But I also had to wonder if his tattoos were begun as a defense against the indefensible. His mother had preyed on him; he’d had to become an uberpredator in order to survive—both physically and mentally. Not that Sawyer had ever seemed to have a lot of psychological problems.
Considering what I’d just witnessed, Sawyer’s not having psychological problems was a problem.
“What did you do?” I asked.
He glanced over his shoulder; for an instant his face was stark, haunted, and I caught my breath. Was he going to tell me about his past? Could I handle it if he did? Then the unguarded expression was gone, replaced by his usual indifference.
“I cast a spell of protection. It’ll keep her out for a few hours, maybe even the rest of the night.”
“Why don’t you cast that spell over and over and over again? Keep her away forever.”
“She’s too strong. Once she breaks this spell, it doesn’t work anymore. And there aren’t very many that work against her at all.”
“You need to save them.”
He nodded.
I opened my mouth to ask why tonight, then shut it again. Why not tonight? I could certainly use a rest from her popping in and trying to kill me.
Sawyer turned away from the door, and my gaze was captured by the tiny bottle hanging from a strip of rawhide looped around his neck.
I reached out and captured it between my forefinger and thumb. Inside was a bit of red-brown dirt.
Sawyer had gone still; he barely seemed to breathe. I lifted my eyes to his. “What did Carla do?”
He looked away, then back again, shrugged. “A spell. As long as I wear this talisman, I can walk as a man anywhere that I wish.”
“And if you don’t wear it?”
“Woof.”
“Very funny.”
“I thought so.”
Yet he wasn’t smiling. He so rarely did. After today. I could understand why.
“Talisman,” I murmured. “Not an amulet?”
“An amulet is for protection, a talisman brings good fortune.”
“Your mother—”
“Don’t call her that.” He didn’t raise his voice; nevertheless I flinched at the fury in the words.
“All right.” I agreed, though what was, was, and the Naye’i was his mother. “The woman of smoke had an amulet.”
“To protect her from her enemies by hiding her from their seeking eyes.”
“And this?” I lifted the bottle a little higher.
“A talisman to bring me …” He spread his clever hands. “Me.”
I nodded, laying the talisman against his chest. My fingertips brushed his skin and he shuddered, then took a step back.
“You okay?” He’d never reacted that way before; it was almost as though he couldn’t stand to be near me.
“Fine.” he said, and brushed past. “Without my fur, the air’s too cold.”
It was summer, nearly eighty degrees out there, but I didn’t bother to point that out. He wasn’t cold and we both knew it.
“I’ll take a shower.” He disappeared into the bathroom.
“I guess we’re sharing a room,” I murmured to the closed door.
I hadn’t had much choice when he was furry, but now … I wasn’t so certain staying in the same room with Sawyer was the best idea. Not that his being furry had done anything to stop the sex—at least in our minds.
I wandered around the room, uncertain what to do with myself. I picked up the TV remote, hit the on button, then just as quickly hit the off. I wanted silence. I needed to think.
I sat on the bed, but every time I tried to mull over our situation, I saw again the woman of smoke trailing her fingertip over Sawyer’s chest. Was I ever going to gel that out of my brain? How did he?
Bam!
A dull cracking thud reverberated through the room. I glanced at the door, but it was still on the hinges, then up at the ceiling, but nothing huge and scaly was peeling back the roof and preparing to climb inside.
Bam!
The sound came again. From the bathroom.
I crossed the short distance, then turned the knob and walked right in.
The water was still running, the room full of steam. The red athletic shorts lay in a heap on the floor.
Sawyer leaned against the sink, shoulders hunched, head bowed. His hair was wet, he smelled of hotel soap, though even that couldn’t erase the scent of fire, the mountains, distant lightning.
My gaze swept the room. Two huge holes gaped in the tile wall, and Sawyer’s knuckles were bleeding.
“That isn’t going to heal unless you shift,” I said.
“It’ll heal, just not right away.”
