“Get back.” Sawyer was all business again. His erection appeared to have deflated at the sight of the rattlesnake. Understandable. I thought I might wet myself.
“Can’t,” I murmured, trying my best not to move anything but my lips, and those not too much either. The word came out both shaky and muffled.
The sound of cloth sliding across skin caught my attention. Sawyer had dropped his breechclout and wrapped his hand around his limp penis.
Now? I thought incredulously. But a single touch and he shimmered, then shifted. His body was there one second and gone the next. Like Wile E. Coyote who drops off the cliff—now you see him, now you don’t. The only thing left in the suddenly vacant air was a little swirl of current.
I lowered my gaze. Two rattlesnakes slithered toward each other far too close to my feet. I tensed, unwilling to move and draw attention to myself, even when one of them scooted over the toe of my boot.
I’d never seen a rattlesnake, let alone two. I was a city girl. Did snakes fight? What would I do if they did? What would happen if the Sawyer snake lost and the winner came after me?
I’d hide, but where? Inside the hogan, I’d be trapped.
The water? Not much better. I was pretty certain snakes could swim.
Up a tree? Perhaps. Unfortunately, all the trees were on the other side of the snakes.
The two met, rising up, bodies bobbing more like cobras than rattlesnakes. Their triangular heads shot at each other. I flinched. But instead of striking, they wrapped their necks around and around, twining together for an instant before breaking apart.
I wasn’t sure which one was which, until the sun seemed to spark off the nearest, making it shimmer shining silver. The next instant it grew, lengthened, rose toward the sun and burst free a man.
“It’s for you,” Sawyer said.
Chapter 27
Sawyer grabbed my hand and dragged it to his penis.
“Hey!” I pulled back. “Do I seem like I have a burning desire to jerk you off?”
His eyes flared, the most anger I’d seen from him in ages. “He wants to tell you something.”
“Who is he?”
“A snake.”
“Just a snake. Nothing extra?”
“No.”
“Then how can he tell me anything?”
“That’s why you need to shift. The only way to talk to the animals is to become one.”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
Impatience flashed across his features. “Grow up. This is your life now. Deal with it.”
He snatched my hand again, and from his grip, I knew he wouldn’t let go regardless of what I said, or how I struggled.
I loosened the tight fist I’d made the first time he’d grabbed me. As much fun as it might be, I couldn’t slug him. At least not right now.
He looked me up, and then down. “It’ll be easier without the clothes.”
I was starting to see why he favored a breechclout most of the time.
I sighed; he let me go. I stripped, then met his eyes. “This is the only way?”
Stupid question. I’d touched the wolf tattoo the first time I’d shifted. Sawyer had touched himself to become the snake. To become one myself, touching was involved, and since I didn’t have a tattoo…
He gave a sharp nod, face set, as if he didn’t want me to touch him any more than I wanted to. Because of that expression, I probably grabbed him a little too hard, squeezed a little too much.
How many times did I need him to show me that he’d only been with me because he’d had to be? What difference did it make? It wasn’t as if I loved Sawyer any more than he loved me. I’d only loved one man in my life, and he was as untrustworthy as this one.
I gave myself up to the chill, the heat, the wash of silver flowing through me, the pull of another entity that came from outside myself as well as within.
Beneath my fingers, Sawyer’s skin warmed; I could feel his pulse in my palm, beating in tandem with mine. I stroked him and heard the warning rattle of his snake.
Light exploded, blinding me. The wind blew past me as I fell from a great height. I tried to catch myself, but I no longer had arms or legs. Instead the ground met my belly, my back bent in ways my back had never bent before.
I saw the world from a different angle, in an entirely different way. I couldn’t hear, not really.
Did snakes have ears? I didn’t think so.
Instead, I sensed vibrations, movement, a wash of heat across my face. Something warm-blooded and small just there. My head swiveled to the right. Beneath that bush, a mouse quivered, black eyes wide, nose twitching in terror, and I liked it.
Nearby something much larger and equally warm loomed. Sawyer. A man. Not prey. No. He was the only one like me in the world.
I relished the power to mete out death with one swift attack. I wasn’t angry; I was just… me. My nature was to watch and wait, to sense, to strike when striking was necessary.
But I also knew, in that other part of me, that I was more. I was Elizabeth. I was a woman most of the time.
The sensation of movement drew me in another direction, but no warmth there. Cold-blooded, then. The rattler that wanted to talk to me.