Imagines (Imago, Book Two) Read online

  “Good morning.” He looked behind me. “Where’s Jack?”

  “He dropped me off. He needed the hire car to get some camping gear for tonight,” I explained. “I hope you weren’t offended by my not including you. I assumed you’d prefer not to camp out, sleeping on the ground.”

  He chuckled good-naturedly. “You assume correctly. No offence taken. My days of field work, as such, and nights on hard earth are well behind me.” He seemed thoughtful for a moment. “I think Jack might prefer my absence also.”

  I withheld a sigh and bit my tongue. Jack had told me of the conversation they’d had while I was sorting out camping permits. While I did think Piers had accepted that I’d rejected his advances, Jack wasn’t sure. In fact, he wasn’t sure what Piers’ intentions were at all. I’d reassured him the professor was simply eccentric and probably most accustomed to luring any younger man he wanted with his French accent and confidence. Jack had laughed.

  “Possibly. Though Piers, please understand his concerns are of my wellbeing, not a reflection of any insecurities you think he might have. He asked if I was comfortable working with you, and I said yes. If I wasn’t certain of your professionalism, I wouldn’t be here.”

  Piers fought a smile. “You are one of a kind, Lawson Gale.”

  “Thank you. Now let’s get these samples processed.”

  * * *

  So that’s what we did. For hours, we sat side by side documenting, citing, researching, collating. It was therapeutic and productive. Piers called his associate at the Cairns CSIRO, a lady by the name of Jamine. They’d collaborated before, so when he asked if she could process some findings on behalf of the conservatory in the interest and conservation of the Ulysses butterfly, she not only agreed but said she’d fast-track the reports.

  By the time Jack arrived, a little after three in the afternoon, we were ready to ship our samples and preliminary findings off to the CSIRO for further, more comprehensive testing.

  “How’d it go?” Jack asked. “Can you determine anything yet?”

  “The soil samples have the higher potassium levels that the soil we tested here has,” Piers said. “It could be a direct correlation to the introduction of the toxins into the water.”

  “That’s good, right?” Jack asked. “I mean, not good that the soil is affected, but good for the theory that it’s all linked.”

  “Yes.” I gave him a smile. “Did you get everything we might need tonight?”

  “Yep. It’s gonna rain later, apparently, so the girl at the camping store threw in an extra canopy tarp for free.”

  I almost laughed. I could just imagine Jack talking shop with the sales assistant, making her laugh and charming her enough to give him something for free. He probably even offered a sightseeing tour of his national parks if she ever finds herself in Tasmania. “I’m sure she did.”

  Jack beamed, then looked at all the individual bagged, sealed, and labelled samples, slides, and the paperwork that went with them. “Is this everything you have to take over?”

  I nodded. “Yes. Fingers crossed we get some kind of feedback. Any kind, at this point, is all we can ask for.”

  Piers put two insulated boxes on the counter, and we carefully stacked our samples into them. Before I sealed the second box, Piers came back holding a square, clear plastic container. Inside it was one of the Ulysses that had died. I knew he was reluctant to surrender the specimen for research, but in his heart he knew it was for the right cause. We needed to see if there were any traces of the toxins in the butterfly. It was the only way to know for sure if we were on the right track.

  I took the container. “Thank you, Piers.”

  “It is for the best,” he replied. “I will keep the other one, but if they require it, then I’ll… then I’ll surrender it also.”

  I put my hand on his upper arm. “You’re doing the right thing.”

  Jack carefully lifted one of the insulated carry boxes. “We good to go?”

  I picked up the second box. “Yes. They’re expecting us.”

  Thankfully the drive to the CSIRO laboratories didn’t take too long. We were greeted by Jamine in the front office, and Piers made introductions. She was younger than I assumed, appeared Polynesian, though I never asked, and wore a white lab coat. She was friendly enough, and excited by the prospect of finding anything to help in the conservation of the Ulysses. I liked her immediately. Piers and I followed her into the restricted area, while Jack offered to stay in the waiting room.