“Was that really necessary?”
“Yes,” he said simply.
I wanted to touch him, but I wasn’t sure how, wasn’t sure if touching him was the right thing, or the worst thing, I could do, so I stayed near the door and I waited.
He shivered and gooseflesh sprang up across his skin. He really was cold, or maybe in shock. Seeing him like this scared me. Sawyer was afraid of nothing and no one. Or so I’d believed.
“The door,” he murmured. “It’s chilly out there.”
I shoved it a little too hard, and the resulting bang made him jump. “Sorry,” I said.
He didn’t answer, didn’t move, just kept leaning against the sink as the mirror fogged and his knuckles bled red rivulets across the white porcelain.
I couldn’t just stand there, so I strode forward, twisted the water on, and shoved his hand beneath the stream. That he let me caused the already nervous fluttering of my stomach to flutter some more.
“Why did you let her touch you like that?” I asked.
“You think I could have stopped her?”
I lifted my hand, tilted his face toward mine. “You’re not a child anymore. You could have stopped her.”
He yanked his chin from my grip. “Fighting only excites her.”
I fought the gagging reflex at the image his words conjured. I was going to find out how to kill that bitch, and I was going to do it, no matter the cost. If there was justice on earth, and most of the time I had my doubts, the killing of a Naye’i would be a slow, drawn-out, and extremely painful process.
“Did you know she was the leader of the darkness?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I’m a witch, not a mind reader.”
I narrowed my eyes. Sometimes I wondered.
“I haven’t seen her in a long time. She hasn’t answered my call.” Sawyer pulled his hand out of the water, turned it off with a flick of his wrist, then stared into the sink as if all the answers had just swirled down the drain. “I should have known she was up to something.”
Yeah, he should have. But after witnessing how she behaved with him, I could understand why he’d just been glad she was gone.
“She offered me to you.”
His gray eyes met mine. “Yes.”
“I didn’t know you wanted me.”
“Liar,” he murmured.
Suddenly the room was too small, and despite the steamy heat, my skin tingled as if I’d just stepped into a snowstorm.
“I wanted you the first time I saw you, Phoenix.”
“I was fifteen.”
“Age means nothing to me,” he said. “What matters is what’s beneath. The soul is eternal.”
I wasn’t sure what he was getting at. “Obviously age meant something. You never touched me when I was at your place.”
“I didn’t?”
My face heated at the memory of what had happened at his place last month. “I meant the first time.”
“So did I.” He came closer. Even if I’d had room to move back, I couldn’t. Backing up was considered backing down. That was a good way to get my throat ripped out. Figuratively. At least for now.
“Did you dream of me, Phoenix? All those years between when you left and when you came . ..” He leaned over me, nuzzled my neck, his breath tickling the fine hairs and
making me shiver. All the connotations of came ran through my head, just as he’d wanted them to. “Back?” he finished, as he kissed my throat, nibbled my collarbone, then suckled the skin where my pulse throbbed.
I couldn’t quite recall what we’d been talking about. The steam was so thick, I could barely see the room around us. We seemed lost in the swirling fog, only the two of us left in this world.
I grasped desperately at sanity, caught it by the coat-tails just before it fled, and managed to lift my head, to speak. “Dreams aren’t real.”
“They are if they’re memories.”
He was trying to make me believe that he’d had sex with me as a teenager, that he’d somehow seduced me and made me forget it had ever happened, except in my dreams. But I knew that wasn’t true. The first time I’d ever had sex had been with Jimmy. Blood doesn’t lie.
Sawyer was trying to push me away. He didn’t like that I’d seen her touch him, that I knew what she’d done to him. He didn’t want my sympathy. But he did want me. I felt that as surely as I felt his heat, despite his protestations of cold.
The urge to show him some tenderness, to teach him that sex could be about something other than nothing, overwhelmed me. I couldn’t have stopped what was happening between us any more than it seemed I could stop Doomsday.
