Gayle groaned inwardly. “That’s my great-aunt you’re talking about.”

  “I’m not the one who named an elk after her.”

  “She’s an animal, for crying out loud,” Gayle said. “I never thought anyone would talk dirty to her.”

  “That shows a distinct lack of imagination on your part.”

  Before she could give him a good piece of her imagination, Bob tipped back his head and let out a loud bellow. Bugling.

  “See, Bob agrees with me,” Hersch proclaimed. “Now cue the bow-chicka-bow music.”

  Even Hattie cooperated with Hersch’s porn scenario. Someone who didn’t know these animals might miss the subtle shift in Hattie’s posture. As Bob approached, she stood her ground, signaling her willingness by presenting her rump. With a low rumble, Bob lifted his huge body on top of Hattie’s and thrust into her, his haunches moving in an ancient rhythm.

  “Awww-right!” Hersch said. “Nailed her.”

  She slapped him on the shoulder. “Do you mind?”

  He lowered the camera and turned toward her. “What? Mind what?”

  “This is a scientific endeavor, not a peep show,” she said.

  “It’s a fabulous display of nature,” he said. “Can’t I admire it?”

  “Can you act a little, well, more mature about it?”

  “Look, you invited me here to observe. You showed me the finest bull I’ve ever seen. He just mated successfully. I’m going to get a little excited, okay?”

  “Lower your voice,” she said. Of course, she’d probably been yelling since somewhere back at You want to get lucky, Hattie? Why in hell had she ever thought she could work with this man?

  “Lower your own voice,” he said. “They’ll hear you.”

  She glanced outside to find that Bob had finished and led his group off into the redwoods. Only a few stragglers remained, and they soon disappeared, too.

  “Well, that’s a morning shot,” she said.

  Hersch lifted the camera. “We have some data in here. We might as well go back and take a look at it.”

  TEASING GAYLE WAS one thing, but he might have gone too far this time. Nolan hadn’t said all those coarse things about the elk to upset her. The excitement of the moment really had carried him away. She might have observed the bull she called Bob cover one of his females before, but Nolan hadn’t. Video didn’t do a male like that justice.

  Whether he’d meant to or not, he’d irritated her enough that even after dinner she could hardly sit beside him and watch what they’d recorded that morning. But as the video came to the moment in time just before the bull approached the female, Gayle clapped a hand on his shoulder.

  “Pause it,” she said. “Right there. Tell me what you see.”

  He did as she requested and studied the images on the laptop. “Am I missing something?”

  “Damn straight you are. Look.”

  He stared at the picture some more.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” she said. “It’s Hattie. Her posture. Can’t you see it?”

  “Not with the video paused.”

  “All right, start it again.” She leaned closer until the scent of her soap or shampoo wafted into his nostrils. “Right there. She’s shifted, her back sort of arched. Almost a lordotic posture.”

  “She’s assumed the position?”

  “I swear to God, Hersch . . .”

  “Okay. I’ve had about enough of that for one day.” Irritation went both ways. “Sit down and explain what you’re talking about.”

  She huffed but did as he’d ordered, her arms crossed over her chest. “Hattie was signaling her willingness. Obviously.”

  She could be right about that. Females of most species had some way of letting the male know they were receptive. He’d never particularly noticed it in elk, but Gayle had been watching this group for a long time. She might very well know what she was talking about.

  “As impressive as Bob is, he can’t get anywhere without Hattie’s cooperation,” she said.

  “That’s a bit of an overstatement, don’t you think?” Nolan said. “He’s a lot bigger than she is.”

  “Bob’s good, but even he can’t hit a moving target.”

  “All right. I know where you’re going next.” They’d come to their constant dispute—the thing they battled about in the journals with colleagues aligned pretty much along a continuum from traditional, accepted theories of sexual behavior to what was unfortunately guided by political correctness more than anything else. She wanted to argue for the primacy of the female drive in mating against all the available evidence. If she didn’t have such exceptional skills as an observer and collector of data, she’d have totally disgraced herself years ago.

  He might as well make one more attempt to get her to acknowledge reality, although the expression on her face didn’t offer much chance of success. Behind those deep, brown eyes, the wheels were turning, as she mentally put on her boxing gloves for another round.

  “The goal of each individual is to get as much of its DNA into the next generation, right?” he said.

  “Theoretically,” she said. “That isn’t exactly at the top of my own personal list.”

  “You don’t plan to have children?”

  “I might, but I’d want children, not little DNA receptacles,” she said.

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “To you it probably is,” she muttered.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Never mind.”

  He cleared his throat. “So both male and female ought to be interested in as much sex as they could possibly have with an eye toward lots of offspring. Except for one thing.”

  Her foot began to move, an angry tap of the heel against the floor. “I know what’s coming next.”

  “After copulation, the female is stuck with the egg and then the embryo, the fetus, and the calf. She can’t conceive again for a long time. Her best evolutionary bet is to keep the powerful male around to provide.”

  “So the male wants sex while the female wants a meal ticket, is that it?”

