CHAPTER 27
“What,” I repeated through clenched teeth, “did you do?”
“Nothing, Phoen . . .” Sawyer paused. I could hear his teeth grinding together. Neither one of us was going to have much left but stubs soon. “Elizabeth,” he corrected.
“He’d better not be dead.”
“Or what?” Sawyer’s voice held the smile so rarely found on his face.
“I’ll kill you.”
“The threat is getting old. Especially since you have no way to back it up.”
“You think I can’t do it?”
“I know you can’t. You have no idea how to kill a skinwalker.”
There was that. No one in the world—except for him—appeared to know how, or if they did, they weren’t sharing. Considering Sawyer, his power, his reputation, I didn’t blame them.
“Did you come here to show me how?” I asked.
A slight pause reflected his surprise. “You think I came to kill you?”
“Did you kill Jimmy?”
He sighed. “It would be better for you both if I did.”
“Mercy killing. That is so . . . not you.”
I lost my shoes, then flung out my leg in the direction of the voice, not to kick him—although that would have been an acceptable bonus—but to try to touch him and maybe “see” some of his secrets.
But my foot met air. I’d kicked so hard I nearly shot myself off the bed. Considering I was still chained to it by my arms . . . ouch!
“Relax.” His voice now came from the other side, nearer my face. I considered lifting my feet and smashing him the way I’d smashed the wall, but I figured he’d see that coming, if not literally then with whatever tenth sense he’d always had that had kept him alive for so long.
“I don’t want to relax.”
“You never do,” he murmured.
I strained my eyes. He was close enough that I could feel the incredible heat that always rolled off of him in waves, close enough that the breeze through the slightly cracked window no longer overpowered his scent, which was the same as always—the mountains beneath the sun, newborn leaves, a tinge of fire and just a hint of smoke.
However, I still couldn’t see him, and I started to wonder if he was really here at all. There were so many things that Sawyer could do that he’d never told me, that I might never know unless he did.
“Touch me,” I murmured.
Silence followed my demand. I felt his surprise flare so brightly I almost saw it—fireflies flickering in the depths of the night.
“Touch me,” I repeated, lowering my voice to what I hoped was a sexy murmur. I had no idea if it was; I’d never sexy murmured before. “You know that you want to.”
“I—uh. What?”
My lips curved. I discovered that I wasn’t afraid. If it was my time to die, if Sawyer had been sent to kill me, so be it. One thing I’d learned long ago: When it was your time, it was your time. There was no damn way to stop it.
“Touch me,” I repeated. “Now.”
“That’s not a good idea. I wanted—”
I tried to brush him with my elbow, but the chains rattled and gave me away. Maybe. Since this was Sawyer, he’d have no problem scooting back faster than any movement I made. If he were even in the room in the first place.
“Why are you here?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You want me to forgive you for changing sides? For fucking my mother? For—” Fury bubbled in my chest, so hot I was half-afraid my skin might start to glow as hers had. “Whatever the hell else you’ve done?”
I yanked on the chains again, hissed at the pain, threw my legs once more in his direction, and this time I flipped half off the bed, landing hard on my knees, my upper body still attached. I wrenched my back, and my breath caught.
“Nice job,” I muttered. Now I ached all over, and I still hadn’t managed to brush against Sawyer at all.
“You’re going to hurt yourself.”
“You think?”
He gave a half laugh that sounded almost like a sob, and I stilled.
“You aren’t Sawyer,” I said.
I sensed movement in my direction, and since I didn’t want to be skewered while lying half on and half off the floor, my back to my attacker, I scrambled and twisted, pushed off with my legs and threw myself onto the bed.
The only way I could detect an approach was a slight shift in the air current, the increase in that scent that was so maddeningly Sawyer’s. What creature could imitate his voice, his smell, his very essence? I had no idea.
I waited, tense and ready, until the telltale lifting of the hairs on the arm, the crackle at the back of my neck that shrieked, Run! became too strong to ignore. Then I scissor-kicked my legs—bam, bam—right where a face should be.
I didn’t hit anything, but I didn’t fly off the bed this time either. Only because this time, hands grabbed my calves, shoving me back onto the bed as a heavy, hard, all too familiar body pinned me down.
“Get off!” I shouted. “You’re not him.”
“What is wrong with you?” Sawyer growled, and when he growled, he actually growled. His beast—which one, I wasn’t quite sure—was very close to the surface.
I started to laugh. I couldn’t help it. What was wrong? Let me make a list.
“I’m captured, chained, and in the morning I have to prove myself to my psychotic nymphomaniac mother, who just happens to be a shape-shifting Egyptian firebird. I’m the leader of the forces of light, but I can’t lead. A seer who can’t see. Jimmy hates me. I’m a vampire. You’re—” My laughter died. “What are you?”
“I’m me.”
