Stormwalker (22 page)

“A good way to keep an eye on you.”

“Including a view of my breasts?”

He gave me a ghost of a grin. “That’s not bad either.”

His unnerving gaze lingered at the cleavage in question. I shivered and folded my arms, realizing I was still drenched from the rain and my impromptu flood.

Mick moved past me to my bedroom. I didn’t follow, but I couldn’t keep myself from studying his backside as he walked. I loved running my hands over that backside when we lay face-to-face, kissing in afterglow.

He was back before I could pull out of the fantasy, his arms full of towels. “You’re soaked.”

Mick plopped the towels on the counter, shook one out, and then gently wiped my neck and face. He wrapped the towel around my shoulders, holding the ends as he looked at me.

I slid my hands up his warm arms. The storm power still spun inside me, although not as crazily as it would with a full-blown thunderstorm. But I needed to empty myself, to let the power flow away.

I felt the answering flicker of Mick’s fire magic. Without a word, he drew my magic into himself, sucking in a breath as the water power flooded from my body to his.

I touched his face, loving the sandpaper feel of his unshaved whiskers. He was my strong Mick, the powerful man who could be so incredibly gentle with me. He watched me, his eyes darkening, lips parting as mine drew near his.

I didn’t arch to him consciously—the magic in me sought the answering magic in him, wanting to couple with it, just as it had with Nash in the aftermath of the thunderstorm. I moved my hips, feeling Mick hard and ready for me.

“Stop.” Mick’s lips brushed mine. “Or I won’t want to stop.”

Tonight I was cold, worried, frightened, and turned on by our connection. Mick’s heartbreaking secrets seemed not so terrible against the other forces working on me.

“I don’t mind.” I ran my fingers down his chest. “Tonight, I don’t mind.”

Mick stepped back, breaking the warm contact. “But I do.”

“Why?” Did I sound desperate? I felt desperate. I wanted the madness of sex—of wild sex with Mick—to make me forget.

“I won’t come to your bed until you truly want me there,” Mick said. “Truly want
me
. I think you understand.”

I did. He didn’t want me to use him, which was exactly what I would be doing. He knew I was still furious with him, damn him, and knew that I asked out of need, not forgiveness.

“I really did love you,” I whispered.

Mick studied me with intense blue eyes. “I’m a dragon, Janet, trying to live in a world that no longer believes in dragons. We’ve learned to be secretive to survive. I thought I’d want to kill you when I first met you, and then I found myself liking you. You had strength, and sass. I decided I’d get to know you, see what you were like inside. That was my mistake.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat. “Why would a dragon possibly care what I thought of him?”

“I shouldn’t have. But I did. Still do.” Mick picked up a dry towel and threw it over his shoulder. “I’ll sleep upstairs.”

He turned away and walked heavily up the steps, not looking back. The darkness swallowed him. I heard his tread on the balcony, and then a softly closing door.

Tears stung my eyes as I trudged into my bedroom to strip off my sodden clothes. I took a shower, noting with gratitude that the hot water was back, and got into bed, where I tossed and turned, uncomfortable and needy.

My skin itched. I itched on the inside too. My whole body craved sex. So much so that I was tempted to run upstairs and persuade Mick without words that I really, really wanted him.

I suppressed the urge with effort. Nash had kissed me out in the darkness because his hormones had been responding to my magic, nothing more. I’d needed someone to draw off the storm, and sensuality had sparked between us. Nash had reacted without realizing why. I noticed that when I’d talked to him today, he’d been keen to avoid the subject.

Nash was a very good kisser. I thought of him in Maya’s bed, the strength in his arms as he’d pushed himself up into her. I’d never been a voyeur, always looking quickly away whenever I saw people so much as kissing in public. So why did I keep seeing Nash’s tanned body on Maya’s white sheets, Maya’s glorious black hair flowing across her latte-colored skin as she made love to him?

Answer: because I was horny, and because they’d looked so beautiful together. If I ever photographed nudes, I’d take a photo just like that and call it “The Beauty of Physical Love.”

If photos existed of me and Mick in bed, on the other hand, they would shock even the most avid voyeur. Mick could be . . . creative. When I’d met him, I’d been sexually naïve, knowing the theory but not much more than that. I’d never read adult magazines or watched X-rated movies, having never had much interest in them. I’d embraced what Mick taught me, because he’d made sex fun and exciting, loving. I’d gone through life thinking that everyone used toys and interesting positions and bonds, but now I wondered if Mick just didn’t know any other way. Maybe dragons didn’t know about the missionary position.

The simplicity of the scene with Maya and Nash made me realize how intimate a man and woman could be. No games, no toys, just two people: face-to-face, open, and vulnerable.

