As she continued sucking on him and stroking what wouldn’t fit into her mouth, he placed a hand on her head as if to maintain his balance. He was reaching the high plateau of arousal. She’d heard enough of the noises he made to know. Sighs and grunts—sounds that would seem silly in any other situation but that made a mating call to the woman who created them. They sang to her own sexual self. A serenade inviting her to the dance that would have her crooning the same melody. Her pussy grew moist, clenching in anticipation of what he’d do for her as soon as she had him ready.

  She wanted him all over again. She’d had him twice the night before, in coupling so fierce it made all her other encounters seem trifling. She’d had him again just a few minutes ago, and he’d made her come so hard she’d burst into sparkling pieces. Now she needed more because he needed more. They’d satisfy each other again, but for how long? How much time would pass before the same hunger returned to demand more and more and more?

  Then he was trembling and pushing her head away. “Damn, but you give good head.”

  “I’m only giving as good as I got.”

  “In another minute . . . wow.” He took an uncertain breath. “Bedroom?”

  “Too far.

  “You always say that,” he said.

  “It’s always true.” Instead of rising, she knelt on the bath mat, offering him a view of her ass. “Why don’t you mount me here?”

  “Doggie style.”

  “If it’s good enough for the elk . . .”

  “I might just bugle.” He lowered himself to his knees and took his position between her legs. Then grasping her hips to brace her, he eased the tip of his cock between her folds. She almost melted on the spot. He felt so fucking good. She did turn liquid, releasing moisture to coat him and invite him deeper.

  He took his time about it, burning the impression of every inch of him into her mind. By the time he’d entered her fully, her heart had sped to a thready rhythm, and her clitoris had hardened and begun to throb. He truly would turn her into an addict if he kept performing like this, but for now, she wouldn’t worry about the future but would enjoy his total possession of her body.

  He began thrusting with a slow and steady rhythm, pulling nearly out of her and then pressing forward again. Each time he entered her, he seemed to go deeper, as if they hadn’t already known each other as intimately as two lovers could. Her breathing caught the tempo, and her heart beat in double time.

  “I don’t believe I’m doing this,” he said. “Again.”

  “I do believe I’ll kill you if you stop.”

  “Stop?” He moaned in a particularly low and evil manner. “Not possible.”

  She’d feel flattered if she weren’t so completely turned on. She might even feel feminine pride, if the higher centers of consciousness hadn’t blinked out about the time he’d entered her. She’d have to figure all that out later, because she was about to hit the wall called orgasm and get splattered right against it.

  “Nolan,” she cried.

  “I know, babe.” Then he did the absolutely most fantastic thing she could have imagined. He reached around her to find her clit. As soon as he touched it, she went ballistic. Every muscle in her body tensed as the climax rushed through her. She shot straight up to heaven, shouting as her pussy clamped down on his hardness over and over. When he came, too, grasping her hips and pounding into her a few more times, he prolonged the heaven. When it ended, her strength gave out and she collapsed onto the floor, struggling for breath.

  “You know what, Hersch?” she said when her voice returned.

  “Nolan,” he said, his mouth at her ear. He’d fallen on top of her.

  “Whatever.”

  “Not whatever. Nolan.”

  “Okay, Nolan. I think you won that one.”

  NOLAN SHOULDN’T WEAR her acknowledgement as a badge. He shouldn’t have to stifle a grin as he walked beside her along the path underneath the huge trees. He couldn’t help but enjoy the day, of course. The air held a bit of a chill as it always did in the forest. So little light penetrated to the ground that even on the hottest days, the air always felt cool under the redwoods.

  Few plants could grow with so little sun to nurture them, which created the effect of being in a cathedral rather than a space created by nature. Where grasses clogged the landscape in other places in Northern California, only ferns appeared here. With the tall trunks of the trees reaching toward heaven and the soft duff beneath their feet to muffle their steps, he couldn’t avoid the comparison to a place of worship. This space was that beautiful.

  Gayle must have shared his awe because she hadn’t issued so much as one clever quip. Not a single insult. No challenges to his scientific views. She hadn’t even called him by his last name. But then, she hadn’t referred to him as Hersch since that morning in the bathroom. She hadn’t used “Nolan” much yet, either, but had stuck to “you.”

  They passed a space where a downed tree had created a hole in the canopy, allowing the sunlight to spill in. Here, some underbrush had managed to grow, and redwood seedlings stretched upward, competing for the opportunity to replace the old giant that had fallen. His dark-adapted eyes drank in all the colors in their most saturated form. In a word, it was magical. Not something you merely walked by as though you found such beauty every day.

  He caught her hand. “Let’s sit for a while.”

  She looked down at his fingers curled around hers but didn’t pull away. “Tired?”

  “I’d just like to enjoy the view.” Of course, that had more than one meaning. He’d meant to look at the sunlight, but he wouldn’t mind staring at her for a while, too. Odd, he’d fucked her like a maniac, but he hadn’t romanced her in any way.