I stared into his eyes. “You’re trying to push me away.”
He stared right back. “Is it working?”
“No,” I said, and kissed him.
CHAPTER 20
I figured he’d push me away literally, that I’d have a battle on my hands. But Sawyer surprised me by kissing me back.
His mouth was desperate, his hands were, too. In the past he’d always taken his time; there’d never been any rush. One thing about Sawyer, even when he was doing you for the good of the world, he always made being fucked worthwhile.
He tasted both sweet and spicy. I licked his teeth; his fingers tightened on my arms, one squeeze and then he released me. I grabbed at him, afraid he’d fly away, and when my left palm met his right bicep, everything flickered.
“Open your eyes,” he whispered.
I did and saw his had gone wolf. A growl rumbled, and it took me a second to realize the sound was coming from me. If I could see my face in the mirror past the steam, I had no doubt my eyes would reflect my wolf, too.
I yanked my hand away. When we had sex and I touched his tattoos, the essence of his beasts swirled through me. I didn’t become them, but I felt them, smelled them, knew them as intimately as I knew him.
“Do you want to change?” he whispered.
I stiffened. He’d said one day I’d mate with him as a wolf. I wasn’t ready for that, didn’t think I’d ever be. Becoming a wolf wasn’t part of who I was, the way it was a part of what he was.
His expression as he watched me, wolf eyes sharp, man’s mouth amused, made me realize he was trying to get me to run again.
“No chance,” I answered, and his lips thinned.
“Phoenix,” he growled.
I wrapped my hand around his penis, and the deadly call of a rattlesnake filled the air. I concentrated on him, on this, on us, and the urge to flick my tongue at him passed, although the urge to flick my tongue around him was irresistible.
I sank to my knees, took him in my mouth. He wouldn’t be able to resist, either.
The rattle increased, drowning out the sound of the water. I touched his thigh, ran my fingers across the head of the tiger depicted there, and felt the long, dry grass brush my fur-covered body.
I used my teeth, not too hard, just enough, and was rewarded with a soft curse. I glanced up. The fluorescent lights were dim; the steam swirled around us like fog at sunset. I should probably shut off the water, but I liked the mist. It sparkled in Sawyer’s hair like diamonds in a midnight sky.
His head was thrown back, his face tight, his hands clenched at his sides as if he were afraid to touch me. We couldn’t have that.
“Hey,” I murmured, and his chin slowly dipped toward the sleek, slick pane of his chest until his half-open eyes met mine. The wolf had receded, though it lurked, waiting to pounce.
I rolled my tongue lazily around his tip and his cool gray gaze flared. Then I took him into my mouth, as far as he would go, and I sucked.
His back arched as he pumped and withdrew, but still he didn’t touch me.
I wore all my clothes; he wore none. I licked him one last, long time, then drew my tank top over my head, flicked the front snap on my bra, was reaching for the button on my jeans, when he hauled me to my feet by my elbows.
“That’s enough,” he said.
I leaned forward, brushing my breasts across his chest. With Sawyer nothing was ever enough.
“There’s no reason for this, Phoenix.”
“There has to be a reason?”
He appeared confused. “Yes.”
Poor man.
“Fine,” I said. “How about this?” I took his clenched hand, pulled on his fingers until he released the fist, then I placed his palm against my chest, where my heart thrummed fast and sure.
“I don’t understand.”
“The reason is desire. My body and yours together because we have a connection.”
“We do?”
He might be ancient, yet he was a child in so many ways. Had he ever been touched in love? Had he ever had sex simply because he wanted to?
He thought I hated him, and I couldn’t claim differently because sometimes, hell, most times, I did. But there was a connection between us. Had been even before I’d become like him.
“I’ll show you,” I murmured.
I began with kisses, soft and sweet, lips only, just a wisp as our breath blended together. He sighed, relaxed, closed his eyes when I trailed my fingertips across his lids. Leaning against the sink at my urging, he let me touch him and kiss him everywhere.
