I don't have the power to walk in dreams. You do.
I'd inherited that power from Jimmy. When necessary, I could stroll through a person's mind and discover the answer to my most desperate question. Only problem was, I needed to be half dead to do it. It was quite possible that yesterday's fiasco with the woman of smoke had been just enough to warrant such a walk. But if I'd walked through Sawyer's mind that meant the dreams had been his and not my own.
I lifted one side of my mouth in a soundless snarl. Though I'd enjoyed sex with Sawyer, both in reality and in my head, that he was dreaming of me nightly was kind of creepy. But then so was he.
What information had he imparted during the dream? What desperate question had I needed an answer to?
I had no idea. But I'd learned over the last month that sooner or later, the truth would come to me.
At least I hadn't really done him. The images I recalled—wolf, man, woman, wolf, and several in between—gave me the willies. Shape-shifting was for beating the bad guys. It wasn't a new and innovative sex toy.
Someday you'll mate with me, Phoenix. He laid his head back between his paws. It's only a matter of time.
I took a step forward as my hackles rose. Those dreams, which had felt far too much like memories, had been seductive. I wanted to touch him in both forms, to shift as we mated, to come screaming as he took me, to clench around him, to make him spurt, the heat both scalding and comforting, the scent of him my own.
You're being—I broke off. I'd been about to say an asshole, but instead I finished with a murmured you, before I disappeared into the bathroom.
I nosed the door too hard and it slammed. I heard his laughter in my mind. I wanted to shut out his voice; I wanted to forget everything I'd remembered. The first was easy, the second impossible.
Closing my eyes, I imagined myself human. I welcomed the brush of air past my face as I lengthened from quadrapedal to bipedal, my skin prickling with gooseflesh as the air went from hot to cool.
I stood in front of the mirror. My dark hair stuck up every which way, my usually tan cheeks appeared pale, the skin beneath my eyes bruised.
"Rough night?" I asked the woman. She didn't answer.
At least the wound was gone. Completely, as if it had never been. Sawyer was right again. What else was new?
In an attempt to get rid of the scent of him that clung to me like perfume, I took another shower. The hot spike of the water hitting my still vulnerable flesh made me bite my lip to keep from moaning.
Instead of feeling satiated, as I would have if I'd actually done him, I was instead so on edge a slight buzz thrummed at the corners of my consciousness. That stinging sense of thwarted lust. The hum that signaled sexual deprivation. If Sawyer were a man, I'd jump him just to make it all go away.
I tried to think of something else. What I thought of was Jimmy. Not a good way to make the needy hum disappear. If anything it got worse.
I had to call Summer, see how she was doing with the Jimmy hunt. Maybe I should have touched her as she'd suggested. Maybe I would have gotten a clearer flash of where he'd gone.
"Touch something he did." I gave a halfhearted laugh and let the water pound on my face. If that worked, I might as well touch myself.
I stilled, then lifted my head out of the water, tilting it as if I'd just heard something very far away and very interesting.
I laughed again, this time putting more heart into it. "Why the hell not?"
Slowly, I laid my palm across my stomach and thought of Jimmy.
"Squat," I muttered, but I didn't give up easily.
I smoothed my fingers across my ribs, then upward, cupping the heavy weight of my own breasts. Jimmy's face flickered behind my closed eyelids. I might just be on to something here.
Perhaps, in order to "see" someone who'd touched me, I had to touch myself in the same way they had. Or at least in the way most likely to invoke some kind of response.\
I rolled my own nipples between my fingers, lifting my breasts until I could take the rosy tips into my mouth and suckle, first one and then the other. The sensation shot through me like a dying star across the sky. My skin tingled; my toes curled. I was so close to eruption, thanks to the dreams I'd had, that a single stroke between my legs brought me home, and in the seconds that followed, I saw everything that I needed to.
CHAPTER 14
Jimmy was in New Mexico, staying in a virtual clone of the motel we now occupied. Two signs were visible through the open window at his back—the sleep cheap—a name like that really made you want to curl up on the sheets, didn't it?—and interstate 25.
It was daytime, and Jimmy was reading the Red Rock Sentinel. He appeared awfully interested in what was inside.