Panicked, I reached for and became myself, the air going from hot to cold as the bright flash of magic that surrounded the shift faded. I stood in the moonlight naked and panting, my body still aroused, my mind churning like a storm-shrouded sea.
Another flash of light warred against the stars in the navy blue sky, and then Sawyer stood next to me. At least he had tattoos between him and the night.
In human form, he wasn’t handsome. His face was too finely angled for that, but he was striking, with silky black hair trailing past his shoulders, his bronze skin a sharp contrast to his strangely light eyes.
I’d never known a Navajo to have gray eyes, especially a full-blood like Sawyer, which led me to believe those eyes had marked him as a skinwalker, a sorcerer, a witch from birth. Since the Navajo fear the supernatural and hate witches above all else, this probably explained a lot about Sawyer.
“When we’re wolves, Phoenix, we’re wolves,” he began.
“We’re not.”
I pulled my gaze away from the sleek, glistening expanse of his skin. No matter how much he infuriated me, scared me, confused me, if Sawyer took off his clothes—and he did that a lot—my mouth went dry and my mind went south. No one on earth, in any century, had a better body than Sawyer.
“Wolves can’t think,” I continued, “can’t reason, can’t talk to one another with their minds.”
“Are you sure?”
I drew back my arm to slug him; I don’t know why. I couldn’t hurt him. I didn’t know if anyone or anything could. He grabbed my wrist, quicker than the snake tattooed on his penis. I’d never been sure if that was Sawyer’s idea of a joke or not.
My other hand came up, also clenched into a fist, and headed right for his blade of a nose. He snatched that wrist too. Our bodies smacked together—breast to chest, hip to hip.
His snake was awake.
I had an instant to think, What the hell? and then we were kissing. If you could call it that. More of a battle—with teeth clashing, tongues plunging, tiny nips at the lips and the chin. We might be human—or then again we might not be—but we were behaving more like animals than we had only moments before.
I’m not exactly certain what got into me, besides him. Sure, I was still aroused from the encounter in the burrow, and being naked in the pine-scented shadow of Mount Taylor with the breeze stirring my hair and the light of the stars dancing across my skin would make anyone moon mad.
Perhaps I needed to have sex with someone for no other reason than that. No exchange of power—I already had Sawyer’s and I didn’t get double no matter how many times I tried—no favors to be granted, no boons to be asked, no forgiveness to be begged. Just sex with a man who knew better than any how to have it.
I tugged on my wrists, and he let them go so I could run my open palms over his incredible body. As I touched each tattoo the essence of the beast flickered—wolf, hawk, crocodile, tarantula, snaaaaake.
The hiss of a rattler slid through my mind even as the sleek, hard skin of Sawyer slid through my hand. He cursed, then nipped my collarbone. He was as on edge as I was.
A growl purred through the air—him or me? Hard to say. His hands at my hips, he twirled me around, my back to his front. We were nearly the same height, Sawyer maybe an inch taller, which allowed his erection to rest in the cleft of my buttocks. The sensation was exquisite. I rubbed against him like a cat.
He cupped my breasts, lifting them like an offering to the goddess of the moon, her silvery breath a hint of frost across our skin.
His lips at the curve of my neck caressed; his teeth worried a fold, a siren call to what lay captured inside of me. His tongue trailed along the collar that bound me, tickled beneath it, and the demon within me roared.
I bent at the waist, took him in from behind. As always, he knew what I wanted, what I needed, better than I did. Fast, hard, no words, only actions. Make me forget, make me feel but not think, make me come.
He held me to him with one arm around my waist, palm warm at my belly as his long, supple fingers stroked me higher and higher even as his other hand teased my nipples until they peaked and ached and burned. His body slammed into me so violently the slap of skin on skin echoed in the still and silent night, the sound as enticing as the actions.
I wanted more and he gave me more, he gave me all that he had, all that he could, until together we convulsed, our bodies shuddering against each other, within, around, as one.
When the glow faded—it always did—I straightened. He stepped back. I cast him a glance, but he was staring at the moon and not at me.
He looked exactly the same as he had the first time I’d seen him, and he always would. Sawyer was ageless, virtually indestructible and, for those reasons and several others, damned dangerous. Lucky for us he was on our side.
I think. With Sawyer, one could never quite tell.
I opened my mouth, but before I could speak, howls erupted from the darkness all around us. Weird howls. Howls that did not belong in the New Mexico desert. More like calls, maybe cackles.