His skin was slick with steam; so was mine. He tasted of the sea. My fingers raced along his ribs, given speed by the moisture that beaded like dew.
His hands clenched in my hair. I didn’t have much. Not like him. He held me closer, traced his thumbs across my brow, my cheeks, as if memorizing the bones beneath.
I leaned in to press my mouth to his neck, to inhale that fire-and-wind scent of him, and he wrapped his arms around me in the first hug from him I’d ever known. Together, we stilled. I wasn’t sure, but I thought his lips brushed the crown of my head. For just an instant, my eyes burned, and my chest felt as if it would burst. This just might be the dumbest thing I’d ever done.
I didn’t have time to dwell on it. Sawyer’s patience was gone. Or perhaps he’d felt something, too, and it scared him as much as it had scared me. At any rate, he tugged at my zipper and I took the hint, losing the jeans, underwear, shoes, and socks.
The water had gone cold at last. I reached in and shut it off. Sawyer watched me, arms braced against the sink, biceps bulging, erection jutting forward. I started for the door; quick as a snake, he reached out and drew me back.
“What—” I began.
“No time for that,” he said, swinging me around, lifting me onto the countertop, and stepping between my legs in one smooth movement.
All thoughts left my head as he filled me completely. My legs hung awkwardly, so he put his hands beneath my knees and hitched them up and over his hips. The change in angle made him slide ever deeper.
I opened my eyes, just as he slapped his hand to the switch and the room went dark, the only light a slim band creeping beneath the door.
The steam that had moistened our skin now chilled, but I didn’t feel cold. I didn’t feel anything but Sawyer inside of me. Harder and faster he pumped. I cradled his head as he took a nipple in his mouth, his hair spilling over my wrists, the ends tickling my belly.
Each press of his lips and tongue brought an answering tug between my legs. He suckled as if he’d draw something from me—my heart, my soul, sustenance. Then he used his teeth, biting down just short of pain, before kissing
his way to my face, brushing his lips across my eyelids, my mouth. His palm cupped my cheek; his breath stirred my hair, and I stilled, something flitting through my mind like a prophecy.
But his thumb stroked the seam of my lips, the pressure insistent, as he continued to flex his hips, filling me, emptying me, filling me again. I forgot thoughts and feelings and prophecies of doom or glory as I caught his thumb between my teeth. I suckled him as he’d suckled me, bit him just a little, then let him go. He reached between us with that thumb, using the moisture from my own mouth to rub my throbbing center until I came.
As I did, he grasped my hips, buried his face in my neck, and did the same. Smoothing my palm down his damp back, I pressed my cheek to the top of his head.
We stayed that way, I’m not sure how long, until he kissed me. Just once on the lips, in the dark, and then he turned away. “I’ll order food,” he said.
Airport hotels, which catered to the business traveler, usually had room service, and this one was no exception. One of the reasons I’d chosen it.
“Great.” My voice was too cheerful. I hopped off the counter, restarted the shower, hoping like hell the water heater recycled at the speed of sound, then I cleared my throat and tried again. “Whatever you want is fine with me.”
There, that sounded better, as if what had just happened had meant nothing.
Even though we both knew that it had.
The shower was just warm enough to endure, just cold enough to be unpleasant. When I drew back the curtain, my duffel sat on the toilet seat. I glanced at the closed door. Nice of him.
I was running out of clean clothes. Tomorrow we’d have to hit Wal-Mart. Not surprisingly, I’d seen one just across the street. The superstores seemed to be multiplying like bunnies. I kind of liked it. Wherever you were, there they were. It was comforting.
Sawyer had put the athletic shorts back on. He didn’t have much choice. He’d also draped a dry towel around his shoulders.
“Still cold?” I asked as I came into the room.
He shrugged, not looking at me, and one end of the towel slid down his back.
“You okay?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
I shouldn’t mention the woman of smoke. I didn’t want to upset him again. Except I had to.
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