Another image flickered, something new. Something that hadn't been there the last time I'd touched him. I reached for it and became for a single flickering instant a crocodile. The strength of my jaws was legendary; if I captured something in my mouth, it was lost.
The idea enticed me, and I slid downward, capturing something else in my mouth. A long lick up his length, I wrapped my palm around him and heard the distant whisper of a rattler; cool fury washed over me, and I moved my body in a slinking, boneless motion that felt delicious against the sheets.
He pulled away; I let him go, enjoying the glide of his skin along mine. I tasted salt even as fur brushed my belly, my thighs, and in between. I arched, an offering to the beasts, to the man, begging him to take me in every way and in every form.
I wanted to run my hands over him again, to stare down at him as moonlight filtered in through the window, to watch his face as he came, as I did.
While Sawyer wasn't conventionally handsome—how could he be?—he had the best body of anyone I'd ever seen, both in person and in any underwear ad in America. I suspect the centuries of his life had allowed him to hone his pecs and abs more thoroughly than anyone around.
He was perhaps only a hair taller than my own five ten, a height that would have been impressive in any previous age but was merely average in this one. As if Sawyer could ever be average.
His face was all angles and planes; sharp, high cheekbones and annoyingly thick black eyelashes framed his spooky gray eyes. In human form his hair was long and straight and black, as soft as his body was hard. As a wolf it was just as dark, but coarse with an underlayer of silver that made him shimmer beneath the moon.
Around us the room kept changing. One minute we were in his hogan in New Mexico, the next we were in a motel room in Indiana, then we whirled through places I'd never been, or perhaps had yet to be—on a bed, the ground, atop a blanket, in the sand. The passing of time and place became dizzying.
Words flared on the walls, in the sky, there and then gone, some I could read and some I could not.
Stars sparked against the black of the night. I thought they said: Never surrender.
Across the dingy white motel ceiling, words appeared in paint as red as fresh blood. Toss evil to the four winds.
Then, the sand of the desert swirled, an invisible hand casting the phrase: The birth of faith approaches.
Dreams are so damn weird.
Sawyer skimmed his palms down my waist, my hips, then over my belly and back up to cup my breasts. He laved the nipples, suckled and bit gently until I thought I'd go mad if he didn't take me.
Instead, he turned me over, made love to my shoulders and back with his mouth, urged me onto my knees and draped his body over mine. His hair sifted past my cheek, shrouding us both in shadow. His breath puffed against me, first across skin and then across fur as he plunged.
The act was both virile and violent, his mouth on my cheek, his teeth at my neck. Me on all fours, hands, paws, fur, skin. Was I woman or was I wolf? I didn't know. When Sawyer was inside of me, I didn't care.
I clenched around him, cried out, the sound his name, a curse, a howl. He pulsed, hot and heavy and deep, and I awoke in the still quiet of the dark all tangled up in him.
Snout across my neck, his warm breath stirred the fur on my face. My body ached, from sleep, from sex, or both, I couldn't recall. Once before I'd believed a dream just a dream only to find out that my dreams were too often reality.
I smelled like him—smoke and fire, human and wolf. Because we'd slept curled together, or because we'd done it doggy-style?
I jerked, my legs flailing as if I chased a rabbit through my dreams, but I was no longer asleep, and from the increased tempo of his breathing, neither was Sawyer.
He lapped a lazy lick down my cheek, and my body leaped in response. I wanted him again.
Again? Hell. I was going to kill him.
I shot from the bed, landed on the ground. My chest no longer hurt. I had no doubt that when I shifted back the scar would be minimal to gone, but that wasn't my main concern now.
What the hell were you doing in my bed? You've got your own.
You cried out in the night.
I narrowed my eyes. There was crying out and then there was crying out—fear or passion, memories or reality?
Did we—
He lay on the bed, paws extended, snout resting between, at home amid the tangled sheets, warm, languid, and comfortable with himself and all the worlds he lived in.
Did we what?
You know what! I told you no.
Then the answer must he no.
I sniffed. Sawyer's powers were based on sex. He reeked of it in any form. Seers and DKs were often sent to him to be unblocked, to get past any "issues" they might have and embrace what they were. Sawyer accomplished that by embracing them.
He lifted his head; his gray eyes flared. Did you dream of me, Phoenix? Did you dream of us?
You know I did. You made me.