  “You’re oversimplifying, but yes.”

  “There’s at least one little problem with your theory.” She gave him a smile the cat might give a cornered mouse. “If the male is such a hypersexual creature and the female is nothing more than a brood sow, why is it that a woman can have two, three, or more orgasms to a man’s one?”

  Good Lord, they’d never discussed anything like that in any of the journals. Could she have been thinking it the entire time? Could she have been looking at him and pondering orgasms? With his brain nearly empty of responses, he glommed onto something a professor had said to him ages ago.

  “As lovely as the female orgasm is, there’s no evolutionary necessity for it.” Most likely, even the man who’d told him that didn’t really believe it. There were lots of reasons for women to have orgasms, evolution be damned. But he wasn’t going to bring any of them up with the memory of their kiss still hot in his mind.

  “Oh really?” She stood, rested her hands on the arms of his chair, and leaned into him until her nose almost touched his. “How about getting her to hold still?”

  “Are we back to that?” he said.

  “We never left it. Look, pal.” She waved a finger under his nose. “The male can bray, bugle, or pound his chest all he likes. If the lady isn’t interested, he’s SOL.”

  “So you’ve said. Numerous times.”

  “So says nature. If you observed . . . really observed . . . with your eyes instead of your preconceived notions, you’d see that’s how it works in nature. No matter how big and fierce the animal, he’s not getting laid until she’s damned good and ready.” She straightened, staring daggers at him the whole time. “When it comes to sex, the female rules.”

  “You’ve missed the point entirely.” He didn’t add “again,” although he certainly could have.

  “Oh really? “ She backed away a bit, but only to get enough room to pace back and forth in front of him.

  “You study elk, for crissake. You know how those animals behave. Each of the cows only has to conceive once. Bob has to impregnate them all. He’ll go at it day and night while the females stand around grazing.”

  “So despite everything I’ve said, you’re still going to assert that the male is more powerfully sexed than the female,” she shouted.

  “I’m not asserting anything. It’s plain fact.”

  She stopped right in front of him. “Oh yeah?”

  Well shit. If she could act second grade, so could he. “Yeah.”

  “Then prove it.” She grabbed the hem of her T-shirt and yanked it up. As it went over her head, it grabbed the thing that held her hair in a pony tail, and that fell loose around her face and shoulders.

  Now he found himself staring at a tiny scrap of a bra—black satin and lace—that did little to hide firm breasts just the right size for his hands. Holy shit, she’d been wearing that the whole time they’d sat in the blind together. Those long hours while he’d been killing himself to behave like a gentleman, he could have reached under her shirt and freed a nipple with only a finger. While his brain—and the smaller brain in his pants—registered that fact, her hands went to the snap of her jeans.

  “What in hell are you doing?” he said.

  “I’m giving you the opportunity to prove your hypothesis.”

  Hypothesis. Hypothesis. She was taking off her clothes, and she expected him to talk science?

  She unzipped her jeans and pushed them down her legs. Only the fact that she hadn’t removed her shoes and had to sit to do it now gave him a few seconds to think, or what passed as thinking as his cock came to attention. The rush of blood to his crotch came so fast and hard he might have fallen over if he hadn’t been sitting down.

  When she had her feet free, she stood and reached to the back fastening of her bra. “You don’t look so sexual now. You look confused.”

  “Trust me.” He swallowed hard. “I’m feeling good and sexual.”

  “I’m not trusting you on this one.” She removed the bra to reveal the two most beautiful breasts he’d ever seen. On the small side but round, with erect nipples just begging for some loving. “You have to prove it.”

  “Prove it?” Damn, words were still not making any sense.

  “By fucking me, of course,” she said. “You can do that, can’t you?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “I was beginning to wonder after last night.”

  “Last night I was being a gentleman,” he said.

  “Gentleman.” She snorted, actually snorted. “Are you male or aren’t you?”

  “You know damned well I am.”

  She removed her panties. As tiny and sinful as the bra, they hardly had enough material to make a handkerchief. When she pushed them past her ankles, she was completely, unashamedly, gloriously naked. And when she straightened again, he could let his gaze roam over all of her, from the length of her throat, to those delectable breasts, down to the flare of her hips, and finally to the heaven between her legs. All female and flushed with anger or maybe more.

  “Well, are you a mindless fucking machine at the mercy of your hormones and driven by the urge to pass on your DNA or aren’t you?” she demanded.

  “Yes,” he croaked. “Uh, no. No passing of the DNA.”

  Thank God he’d at least had the sense to realize that he only had one condom—the one he always carried in his wallet. With days alone in this cabin with this woman, her dirty mouth, and her body that would not quit, once wouldn’t satisfy him. Once in the morning, once after lunch, and once in the middle of the night wouldn’t satisfy him.

  “I don’t have protection,” he said finally. Shit, was he really going to turn her down again? Really? Gallantry was one thing. Passing up this opportunity would amount to torture.

  “You’re not getting out of it that easy. I’m on the pill. So you can either prove that you can get me to hold still long enough to ‘nail’ me.” She used air quotes around nail. “Or you can shut the hell up.”

