Then Sam’s gaze dropped to my lips. Heat blazed through my body.
God, I wanted this man like I had never wanted anything. The thought of touching Sam drove me crazy.
Abruptly, I shot to my feet. My breathing came fast and my skin felt tight. Our dinner had warmed through, so I mademyself busy serving us the delicious pasta Chef Theo had cooked. Somehow I managed to shove the food into my mouth, but as soon as I was done I didn’t even look at him. I grabbed my parka and stepped toward the tent’s zippered door.
“Where are you going?” Sam asked from behind me.
“Uhhh… I just need to go for a walk.”
“Now?” I could hear the disbelief in his tone.
I didn’t turn back. I was not ready to look at him. I needed to burn this restlessness out of my body before I could face the prospect of lying with him in the same sleeping bag.
“Yeah… I just need to burn off some extra energy.” I knew that was the lamest excuse — we were both exhausted after a full day of walking the rocky island and collecting samples.
I opened the zip and ducked out. Outside, the midnight sun hung low over the horizon. Throughout the summer it would not dip below it — one of the most beautiful things about being at the southernmost tip of the planet.
The temperature had dropped significantly. The cold bit into me. It came as a relief to my overheated body. The penguins were busy doing their thing. I decided I might as well gather some data, and walked the colony edge collecting a few more tail feathers.
The pale weak light played off the far icebergs. Those gigantic chunks of floating ice often served as navigation landmarks.
A couple of penguin chicks decided to follow me around. Their antics were too cute for my mood to persist. There were restricted protocols in place regarding human-penguin interactions. It wasn’t like the videos I often saw on social media where people in parks fed wildlife all kinds of stuff like breadcrumbs and whatnot. I always cringed watching those. As per protocols, we were not allowed to feed them anything oreven touch them unless it was approved for scientific research, like we had done today.
Eventually, I ran out of both energy and heat. Hoping Sam had already gone to sleep, I quietly entered the tent and zipped it behind me, trapping the precious warmth inside.
In the semi-darkness, I could see him inside the sleeping bag, all tucked in and seemingly asleep. I took off my parka and cap. The steam from the kettle earlier and our body heat had made the inside of the tent remarkably comfortable.
I stripped down to my base layers, then with a deep breath and a strict warning to my dick, I slid inside the sleeping bag stiffly, creating as much distance as I could between our bodies — which was not much at all.
6
Chapter 6
I lay stiff as a log, staring up at the roof of the tent. I could smell Sam’s deodorant, or whatever he used. It was woodsy and intoxicating.
I wished the top of the tent was open so I could look at the sky and count the stars. There was no way I was going to fall asleep. Sam was snoring very softly beside me. I turned my head slightly to look at him. His back was facing me. With my eyes I traced the outline of his strong shoulders, the muscles of his bulging biceps.
I had always felt the ridiculous urge to bite into those muscles. It was one of my favorite parts of his body. When we were younger and went off exploring the trails in Alaska, he would often carry me on his shoulders. I used to tire out quickly. Not anymore, thank goodness — but I missed those days when I could be close to him without my raging attraction getting in the way.
Sam had never had a girlfriend. Or a boyfriend, for that matter. I could never get a read on what he thought about me. I knew he cared about me obviously, but did he ever feel anything more than that? And did he know how I felt about him? I hated that I was such an open book. Both Grant and Daniel had clocked my crush on Sam within a few days of meeting me.Yet Sam had never given any indication. Maybe he was just one of those people who were not interested in anything romantic. He definitely was the independent type.
“Viktor?” Sam’s sleepy voice jolted me back to reality. At some point he had turned and was now facing me. I stared at him.
“Everything OK?” he mumbled, his eyes still closed, as if in his sleep he was still tracking whether I was fine.
“Yeah, everything is OK. Go back to sleep,” I answered softly.
He mumbled something else and then his breathing evened out. I lay there for god knows how long. But even my hard-on couldn’t stop the exhaustion that had overcome me. Sam’s rhythmic breathing lulled me into a deep sleep.
***
Next morning, I worked the perimeter slowly, binoculars up, logging each sighting on my tablet. The colony ran along the elevated spine of the island, nests packed onto every flat or slightly elevated surface the rock offered.
Sam was twenty meters behind me, pack on. I raised the binoculars looking for Blue 47. He was a male that I’d been tracking for four years. He and his female got together every season. Blue 47 had a funny personality and I had bonded with him because in my mind he seemed to appreciate my sense of humor. He was a champion in stealing stones to build his nest. His nest was usually the best too. Sneaky bastard.
This season had started like others. Waypoint station’s long term research dataset was well known, even available to public. We had been tracking these birds over a very long time period. I had been monitoring Blue 47 and his partner’s journey but theneleven days back I lost her signal. Since then I’d been checking in daily. No luck. I was eager to verify with my own eyes that everything was okay.
Sam came up beside me. “There,” he pointed out.