  “Okay,” she started, looking at her clipboard. “We will start with the water samples, testing for bioaccumulation factors, and see what readings we get. Then we’ll move onto the plant samples, checking for degrees of transference, then finally the animal samples. You said you collected tadpoles, leeches. And there’s a butterfly sample?”

  “Yes,” Piers answered. “The last butterfly to die at the conservatory.”

  “We’re hoping there’s a correlation between the deaths of the Ulysses and toxins from the tadpoles,” I stated. “Looking for bufadienolides specifically, the toxin from the tadpoles.”

  Jamine looked from her clipboard to me. “You think there’s transference to the food source via toxins from tadpoles permeating the water?”

  My answer was resounding. “Yes.”

  She looked at Piers. “And you?”

  He took a breath and seemed to think about his answer. “I will admit, I didn’t at first. But I do now. I think it’s plausible, yes.”

  “I’m going back out tonight,” I admitted. “I’m hoping to collect more water and doughwood samples from different locations. If the Ulysses is dying in the wild, then we need broader samples.”

  Jamine nodded. “For conclusive results, yes.”

  I had no issue with that. “So, we start here. If it’s positive locally, then we take it further. Regionally. Nationally. Internationally.”

  “Well,” Jamine said, going back to her clipboard. “It wouldn’t be the craziest thing we’ve found.” Then she looked at us both and gave us a blinding smile. “Leave it with me.”

  When we left the lab, we found Jack in the waiting room. He threw the magazine he was reading back on the table and stood up. “How’d it go?”

  “Good, hopefully. Jamine’s going to fast track it,” I answered. “Reading anything in particular?”

  “Nah, just a guy I went to school with got a write-up. It’s nothing.” He brightened. “So, we ready to go camping? If we want to make good headway into the forest, we’re gonna need to make a start or we’ll run out of sunlight.”

  I grinned at him. He was clearly looking forward to a night in the great outdoors, as was I. Piers threw his hands up with a laugh. “Okay, okay, you two, enough with the love-eyes. But please drive me back to the lab first.”

  * * *

  A short while later, we were hiking into the forest. Gary had graciously driven us as far as the ute would go, and Jack had packed everything expertly into the backpacks we now lugged through the dense undergrowth. We each carried a tub of specimen jars, clip-seal bags, and identification forms, and it was hard going. It was humid, and the uneven forest floor didn’t exactly make for easy hiking.

  Jack used his GPS and compass and led the way, and I followed. He weaved the way down to a gully, which was dotted with water pools. He put his tub down and surveyed the puddles and trees. “Well, they’re pretty dried up now, but I’d reckon this’d be almost a creek with decent rain.”

  I put my tub alongside his and took out the folded paper map from my backpack. I found where we were. “Yes, see here?” I pointed to the area on the map. “There’s a blue line that runs east. But it’s certainly not a creek now.”

  “Nope.” Jack opened the first tub and took out some specimen jars. “But it’s supposed to rain tonight, remember?”

  “It rains most nights in the rainforests. Funnily enough, that’s why they’re called rainforests.”

  Jack let his hands fall to his sides and he stared a
t me. “Are you being sarcastic?”

  “I was going for roguish.”

  He laughed. “I’m the roguish one, remember?” He shoved a specimen jar at my chest. “Now, go get your toxic water samples. I’ll take samples of the roots and leaves.”

  He trudged off, and I quickly took my water samples and even captured another tadpole. I documented the jars, cataloguing each sample, and we went further on, deeper into the national park, and took more samples before the setting sun got the better of us. “We should set up camp,” Jack suggested, looking around the small clearing at the top of the dry creek bank. “You wanna do the fire or the tent?”

  “Fire.”

  Jack rolled his eyes and dumped his backpack. “Thought you’d say that.”

  I had a campfire roaring by the time Jack declared the tent was ready. I collected the small skillet and found the food Jack had packed. Vegetable pasta salad, which I understood perfectly. The clip-seal bag of flour, however, had me confused. “Uh, Jack?” I held up the bag. “I take it this is actually flour and we’re not suddenly drug mules.”

