Page 17 of His Hawaiian Heart (Stateside Doms #26)

McNut took us away from the waterfall and into part of the jungle where the light was dimmer.

Not because of the hour, but because the lush vegetation created dense barriers, and vines, some thicker than my waist, wound up trees and over boulders.

Ferns clung to the cliffside where rocks jutted out like steps of a giant’s massive staircase.

There was no rainbow, no glittering diamonds of water droplets, but it was just as beautiful as where we’d picnicked.

I looked up and grinned when I heard Sam give a short curse. If he hadn’t been over six feet tall and standing I might not have been able to spot him. The vegetation was that thick.

“You okay?”

He turned my way. “Yeah, but I honestly don’t see how you get off on doing this for a living. I think I’ve found every pokey thing in this jungle but I haven’t seen a single caterpillar.”

I had to push the “get off” portion of his comment aside in order to give him a response worthy of my position.

Of course, what came out instead was one word.

“Pokey?” Before he could misconstrue my meaning—as my inner sex goddess was perfectly capable of picturing her idea of things that poked—I added, “What sort of scientific term is pokey?”

“The kind that means I’m obviously not cut out for this line of work.”

Poor guy. He was hot and tired and probably had a thousand better things to do, but he was here with me.

Still, I couldn’t help but tease a bit. “If you want to avoid pokey things, then next time just ask Mr. Eupithecia for his actual address.” The look he shot me had me taking pity. “Come over here.”

It took a few minutes for him to disentangle himself but I was good with observing the process as he was the most interesting subject I’d ever studied.

Once he was close, I brushed some leaves off his shirt and then held up two.

“Tell me, which one of these leaves do you believe our caterpillar looks more like?”

He didn’t even hesitate and pointed to the bright green leaf in my right hand. “That one, obviously.”

I tossed the leaf over my shoulder. “Well, there’s your answer.”

“What?”

I shook the leaf I still held but he just grinned and shook his head. “Sorry, Doc, but I can’t concentrate on what you are saying when you’re wearing these.” He reached to carefully push the glasses I’d been using to the top of my head.

“Oh, I’m so used to wearing them, I forget I even have them on.” I could feel my cheeks heat with the thought of how ridiculous I must have looked, then remembered something. “Hey, does that mean you were lying when you called them sexy?”

“I may have a lot of flaws, but lying isn’t one of them. You can trust that I mean every word I say. They are sexy as hell.”

“Why, Sam, I believe you might have a glasses kink.”

“Baby, there is no might about that being one of my kinks when it is you wearing them.”

One of my kinks.

There I go getting all tingling again. Though that might be due to the fact he’d reached for my hand holding the remaining leaf.

“Please continue.”

“Right, okay.” I smiled and flattened my palm so the brown leaf sat in its center. “You’re thinking of those caterpillars portrayed in children’s books. And while our guy is quite handsome in his own right, he’d never be able to ambush his prey if he is bright green.”

“So you’re saying he looks like a dead leaf?”

“Yes and no.”

“Well, that’s about as clear as mud.”

I laughed and took his index finger and guided it to the ridge of one of the leaf’s ribs.

“Camouflage, remember? Our guy started life as a moth but once the moth found the Hawaiian islands, over eons our little caterpillar became a genius in disguising himself. Stop looking for the chubby green one found in The Hungry Caterpillar and start looking for small, thin twigs on a branch or leaf like this one. He won’t be crawling along either.

He’ll most likely be standing tall, though he’s only about three quarters of an inch long. ”

His look wasn’t that of a man willing to be bored out of his mind to impress a girl but was one of true interest. Well, interest and a bit of lust.

“Hence the glasses.”

“Right,” I said, reaching up and taking them off my head before offering them to him. When he hesitated, I grinned. “Go ahead. This is as good a time as any to discover if I should add glasses to my kink list.”

His pupils widened at that and his lips curled which had already made it to my top five favorite things. Accepting the glasses, he put them on only to say, “Whoa,” and snatch them off. “Unless that kink list involves watching me vomit, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.”

Laughing, I took them back and showed him the small buttons on the frames. “You have to adjust them to your eyes. Don’t think binoculars, think microscope. Turn the dials until you can see that this leaf is far more than what you’re seeing with your naked eye.”

He looked doubtful but took the glasses back and fiddled with the controls until he grinned.

“Look at the leaf, sir, not me.”

“Then stop saying words like naked,” he said without missing a beat, and then added, “and especially Sir,” before slipping his hand beneath mine holding the leaf and lifting it higher.

If a woman had ever wished to be able to step outside herself to see a man’s discovery of what she looked like through his eyes when he bent to examine an erect nipple or trace the goosebumps across her belly to the valley between her legs, I imagined it was akin to what I was privileged to watch in this moment.

Sam’ brows behind the glasses lifted and his lips parted as he breathed a soft, “wow,” in awe as his fingernail traced around the margin of the leaf then up the brittle ridge in the center.

He carefully ran his finger along one of the tiny veins that spread from the center out to the leaf’s edge.

His small grunt of complaint when I took the leaf quieted when I turned it over to expose what only was visible through the lens of the glasses.

He began to trace the belly of the leaf.

His fingernail flicked at a cluster of dirt covering the surface.

When he chuckled, I knew he was watching that “dirt” break open and the dust it held hover on the air a moment before the wind took it.

The spores he released were too small even for those glasses to truly examine but that wasn’t the point.

The point was that by the time his head lifted, his lips were curled in a grin that stripped years from his age.

He pushed the glasses to the top of his head. “All the leaves I’ve raked into piles and jumped into. The ones I’ve brushed off my shirt or hat. I’ve never given a single thought to them, but, seriously, that’s freaking amazing.”

I stood on my tiptoes and took his face between my palms and drew him to me.

“You’re amazing,” I said just before I kissed him.

An arm wrapped around me and lifted me off my feet as another cupped my head and he deepened the kiss.

When he set me on my feet, he kept his arm around me as if he knew I was slightly unsteady.

Once I recovered the ability to speak, I said, “Box checked.”

His left eyebrow quirked and I silently added another checkmark in my top five favorite things to see.

“Turns out we do share that glasses kink.”

“Unless I’m the most clueless man on the planet, I’m willing to bet we share a hell of a lot more than that single kink.”

I ran my hand up his chest and tucked the leaf I still held into the pocket of his shirt. “And that, sir, is what science is all about. The fun of research and the joy of discovery. Now, how about we try to find our caterpillar.”

I knew he would probably prefer I simply dismiss the class, for a bit of “recess,” but I was finding that “slowly” was proving to be far more provocative than I would have ever believed.