Page 27 of His Hawaiian Heart
“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 inThe Hungry Caterpillarand start looking for small, thin twigson 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 tomykink 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 partedas 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 thanthatsingle 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.
Chapter Twelve
Samuel
As I listened to Samantha telling her team about the caterpillar we’d found, it was more satisfying than listening to any presentation I’d ever sat through.
Her awe and the way she’d looked when peering up at me with those ridiculous glasses on her face made her the sexiest woman I’d ever had the privilege of viewing. She hadn’t even said a word, simply smiled and beckoned me forward. For the first time since I’d hit puberty, I hadn’t considered the gesture as an invitation to get her beneath me, but one inviting me to share another part of her world.
She’d given me her father’s magnifying glass, taken my hand, and slowly guided it to a point above a log that had fallen decades earlier to the forest floor. It was partially covered with green moss, but the lesson of earlier had me ignoring it in favor of finding the darkened areas of brown. It still took her hand on my wrist to home in on the location, but when I saw a stickstanding up at the edge of a small hole in the log, I literally gasped. I’d seen a million twigs moving in the wind, but never had I seen one swaying without benefit of a breeze.
This one was doing exactly that, not wildly, but slowly as it’s claws, feet, teeth—I had no clue what they were called, only that this stick was using them to hold what looked like some type of ant. I’d watched for several minutes and then realized Sam was no longer holding my wrist. In fact, she was no longer even beside me. I began to rise but caught her out of the corner of my eye and saw her motioning for me to remain still. The soft scribbling of pencil across paper stilled the twig for a moment, but when it didn’t sense danger, it bobbed ever so slightly again. I’d had no clue how long I studied it, but only turned to proclaim, “No way!”
Her laugh had me grin with the realization I’d practically shouted. I couldn’t care less. What I’d seen still seem impossible.
“Tell me, Sam, exactly how much did you know about our specimen before today?”
