by Vonna Harper
Shaking his head, he released his cock and ran his thumb over her drenched labia. “I’m with you, if that’s what you’re thinking. Me and not Cougar.”
“He was here while we were having sex. He still isn’t completely gone.”
“I know.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Of him breaking free? The only thing my cock cared about was staying inside you.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
“I know.” Watching her, he ran his thumb into her opening. Then he withdrew it, only to bring his hand to her mouth. “Taste yourself again, Kai. Admit I’m responsible for this.”
He didn’t want to hear about her vision. If he had, he wouldn’t have tried to distract her the way he had. She sucked his thumb into her mouth, licked cum and more off him, and swallowed everything. That done, she did what she knew she had to.
“You were going to become a father,” she told him. “But your girlfriend—I think that’s what she was—had an abortion.”
“How do you know?”
Sparing him nothing, she detailed the conversation she’d overheard. “You didn’t say much, but you didn’t have to. It was obvious the news hit you hard. You wanted to take it out on her, maybe you did.”
“You don’t know what happened after that?”
“No. Things faded away, probably because of this.” She indicated her still-red pussy. Then, feeling bolder than she had since he’d entered her world, she fingered his cock. Liquid from both of them greased his length.
“Can you get it back?”
“I don’t know. Hok’ee, the only reason I’m able to tap into your past is because of Cougar. I think he, being an animal, serves as the conduit. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I think I do. So, without him making his presence known, that’s all there is?”
His emotion had been crystal clear during the conversation with his girlfriend. Although the circumstances were far different now, there was no questioning how important this was to him, not that she should be surprised.
“You want to do this?” She touched his cock again, a light brushing of her fingertips that brought a lump to her throat and tightened her nipples. Even as she willed herself not to, she imagined drawing his organ into her mouth and licking him clean. “Learn what happened?”
“Wouldn’t you?” he demanded. Grabbing her wrists with one hand, he forced her arms to the side. “If you had no knowledge of your existence before today, would that be enough?”
“No, of course not.” He’d pulled her off balance. So much for allowing herself to believe they were equals. “But if I’m looking at the last day of your life—”
“Then I’ll know how I died.”
Except he wasn’t dead after all. Or rather, he’d come back to life, albeit in altered form.
“All right,” she whispered. “But you’re going to have to step aside a bit and encourage Cougar to increase his presence.”
“Encourage? It’s always been a battle between us.”
But if they were capable of working in harmony, what were the possibilities? Barely able to contain herself, she nevertheless forced thoughts of the Anasazi to the back of her mind. “I have to be touching you, you and Cougar.”
The way he looked at their hands made her wonder if he’d been unaware of what he’d just done. He released her and she straightened. Then, studying her as he worked, he untied the rope she’d come to accept as part of her.
“It’ll be easier for you this way,” he said. “Now you can touch me when and where you have to.”
Just like that, had their relationship changed? Maybe.
“What about Cougar?” she asked. “Is it possible for the two of you to reach a balance? Share the same space?”
Instead of answering, Hok’ee stood and paced to the opening. He stood with his back to her, looking out at the landscape. It was late afternoon, which meant Garrin had to be impatient for her return. She still believed he wouldn’t think to come anywhere near here, but that didn’t quiet her concern. Garrin carried a pistol and kept a rifle in his tent. If he spotted Hok’ee in cougar form—
Hok’ee threw back his shoulders, drawing her attention to him. He was so comfortable with his nudity. Maybe he’d left the human he’d once been far behind him.
Ryan. He’d once been a motorcycle-riding man with a short, strong name—and a baby who would never be born.
Beyond the mating, male cougars had no involvement with their offspring, and hadn’t she read that males have been known to kill their youngsters? In contrast, Hok’ee’s reaction to what she’d told him about the abortion had been all human. How hard it must be for Hok’ee to have to turn his head and heart over to an animal. No wonder he and Cougar were in conflict.
