Chaos Bites (17 page)

“I miss you,” I whispered, and he held out his hand.

I reached forward, half afraid I’d put my palm to the cool glass and he’d vanish now like he had when he’d died. Instead my fingers squelched through the pane, seeming to disappear from here and appear over there. His closed around them, and Sawyer tugged me into the mirror.

I stumbled, and he caught me. He was warm, and he smelled so good—like the trees, the earth, the sun on the mountain—like himself. I wanted to rub my face all over him, feel his flesh against my cheek, his hair brush my eyelids, his scent becoming my own.

Glancing through the looking glass at the motel room, empty but for my duffel and keys, made me dizzy. Here the sun shone bright and warm in opposition to the moon sheen I’d left behind. That contrast made me realize that where I stood was the mirror image of where I’d been.

I returned my attention to Sawyer, questions ready to tumble from my lips, and he kissed me.

He tasted of both day and night, salt and sugar, spicy yet sweet. He tasted like Sawyer, and all I wanted was to keep tasting him until the pain and the fear and the loneliness went away.

I filled my hands with his hair. The ebony strands felt like midnight—cool and dark, they flowed over my wrists, spilling the scent of the mountains that rose from the desert and the wind that whirled the waters of the sea.

His tongue brushed the seam of my lips, causing gooseflesh to ripple across my back. He rubbed the prickle away with firm strokes of his hard, magic hands, then traced his nails across my shoulders, making the skin rise again.

Opening to him, I met his tongue with my own, dueling, teasing, chasing it back into his mouth for just one more taste. I scored his lip with my teeth, tempted to draw blood just to see if I could.

A wraith wouldn’t bleed, neither ghost nor spirit, just a man. But Sawyer had never been
just
anything in his life.

If I drew his blood would he disappear forever? If I tasted it would I? I didn’t want to take that chance.

My hands were cold against his neck, and he shivered. I ran my palms over him as he’d done to me, and beneath my closed eyelids the images of his beasts flashed like a Vegas light show. If I wanted, I could become each of them. All I had to do was touch him and reach for the change.

Though there was another skinwalker on Inyan Kara, there would never be another with the power of Sawyer, the power of me. There was no one like us in the world.

He’d told me once how similar we were, and I’d denied it. The thought of being as cold, sarcastic, dangerous, and distant as he was had repelled me. For years Sawyer had terrified me. Probably because whenever I peered into his eyes I saw a reflection of myself. More recently I’d come to realize that our similarities connected us in a way I was connected to no one else. Only with Sawyer could I ever be completely me.

I tried to peer into his face, but the sunlight through the windows was too bright. I squinted, and he flicked his wrist. The curtains flew across the curtain rod with a muffled shriek.

The sun still peeked around the edges just enough that I could see myself at the center of his gray gaze, captured forever.

“What is this?” I asked. “Where are we?”

He didn’t answer, and I began to wonder if he could. Like the Little Mermaid, had his voice been the price he’d had to pay to touch me one more time? What would I pay to touch him?

How about your soul?

I started. Was this how Summer had lost hers? Feeling the pain of Jimmy’s inevitable loss, knowing she could prevent it, being enticed with the promise of saving him. All she had to do was sell her immortal soul. Would I do the same to bring Sawyer back? Would I do it even for Jimmy?

“Kiss me,” I whispered. “Kiss me and don’t stop. Love me and don’t talk.”

I didn’t want to hear any more whispers, not his and definitely not my own.

Sawyer didn’t need to be told twice to have sex. Sawyer
was
sex. Temptation in perfect form.

He slid to his knees, his mouth, his hands caressing me as he went. His tongue circled my navel; his teeth scraped my hip. He pressed his thumb to the throbbing vein in my thigh, then he lowered his head, and his hair cascaded over my knee as he put his mouth to that vein and suckled.

I thought I might fall, but his palms held me firmly by the backs of my legs, the tips of his index fingers just brushing the swell of my rear, sliding across the sensitive skin below.

I steadied myself with a hand on his shoulder, the other cupping his head, urging him on. Who could have ever imagined that the press of lips, the spike of teeth, the laving of a tongue against the femoral artery could nearly make me come?

