Dash and Dingo (27 page)

“You must have slept well.” Dingo gave him a lecherous smile.

“I was the one doing all the work, if I recall,” Henry replied tartly, although it wasn’t as if what he had been doing to Dingo was a chore.

“Your turn. I’m surprised you didn’t hear it, though. The devils were fighting over something, yowling and cursing like the little demons they are,”

Dingo said with relish, as if he admired them more than anything. “They don’t leave much behind. Crunch right through the bones with their heavy jaws.

Usually you only find bits of bone and teeth the next day.”

“Charming.”

“Useful. They’re the housekeepers and undertakers of Tasmania.”

Henry decided that Dingo was altogether too cheerful about this.

“Would they eat a man?”

“They’re actually rather timid around humans. We rather tower over them. But if you were to be incapacitated or they found you injured and unable to get away, they’d take care of you all right, and leave little evidence behind.”

Henry shivered. “What about the tiger?”

“They’re even more skittish about being near us. But there haven’t been authenticated reports of one attacking a human being.” Dingo’s mouth was set in a grim line. “I’m not entirely certain that they really have eaten any sheep either. There are plenty of predators to share the blame. Quolls, devils, feral dogs, even feral cats.”

Henry wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that the government had heaped their transgressions upon the tiger as well in its quest to stamp them out. He blinked in surprise when he stepped out into what looked like a snug pasture transplanted from England in the midst of the trees. “Does somebody live here?”

“It’s a kangaroo plantation; they keep the grass cropped like this,”

Dingo said. He held out his arm, stopping Henry from stepping into the grassy

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pasture. “We’ll skirt around it. If we trample the grass, it’d be like leaving a signboard for Hodges. ‘Dash and Dingo went this way!’”

“What if he has as good a tracker as Jarrah?” Henry asked.

Dingo didn’t even hesitate in his answer. “There’s nobody as good as Jarrah.”

Henry found Dingo’s loyalty to his friend admirable, but there was a little niggling voice in his mind whispering that Dingo still seemed to underestimate Hodges and what he was capable of. Henry hoped that Dingo was right; after all, he did know Hodges and had for a long time. But Henry brought a fresh perspective to their history, and his brief encounters with Dingo’s nemesis would not allow him to subscribe to the lackadaisical analysis of the man that Dingo was trying to sell.

“This looks like a fine spot.”

Henry came out of his fugue state with a longing expression on his face.

“We’re here?”

“We’re here.”

The climb up the mountain had been arduous; Henry had overcome his pride and asked for frequent rest breaks along the way. Dingo had been attentive but firm. They had to get to what would become their base by early afternoon.

“You rest,” Dingo said. “I’ll pitch the tent.”

Henry shook his head. “I’ll do my share.”

“How are the feet?”

Henry tested them with a quizzical expression. “Better actually.” What he didn’t mention was that the rest of him more than made up for that.

Dingo gave him a nod of approval. Henry was glad that he was at least proving some kind of mettle on this expedition. Perhaps Hodges had been right and Dingo hadn’t been expecting as much from him, given the look on his face. And maybe now certain affections had been revealed, Dingo might have been tempted to make things easier for his new lover, make allowances he wouldn’t have done for anybody else. Henry didn’t want to be given such liberties. He wanted to be worthy of Dingo’s merit; even though there were

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many things Dingo was better at than he, Henry knew there were other things he could bring to their partnership as adventurers.

But he was relieved when the tent was up, and Dingo crawled within to lie down.

“Are we resting already?” Henry teased from where he was sitting outside.

“Get in here, Dash,” Dingo said. “I want to feel your bones.”

Henry didn’t need any further persuasion. He thankfully crawled in beside Dingo, who immediately took him in his arms.

“Now the hard work begins,” Dingo murmured.

Henry blanched. Their days of trekking hadn’t been the hard work? He shuddered to think what could come next. “What next?”

“Sleep,” Dingo said. “Tonight we start our watch for the tigers.”

“We’re in tiger country,” Henry said, enthused.

“In the thick of it. Where they have been driven out and where only a handful of people know. To everybody else they’re as good as dead.”

Henry couldn’t think of anything worse than a belief in total extinction, except there could be one thing even more horrifying—the numb acceptance of, or lack of caring about, the eradication of a species. “I can’t believe I’m here.”

“Believe it,” Dingo said kindly. “You belong here, Dash.”

Emboldened by both their physical closeness and the new emotional bond that was deepening between them, Henry said, “And I can’t believe I’m here with you.”

“Really?”

Henry struggled to convey the depth of what he was feeling. “It’s as if two dreams have collided. And I don’t know….”

“Don’t know what?”

But this was the one thing Henry couldn’t say. Going back to England would be like waking from this dream. He didn’t know what would happen once this quest was over nor what lay in the future for him and Dingo. If he didn’t speak of it, then maybe he would never have to think about the logistics of it and how everything seemed stacked against their favor.

Finally, he said, “Just, it’s too good to be true.”

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Dingo nuzzled against his cheek, his breath warm against his skin.

“Doesn’t mean it can’t stay like that.”

It was a nice thought, but Henry knew both of them were realists. The wilds of Tasmania were a different world altogether; they could hardly live in total abandon the way they had the past few days among the cobblestones of Melbourne or London.

Time to change the subject, although Henry thought Dingo was doing the same thing in the way he was sliding his hand below Henry’s shirt and lazily tracing the circle of his nipple.

Henry thought that it would have been impossible for him to be ready to sleep so early in the day, but the strenuous climb and now lying supine against the delicious warmth of Dingo, he could feel himself slowly drifting away.

“Dingo,” he said sleepily.

“Yeah?”