More muscle flexing on Hok’ee’s part fascinated her. Grateful for the end to weighty considerations, she ran her fingers through her hair. It was tangled and dirty. What man would want to play with that mass? Maybe she’d—
What the hell did she care about her hair?
Dismissing the drying sweat on her naked body, she slipped off the bed and took a couple of steps. Hok’ee had gone back to staring at the world beyond the cave, and she didn’t know whether he was aware of what he was looking at. Maybe he was engaged in some kind of conversation with Cougar.
Stifling a laugh, she resigned herself to waiting for him. After hours of being under his control and hands, she didn’t know how to handle the change. Much as she appreciated being able to do what she wanted to with her arms, she needed him to be back in charge, and for everything to revolve around sex.
Shifting his weight, he turned in a slow, smooth half circle. With the light behind him, she couldn’t make out his features. Yes, his chest was larger than before, his ears longer. His limbs were broader. Unlike when he’d shifted into Cougar earlier, he still stood upright, and she saw no sign of a tail.
“Come here,” he said, the words issuing up from someplace deep in his chest. “Quickly. Touch me, before it’s too late.”
On less than steady legs, she put an end to the distance between them. His flesh had taken on a golden cast because of the thick, short hairs that had sprouted everywhere. Feeling as if she was having an out-of-body experience, she placed a hand on his chest, then pressed until she felt his heartbeat. A predator took shape in her mind, magnificent, deadly, compelling.
Then, responding to the urgency in Hok’ee’s voice, she shook off the image and opened herself to her gift.
There, the man on the motorcycle.
14
It was dark, maybe late at night, judging by the lack of traffic. Ryan and his screaming black beast were on a single lane road with evergreens growing close on either side, and seemingly endless hills and turns around him.
He was going so fast that when he sped around a turn, he and his bike were nearly parallel with the road. Much as she wanted to beg him to slow down, she knew it wouldn’t do any good. Instead of easing off the gas, he forced yet more speed out of the machine until the engine squealed. Hating and fearing what she had to do, she slipped closer to the hell-bent man until she started sliding into his body.
Ryan’s confusion and anger surrounded her. She shared his hammering heart and pulled the same air into her lungs. But unlike Ryan who seemed to be embracing danger, she feared the speed and lonely road.
“What—” Hok’ee started.
“Not now. I have to concentrate.”
A long-nailed hand covered the one she’d pressed against Hok’ee’s chest. Cougar! Maybe trying to take over. Then, fighting, she pulled herself back together.
Still exceeding the speed limit and ignoring the instinct for preservation, Ryan wrapped his body around his machine. Anger pounded through him. His rage had grown so strong that confusion had given way to the more powerful emotion. He hated not the woman who’d ended the life of his unborn child, but himself.
Determined to learn why, she reached deep into his mind. Beyond
harsh emotion lay Ryan’s memories and past, but the man’s self-protective barriers got in the way. It wasn’t just that he didn’t want her to see his truth; he hated facing it himself. Fearing she’d never have a chance again, she continued to probe.
Now she saw a boy perched on a wooden chair in a small room with posters on the walls. Although the boy stared at a middle-aged woman sitting behind a cluttered desk, Kai first focused on the posters.
Open Your Heart and Home to a Child in Need, one read.
Each Child Deserves Love.
Foster Parents, The Best Job There Is.
So this room belonged to an agency that dealt with children who couldn’t live with their biological parents. Ryan had to be the tense boy on the chair. She couldn’t hear what was being said, maybe because the boy’s distrust and helplessness was so powerful, she couldn’t concentrate on anything else. One thing she did know, although he’d thrown up a I don’t care façade, beneath the outer shell, he was utterly alone, lost.
The way she’d felt the day her father died.
