Sex and Dinosaurs

Harlow climbed the sandstone ledge and used her hand to shield her eyes from the sun. She surveyed a vast expanse of barely vegetated rock and sand, bound only by distant blue mountains shimmering on the horizon. It wasn't noon yet, but already the heat had spawned dust devils that danced on the ground and towered into the blue sky.

I stopped the rock drill and took my hat off to wipe away the sweat hanging on my eyebrows and on the tip of my nose, and I watched her. Dana Harlow was long and tan; she was a perfect, sinewy desert rat with sun-bleached hair that just fit into short pony tail.

"Powell," she said, and turned to where I watched her, "Let's call it a day and send everyone back to Holbrook." I didn't disagree. We started before dawn that morning, so we'd already put in six hours of work; any more time in the growing heat threatened the volunteers with heat exhaustion.

The dusty site that we were excavating in eastern Arizona had been known for years—ever since a local rancher found bones weathering from the soft mudstone along the side of a broad arroyo. He called the University and the site was stabilized with concrete and preserved until now. We broke the concrete away and our job was to peel back the layer of sandstone that covered the fossils so we could see what was there.

Harlow kept her eyes on the crew as they worked under sun shades that stretched over the site, and she talked so that only I could hear, "If you play your cards right then I might even lay you tonight, but only if I'm on top this time."

She walked away, and as I watched her go my fingers twitched with the desire to peel off her khaki shorts and her bikini top—to strip her down to her tan lines. She and I were a lot alike; we both enjoyed the sex, but we were both too competitive and controlling to admit it.

It was almost a week earlier when I got carried away in bed and stuck my dick into Harlow before she was ready. That led to an argument, and we hadn't shared a bed since. I didn't think the drought would last very long, and I was right.

Harlow called off work, and we ate lunch with the crew under the sun shades. It was Thursday—the end of the week for the volunteers—and they were in a talkative mood. I walked them to the crew cars when the food was gone and the chatter wound down. I made sure they were all hydrated and happy.

Harlow cleaned up on the site while I was gone and got a better look at the day's results. I found her studying the Late Triassic-aged mudstone we exposed by drilling, then breaking and removing three or four feet of sandstone and shale. I bent over her shoulder to watch and asked, "What do we have?"

"It's another skull." she said, and dusted some grit out of the empty eye socket. "That makes at least five individuals. At a glance, they look like Theropods, but I think they're too big to be Coelophysis. They could be something new."

I had to step back when she stood and turned to face me. She used my first name as rarely as I used hers, but she used it when she said, "Frank, this site could be another Ghost Ranch. It could make our names. The preservation is incredible."

I warned her, "Don't get ahead of yourself. The budget we have right now isn't going to get us very far. Our only job is to get enough information to justify a bigger budget. I doubt that will make anyone's name."

Harlow and I were post-doctoral fellows in vertebrate paleontology. We worked at different universities and different museums. Until a few months ago, almost all we knew about each other was that we disagreed. The faculty positions that we both wanted were hard to get, so we each used our social contacts, and the question-and-answer periods and discussion boards at every conference to jostle for an advantage.

Then our departments pooled their resources into one proposal to explore this site. We were funded and found ourselves assigned to co-manage the summer field operations. The first thing we ever agreed on was that our senior investigators, Lillian Thayer and Tom Hamlin, must share an odd sense of humor.

Harlow glanced away. "You're right," she said, but she glared at me and went on, "If there's any chance for early success, I going for it, whether you're with me or not."

Her defiance was pure Harlow—it was one of the things I liked about her. When she looked up at me her scent penetrated my senses and my desire for her suddenly boiled to the surface. To us there was something illicit in the attraction we had, so we hid it from the volunteers and we hid it from Thayer and Hamlin. In retrospect, we even denied it to ourselves by turning it all into a game of control.

I reached to touch Harlow's shoulders then stopped myself with my hands poised in the air. I said, "You know that Thayer and Hamlin are coming up with the GPR results, right?" I searched her face, looking for a reaction then went on, "We may not have time tonight. I want to do it right now."

She hesitated and said, "You know we're both a sweaty mess, right?" She waited for me to acknowledge her and then she said, "Then damn the heat and the grit."