“Tell me about the first time you saw Tassie.”

Dingo chuckled to himself. “You want a bedtime story, Dash?”

“Yes, a story about young Dingo in the wild.”

“You wouldn’t have liked me back then. I was a cocky bastard.”

Henry smiled. “Well, I like you now, and believe me, it sounds like nothing has changed.”

“Too right,” Dingo admitted.

Henry closed his eyes. “I’m listening. Talk to me.”

Dingo rested his head against Henry’s shoulder and let his hand remain under his shirt so he could maintain the touch of Henry’s skin and the steady thump of his heartbeat on the right side of his palm. “I was just a snip of a kid, having just turned ten. I’d had to watch my dad take my brothers along for years, but Mum wouldn’t let me go. She said I was too young.”

“You’re her baby,” Henry murmured. “It’s nice.”

“Not when you’re ten and you think you’re a man already. But she finally relented. My dad packed us all up, and we went in search of Tassie. It was far away from here; back then the tiger hadn’t been driven so far inland.

We camped out, and I remember one night I slept through, and my brothers claimed they had seen a family of tigers while I snored my fool head off. I was so mad that I hit Johnno right in the kisser and was about to start in on Baz when my dad stepped in. They wouldn’t speak to me for the rest of the

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day, Johnno especially, because I was so much younger than him and managed to best him. It was luck, really.”

Henry laughed, and Dingo snuggled closer.

“Anyway, that night I was determined not to sleep in case the tigers were seen again. My brothers and I weren’t talking, and my dad was mad at all of us for not talking, so he wasn’t talking to any of us either. Dad let me have my first taste of beer—”

“At ten?” Henry asked, horrified.

“Relax, Dash, he watered it down. Just enough to taste it. But I tell you, it made me piss like a horse all night.”

Henry chuckled again, imagining Dingo telling this story at his parents’

dinner table.
His
parents would probably both faint into their soup, but he was sure that Helen and Hank were made of stronger stuff. Probably Dingo actually
had
told the story at some point, and more than once!

“On about my fifth trip into the bush, we had set aside for our dunny, that was when it happened. I was in the middle of going when in a small patch of moonlight just ahead of me, Tassie stepped into it as if she were about to go on stage and that was her spotlight.”

Henry’s eyes fluttered open, although sleep wanted to will them shut again. “What did you do?”

“Pissed all over myself, for starters, I was that excited. Oh, Dash, she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. Present company excluded, of course.”

Henry shook his head but was pleased by the compliment, even though he didn’t think anything could rival the strange and alien beauty of the thylacine.

“Her coat was this rich caramel color, and the stripes were vibrant against it. She looked straight at me, the moon reflecting off her black eyes, and she allowed me to see the width of her jaw as she opened it in a yawn.

Like she was putting on a show. Then, just as quick as she appeared, she was gone.”

“What happened then?” Henry asked breathlessly.

“I started screaming like a loon. My brothers and my dad rushed over to find me, my dick still hanging out for all to see, while I was pointing at an empty bit of bush.”

“Did they believe you?”

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“Johnno and Baz didn’t want to, just to keep me going, but Dad made them stop. They could all tell by the look in my eyes that I hadn’t imagined it.

That I was now under its spell.”

Henry knew the spell, that singular passion that the thylacine had aroused in him as well.

As if reading his mind, Dingo said, “You’ve got the look as well. That’s why I wanted you to come. Besides the fact that I was hoping you’d let me have my way with you.”

“Dingo,” Henry groaned, but then he paused and asked in all

seriousness, “How can I have the look? I haven’t seen Tassie.”

“Not in its natural element,” Dingo agreed. “Or alive. But you’ve seen its legacy and its mystery. That’s why you’re hooked, just like the rest of us.

It’s why you had to come.”

Henry closed his eyes again, happy. “That was a good story, Dingo.”

And with that, his lips parted and a small snore issued forth between them.

Dingo pressed his lips against his lover’s forehead. “Sweet dreams, Dash.”

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Henry awoke suddenly. All the hairs on his body were standing on end, and he didn’t know why. He wasn’t cold; the heat pouring off Dingo’s body combined with the blanket should have had him sweating. He knew he hadn’t been having a nightmare; the last remnants of his dream that he could remember were basically a replay of their session in the forest the night before. It was why his cock was now uncomfortably hard, but sex was the last thing on his mind.

“Dingo,” he said urgently, shaking the man next to him.

Dingo smacked his lips but didn’t open his eyes. “Let a man sleep, Dash.”

“Dingo, wake up!”

This time, the tone of his voice seemed to permeate into Dingo’s brain.

He sat up straight away. “What is it?” He peered outside the flap of the tent.

“Christ, Dash, how long have we been sleeping? We should have been up ages ago!”

Interested in spite of the strange feeling that remained with him, Henry asked, “How can you tell what time it is? By how many stars are out?”

“Magic,” Dingo said. Then he held up his wrist. “It’s called a watch, love.”

Both of them froze at the word that had escaped unknowingly and unfiltered from him. Even in the blu-ish hue of the moonlight, Henry could see Dingo’s face darken. Was that a blush? He had never seen Dingo blush; he wouldn’t have even thought his skin capable of such a reaction.

“Of course,” Henry said. “Silly me.” But he leaned forward and pulled Dingo against him, crushing their lips together. Dingo responded fiercely, so fast and so strong that they toppled over, Henry on his back and Dingo against his chest. Henry shifted himself so that his still-hard cock thrust against Dingo’s. Dingo’s breath was hot in his mouth and his tongue insistent on playing with his own. Scarcely able to breathe, Henry pulled at the back of Dingo’s trousers, just wanting him off for a moment so he could recapture his