The image faded. For several seconds she was back on the deadly motorcycle, but then that fell away, and she found herself at some kind of celebration. Sturdy women with long black hair were dressed in bright blouses and long skirts. Exquisite jewelry made from turquoise and silver hung from their necks and wrapped their wrists and waists. Dark-haired men wearing equally bright shirts and jeans sat in a large circle as they beat drums and chanted. Occasionally they looked at the children who moved their moccasin-clad feet in time with the drumming.
Recognizing a Navajo powwow, she wondered if she’d somehow tapped into something that was happening right now elsewhere in the state. But then she spotted the nearby parking lot filled with vehicles from the eighties and nineties, and knew she was still in the past, although maybe not as far back as she’d been with the boy.
Whatever camera lens she was looking through zoomed down and closer until it focused on a bored teenager and a man who appeared to be in his forties. The teen was trying to hide behind baggy, sloppy jeans and an oversized faded shirt. He wore dirty tennis shoes, and his unkempt black hair caught on his shirt collar.
Touching the boy’s arm, the older man pointed at a beautifully dressed elderly Navajo woman. With her oversized turquoise and silver necklace, long gray braids, and deeply lined face, she represented not someone in costume for a celebration, but the real deal. From what Kai could tell, that’s what the middle-aged man was trying to impress on the teen. All he got in return was a practiced I can’t believe you’re making me do this look.
Stifling the urge to slap the handsome young face, she pushed closer. There was no denying Hok’ee’s dark skin, black eyes, and solid bone structure.
“Just a few more minutes,” the man said, “that’s all I’m asking.”
“I don’t want to be here,” young Hok’ee—or should she say Ryan—retorted. “I told you—”
“That you don’t give a damn about your heritage. Yeah, I know. But you’re wrong when you say you don’t have any roots. There they are. What’s so hard about acknowledging them?”
“If the Navajo are so all-fired big on keeping their bloodline going, why did they throw me away?”
“I don’t know. Ryan, I can’t change what happened to you when you were little. All I can do is give you this, and the roof Carol and I’ve provided.”
More shifting, the scene dissolving, words fading, and the loneliness beneath young Ryan’s stony expression slipping away.
Fighting tears, Kai waited for what might come next. She was vaguely aware of the warm, naked body standing next to her and the hand with the beginnings of claws covering hers as it lay on his powerful chest. But though she longed to increase her awareness of Hok’ee, she wasn’t done doing what she must.
The speeding motorcycle came back in view. But instead of feeling as if she was riding it with Ryan, she now hovered over the leather-clad form, not touching, no longer tapped into his emotions.
“Something’s about to happen,” she muttered. “I’m not going to want to be there.”
“I’m with you,” Hok’ee muttered in his deep-throated way. “I won’t leave.”
Unless Cougar takes over.
Too much speed, tires hissing, and the muffler hot enough to burn. Ryan clinging to the great beast, staring straight ahead but not slowing for the upcoming turn.
Despite wanting to scream at him not to throw his life away, Kai could do nothing except stare at the turn. The pavement at the road’s edge had been attacked by weather and countless other vehicles over the years, causing it to break down. Ryan entered the turn, but this time, instead of marrying himself to the motorcycle, he sat upright, staring.
The wheels, slipping, losing traction! The cycle, tipping, tipping even more. The harsh screech of metal against pavement, and the sound going on and on.
Sparks, a fender, and other motorcycle parts flying in all directions. The too-late smell of rubber as brakes were applied.
And then the cry of a dying man.
“I was Navajo.”
Listening to himself, Hok’ee silently cursed the stupid comment. He only had to look at his dusky complexion to surmise that he had Native American blood, but until now he’d dismissed his heritage as immaterial. What mattered was the here and now, specifically learning how to survive in this land of remote canyons he felt compelled to stay in. Once he’d reconciled himself to stealing in order to fill his human belly and have a bed to sleep on, he’d been forced to come face-to-face with something even more difficult to accept than reconciling himself to Cougar’s existence—solitude. Yes, there were the other Tocho, but none of them was female.
And so he’d captured a woman in a damn insane attempt to end the lonely nights. But look where that had gotten him.