I finally drifted to sleep to erotic dreams, one involving an interesting ménage of me, Mick, Nash, and Coyote—three beautiful men touching, licking, making love to me. Me on Nash as Maya had been, his face twisted in passion as he rose into me. In the dream I turned my head to take Mick into my mouth, and Coyote was behind me with his arms around me. I could smell sweat and breath, sex and excitement.

I both longed to and hated to wake up. In the morning I dragged myself out of bed and went to greet the dawn, aching, cranky, and still horny.

As I scattered corn, the big coyote came up over the railroad bed and took up his usual place under the juniper. I knew no one had been in bed with me in truth last night—I’d woken with my nightshirt and panties firmly in place—but the look in the coyote’s eyes made me blush.

Good dream,
he said inside my head, and howled with laughter when I glared at him.

“Why?” I asked when I reached my bike. “You have the mirror to keep tabs on me.”

“I can come to your rescue faster if I’m already with you.”

“Mick . . .”

“It’s five hours on open road. There are skinwalkers out there, a man you beat up with a flood looking for you, dragons who don’t trust you, and bikers who might be friends of the ones you got arrested. You have a gift for pissing people off.”

“Sure, because I ask them to drive through my hotel, shoot my boyfriend, and pull guns on me in restaurants.”

Mick gave me a firm look. “You attract trouble, and I’m coming with you.”

“Fine.” I shoved my backpack into the saddlebags and mounted the bike. I secretly didn’t mind Mick’s insistence— I wasn’t sure what I’d find in Tucson, and muscle with me couldn’t hurt.

I squawked when Mick swung his leg over the back of my bike and settled in behind me. “What are you doing? You have your own ride.”

Mick wrapped strong arms around my waist. “It’s a long way, I don’t want to lose you on the road, and I don’t know specifically where you’re going.”

I gave him a sour look but started the bike. Mick easily balanced his weight with mine as I pulled out, his grip steady but not constricting.

This would kill me. Mick’s warm bulk at my back, his strong thighs on either side of mine—damn, it wasn’t fair. Was he deliberately trying to drive me insane?

I rode to Winslow, then took the interstates west and south. The back highways were more direct, but they were also narrow roads that wound up and down mountains and dawdled at thirty-five miles per hour through small towns. This time of year the roads would be clogged with ranchers, farmers, tourists, and people in RVs. I was in a hurry, wanting to get down to Tucson and find out what I could. I wanted this to be over.

We rode into the cool altitudes of mountainous Flagstaff, where the ground was black with volcanic rock under thick green pines. I turned south on the 17 and descended back to dry desert, and the air heated steadily. The bright orange red buttes of Sedona appeared far to our right, then dropped behind us as we climbed from Verde Valley to another pass. Over those mountains, then down, down, down, dropping from the rim of the high plateau to the low deserts of the south.

It was frigging hot. In mid-May, the temperatures south of the Mogollon Rim were already in the hundreds and the sun beat on us from a cloudless sky. My bike flew down the miles, sliding between eighteen-wheelers, RVs, cars, SUVs, pickups. We passed places with the intriguing names of Bumble Bee, Deadman Wash, Bloody Basin, and Big Bug Creek, past hills covered with giant saguaros reaching to the sky, and so on into the ever-spreading sprawl of Phoenix.

The city glittered under the sun, several million people gathered to weather the heat under the blast of air conditioners. The traffic slowed to a crawl as cars began to pour onto the freeway, heading into town.

I stopped for gas at an exit with a large strip mall, the pavement feeding back the heat of the sun. I knew this part of the state would grow much hotter before summer was over; in Magellan, this temperature represented the peak of the year’s heat.

We decided to lunch at a Mexican place, where the waitress tried to get us to order the specially priced frozen margaritas. We still had a long drive, and we stuck to water and soft drinks, to her disappointment.

Mick and I ate our burrito combos in silence. We’d often not speak for long stretches when we traveled together, neither of us having need for small talk. But today the silence stretched between us.

Mick never once asked what I hoped to discover in Tucson or where. I would have told him the whole story if he’d asked, but he never did. He was trusting me, for the first time in our bizarre relationship. I wasn’t sure what to think about that.

We finished our meal, which Mick insisted on paying for. I went to the ladies’, and when I came out, Mick was straddling the bike outside with it started, waiting for me.

“Get on behind me,” he said. “You need to rest.”

I made a noise of impatience at his high-handedness, but it did feel good to sit back and close my eyes against the heat. I slid my arms around his waist, trying not to enjoy the feel and scent of his body so close to mine.

Mick knew how to ride. He had us out of there and through city traffic in less time than I’d ever have been able to without getting a ticket. Soon we were streaming south and east on the 10, curving toward Tucson.

More interesting names: Toltec; Eloy; Picacho Peak, where a Civil War battle had been fought; and so on into Tucson.

