“There’s a helluva lot I should know.”
His chest lifted and lowered, pushing against me, then flowing away. I was reminded that we were on a bed, body to body, my hands tied above my head. He could do anything he wanted, or at least try. Why did that make my nipples tingle again?
“Get off me,” I ordered.
“Not yet.”
He rolled to the side, sliding a hand into the pocket of his jeans. He came up with a key. A few clicks later and my hands were free; the golden chains clattered to the floor.
“I can’t leave,” I said.
“And I can’t let you.”
He still lay on top of me. I waited to see where this would lead.
“Do you remember the first time you touched me?” he murmured.
I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant. I’d touched him when I was fifteen, but as little and as gingerly as possible. He’d tried to teach me so much, and I hadn’t been able to understand most of it. Then I hadn’t known what he was, what I was. I’d only known that he frightened me.
When I’d returned ten years later I was Ruthie’s heir. I could hear her voice on the wind revealing the names of the supernatural creatures that walked through our world.
She’d whispered, “Skinwalker,” and I’d touched him, then seen the aeons of his life. Or at least what he’d wanted me to see.
Not long after that I’d touched him in the night, become a part of him and him of me, and discovered a way to channel my power, to control and increase it.
“Which first time?” I asked.
“When I let you see my mate.”
Ah. He’d lived as a wolf, mated as one, loved and then lost her. The devastation I’d seen . . . It was one of the most human behaviors I’d ever witnessed in Sawyer, and he hadn’t even been human at the time.
“I remember,” I murmured. “You loved her very much.”
He didn’t answer.
“I’m sure you had a good reason.”
“For loving her?”
“For killing her.”
“I didn’t kill her.” His voice was so calm, so reasonable. You’d never know I’d just accused him of killing the only wolf he’d ever loved.
“Then—?”
“How did I get my magic?”
“Yes.”
He stood abruptly, and I tensed. Sawyer might sound calm, but that didn’t mean he was. He could easily reach over and break my neck just to shut me up for the few seconds it would take to heal.
Instead, he sat again, hip brushing mine, the scent of his skin washing over me and making me remember all the first times that had come before. I had to resist the urge to press my face to his flat, hard belly and taste.
“Touch me,” he whispered. “Touch me and see.”
CHAPTER 28
I kept my fingers clenched. He’d hidden his past from me before, shown me only what he wanted me to know. Now he was inviting me in, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. Knowing Sawyer, the blast of his past might just short-circuit my brain.
“I can make you,” he said.
I was so tired of being pushed around, threatened into doing things I didn’t want to, ordered by angels and demons and ghosts to kill that, fuck this, save everyone. I was supposed to be the boss of this side of the Apocalypse, but you’d never know it.
“Break my fingers,” I said tightly, “crack my wrist, force me any way that you like. You’re the one who taught me to block the view. If I don’t want to see, Sawyer, I won’t.”
“You keep on believing that.”
Then he was touching me, his dark clever fingers gentle yet sure, cupping my breast, thumb stroking the nipple back to a tingling peak. He ran his other palm over my ribs, tracing each and every one before inching beneath the waistband of my jeans, then the lacy strip of my panties, and stroking me where I was still wet from before.
I couldn’t help it; my legs fell open, my breath coming fast and hard, as my hands splayed wide, fingers reaching for . . . him.
“Touch me,” he whispered again.
I sat up, then slowly placed my palm on his stomach where there were no tattoos. I didn’t want the distraction of the beasts when they called.
His skin was smooth, the muscles stone-hard; I flexed my fingers, drawing my nails along the plane, and he caught his breath, tightening the muscles even further. Closing my eyes, I reached with my mind, caught just a flicker before it was gone, so I dipped my thumb into his navel and gently scored the rim.
Bam. Flash. Light. Dark. I thought I saw his hogan, but—
“I can’t be sure.”
“You know what we have to do.”
I opened my eyes; his were right in front of me—silvery gray surrounded by a thin thread of black. So familiar yet so cool and distant. I had been as close to this man physically as I’d been to almost no one else, yet I hardly knew him at all.
“Just tell me,” I said.
He kissed me instead. I caught where this was headed. We’d been there before. The only way to truly open—for me and for him—was to give ourselves over to the power of our magic. For Sawyer, his magic was based in sex, and now mine was too.