So be it, I thought.
I pulled him onto the bed, running my fingers all over his back, chest and arms, getting flashes of wolf, cougar, shark, interspersed with the silhouette of a bird in the sky—at night, dawn, noon.
He yanked off my shirt, nearly ripped my bra in two, filled his palms with my breasts and lifted them to his mouth. His hands were so hard, yet clever and true. He teased my nipples with tongue and teeth, then worked his way downward, tracing my belly, tickling my navel as I’d tickled his. My pants fell on top of the golden chains as he meandered lower still.
I tried to focus, to see into the darkness of his mind, but his breath stirred the curls between my legs, hot, almost scalding, and I moaned, my fingers tangling in his hair, my thumb rubbing over the spike of his cheekbone, then tracing the curve of his ear. Hard and soft, so many contrasts in just one man.
His tongue flicked over me—once, twice—then he suckled, rolling me in his mouth. I tried to buck away.
“No, we should—”
I grasped at his shoulders, tried to pull him up and over, then inside, but it was like trying to move a mountain. He slipped his hands beneath me, grasping and lifting me, tilting me so he could feast.
My arms flopped limply to my sides as my legs first opened, and then, when he began to flick his tongue back and forth, back and forth, harder and faster, clamped around his shoulders and tightened.
He must have felt me swell, the bud of my clitoris going tight against his tongue in that instant before I came, because then he did rear up and over me, plunging within before going completely still.
“Wait,” he whispered. “Just . . . wait.”
I was on the verge, in that place where everything in the world narrows to the circle of body on body, body in body, body surrounding body. The very air seemed to pause; silence engulfed us. There was only us.
At last he moved, drawing himself against me so I could feel every inch of the slide. I was so wet, so swollen, so ready that when he grew and jerked and spurted, it only took me a milli second to erupt.
I might have screamed if he hadn’t put his hand over my lips; as it was, I bit him. The taste of his flesh in my mouth, the salt of his skin, the promise of blood, made me come harder, and I clenched around him so tightly he froze, holding himself motionless as if he didn’t want this ever to end.
Eventually it did. Someone had to move, and that someone was him. He rolled to the side, then stared at the ceiling too.
“That was supposed to open me,” I said. “Or maybe you?”
“Mmm.”
“I’m not getting much of a news flash.”
“Wait,” he murmured.
“Sawyer, if you did me just to . . . do me, I’m going to—”
Suddenly, he rolled back on top of me, toe-to-toe, hip-to-hip, chest-to-chest. He pressed his forehead to mine, his eyes widened, the whites blazing like lightning through a clear midnight sky. The bed rattled; the windows did a thrumming dance.
He groped for my hands, drew them next to my head and then pressed down with his own, palm-to-palm.
I was drawn into the past with such force the breeze stirred my hair. In one-quarter of my mind I knew I was still on that bed in Cairo, but the other three-quarters was full of him.
He’s laughing, teeth bright white against the bronze of his skin, and he looks younger, but not because of any difference in his face, or his eyes or his stance. Perhaps it is just that he’s happy.
Have I ever seen Sawyer happy? I don’t think so, and I have to wonder why. Sure, our lives aren’t fit for a Disney movie, but there should be a little joy somewhere; otherwise, really, what’s the point?
The terrain surrounding him is both familiar and new—the Southwest from the shade of the dirt, the shape of the rock formations, the incredible blues and golds, reds and pinks and oranges of the sky at dusk, or is it dawn? Miles and miles and miles of desert, distant mountains, but not a road, a telephone pole or the hint of a house anywhere at all.
Sawyer lifts his face to the sun. He is naked. The colors of the sky cascade over him, tracing his skin like a rainbow. His tattoos writhe wherever the light hits.
He doesn’t have as many tattoos as he does now. The wolf stalks across his biceps; the tiger strolls along his thigh; the snake twists lazily between his legs. Then light sizzles so brightly nothing can be seen but white, and when it fades a tiger stands where Sawyer had been.
The wild cat continues to stare upward; a shadow cants across his face, and he watches the great bird sail overhead, then trots after, loping along with tiger grace, so beautiful, so deadly and strong.
Thunder rumbles, and the earth shakes. Dust rises on the horizon. Something is coming. Yet still the tiger follows the black V in the sky that is the bird.