logan’s damp hair and tugged his mouth down. Cold face, warm lips, hot tongue—Kit was a big fan of this combination as Logan submitted to the deep, thorough kiss that Kit wanted to lead.

  “Okay, you’ve earned the loan of my dryer,” Kit said, laughing as he pulled back.

  “I feel dirty,” Logan said, and Kit laughed again.

  “Come on,” he said.

  The laundry room was in the basement of this building. Kit wasn’t going to make Logan go down there dressed as he was, so he found a spare blanket for Logan to warm up under on the couch. When he got back, Logan was snuggled all the way under, the blanket covering from his toes to his neck as he curled in on himself. Dizzy was on the other end of the couch, trying to burrow under it with him.

  “Hey, no dinosaurs on the sofa.”

  “She’s cold,” Logan said.

  “Are you?” Kit asked.

  “A little.”

  He went and closed the open windows and turned the thermostat up. Kit wasn’t feeling it, but he didn’t want Logan to catch a cold from the wet clothes.

  “I’m going to make hot chocolate. Do you want any?”

  Logan’s eyes lit up. “You don’t have to.”

  “I was going to make some before you got here,” Kit lied. “Does Dizzy need feeding?”

  “Maybe a snack, if you have anything.”

  “We can do that,” Kit said as he went into the kitchen.

  He kept bags of unwashed salad leaves in the fridge as a matter of course, just in case he ended up dinosaur-sitting. He grabbed a handful and, as much as it pained him, scattered it across the kitchen floor. There was a familiar thump as Dizzy got down from the couch and waddled in. “Scavenging” for food like this was good for her, enrichment, as they called it in zoos. Not that Dizzy was in a zoo, or behaved like a zoo animal. No, she was Logan’s foster-baby, however much it pained both of them to admit it.

  Kit hooked the carton of milk around his finger and grabbed the bar of good chocolate from the drawer it was “hidden” in.

  When he turned around, Logan was standing in the doorway to the kitchen with the blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a cape. He looked adorably bereft and Kit wanted to pull him in for a hug, however silly that seemed.

  “You’re making it with real chocolate?” Logan asked hopefully.

  “Yeah. I don’t normally, but I think you deserve it.”

  “I do,” Logan said, sounding so sincere Kit wanted to laugh again.

  “You have a sweet tooth, don’t you?”

  “A little bit.”

  “A lot,” Kit teased, pouring the milk into a mug and emptying it into a saucepan twice over.

  Logan wrapped his arms around Kit’s waist and pressed his cold nose to the space between Kit’s neck and shoulder. He shivered, but let Logan do it. Logan was the one who got caught in a storm, after all.

  “Am I in the way?” Logan mumbled against Kit’s neck as Kit broke the chocolate into pieces and dropped it into the milk to melt.

  “What on earth gave you that idea?”

  Logan’s arms—Logan’s thick, ridiculously muscled arms—tightened around his waist. In very tiny increments, he turned his head, nuzzling and kissing at Kit’s skin. Dizzy came over and nudged her head against Kit’s leg. He was used to the gesture now, sure it was an affectionate thing, or even a dissimosaur checking-in type thing. It didn’t hurt, and she wasn’t forceful enough to knock anyone over doing it, so they weren’t discouraging it.

  “Okay, I need two hands for this,” Kit said when the hot chocolate was ready. Logan stepped back and pulled his blanket cape tighter around his shoulders.

  Kit carefully poured the hot chocolate back into the mugs, then found the bag of mini marshmallows in the cupboard and dropped a few on top of each.

  “Here you go.”

  “You’re amazing,” Logan breathed, taking the blue mug.

  “Don’t burn your tongue,” Kit scolded. He realized too late he sounded like his mother, and decided he was okay with that.

  They went back into the family room, and Logan refused to let Kit sit anywhere other than on his lap, to share body heat, naturally.

  “It’s an important survival technique,” he said, blowing over the surface of his drink.

  “Uh-huh,” Kit said. He leaned forward and impulsively kissed Logan on the tip of his nose. “You’re adorable.
Anyone ever tell you that?”

  “Only you.”

  “Good.”

  It was the type of afternoon for old Western movies, the type Kit could remember watching with his grandfather.

  Kit made a mental note to arrange a video chat with his grandparents again. It wasn’t often he felt homesick, living here, but it was inevitable, really. He’d always been close to his family.

  When Leilani got home from work at six, Logan was dressed in his own clothes, but still wore Kit’s sweatshirt over his T-shirt.

  “Hi, guys,” she sang.

  Her smile dropped when Dizzy waddled out from the kitchen. “Holy shit.”

  “Hi… yeah,” Kit said, realizing too late that he hadn’t clued her in on Logan’s new addition to the family.

  “That’s a dissimosaur.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holy shit,” Leilani said again. She shrugged off her jacket and left her shoes by the door before venturing farther into the apartment.

  Dizzy was already making herself comfortable in this somewhat familiar environment. Leilani watched her with a look of confusion and wonder.

  “Why do you have a dissimosaur?”

  “She was injured,” Logan said. “On the North Island. I decided to bring her back.”

  “Are you allowed to do that?”

  “Definitely not.”

  Kit pressed his lips together, not sure what he could add to the conversation. Leilani was definitely going to give him hell later.

  “You have an illegal pet dissimosaur.”

  “I… yeah. I do.”

  “That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  Logan laughed. “Thanks, I think.”

  “Does anyone else know?”

  “No,” Kit said.

  Logan shook his head slowly. “Not yet. We’re trying to find a good argument to go to management with so they’ll let us keep her.”

  Leilani shook her head. “You’re a brave man, Dr. Beck.”

  “Logan.”

  “Logan,” she agreed. “Can I touch her?”

  “Sure,” Logan said easily. “She’s very friendly.”

  “Are you staying for dinner?” Leilani asked, crouching down to greet Dizzy with the required amount of fussing and attention.

  “Sure,” Logan said. “I can order something in for us if you like.”