“You will.”
His confidence was inspiring, but I still hadn’t had a vision; I wouldn’t be able to tell Jimmy or any of my other DKs what they needed to know. 1 hadn’t wanted this power, but since I appeared to be stuck with it, I should at least be able to use it without getting myself and everyone around me killed.
“If you’re so smart”—I stood too—”why don’t you have the visions?”
“Because you were meant to have them. I was meant to show you the way.”
He’d knelt and begun to roll the bedroll into a cylinder. I put my foot directly in the middle and he stopped, glancing up.
“You knew that sex would bring me into my power.”
His lips thinned; he sat back on his heels. The sheepskin, released from the pressure of his blunt, strong fingers, loosened, spilling across his knees in a soft wave.
“You know that I did.”
“You do this to save the world.”
He frowned, confusion spreading across his timeless face.
I thought of the centuries he’d been alive, the things he’d seen, the people he’d done. I’d been disgusted at first, still was a little, but I could also see how his place in this world might be more difficult than anyone’s.
“Sex for most people is about love—” He snorted. “At the least about pleasure, fun, a connection. This has to take a toll on you.”
He laughed. “It’s not such a hardship. I am what I am.”
“But—”
“I’d have fucked you anyway. It’s what I’ve wanted since the first time I saw you.”
I took a step back, and his smile was all teeth, his eyes all beast.
“I was fifteen,” I pointed out, “and you were, what? Three hundred and fifteen?”
He got to his feet. “You think that matters to a man like me?”
It must have, because despite my being here that summer, just the two of us, he’d never touched me like that. Except in my dreams.
Sawyer’s fingers closed around my upper arms. “Don’t expect me to be a hero; I’m not capable of it.”
“I think you’re capable of a lot more than you let on.”
To prove his point, or perhaps mine, his mouth swooped down. I didn’t try to get away. I doubt I could have, even if I’d wanted to.
His kiss was rough, punishing—him or me? I didn’t know. I didn’t care. Our teeth clicked; he nipped my lip and I tasted blood. His tongue laved it away.
I opened to him, relishing the violence. It called to me. When he kissed me, I saw worlds, centuries, all that he’d done, everything he knew and everyone. I wanted to lap up the knowledge like a tiger at a jungle river, like a wolf at a mountain lake, like everything he was and everything I could be.
He broke away, staring into my face. “Did you see anything? Hear anyone?”
I scowled. He’d kissed me to jump-start a vision? I wanted to kick him, but that never worked out as well as I hoped.
“No.” I shifted in his amis. “Let me go.”
He didn’t, and I considered kicking him again. My fingers brushed his shoulder where the shark lived and for an instant I felt the water, cool and sweet, all around me. I wanted to dive deeper where the darkness lived, chase things and make them bleed.
I yanked my hand away. He still didn’t release me.
“Will I have to touch a tattoo every time I want to shape-shift?”
Not that I wanted to shape-shift, but I was pretty certain I was going to have to. Eventually.
“Either that or get some of your own.”
“You’re sure?”
“Since I have to touch them, and you’ve absorbed my powers, it would follow that you’d have to.”
The idea of marking my skin as he’d marked his chilled me. But I was starting to understand that what I wanted and needed didn’t matter, because if I didn’t do whatever I had to I wasn’t going to have a world for my wants and needs to exist in.
God, this sucked.
Sawyer released me as suddenly as he’d grabbed me, then knelt. I tensed, half expecting him to press his face to my stomach, or perhaps lower. My body responded, going moist at the thought. But he only caught the edge of the sheepskin and began to rewrap it.
I knelt too, then placed my hands over his. He paused, staring at them. My skin was lighter, but not by much. For some reason our hands looked right like that. A man’s hands and a woman’s, the way it should be, the way it was meant to be.
In the beginning.
Chapter 28
For a second I thought he meant to say something, but he never did. Instead, he pulled his hands from mine as he lifted the sheepskin and went into the hogan.
He returned moments later, dressed and packed, then disappeared into the pine trees without even glancing in my direction. What the hell did I do?