  “Okay.“ She gave him something that resembled a shy smile. He’d seen her grin, laugh, and guffaw more than once. He’d never seen anything like this expression. It warmed a place in his heart he didn’t normally pay much attention to, most especially since the day Annie had declared him miserable husband material and had left.

  They walked the two steps to the log together as if they’d been choreographed. That shouldn’t seem odd, given that their bodies had done a lot of moving together lately. Maybe it didn’t feel so much odd as nice.

  When they sat, she reclaimed her hand and wrapped her arms around one knee and raised her foot to rest against the log. “Sometimes, I think I’m running a scam on my funding agencies to get them to send me here.”

  “Hotel Rustic, complete with the world’s smallest bathroom,” he said. “The very latest in luxury resorts.”

  “You were the one who wanted to look at the view.” She gestured to the clearing where sunlight slanted in, scattering dust motes and small insects around in aimless circles. “You don’t find that at the hip beach destinations.”

  “No, you don’t. I know exactly what you mean. I send in a bunch of paperwork for grant proposals—”

  “Huge piles of obnoxious paperwork,” she said.

  “Huge and obnoxious, for sure, but when they stamp ‘approved,’ I get to go off and follow my curiosity wherever it leads,” he said. “That’s true luxury.”

  “It’s not as if we get rich doing it.”

  “Not in money. But after this morning, I don’t think I mind cramped showers, either.”

  She gazed intently into the clearing. Yes, it was beautiful, but her concentration said more about avoiding his gaze than looking at the forest. Still, he could study her with impunity. If she was trying to pretend she wasn’t paying attention to him, she couldn’t claim he was being rude by staring.

  She’d tied her dark curls at the nape of her neck with what women called a scrunchie. As rebellious as the woman herself, her hair refused to be confined, and a few strands had come free and curled around her face. He ought to convince her to share his bed every night so he could see that face when he woke up in the morning.

  “Can I ask you something?” she said softly.

  “Sure.”

  “It’s personal,” she said. “Really personal.”

  “You can ask. If I don’t want to answer, I won’t.”

  “Were you always faithful to your wife?” she asked.

  “What?” There went the mood. Of all the insulting things she could have suggested, that one was off the scale. “I cannot believe you just asked me that.”

  “You said I could ask. If you don’t want to tell me, don’t,” she said.

  “But I do want to answer. Of course I was faithful to her. Now, I’ll ask you one . . . how the fuck could you think I wasn’t?”

  “No need to get huffy about it.”

  “I disagree. I think there are damned good reasons to get huffy.” Huffy didn’t even do the job. Furious fit better, as did irate. Umbrage was old-fashioned and stuffy, but he’d take that, too. In the end, though, he came down to disappointed. How could she think that about him?

  Could she honestly believe that he was insensitive enough—so wrapped up in himself—that he’d do something that hurtful to someone he’d loved? She couldn’t judge his personal ethics based on what he said in his papers and talks. All that was theoretical. Cheating on your wife was personal in about the most destructive way possible. He and Annie had remained friends because they honestly liked each other as much as they always had. But then, maybe they’d liked each other more than loved each other the whole time they’d been together. Maybe he was only now learning about love. The next time he saw his ex he ought to apologize for having been exactly what she’d accused him of . . . a bozo of a husband.

  “No,” he said. “I never cheated on my wife.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I just kind of assumed.”

  “From what evidence?”

  “Well, the things you write in your papers. The issues we’ve fought about for years.”

  “What does that have to do with anything?” he demanded.

  She looked at him as if that was about the dumbest thing she’d ever heard. She held up her fingers to make air quotes. “The male’s best adaptive strategy is to impregnate as many females as possible.”

  “That’s totally unrelated to how I behave.”

  “Are you or are you not a male?”

  She could ask that after the way they’d spent half of their waking hours since arriving here? Okay, probably not half. They had gotten some work done, they’d eaten, washed dishes, and all that other stuff. In fact, they’d had a pleasant walk here and conversation until a minute ago. But they’d spent a whole lot of time doing things that proved his sex and hers. He’d performed at a level he’d never imagined, even during his twenties, when testosterone ran like an IV in his blood.

  “Yes, I’m a male, as you may have noticed,” he said. “But you also know I study animals, not humans.”

  “But you don’t restrict your discussions to nonhumans. Your research is impeccable, your data convincing. It’s when you get to the conclusions part of your talks that the women in the audience start to fidget in their seats.”

  “They do?”

  She actually put her face in her palm. “Honestly, Hersch.”

  “Nolan.”

  “When you act that dense, you’re Hersch,” she said.

  Did women have that reaction? He’d always concentrated on this particular woman when she was in the audience. His other female colleagues could be dancing in their chairs, for all he’d notice. He had had some heated discussions with other women in his department. A couple of graduate students had engaged in some loud debate with him in one particular seminar. He’d always enjoyed the spirited give-and-take. He’d never considered that they might actually be pissed off.