My hands fell on Harlow's shoulders and I took her mouth. The touch of her tongue, her breath on my cheek, and her hand rubbing at the front of my shorts all excited me. She turned her head to break our kiss, and I read desire written on her face. It must have been etched on mine.

There was no place better to take Harlow down than right where we were. She squealed in surprise when I laid her on the fossil slab, but I covered her mouth with mine and thrust my hand into her shorts.

Harlow pushed my mouth away and gasped, "Oh God, Powell!" and kicked her feet apart. Her cunt was hot and wet. I had two fingers into her when she grasped the hair at the back of my head and pulled me back.

"The deal was, I'm on top." she said. I was four inches taller and probably fifty pounds heavier than Harlow, but I let her roll me on my back. She climbed on top and straddled my thighs then freed my cock from my shorts. Her hands were rough from hard work, but when she wrapped them around me I hardened so fast that it made me groan.

She was leaning on my chest with one hand and had my cock in the other when a grin parted her lips. "I warned you, so no complaining," she said and pushed her shorts and her panties down. I knew what Harlow liked, so I wasn't surprised when she swung her knee over my face and pressed her smoothly shaved pussy to my mouth. After a morning of working in the heat and the dust, her feminine taste and scent were uncivilized—distinctly strong and sweaty. She leaned forward to take my cock in her mouth and I'm sure she found my scent and taste to be no better.

I wrapped her hips with my arms, lifted my face between her legs, and immersed myself in her. I could feel Harlow's excitement in the tension of her muscles and in the way she moved in my arms. I won the game when she buried her face against my thigh and pushed back against my mouth. She had lost control. I slipped my tongue through her deep creases and sucked her juices. I flicked it along and over her trigger again and again, until she dug her fingers into my leg and screamed through her orgasm.

Harlow tried to pull away when her spasms passed, but I held on and pursued her with my tongue. I lapped at her wet folds until she protested, "Powell, I'm too sensitive!" I let her slip away, and her body relaxed into post-orgasmic euphoria. She sighed, "Damn, that was good."

She rested on me for a few minutes then without saying a word she tensed and pushed herself up. She sat on my chest with my cock in both hands and pumped me. I ran my hands down her narrow back and rested them on the spread of her hips, and instinctively rocked my hips to thrust back into her grip. It was my turn to give up control. I groaned and bucked under her weight while I came, and my essence gushed out into her hands and onto her tanned belly.

"What a mess!" Harlow complained. I sat up under her and she pitched forward onto one hand while I slid back and leaned against the face of the excavation to catch my breath. I wiped my face on my tee shirt then realized how overheated I felt and pulled it off over my head.

Harlow turned around to face me and straddled my hips again. She used my shirt to wipe her hands and her belly. I waited until she tossed the shirt aside then I reached between her legs to touch her bare skin. "You planned this, didn't you." I said. "You shaved this morning."

"Of course I planned it," she laughed, "But I planned it for tonight after we had a chance to clean up." She pinched my cheek with two days of stubble on it, "I didn't plan for this, though. Now I have whisker burn between my legs."

"Sorry about that." I said, though maybe I wasn't so sorry. "I didn't plan." I could admit that, but I didn't want to admit that Harlow's strong scent—once I got used to it—excited me. There was something purely animal in it that turned me on.

My train of thought got lost when I found Harlow's nipples standing out under her bikini top. I pried at the knot that closed the bra in front then let it fall open and exposed the untanned triangles of skin underneath. Her breasts were beautiful—more than a mouthful, but not a lot more—and what they lacked in size they made up for in sensitivity.

I tugged her toward me, and when she leaned forward to offer me a tit I took them both. I sucked a mouth full of her firm, white flesh—first one side and then the other—then I pulled her nipples through my teeth. She gasped and I felt a thrill run through her body.

Harlow leaned against the rock over my head and said, "You're getting hard again. You couldn't stop yourself if you wanted to, could you?" She squirmed to get my hard-on under her bud where she could rub herself against it, and I rested my hands on her waist and watched her expressions while she rocked.

Harlow knew what I intended when I lifted her off my cock to reach between us, and she pushed away. She found her shorts where she dropped them, searched in a pocket, and came up with a condom packet. "At least one of us thinks about these things," she said. I knew Harlow used birth control, but she liked the extra protection.