He inched upward, but I slid down. I wanted to kiss him again, to make this last. He’d be gone when we were done, and after tomorrow who knew if I’d ever see him again. The last ghost I’d raised had told me what I needed to know then taken the express train to eternity.

I both wanted that for Sawyer and feared it. He deserved peace; despite Jimmy’s words, he deserved heaven. But once Sawyer went, he’d be lost to me. I doubted he’d get a weekend pass for a dream booty call.

We knelt face-to-face, so close in height our bodies aligned perfectly. His erection caressed the darker curls between my thighs. The mountain lion on his chest seemed to purr when my breasts brushed against it. Only a whisper apart, breath mingling, hands at our sides, our eyes stared intently into each other’s.

I licked my lips, and my tongue caught the edge of his. A flame seemed to flare at the center of his eerie gray gaze, and he lifted one hand, clasped my neck, then crushed our mouths together.

My heart gave a single thud then began to race. Sawyer tensed, jerked back. His eyes flared first yellow, then orange, then the pupil at the center widened into the silhouette of a great bird in flight. For just an instant his face flickered—man, bird, man, bird.

Hissing, he yanked his palm away, shaking it as if he’d been burned, though I could see no evidence of it. When he lifted his eyes, they’d returned to their normal light gray.

“The shifting works both ways,” I murmured.

Not only could I touch one of his tattoos and become the animal beneath, it appeared he could touch the phoenix on my neck and become one, too. That would have been an intriguing development if he weren’t dead.

I stared into Sawyer’s face; he stared into mine.

“Whatever,” I said, and kissed him again.

He laughed, the vibration causing a shimmer to slide all the way from my lips to my toes.

We kissed for a long time. He could make me forget the now. Hell, he could make me forget my name. Too bad he couldn’t make me forget the past; too bad he couldn’t scourge it from my brain forever.

His mouth trailed across my neck to my breasts. Sawyer might be part beast, but he was all man. As lovely as kissing was, eventually he moved on.

I cupped his chin, lifted his face, smiled at his confusion. “Lie back.”

A shove in the middle of his chest, a tiny flare of light and a slight shimmy of my form when I touched his mountain lion, then he tumbled onto the floor.

I wanted to walk my lips over his skin, rub my cheek against his flesh and memorize the texture, imprint the scent, though I knew that for the rest of my life when I smelled rain on the trees I’d smell him.

Closing my eyes I traced my mouth across his fluttering eyelids, the fine blade of his nose, the spike of his cheekbones and chin. The curve of his neck tasted like the first blade of grass in spring—sweet and tart, green and earthy. When I kissed his biceps, his wolf howled in my head—agony, ecstasy, freedom and pain.

“Hush,” I murmured against his skin, then licked the tattoo from the tip of the wolf’s tilted snout to the base of his curling tail.

The rumble of Sawyer’s growl drew my lips to his chest. I avoided the lion in the center, concentrating on the flat, brown disks of his nipples. His nipples were softer, darker than the rest, and they tasted softer and darker, too. Like fine Belgian chocolate after a long stretch of generic candy bars.

I teased them until the tips had tightened to pebbled peaks then taunted them with my teeth. His fingers clenched in my hair, cupping my head, showing me that he wanted me to go on and on.

I ran my tongue down the ridge of his ribs, laid my cheek against the plane of his stomach. Felt his breath go in and out, lifting and lowering me, like the rock of the sea or the sway of the wind.

My own breath brushed his erection and he leaped. My lips curved as I raised my head, pressed a kiss to the soft skin, pulled hard and tight over his pelvis. I hovered, centimeters away from where he wanted me to be, his penis rising higher and higher, nearly brushing my chin, and then I pounced, running my tongue over the vein in his thigh as he’d run his over mine.

His back arched—pleasure or pain?—and his fingernails scraped the carpet as he clenched his hands. I rested my head against one thigh and smoothed my palm down the length of the other, swirling my index finger over the scattering of black hair. He had very little body hair, like most full-blooded Native Americans, or so I’d heard. There aren’t many left to ask.

I explored his knees, pressing first my thumbs, then my tongue into the valleys. When I licked the seam at the back, then took a fold into my mouth and suckled, his breath caught as if he might come.