“Prove it,” I said. So he kissed me.
It was good proof. No one kissed like Sawyer.
He tasted of salt and sugar; I liked to lick his teeth. When I did, his tongue flicked out and tickled the base of mine. I felt it all the way to my curling toes.
There were things I did with Sawyer that I’d never done with anyone else. With Sawyer there were no rules, no boundaries. When he kissed me—now and always—every thought disappeared, every memory, every hope and dream, leaving only the burning desire to kiss until kissing wasn’t enough, then to get naked, sweat-slicked skin sliding along sweat-slicked skin, plunging within, over and over until at last the burn went away.
A thought meandered through my lust-laden brain. I was supposed to be doing something.
Seduce him.
At least I was right on track.
I arched, wiggling in the hope he might touch me as I’d ordered. I forgot my hands were tied and nearly tore them off at the wrists when I tried to run my palms over his back. Instead, I wrapped my ankles around his, opening my legs so that he lay cradled between. I immediately deduced the seduction was working.
His mouth trailed down my neck; then his breath traced the moisture left behind, and I shivered. My nipples hardened, and he suckled me through my shirt and bra; the sensation of tongue and lips and teeth, along with the friction of the material, made me moan.
The sound snapped me out of the lust coma I’d nearly fallen into. I had to keep my wits from melting along with my body. I needed information.
“Does she have the key?” I asked. Talk about sexy murmur. My voice was so low and hoarse I got excited myself.
“Mmm,” Sawyer answered, the sound buzzing along my breast like a vibrator.
Was that mmm, mmm good? Or mmm as in yes?
“She does?”
He lifted his mouth; his face was so close our breath mingled. “You shouldn’t have come. I had it under control.”
“Had what?” I frowned. “Are you saying you infiltrated ahead of us?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
“And I’m supposed to . . . believe you?”
“Why do you think I came here tonight?”
I arched my back, pressing my pelvis into his erection. “The usual reason.”
He snorted, his breath a sharp puff of heat against my face. “I’ve got more sex than I can handle.”
“That’ll be the day.” I had a sudden flash of the Phoenix giving him a blow job in the foyer. “So what was the plan? Fuck her until she told you the truth?”
“It’s worked in the past.”
Sawyer had whored for the federation before; sometimes I wondered if he did much else.
I should talk. I’d planned on doing the same thing.
“How’s it been working on her?”
“Not quite as well,” he admitted.
“What have you found out?”
“Nothing.”
“If you were still on our side, you’d share what you know.”
“I would, if I had anything to share. She’s a little leery of trusting me.”
“Join the club.”
“There’s something you should know,” he said.
“There’s a helluva lot I should know.”
His chest lifted and lowered, pushing against me, then flowing away. I was reminded that we were on a bed, body to body, my hands tied above my head. He could do anything he wanted, or at least try. Why did that make my nipples tingle again?
“Get off me,” I ordered.
“Not yet.”
He rolled to the side, sliding a hand into the pocket of his jeans. He came up with a key. A few clicks later and my hands were free; the golden chains clattered to the floor.
“I can’t leave,” I said.
“And I can’t let you.”
He still lay on top of me. I waited to see where this would lead.
“Do you remember the first time you touched me?” he murmured.
I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant. I’d touched him when I was fifteen, but as little and as gingerly as possible. He’d tried to teach me so much, and I hadn’t been able to understand most of it. Then I hadn’t known what he was, what I was. I’d only known that he frightened me.
When I’d returned ten years later I was Ruthie’s heir. I could hear her voice on the wind revealing the names of the supernatural creatures that walked through our world.
She’d whispered, “Skinwalker,” and I’d touched him, then seen the aeons of his life. Or at least what he’d wanted me to see.
Not long after that I’d touched him in the night, become a part of him and him of me, and discovered a way to channel my power, to control and increase it.
“Which first time?” I asked.
“When I let you see my mate.”
Ah. He’d lived as a wolf, mated as one, loved and then lost her. The devastation I’d seen . . . It was one of the most human behaviors I’d ever witnessed in Sawyer, and he hadn’t even been human at the time.
“I remember,” I murmured. “You loved her very much.”
He didn’t answer.
“I’m sure you had a good reason.”
“For killing her.”
“I didn’t kill her.” His voice was so calm, so reasonable. You’d never know I’d just accused him of killing the only wolf he’d ever loved.
“Then—?”
“How did I get my magic?”
“Yes.”
He stood abruptly, and I tensed. Sawyer might sound calm, but that didn’t mean he was. He could easily reach over and break my neck just to shut me up for the few seconds it would take to heal.
Instead, he sat again, hip brushing mine, the scent of his skin washing over me and making me remember all the first times that had come before. I had to resist the urge to press my face to his flat, hard belly and taste.
“Touch me,” he whispered. “Touch me and see.”