She rolled the condom down my cock while I wet my fingers in her, and I used her thick nectar to lubricate the head of my cock. She worked it between her pussy lips then I pushed up and into her tight body. "Powell! You feel so big!" she gasped and pulled away.

"I'm no bigger now than I was before." I said, and positioned it under her again. Harlow lowered herself and her breath was hot on my neck while she took my penetration. She knew what that did to me and to my self-control, and she reveled in it. The sensation was nearly maddening for me while she worked the sensitive head of my cock slowly, farther and farther into her.

Harlow took in all of my cock then lowered her firm button onto me. I tasted the salty sheen on her skin, and droplets fell from the tip of her nose to join the beads of sweat on my chest. There was a limit to how long I could bear this and she knew it—she expected it. I put my hand on her tail bone and pushed her down on my cock. I did it again and again, repeating in rhythm. Harlow picked up the rhythm and our bodies slapped together until I bucked under her on the verge of climax. I groaned through a blinding orgasm and emptied myself into her.

She didn't wait for me to recover. With my softening cock still inside her, she writhed over me and ground against me while her excitement built. She tossed her head back when she climaxed. Her body tightened around my cock, and she gasped animal noises into the desert.

Harlow sat back on me and she caught her breath before she rolled away. We both sprawled on the rock with our arms and legs spread wide and let the dry desert air cool our bodies.

*****

Tom Hamlin and Lillian Thayer met in Mesa that morning and drove to Holbrook in the afternoon. They brought the results of a ground-penetrating radar survey that we completed early in the field season, and they intended to spend the next day at the site.

Professor Hamlin was a big man with a look of success. He was broad, a little soft, and not very tanned. Despite years of quarrying for bones when he was younger, he now seemed a little awkward outside the office and the lab. He grasped my hand, slapped my shoulder, and said, "Frank, you look like the work agrees with you." Tom was my principle advisor while I completed my dissertation and I thought I knew him well.

Dr. Hamlin turned to Harlow with more reserve; they knew each other only from the project meetings. He shook her hand and said, "Dr. Harlow, it's good to see you again."

Harlow had the same relationship with Thayer that I had with Hamlin. Lillian hugged Harlow and told her, "Dana, you're so tanned that I hardly recognize you!"

Dr. Thayer extended her hand to me and said, "Dr. Powell, I agree with Tom. You do look like the work agrees with you." Her grip was firm and warm, and the look she gave me stirred my curiosity. Her white hair matched her blue eyes and light complexion. From the shape and tone of her body, she seemed like someone who was still very active.

We sat in a back booth, as far from the sport bar's blaring televisions as we could get. I sat across from Tom and beside Dr. Thayer. After dinner Lillian pulled a laptop computer from her bag and we bent over the middle of the table to study images from the survey.

"Running the GPR off batteries and shooting through the sandstone didn't give us a lot to go on," she explained. "We got only a few centimeters of penetration into the shale, but from what we can see the deposit may be larger than we planned for."

Tom asked, "How much of the sandstone have you peeled off so far?" That was the primary measure of our progress.

"We're about eight feet back now—to about here." I traced a line on the GPR image. "And I'm drilling the new line about 8 inches farther back."

Thayer looked up at me with surprise on her face. She asked, "You're running the rock drill yourself? That isn't usually something I expect from the field coordinator."

Harlow responded to Thayer's questioning tone of voice. She explained, "We hired a retired uranium miner to do the drilling. We like him, but he has medical problems that make him undependable. He taught Frank how to run the drill and now Frank does about half of the drilling. It keeps us on schedule."

Thayer reached up to touch my arm then pulled back. I studied her expression for a moment and tried to understand what she wanted, and then I offered her my arm. She laughed and squeezed my bicep with both hands and said, "Nice." She looked to Tom and asked, "Do you remember that Hell Canyon site in Montana that we worked when we were about their age? You ran the drill there and it had the same effect. It was the best summer."

Tom shifted uncomfortably on the seat. He fixed his eyes on Lillian and said, "You know how much I enjoy all of our field seasons, but I could never forget that summer. That was the best." He was 27 years my senior and I struggled to imagine him at my age with his muscles toned from the effort of hard labor. It was a little easier for me to imagine Thayer at Harlow's age.

