Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(34)

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.

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.