Doomsday Can Wait (Phoenix Chronicles, #2)(52)

I sat on the bed, but every time I tried to mull over our situation, I saw again the woman of smoke trailing her fingertip over Sawyer's chest. Was I ever going to gel that out of my brain? How did he?



Bam!

A dull cracking thud reverberated through the room. I glanced at the door, but it was still on the hinges, then up at the ceiling, but nothing huge and scaly was peeling back the roof and preparing to climb inside.



Bam!

The sound came again. From the bathroom.

I crossed the short distance, then turned the knob and walked right in.

The water was still running, the room full of steam. The red athletic shorts lay in a heap on the floor.

Sawyer leaned against the sink, shoulders hunched, head bowed. His hair was wet, he smelled of hotel soap, though even that couldn't erase the scent of fire, the mountains, distant lightning.

My gaze swept the room. Two huge holes gaped in the tile wall, and Sawyer's knuckles were bleeding.

"That isn't going to heal unless you shift," I said.

"It'll heal, just not right away."

"Was that really necessary?"

"Yes," he said simply.

I wanted to touch him, but I wasn't sure how, wasn't sure if touching him was the right thing, or the worst thing, I could do, so I stayed near the door and I waited.

He shivered and gooseflesh sprang up across his skin. He really was cold, or maybe in shock. Seeing him like this scared me. Sawyer was afraid of nothing and no one. Or so I'd believed.

"The door," he murmured. "It's chilly out there."

I shoved it a little too hard, and the resulting bang made him jump. "Sorry," I said.

He didn't answer, didn't move, just kept leaning against the sink as the mirror fogged and his knuckles bled red rivulets across the white porcelain.

I couldn't just stand there, so I strode forward, twisted the water on, and shoved his hand beneath the stream. That he let me caused the already nervous fluttering of my stomach to flutter some more.

"Why did you let her touch you like that?" I asked.

"You think I could have stopped her?"

I lifted my hand, tilted his face toward mine. "You're not a child anymore. You could have stopped her."

He yanked his chin from my grip. "Fighting only excites her."

I fought the gagging reflex at the image his words conjured. I was going to find out how to kill that bitch, and I was going to do it, no matter the cost. If there was justice on earth, and most of the time I had my doubts, the killing of a Naye'i would be a slow, drawn-out, and extremely painful process.

"Did you know she was the leader of the darkness?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I'm a witch, not a mind reader."

I narrowed my eyes. Sometimes I wondered.

"I haven't seen her in a long time. She hasn't answered my call." Sawyer pulled his hand out of the water, turned it off with a flick of his wrist, then stared into the sink as if all the answers had just swirled down the drain. "I should have known she was up to something."

Yeah, he should have. But after witnessing how she behaved with him, I could understand why he'd just been glad she was gone.

"She offered me to you."

His gray eyes met mine. "Yes."

"I didn't know you wanted me."

"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.