Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(33)

I guess I hadn't explained everything, so I did. Then, considering the turquoise, I had to ask.



Did you make it?



You think I'd give her something that allowed her to murder at will unseen?

When he put it like that...



Did you?



No. I'm not capable of that powerful a spell.

I snorted. I thought he was capable of a lot more than he ever let on. Still, I didn't think he'd do his mother any favors.



Could she have made it herself?



Perhaps, but I have to think that if she could have, she would have, long ago.



We live and learn, I pointed out, and he dipped his head.



How she got the amulet is irrelevant, Sawyer continued. We have it now; it's useless to her.



She'll keep coming after it.



Isn't that what we want? She comes after the necklace and we... He paused, a frustrated sound escaping his throat. If he'd been in human form, he'd have thrown up his strong-fingered, magical hands. Do whatever it is we have to do to end her.



In theory, I agreed. In practice, we don't know how to end her, so she probably ends us. Ruthie was very adamant about meeting with the good witch of Detroit. And she wanted you to go with me.



What Ruthie wants, Ruthie gets.

I'd thought he would argue or outright refuse to go along, then disappear into the night on his own witch hunt, leaving me to travel alone. He was full of surprises lately.



Come to bed.

My head went up as he leaped to the floor, crowding me until my flanks hit the spindly, scarred excuse for a table and it rattled. His eyes flared, but I refused to look away. Alphas stared down betas. Problem was—Sawyer and I were both alphas.

I growled and bumped his chest with mine. He snarled and bumped me back. This could get ugly.

He ran his open mouth across my shoulder, teeth just brushing my skin, and I shuddered.

Or it might get something else.

Images flickered—of us together in the desert. The best sex I'd ever had.



No. I dropped to the ground, crouching, tail tucked beneath, a position of submission—until I rolled away.

He followed, stalking me like the predator he was. Come on, Phoenix, you know you want to.

The frightening thing ... he was right. I wanted to. I would probably always want to. Except—



You 're a wolf.



So are you.

He kept coming; I needed to stop retreating. I'd never be the alpha if I let him push me around.



But—

His mouth opened in an expression that was pure wolf, in any form, and I understood.

The first time I'd touched him after Ruthie had died, I'd seen the eons of his life rushing past me, people he'd killed, women he'd loved, the many ways he'd lived. Sawyer had spent time as a wolf. He'd mated as one, too.



Gack! I don't think so.



Try it, Phoenix. I know you'll like it.

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.