I lost any semblance of control, hands groping, nails scraping, teeth too. I had a sudden desire to mark him, as any animal would. My mouth learned his shape, his size and scent. My lips wandered through boundless tropical waters where predatory sharks roamed, across deserts inhabited by venomous snakes, then traversed continents— American eagle to Siberian tiger—where my teeth drew on the tender skin of his thigh until I’d left my mark.
He growled, the sound untamed, when I closed my hand around him, ran my thumb over his damp tip. The sky seemed to fill with the hiss of a rattler, and I froze. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea I’d had in years.
“Lie back,” Sawyer murmured, his hand on my breast no longer caressing, but urging me to recline. “Close your eyes. Breathe.”
I inhaled—wood smoke and grass, a soothing, familiar scent—and forgot everything but him, me, us, and what we could do right now.
His body slid along mine as he joined me in repose. He traced a finger across my belly, the skin rippling in its wake. The finger took the path down my hipbone, across the soft skin at the juncture of my thigh, then tangled in the black curls for an instant before unerringly finding the part of me that awaited it.
One stroke and he stopped. Before I could complain his mouth replaced his finger. My legs fell apart to give him access. His tongue flickered over me, quick and clever, teasing me to a gasping, arching peak. Then he blew on the dampness left behind, his breath an August breeze, cool and soothing after a scorching hot day.
Suddenly he licked me, a long, thorough lap, like a cat. His tongue even felt rough, and 1 cried out, my hands flying up, finding nothing, no one.
When 1 opened my eyes, I was alone, my body glistening in the firelight.
“Shh.” The word was the wind. Smoke billowed all around me, creating a curtain between this clearing and the world. I breathed it in, any panic eased, and my eyes slid closed once more.
I drifted, both awake and asleep, aroused, unsatisfied, waiting for—
A hand on my belly.
Lips against my neck.
Legs entangling with mine.
One sharp thrust and the dissatisfaction fled. Still damp and engorged, I nearly sobbed at the friction—so good, so right, so there.
I needed, I wanted. Oh, how I wanted. More. Harder. Deeper. Every thought that 1 had, he obeyed.
The connection went on and on; the orgasm seemingly just out of reach, nearly there, almost and then suddenly farther away. That strange sense of lightning, ozone and smoke, of flowing energy, continued. Where before I’d been limp, almost drugged, the longer he thrust, the more aware, the more alive 1 became.
There was something I needed to do, something I needed to know, and that something was just on the other side of orgasm.
“Open,” he said, the word like thunder crashing all around us.
I opened—my eyes, my legs—and I saw him above me, too solid to be a shadow, too ethereal to be real. His eyes sparkled—the moon, the lightning, just him—who knew? He shifted my hips so he could reach into the very center of me, and at the first driving thrust, he came, heat like fire inside, bursting me open just as he’d wanted.
I connected to the universe; I saw what he’d meant; I understood all that had been denied me before. As my hands smoothed over his back, his shoulders, his neck, I felt the power of every beast shimmering at the edge of my world.
The knowledge, the sensations, the damn orgasm was too much. My mind, my heart, my body seemed to implode and everything went as dark as Sawyer’s soul.
I awoke inside the hogan. I had the faint memory of stumbling in here alone as the fire died.
I glanced through the smoke hole in the ceiling. Dawn threatened. Had Sawyer ever come back last night?
Images flickered. Him. Me. Doing things that had to be illegal in many Middle Eastern countries. In my dreams he’d been here for hours. I’d come several times, once screaming as he plunged into me from behind. His lips, his teeth at my neck, his chest to my back, hips to my flanks, a rhythmic slap that resounded in the quietest part of the night.
Despite the submissive position, I hadn’t felt dominated. I’d been the one in control; the things in my mind had been the things that we’d done, at my unspoken request. And with every orgasm, I’d seen what he’d meant by opening myself, connecting to the power within. In those fantasies I’d believed I could run my fingertips along the edge of the stars, plunge my fist into the moon, walk across the sun and never be burned.
I snorted. If I didn’t know better I’d think I’d been drugged.
But I hadn’t eaten since we’d left Sawyer’s. The only thing I’d drunk had been water from the same canteen as him. Sawyer hadn’t been loopy. I didn’t think. I hadn’t seen him since he’d disappeared into the trees last night. Maybe he’d gone into the mountains for his own acid trip.
I sat up, and the sheepskin fell down. I was naked. I didn’t remember removing my clothes. Except in that vivid sex dream.
I was starting to have a very bad feeling.
I dressed and stepped out of the hogan. A wolf stood at the edge of the clearing. At the sight of me, his snout opened in a welcoming, doglike grin, and the dead rabbit tumbled free, making a dull boneless thud as it hit the ground.
“I’m not cleaning that,” I said.
The wolf cocked its head.