  With the fertility problem solved, “shut the hell up” was not an option. Mindless fucking machine won. At least he had the good sense to take off his shoes before he stood to get out of his clothes. She didn’t flinch when he made his intentions obvious by jerking his own shirt off. She didn’t back up when he unbuckled his belt and popped the snap on his jeans. She didn’t utter a peep when he lowered the zipper and pushed his pants and briefs to the floor.

  She did something finally when he rose again, as naked as she was. Her gaze fastened on his erection, and she bit her lip as her eyes went wide with what looked like feminine admiration. While he hadn’t had any complaints from lovers or even his ex-wife, no woman had ever looked at his member as if it was made of chocolate before.

  “All right, you want to get nailed,” he said. “How would you like it?”

  She released a long ahhhh, kind of like steam escaping. “Any way you can think up.”

  He’d figure out the logistics later. For now, he needed that body against his own. When he reached for her, she stepped into his embrace, snuggling her curves against him everywhere. His cock nestled into the softness of her belly as his lips moved to hers for a searing kiss.

  The passion of their argument immediately translated into lust delayed. Since the night before, he’d been sitting on a powder keg of thwarted need. Hard off and on all day, he’d alternated between imagining her straddling him and sinking down onto his shaft and feeling like a heel for thinking of a colleague that way. Now he could have her, and as his mouth claimed hers, he shifted so that he could finally cup her breast and feel the peak harden into a tight point.

  She gasped, her lips parting to give his tongue access between them. He found her tongue as the tip probed for him, shyly at first and then with enough boldness to make his blood run hot. Whimpering, she shivered against him.

  He managed to pull his mouth from hers. “Are you cold?”

  “Hell no. I’m burning up.”

  Amazing woman. Placing his mouth at her ear, he blew a hot breath inside and enjoyed her little shimmy of pleasure. Every time she did that, she rubbed his cock with the velvet skin of her belly. Nolan wouldn’t normally rush things, but if she kept doing that, she might not give him any choice. His body was an explosive, all right, and it was nearing its flash point. He’d better concentrate on her pleasure for a while to prove he could get her to hold still for him any damned time he wanted. He’d figure out the evolutionary consequences of that at some later time, when he didn’t have a woman in his arms who so obviously needed the absolute best he could give her.

  So after nibbling on her earlobe for a moment, he lowered his head to her shoulder and nipped the tender skin there. Delicious. Absolutely delicious. From there, her breast lay only inches away, so he laid a path of kisses to it while his hand scooped it up to savor its weight in his palm. When he flicked his thumb over the nipple, she gave him a coo of approval. The sort of sound to make his chest swell with pride and his cock to become almost painfully hard.

  The urge to plunge into her grew almost overpowering, but he continued with her breast. This time, he sucked the peak into his mouth and teased it with his tongue. Her breath came hard, filling his ears with the sounds of a woman reaching her own boundary. She dug her fingers into his hair as her panting grew louder.

  Had he pushed her far enough that she could take him now? Would she welcome the intrusion of his swollen member? The answer to that question lay between her legs, so he lowered his hand to her hip and then to her inner thigh. She allowed him access, even shifting to make room for his hand there. Indeed, when he stroked the lips of her pussy, his fingers came away wet.

  “Don’t stop,” she cried.

  “You want more?” He parted her petals and drove a finger inside her. That produced a stream of moisture onto his hand, so he inserted another finger and probed. She clutched at his shoulder, her nails digging into the skin. As he continued pushing and retreating, her inner muscles tensed around him. Damn, but she was hot. Ready to come in another moment. But he could do even better than that.

  Instead of continuing to plunge into her, he removed his fingers and went in search of her clit. It was easy to find—hard and long at the apex of her slit. When he stroked it, she nearly fell, so he caught her with his other arm and continued pressing it and flicking against the tip.

  “Oh God.” She moaned. “Ohgodohgod.”

  Shit. He’d pushed her too hard. She was right on the edge, and here they were standing in the middle of the living room.

  “The bed,” he said.

  “Too far.”

  “Okay, but this isn’t going to be gentle,” he said.

  “Fuck gentle.”

  Oh yeah, she was ready. He guided, half-carried her to the side of the room and leaned her against the wall. Crouching, he took his place between her legs and eased the head of his cock inside her. “Hang on.”

  “God yes.” She released a sound like nothing he’d ever heard a woman make before. Low and guttural—almost a growl. Then she wrapped her arms and legs around him, and he straightened, thrusting into her in one movement.

  He could have growled back or bugled like the elk in full rut. Her heat surrounded him as her muscles clamped down on his cock. She was wet, all for him. He’d created this response, drawn it from her with his hand and his mouth on her breast. So perfect, she drove him now until he felt as if he really could explode. With no power to hold back, he plunged into her over and over. Her back hit the wall with each thrust. She’d bruise, and he’d hate himself, but he could no sooner stop than he could sprout wings and fly out the window.

  “Sorry,” he gritted. “Didn’t mean to hurt you.”