He whirled and took off across the deserted terrain. I hesitated, but only for an instant. In this form certain things called to me, and running was one of them.
True wolves can cover 125 miles in a day and run 40 miles per hour. Shifters are much faster, and skinwalkers can move so quickly they seem to disappear in one place, then appear in another. Part of the reason we excel in this area is that we love it. Running frees us.
I chased Sawyer until I caught him; then I jumped onto his back and we rolled onto the ground, tussling and snapping, nuzzling and nipping. But all too soon, he sidestepped and ran away again. Sawyer wasn’t much for play, unless it was sex play. The man was a sexual god.
Maybe that was hyperbole. But not by much. He’d had centuries to hone his skills. He could seduce anyone, was comfortable doing anything. Unfortunately, sex meant nothing to Sawyer but a means to whatever end he was after at the time. That didn’t make the sex any less spectacular. But the aftermath was a bitch.
I understood why he was the way he was. His mother had screwed him up. Didn’t they always? However, Sawyer’s mother had screwed him up by actually screwing him. The federation had helped to make Sawyer a head case to rival all head cases by using his talent as a catalyst telepath—he could free blocked supernatural abilities through sex. He’d certainly unblocked me.
That he’d drugged me and slept with me to do so was still a matter of contention between us, but since I’d discovered the truth about his mother, I was a little less likely to plunge a knife into his back when he wasn’t looking. I still hadn’t forgiven him, but I kind of understood why he’d thought it was okay. His boundaries were as fucked up as he was.
We ran for miles. It felt so good just to be out in the fresh air, with the wind in my fur and nothing else to do but be.
Night hovered at the edge of the horizon. Mount Taylor loomed ahead, towering and beautiful. Full of mystery and magic. It was on that mountain that I’d become who I was right now. I still wasn’t sure how I felt about that.
There was destiny and this was mine. I hadn’t wanted it. Still didn’t. But we very rarely get what we want. We move on and we live or we die, but we deal.
Sawyer headed away from the mountain, across the scrabbly land. Just when I was about to ask where we were going and why, he paused, crouched and seemed to disappear from the earth.
I let out a surprised woof and his head popped up as if he’d been buried in the dirt. Come, his voice commanded me.
I followed more slowly and saw that the dry ground had crumbled away into a fairly deep hollow, one side open to the steadily descending night and the other trailing back into a twisting cave beneath a rock outcropping the shade of sand. Sawyer stood with his head inside the cave and his tail dappled by the shadows of the setting sun.
What do you smell? he asked as I joined him.
I took a whiff. Something wild and gamey, not human but not completely inhuman, something that did not belong, yet something I recognized but could not quite put a name to.
I don’t know.
Not coyote, not wolf, he mused.
No. Those I’d smelled before.
He crawled in.
Hey! Not a good idea.
What if the animal that had been living in this place came back and found us there?
Sawyer didn’t respond, and he didn’t reappear. I stood outside for a few more seconds; then after a quick glance behind me, I went in too.
The place was a burrow, tight and warm and dry. It smelled of whatever had found it, a lot of them.
Maddening. His thought came to me loud and clear along with the flavor of his emotions. In this form feelings were like auras, scents perhaps. Laughter smelled like syrup. Fury like fire. And right now, overlaying the smell of unknown beast, I caught a whiff like sweet-and-sour sauce. Confusion. Sawyer wasn’t sure what to make of this place and this intruder any more than I was.
Why don’t we go outside? Wait and watch for them to return and then we’ll know.
He lowered his head in agreement. I tried to turn and trot back toward the gray oval of the entrance and so did he. His chest bumped my rear end. My tail slid across his nose. We froze, tangled together, pressed close and unable to move without pressing even closer. Then his breath brushed over me, and I understood the meaning of “being in heat.”
Sawyer had lived as a wolf. He’d mated as one. He wanted to do so again, and he wanted to do so with me. I’d resisted. The idea made me squirrelly. Or at least it had until today. Today my beast was howling for release, my skin twitching beneath the fur, the scent of Sawyer, of me, of this place, making me consider lowering my shoulders, lifting my rump, then allowing him to mount me from behind and—
He moved, and I bolted from the burrow, slamming into him so hard he in turn slammed into the wall and caused dirt to sift over us like rain.