He turned to Harlow and changed the subject. "We brought the GPR unit with us. The generator we have on site now should give us more power than we had on batteries. Do you have cords long enough to reach the excavation?"

Harlow watched Lillian squeeze my arm and then turned to answer Tom. She'd pulled the hair tie off her pony tail before we went to dinner and that let the long, sun-streaked locks at the front curve under her jaw to frame her face. That changed her look from desert rat to desert pixie, and Tom's smile as she answered his question made it clear that he appreciated it.

"We have cords for the lighting that we haven't even used yet. They're long enough and probably big enough." She said.

Lillian interrupted with yawn and said, "Tom, it's been a long day and we need to leave at what, 4:30 in the morning?" She looked to Harlow for confirmation and Harlow agreed. "I don't know about you, but I need to get back to the motel."

Tom slid out of the booth without much hesitation. I glanced at Harlow and found her looking back. We had a lot more time left in the evening than we thought we would.

Harlow and I were standing outside our motel rooms under the dim lamps that lit the walkway when she said, "You got a lot of attention from Lillian. Did she take her hands off from you the whole time we were talking after dinner?"

"Sure she did," I said, even though I wasn't really sure. "She wasn't paying attention to me. I think she was watching Tom, and Tom was watching you." The way that our principle investigators acted was interesting, but it wasn't my biggest concern. I unlocked my door, then asked, "Are you going to open your side tonight?"

Our rooms were connected by a doorway that could be closed from either side. Harlow latched her side last week after our argument. She glanced both ways along the walkway to see if anyone was watching, and then she touched my stubbly jaw with her finger tips. "I'll give you two choices. You can shave this off tonight and I'll open the door, or you can leave it and I won't open that door again until your beard is long enough to soften up."

I shaved then found the door between our rooms open. Harlow sat in the pool of yellow light from her bedside lamp and read some notes she made during the day, so I sat down beside her to see what she was looking at.

Harlow was very good at sketching the things she saw. Photographs might be more accurate and easier, but her sketches emphasized the details she thought were more important. She pointed to her sketch of a partially exposed cervical vertebra with a distinct gouge and said, "What do you think this is?"

"A tooth mark." I said. "I couldn't guess from what I saw whether that was the mortal wound or not." I remembered the vertebra and I remembered Harlow sitting to sketch it. She looked up from the sketch and pushed her nose under my jaw to inhale, then she tossed her notes on the table.

I liked stripping Harlow, so she let me do it. Her shirt came off first. I threw it to the foot of the bed, and her bra followed. Her jeans landed by the bed, and I tossed her panties over my shoulder and into the corner. She rolled on the bed and stretched out, then while I stood to pull off my jeans and my boxers I heard a quiet groan escape her lips.

I knew that sound. Maybe it was involuntary, or maybe it was a manipulation. Either way it meant that she was stiff and sore, so I glanced at her clock to make sure that we had time. Harlow squawked at me when I turned her belly-down and climbed over her and straddled her hips. She lifted her head from the pillow and asked, "What are you doing?" It was an unnecessary question. She knew the answer.

"I'm going to rub your back," I said. Harlow wasn't built for hauling rocks and dirt, but she did it anyway. I took pity on her.

She kept a bottle of lotion by the bed. I squeezed some of it into my palm and rubbed my hands to warm it, and then I smoothed it over her back, searching for tight spots. The muscles in her shoulders, between her spine and her shoulder blade, and just above her hips were all knotted. I warmed another dab of lotion in my hands and smoothed her muscles to relax her. Everything but those knots melted under my touch. Harlow sighed and I warned her, "Don't fall asleep on me now."

She flinched as the room's noisy air conditioner kicked in, then said, "Wake me up if I fall asleep."

It was another victory in our games when Harlow's tight muscles surrendered to me. Starting with the knots above her hips, I stretched her muscles and smoothed them. I moved up to her shoulder blades and pressed the side of my hand against those tight knots. She gasped from the pain or the pleasure and flattened on the bed while I worked her loose. Her skin was smooth and soft from the lotion when I leaned close over her neck to relax her shoulders. The air conditioner shut down again with a familiar jolt that shook the room, and my victory was complete.