"Liar," he murmured.
Suddenly the room was too small, and despite the steamy heat, my skin tingled as if I'd just stepped into a snowstorm.
"I wanted you the first time I saw you, Phoenix."
"I was fifteen."
"Age means nothing to me," he said. "What matters is what's beneath. The soul is eternal."
I wasn't sure what he was getting at. "Obviously age meant something. You never touched me when I was at your place."
"I didn't?"
My face heated at the memory of what had happened at his place last month. "I meant the first time."
"So did I." He came closer. Even if I'd had room to move back, I couldn't. Backing up was considered backing down. That was a good way to get my throat ripped out. Figuratively. At least for now.
"Did you dream of me, Phoenix? All those years between when you left and when you came . .." He leaned over me, nuzzled my neck, his breath tickling the fine hairs and making me shiver. All the connotations of came ran through my head, just as he'd wanted them to. "Back?" he finished, as he kissed my throat, nibbled my collarbone, then suckled the skin where my pulse throbbed.
I couldn't quite recall what we'd been talking about. The steam was so thick, I could barely see the room around us. We seemed lost in the swirling fog, only the two of us left in this world.
I grasped desperately at sanity, caught it by the coat-tails just before it fled, and managed to lift my head, to speak. "Dreams aren't real."
"They are if they're memories."
He was trying to make me believe that he'd had sex with me as a teenager, that he'd somehow seduced me and made me forget it had ever happened, except in my dreams. But I knew that wasn't true. The first time I'd ever had sex had been with Jimmy. Blood doesn't lie.
Sawyer was trying to push me away. He didn't like that I'd seen her touch him, that I knew what she'd done to him. He didn't want my sympathy. But he did want me. I felt that as surely as I felt his heat, despite his protestations of cold.
The urge to show him some tenderness, to teach him that sex could be about something other than nothing, overwhelmed me. I couldn't have stopped what was happening between us any more than it seemed I could stop Doomsday.
I stared into his eyes. "You're trying to push me away."
He stared right back. "Is it working?"
"No," I said, and kissed him.
CHAPTER 20
I figured he'd push me away literally, that I'd have a battle on my hands. But Sawyer surprised me by kissing me back.
His mouth was desperate, his hands were, too. In the past he'd always taken his time; there'd never been any rush. One thing about Sawyer, even when he was doing you for the good of the world, he always made being fucked worthwhile.
He tasted both sweet and spicy. I licked his teeth; his fingers tightened on my arms, one squeeze and then he released me. I grabbed at him, afraid he'd fly away, and when my left palm met his right bicep, everything flickered.
"Open your eyes," he whispered.
I did and saw his had gone wolf. A growl rumbled, and it took me a second to realize the sound was coming from me. If I could see my face in the mirror past the steam, I had no doubt my eyes would reflect my wolf, too.
I yanked my hand away. When we had sex and I touched his tattoos, the essence of his beasts swirled through me. I didn't become them, but I felt them, smelled them, knew them as intimately as I knew him.
"Do you want to change?" he whispered.
I stiffened. He'd said one day I'd mate with him as a wolf. I wasn't ready for that, didn't think I'd ever be. Becoming a wolf wasn't part of who I was, the way it was a part of what he was.
His expression as he watched me, wolf eyes sharp, man's mouth amused, made me realize he was trying to get me to run again.
"No chance," I answered, and his lips thinned.
"Phoenix," he growled.
I wrapped my hand around his penis, and the deadly call of a rattlesnake filled the air. I concentrated on him, on this, on us, and the urge to flick my tongue at him passed, although the urge to flick my tongue around him was irresistible.
I sank to my knees, took him in my mouth. He wouldn't be able to resist, either.
The rattle increased, drowning out the sound of the water. I touched his thigh, ran my fingers across the head of the tiger depicted there, and felt the long, dry grass brush my fur-covered body.
I used my teeth, not too hard, just enough, and was rewarded with a soft curse. I glanced up. The fluorescent lights were dim; the steam swirled around us like fog at sunset. I should probably shut off the water, but I liked the mist. It sparkled in Sawyer's hair like diamonds in a midnight sky.
His head was thrown back, his face tight, his hands clenched at his sides as if he were afraid to touch me. We couldn't have that.