  Or—oh shit—that those two had felt comfortable confronting him only because they’d provided backup for each other. No single woman student had ever dared. They must have assumed he’d meant his research as a guide to human behavior but had been afraid to speak up. He’d been steamrolling his female students without knowing it. What a prick he’d been.

  “I never argued about humans in my papers,” he said. “I always made it clear I was talking about elk.”

  “But some of the others have. Remember the Dalton book?”

  How could he forget it? Howard Dalton had relied on a lot of his own work and mentioned him in the acknowledgements. But Howard had taken things farther than Nolan would have, discussing societies where men owned multiple wives and laws that prosecuted female infidelity but not male. That particular book had made it into the general media and created a furor.

  “I did not write that,” he said.

  “Did you refute it?”

  He searched his brain for something that would change him from goat to hero in this scenario. Nothing presented itself. “Guilty.”

  “Look, you’re not a bad guy, Hersch.”

  “Thanks.” He heaved a sigh he had no right heaving, given that she was right in everything she’d said about him.

  “Nolan,” she corrected and placed her hand over his. “I think you understand better now.”

  “I do. And I’ll fix whatever I can when we get back.”

  “I’m really glad we got to spend this time together.” She reached up and took his chin in her hand to turn his face to hers. It was the sort of gesture a man usually did with a woman. He gave in to it, anyway. She’d restored his status as hero, and now, he could lean across the small distance that separated them and kiss her.

  Then she leaned back so that she could place her palm against his chest. “You know what?”

  He knew he wanted to kiss her, and he knew where that would lead. But given that he finally had her smiling at him, he could postpone the inevitable for a few seconds to see what would come out of her mouth next.

  “What?” he said.

  “I think you might just win our challenge.”

  “Not with you having all those extra orgasms.”

  She bit her lip for a moment. “I like them.”

  “I do, too. I wouldn’t take a single one back even if it meant I’d win,” he said.

  “Maybe the fact that you can make me climax so easily means you’re the champion, not me,” she said. “Maybe in our species, giving really is better than receiving.”

  There. She’d done it again. She’d blown another hole in how he saw the world. When you came right down to it, he’d probably understood sex less than he’d understood love. Sure, he could do it well enough, but the moment his mind moved away from the reality of the act, he started spouting nonsense again. DNA receptacles, indeed. What asshole had ever said something so stupid? He probably owed Annie an apology for not getting what the marital act really was about, too, even though he’d given her plenty of orgasms in their married life.

  “Interesting concept. You could be right,” he said. “Say, did we ever specify a prize?”

  She quirked an eyebrow. “Bragging rights?”

  “No way. What we do here is private.” Contained in this space and time. When they finished here, they’d go back to their respective universities and schedules that would exhaust even the busiest executive. Everything they’d shared would become sweet memories. If you could call anything they’d done with each other’s bodies “sweet.”

  He leaned forward again, inching his mouth toward hers. Still, she held him off.

  “You know what else?” she said.

  “Is it going to take you a long time to tell me?”

  “Sometimes when I’m here all alone and I know there’s no one for miles, I . . .”

  The blush that suddenly covered her cheeks said he’d enjoy whatever she was about to reveal. “Come on. You can tell Uncle Nolan.”

  “Uncle?” She giggled.

  “Okay, not uncle. Horny next-door neighbor. Spit it out.”

  “I sometimes take off all my clothes in the middle of the woods, just so I can feel the air against my skin.”

  Oh, yeah, baby. “You wouldn’t happen to feel like doing that now, would you?”

  “Only if you would, too.”

  “Hot damn.” He started in on his clothes, but getting them off took some doing because he couldn’t take his eyes off Gayle as she stripped. By now, he’d seen her enough that he ought to be able to continue breathing as she revealed herself to him. But no, he had to drag oxygen into his lungs as he gazed at the gentle swell of her breasts, her narrow waist, the flare of her hips. So by the time she’d gotten naked and had even put her shoes back on, he’d only managed to remove his shirt.

  She stood before him, mischief in her eyes, as his rod turned to steel in his pants. She was the perfect woman, from the top of her head to the tips of her toes, and especially at the delightful space between her legs. Only one thing could make the view better.

  “Go stand in the sunlight,” he said.

  She cocked her head but didn’t move.

  “Humor me,” he said. “Please.”

  She turned and walked to the clearing, and now he had a view of the two most beautifully rounded buttocks in the world. They sloped down from her waist and then tucked under. Who would have guessed that a world-class scientist would have a world-class ass like that?

  When she stepped into the clearing, sunlight spilled all over her, creating highlights of flame in her hair. She turned slowly to give him a complete view of the goddess she was. Long limbs, alabaster skin, and the easy power of a woman who knew how to celebrate her sexuality.

  As he rose and approached, she cupped her breasts in her hands, squeezing and holding them out to offer them to him. He stopped right at the boundary between dark and light, struck still where he was in worship of her.