I raised my head, a brow, and watched as he breathed deeply—once, twice, again—before some of the tension slid away.

“Almost,” I said, and gave the same attention to his feet, pressing my fingers here and there, testing his toes with my teeth until he moaned.

Then I shimmied my way back up his body and licked the rattlesnake tattooed on his dick. I’d never been sure if that was a joke—if so, it had Sawyer’s name all over it—or a way to keep a dangerous predator under wraps, so to speak.

I meant to take more time, give him a reward for being so patient, but I’d waited too long, touched him too much, and after that one leisurely lick and a single dip of my mouth over the head, he grabbed me by the elbows and dragged my lips to meet his.

He was wild now—his teeth nipping, catching, and pulling—first at my mouth, then at my neck, my breasts. The sharp draw on first one nipple then the next caused an answering tug much lower. I was so empty, and I desperately needed to be full.

As if he knew, his hands slid from my arms to my hips, over the curve until they rested at the backs of my thighs, then he lifted and separated, sliding within the warm, wet place that waited.

He stretched and filled me, claimed and completed me. Clenching my knees to his sides, I rode the tide. I reached for him and met his hands reaching for mine. We strove toward the place where we would splinter and then fall.

Thrusting together—almost—sliding apart—not quite. Together, apart, almost, not quite. And then—

At last.

Our hands clenched palm-to-palm, fingers grasping, thumbs caressing. I collapsed onto his chest, pressed my face into his neck, breathed in the desert mountain scent of him, felt his warmth, his breath, his touch. Exhaustion hovered, my eyes so heavy, my limbs the same.

“I don’t want to go to sleep,” I whispered, and shifted so his hair cascaded over me, shielding me from the world.

If I slept, I’d wake up back there. I knew that as surely as I knew the taste of his skin. If I stayed awake would I remain here—wherever
here
was—forever?

What about the other side of that mirror? The world I’d pledged to protect. The other man I loved. The child I’d sworn to keep safe. Both places pulled at me, increasing the exhaustion I felt.

I resisted as long as I could. I listened to Sawyer breathing, focused on the steady in and out, the muffled thud of his heart—a heart I knew to be as silent now as Sawyer—beneath my own. I both wanted to stay and had to go.

Eventually, consciousness slipped away despite my efforts to fight it. When I opened my eyes, I lay face-down on the empty, lonely, cold motel bed—my head at the foot, my feet near the head—my hands clutching the sheets, my face hot and streaked with sweat, my body still trembling from the orgasm only he could give.

“Fuck,” I muttered, and turned over, my gaze drawn to the mirror.

Was I here or was I there?

But the mirror reflected this room exactly, the fading darkness behind the curtains, the coming dawn. I’d have thought the entire thing a dream, that I’d never gone into the mirror at all, except—

Near my feet stood a wolf in every shade of midnight-blue and black and purple—with eyes of so light a gray they appeared to blaze like silver stars. A nonexistent wind ruffled his fur and whirled the scent of water and trees and earth through the room.

He appeared as solid as I was. I couldn’t see through him; his paws made dents in the quilt; his weight lowered the bed below him.

Holding my breath, afraid to believe that he would still be there when I took my gaze from the mirror and turned, nevertheless I did.

The wolf remained—slick and solid as sin. I reached for him, and felt the silky sift of his coat, yet my fingers passed right through him.

And as they did, his body became smoke and disappeared.

CHAPTER 19

I swore I could still smell him—on the sheets, on my skin. I passed my hand over the bed where he’d stood, hoping to feel the warmth from where he’d lain, though that could easily be explained as my own body heat. What couldn’t be explained was the tiny icon I found there.

Flicking on the bedside lamp, I shoved my hand beneath the glow. In the center of my palm lay a coyote carved in turquoise—a totem, a fetish, an amulet, a talisman, who knew? But it hadn’t been here before, and I hadn’t brought it with me.

My gaze fell on my laptop, and I was across the room booting it up before I took another breath. A few clicks of the keys and I was surfing for an answer.

I’d encountered amulets before; they protected the wearer from trouble. Talismans brought good fortune. But totems and fetishes I knew very little about.