  He laughed and climbed out of the tent. “Yes, it’s flour.”

  “What for?”

  “You’ll see. I’m making dessert. Is the pasta salad still cold?”

  I felt the outside of the container. “Yes. Um, what dessert can you make in the middle of the forest with a resealable bag of flour?”

  Jack rifled through the insulated food bag and pulled out what he needed. A tin of Carnation Milk, some portions of butter I suspect he borrowed from the hotel, and a bottle of water. “And the pièce de résistance,” he declared, holding up a small bottle. “Golden syrup.”

  He added the butter to the bag of flour first and re-zipped the seal. He rubbed it in the bag, then added the wet ingredients until he effectively had a dough. He added it to the skillet, wrapped it in foil, and shoved it into the coals of the fire. “And while it bakes, we eat the pasta. I wasn’t too keen to have meat in the insulated bag,” he mumbled as he rummaged for the forks. He held one out to me victoriously, and I took it with a smile. “So pasta salad with Mediterranean vegetables it is.”

  “And a true Aussie bush damper for dessert,” I added.

  He smiled as he took a mouthful of pasta. He looked particularly handsome with the fading sunlight and flickering firelight; a sight I would never tire of. “So,” he said as we ate, “thought any more on the possibility of staying on here in Queensland?”

  I chewed and swallowed slowly, giving myself a moment to get my thoughts clear and my words even more so. “Truthfully, I haven’t yet decided. My heart says no…”

  “But your conscience is telling you yes.”

  I sighed. “This species is dying. The Tillman Copper is doing okay, and the breeding program is well established. Once the vegetation has regenerated in the woodlands near Scottsdale, they can be released. I’ll need to monitor that, of course, but for now…”

  “I get it, Lawson,” Jack said quietly.

  “It’s only an idea I’m considering. I can’t really make a decision until we get results back from the CSIRO.” I frowned. “I don’t want to leave you. Please tell me you understand that.”

  He met my gaze and offered me a knowing smile. “Of course I do. I get it, Lawson. I really do. And like I said before, I have no problem with long-distance relationships. If we need to travel to see each other, with you up here and me back in Tassie, then that’s what we do. Simple as that.”

  “That’s why I love you,” I murmured. “Well, that, and your damper-making skills.”

  “Oh!” he cried, reaching for the skillet. He carefully pulled it out of the fire and, with a towel, lifted back the foil. He poured in the golden syrup and recovered it. “Two more minutes.”

  We finished the pasta salad, then Jack dished up two steaming plates of what he called ‘cocky’s joy,’ an old-fashioned Australian bush dessert. Simple and utterly delicious.

  “Oh wow,” I said around a mouthful of syrup-sweetened damper. “This is amazing.”

  Jack laughed as he ate. “I knew you’d like it.” We ate the rest in silence, and Jack was looking around the darkening campsite. “So, how long till we see cane toads?”

  “Soon.”

  He nodded slowly. “So… Do we have enough time for a lesson in biotransference?”

  I wasn’t sure what he meant. “A lesson? What do you want to know? I thought I explained; it’s the result of biological substances being absorbed by another living organism.”

  Again, he nodded slowly, though this time he smirked. There was a smouldering darkness in his eyes that I knew well. “Oh, I know what it is all right, but I thought I could give you a practical lesson, perhaps.”

  “Oh.” Heat pooled in my belly. “That kind of lesson.”

  Twenty minutes later we had dinner cleaned up and squared away and we were stretched out on the thin mattress in the tent. Fully dressed, making out, kissing, touching, gripping, and grinding.

  I broke the kiss and offered him my neck, which he quickly adored with kisses and teeth. “I thought you wanted to do this outside?”

  “It’s gonna rain,” he murmured against my skin.

  He was right. The humidity was high and thick with the need to break for rain. Or maybe it was just how hot it suddenly was in the tent.