“You honestly have no memory of your childhood?” Kai asked. “If we knew where and when you entered the foster system—”
“What does it matter?”
“Maybe it doesn’t,” she said after a short silence. “At least not yet. But you deserve a past. I can’t believe you aren’t interested in it.”
“I can’t go back.”
“No, you can’t. Hok’ee, I saw you die. Doesn’t that bother you?”
“The way you said I was driving, I deserved it.”
“Your mind wasn’t on what you were doing because you couldn’t stop thinking about that woman aborting your child.”
They were back to sitting on the bed because he’d led her to it. She’d been shaking, so he had been concerned she’d pass out. He’d held her until she’d stopped trembling. Then, although he’d already sensed some of what she was going to say, she’d told him what she’d seen. He wasn’t sure how he felt knowing the manner of his death; he’d deal with that later.
He still cradled her naked body against him, just him because Cougar had gone back to wherever the predator existed when he wasn’t trying to take over. Why should he? After all, Cougar could care less about human emotion.
“There’s nothing,” he admitted. “I appreciated the pictures you drew for me, but none of that resonates.”
“Maybe later. I think, Hok’ee, that I don’t believe you were killed outright the moment of the crash. I heard moaning, and for a while you tried to move.”
Despite the hot distraction of her body, he clawed into his mind, searching for something, anything. Maybe he was simply feeding off what she’d told him, but was that the sound of metal against pavement? And that smell—rubber?
Crushing her against him, he concentrated. His right thigh started to burn, and his left wrist throbbed. Pain gnawed at his spine, and he felt like there was blood in his mouth. The sensations grew. His wrist more than ached; he had no doubt it was broken, maybe shattered. And his thigh burned because the skin had been scraped away from hip to knee. Agony now chewed at his knees, and he’d scream if he hadn’t bitten off his tongue.
“Enough!” he bellowed. He jumped to his feet, knocking K
ai to the ground as he did. Instead of helping her stand, he stared down at the pale crumpled form. Who was this woman? Instead of the simple warm cunt he’d been determined to bury himself in, she’d stormed into his life and torn it apart.
That’s what he’d do to her, tear and rip, bite and claw. Force her to admit she’d lied about what she said she’d seen.
How damnably insane he’d been to believe she could look into his past! How dare she manipulate him into freeing her!
“It’s happening, Hok’ee. Cougar is—”
“What?” Grabbing her hair, he hauled her to her feet.
“You’re hurting—”
“Shut up!”
Her sharp gasp hurt his ears, but as he lifted a hand to slap her into silence, he spotted a red mark on her cheek. He’d already hit her, something he had no memory of.
“I’m leaving,” he heard himself say. “I’ll return when—I don’t want you trying to run, because I’ll know. Understand?”
“I’ll be here.”
Here. As he walked away, his feet made a dull slapping sound that reminded him of his heartbeat in the middle of the night. Although he wanted to apologize, he didn’t dare look back at her. Neither did he tell her that he’d hunt her down if she tried to escape—or rather Cougar would—because she had to already know that.
Although it wouldn’t be dark for a while, the sun was behind a sandstone rim and the shadows muted his surroundings. Cougar was retreating inside him, no longer desperate, fierce, and all-consuming. With his mind clearer, he studied his surroundings. He’d become so accustomed to the shadows that most times he dismissed them. Now they reminded him of what Kai had said about a dense, dark fog surrounding him, or had it enveloped Cougar? More important, what had the fog represented?
No thinking or questioning. He’d put necessary distance between himself and her, and then let Cougar have his way. The beast would hunt, and in the hunting the man would connect with this compelling world. Nothing else would matter.
He’d changed direction so he was heading toward the back of the rim, when he heard a familiar cry. Anaba, in cougar form. Breaking into a trot, he looked forward to finding his friend. They’d either hunt together or, both of them assuming human shape, they’d talk. As for what he’d tell Anaba—
