He moved with the blinding speed that was his in animal form, the speed I had in both forms, thanks to him and Jimmy. Nevertheless, I couldn't get away. In this small room, there wasn't anywhere to go.
His body slid along mine, and I saw what he meant; I felt it, too. The animal lust, the uncontrollable urge to be taken, to forget everything with a few minutes of sex, the joining of bodies without the complications of human thoughts, of emotions, an orgasm that would make me howl.
I cringed at the thought and leaped onto the bed, standing stiff-legged at the edge and letting the fury rumble from my throat. His muscles bunched as if he meant to join me, and I bared my teeth, lifting my lips far enough to reveal the red flare of my gums.
This was my place—higher ground. He could stay down there, where his very lack of height made him the submissive—even if it was in name only. If need be, I'd fight him. I'd probably lose, but there could only be one alpha, and it had to be me.
As if nothing had happened, Sawyer jumped onto the other bed, circled three times, and plopped down, tucking his nose beneath his tail before closing his eyes.
My heart, which had accelerated at the confrontation, slowed. He hadn't meant what he'd said. He'd just been messing with me—Sawyer's specialty. He messed with everyone. Still ...
The images that had exploded in my head at his touch were primal—maddening, exhilarating, both frightening and exciting. My body responded in a predictable manner, throbbing in places that hadn't throbbed in over a month. Places that had never throbbed that way with anyone but him.
I tried to resist the urge to circle as Sawyer had, to make a nest and burrow in, but I couldn't. I might be woman and wolf, but in this form, wolf was hard to ignore.
Surprisingly, or maybe not so much, I fell immediately to sleep. Sure, the adrenaline from all the confrontations—the luceres, the woman of smoke, Sawyer, not to mention dying, if in name only—should have kept me wide awake. However, the letdown after so much excitement was exhausting, as was the shape-shifting, and no doubt the healing my body had done already and still had left to do.
In my dreams, the things I'd seen in Sawyer's head, the memories of what had happened between us in New Mexico, were impossible to forget.
Sawyer and I beneath the moon and the stars. My hands sliding over his body, my fingers tracing his tattoos, absorbing the essence of his beasts, of him. The lightning that seemed to flash when we came together, the rumbling of the earth, the heat and flare of the power he'd released within me.
I dreamed of that night, and then I dreamed of this one. Of coming together as wolves, the pure bestial lust of it, the sex for sex alone, no future or past, an exchange of nothing but bodies. We had only now, only us", and the near-violent pace of his body within mine.
In my mind, in my dream, I was woman and wolf. My form flickered from one to the next as his did. The bed dipped as he leaped between them, the arc of his body in one form, the slide of his skin when he shifted to the other.
His flesh was marked with the images of his beasts— a wolf on his bicep, a mountain lion across his chest, an eagle taking flight from his neck. I'd always found it both amusing and disturbing that Sawyer had made the adage "drain the snake" literal by having a rattler tattooed onto his penis.
I'd asked him once why the markings didn't heal when he shifted.
They weren't made by a human wielding a needle, but by a sorcerer who wielded the lightning.
In other words, magic tattoos. Hey, ask a foolish question . ..
Regardless of how they'd come about, the fact remained that Sawyer's tattoos never disappeared.
In the night, in the dark, in my dreams, I explored the spirits of those beasts as I explored him. I brushed the eagle at his neck, the hawk at the small of his back, and for just an instant I could fly.
My palm cupped his shoulder, his chest, his thigh, and I was a wolf, a cougar, a tiger. I could smell prey on the wind; the urge to chase and kill was irresistible, almost evil in its gleeful intensity.
There were nuances to Sawyer I didn't understand, might never understand, probably didn't want to. He flirted with both sides, and I was never certain which side he was on. I wasn't certain he knew.
"Are you evil?" I whispered.
"Perhaps."
My other hand brushed his other shoulder, and I could smell blood in the water; I relished the chill lap of the ocean around my cold-blooded body. As a shark I ruled the sea; all creatures fled from me, and they should.
He rose above me, hip to hip, pressing us together intimately and lights flashed behind my closed eyelids. I grasped his forearms, and I was a tarantula, scampering along the desert floor, the canyons rising above me, yet there in the sand I was king.