  “I’ve been thinking about this transference thing,” he continued, finding his way to the hollow between my collarbones. He settled himself on top of me properly, grinding his erection against mine. I tried to unbutton my shirt, but his hands were quick to stop me, and he pinned my arms at my sides. His lips were swollen, his eyes burned with desire. He spoke against my mouth. “And how it applies to when we make love.”

  I understood his meaning. Now we made love without condoms, every time he came inside me, it was a transference. God, I could barely speak. “I think I need a reminder.”

  His salacious grin was my reward. I thought my blood might catch fire.

  Jack let go of my arms and knelt astride me, then reached for a backpack, I assumed for lube. I seized the opportunity to unbutton my trousers and roll over onto my stomach. I lifted my hips and pulled my pants down just enough to expose my arse to him.

  “Lawson, what are you doing?”

  I put my forehead to the mattress and slid my arms above my head. “I want you to have me, Jack. Just like this. Right now, as I am.”

  He paused a moment. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Do you have lube?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then just do it. Now, Jack. I really need this.”

  “Let me stretch you first.”

  Even the thought of anything else inside me right this minute besides what I wanted most drove me crazy. And not in a good way. “Jack, please just fuck me. I don’t want fingers, I want your cock. Inside me. Now.”

  The sound of his zipper in the silence sent a warm thrill through my bones. I heard the pop of the lube bottle lid, a delicious wet noise, and he slicked himself. I arched my back, raising my arse. I didn’t need to see what he was doing. I could hear it, and it somehow made the anticipation even better, hotter. The slide of cool liquid down my crack didn’t quell the fire in me. It seemed to fan the flames.

  With his left hand planted beside my head as he leaned over me, he slid his hot, hard cock along the cleft of my arse.

  I was all out of patience for games. “Jack.”

  Then his blunt cockhead was pushing inside me, and it was far too much and still not enough. He whispered in my ear. “That what you wanted?”

  It was a keening sound that escaped me, and he froze.

  “Yes,” I managed with a groan. He was so big and breaching, yet I relished the burn, the intrusion. The feel of him inside me was everything. “Give it to me.”

  Jack let his full weight press on my back, his mouth at my ear, his hands gripped my hips, and he started to rock back and forth. “Mmmm,” he moaned as he thrust slowly in and out of me, deeper with each
pass. He took his time with me, eventually pushing harder and faster. “I won’t last long. You feel too good.”

  “Then this might be a lesson in bioaccumulation,” I said breathily. Jack’s bubble of laughter became a groan, and he quickened his pace. “See how many times you can come in me.”

  My words brought him undone, and he slid one arm underneath my chest and held me as he came. I could feel everything… he was everything.

  Jack slumped on top of me, his body wracked with the aftershocks of his orgasm, and eventually his breathing returned to normal. His words were warm against the back of my neck. “I never want to move,” he mumbled.

  “Then don’t.”

  He nuzzled the hair at my nape. “You didn’t come.”

  He normally made it his mission to bring me to orgasm first, and it was strangely satisfying that this time he hadn’t. As though my sole purpose was for his pleasure. “Next time.”

  He hummed a nonsensical reply, but after a moment, he rolled off me, but keeping his arm wrapped tight around my chest, he manoeuvred me so I was his little spoon. He slipped out of me, just as the first spatters of rain began to fall on the tarp above the tent.

  I felt bereft at his absence inside me, and as though he felt the same, he snuggled into me. He was sleepy, sated. “So, about that bioaccumulation…”

  CHAPTER TEN

  Jack

  Sweet mother of God, he felt good. And that filthy mouth of his was my undoing, again. I wanted to stay inside him forever. I wanted to keep him in my arms forever. The rain got heavier and the sound of it, the warmth of Lawson against me, was lulling me to sleep. The rainforest sang a different song in the rain. Fewer birds, more frogs, drumming out a tempo that was oddly soothing.

  Through the tent I could see the campfire become dimmer as the rain doused its flames and little by little our only light was gone. I closed my eyes and I remember thinking I’ll just snooze for a moment. I’ll just close my eyes for a second before we go out looking for cane toads in the rain.