This city didn’t sprawl as much as Phoenix, but it still took some time to thread through traffic to the south side. We took a quiet road not far from San Xavier del Bac, an eighteenth-century Spanish mission church, the city fading behind us.

An adobe wall surrounded the complex I rode to, with a high wooden gate topped with a copper bell. I dismounted the bike in front of this and pulled the rope to ring the bell.

Mick got off with me, but I stopped him. “I don’t think they’ll let you in.”

He looked at the small, square sign on the wall and grinned. “I’ll be right out here. Yell if you need me.”

“This place looks pretty safe.”

“You never know.”

He was right. Where my mother was concerned, it was best to be cautious.

A plainly dressed woman came in answer to the bell. She let me in, quickly shut the gate, and led me to an office. There an older woman in gray blouse and black skirt received me and introduced herself as Sister Margaret.

“Yes, she is here,” Sister Margaret said. “I told her of your request, but she said she didn’t recognize your name.”

“She doesn’t know me, but her parents have asked me to talk with her.”

A bit of a lie, because I hadn’t told the McGuires I was coming down here. I hadn’t wanted to get their hopes up in case the woman I had found here wasn’t really Amy McGuire. Sister Margaret had almost hung up on me when I’d called, and refused to let me talk to Amy on the phone, barely agreeing to let me visit her.

“Please,” I said. “They’re worried.”

Sister Margaret looked as though she didn’t care whether Amy’s parents were worried or on the moon. I knew it was part of her job to protect those who lived here, but I had no intention of riding all the way back to Magellan without an answer.

“I will speak to her,” Sister Margaret said. “Wait here.”

After she walked out, I sat down tiredly in a wooden chair and let the office’s plainness soothe me. The only decoration on the smooth white walls was a carved wooden crucifix. Quietness pervaded the room, the small windows open to let in the air and scents of the garden and the musical sound of finches. It was warm, I was tired, and this place exuded peace.

I jumped when Sister Margaret clumped back in. “She says she’ll see you. For five minutes only. I must tell you that I don’t approve.” She looked me up and down the same way as had my first-grade Sunday school teacher, as though she knew every sin I’d ever committed and those I would in the future.

Sister Margaret gave me a last once-over, clucked in disapproval of my tight black top and dusty motorcycle chaps, and then led me away.

We walked through the inner garden, the path taking us past vegetable beds brimming with life. Wildflowers burst out here and there, some growing in the cracks of the adobe walls. Bees and flies hummed, birds called, but above that was
silence
.

Sister Margaret took me from the garden to an orchard, the orange trees spaced in exact rows and now flowering with white, sweet-scented blossoms. A woman waited for me near a stone bench, also wearing a gray blouse and dark skirt. She was a young woman, slender but not overly thin, with pale skin, green eyes, very short blond hair, and a frightened expression.

Sister Margaret gave me a stern stare and said, “Five minutes. I’ll be in my office.”

“Thank you.” I waited until she’d walked back through the garden; then I said, “Amy?”

“My name is no longer Amy,” the young woman said. Her voice sounded stiff and stilted, as though she didn’t much like to speak. “It’s Barbara now.”

“Why?”

Her gaze flicked away. “I thought it best.”

“I mean why are you here? They all think you’re dead. Your father and mother, everyone in Magellan, Nash Jones.”

She bowed her head, showing me her hair cut close to her scalp, as though her head had been shaved and the hair was just now growing out. “Poor Nash. Is he all right?”

“No, he isn’t. He’s done nothing but brood and wonder what happened to you for a year. Same with your parents. If you could see them, it would break your heart. Or at least, I hope it would make you feel bad for being such a selfish bitch. You never even bothered to call them to tell them you were all right.”

My voice rose as I spoke. I was suddenly furious with her for all the grief she’d caused, and it didn’t help that she aroused the guilt in me as well. After meeting my mother, I’d taken off halfway across the country before I calmed down and called my dad. He must have been scared to death wondering what had happened to me. But at least I’d called after a week. Amy hadn’t in twelve months.

Then again, I hadn’t exactly rushed home every weekend to embrace my family. I’d been avoiding them for six years. I was angry at Amy, but part of my anger swung around and directed itself back at me.

I stepped toward her, right into a patch of sunlight. Amy jerked her attention to me, and then her eyes widened, her face paled, and she scrambled back, lifting her hands.

“No. This is sacred ground. You can’t touch me here.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not going to hit you, mad as I am.”

“This is sanctuary. You can’t bring her in here.”

“Bring who here? No one is with me but Mick, and he’s waiting outside.”

“I see her in your eyes. I see her shining out of you.” Amy slammed her hands to her face and started babbling.
“Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee . . .”