Dreamwalker (Stormwalker #5)(16)

We stopped at historic sites along the way, Mick telling me more about indigenous culture than I ever knew. Even Grandmother hadn’t taught me much beyond the traditions of the Diné.

Mick knew a lot about geology too. Today he went on about how the Black Hills formed from rifts and uplifts or passing hot spots or whatever. At the time I’d thought he simply read a lot of books. Now I knew that, in his time, he’d probably witnessed an amazing amount of volcanic activity.

By mid-afternoon, Mick had dropped the college professor mode and suggested we stop in a town and rest a while. My young heart beat faster with anticipation—he really meant we should hole up and spend time in bed.

Mick tucked us into a room in another tiny motel, securing our bikes right outside the door. This motel was popular with bikers, and the ones wandering around the place were big, scary-looking guys. When they saw Mick, however, they broke into grins and greeted him with enthusiasm.

I swore Mick knew everyone on the planet. I bet myself that if we hiked to the highest, remotest place in the Gobi desert, a Mongolian would come striding along and say, “Mick! Hey, how you doing?”

That night a big thunderstorm blew up. The clouds were volatile, a tornado forming in the storm’s heart.

I wanted to pull that tornado wind to me and ride it. I wanted to blow apart every building, fly away high to freedom. I grabbed the lightning and sent it around the room, laughing.

“Shh.” Mick held my face in his hands as he took me down to the bed. His kisses were firing instead of calming, he aroused and wanting me.

Mick pressed my palms to his chest and took the lightning I gathered straight into him. I zapped him as I had the first night we’d met. Then he’d only laughed as arcs crawled all over him, crackling in his fingers.

His fingers danced with electricity now, and his smile was wild. Mick growled as the lightning ate into him, and he began to love me. A gust of wind burst through the room before I could stop it, rattling the walls and smashing pictures to the floor.

Mick had never made love to me like this before. Shrieking wind and crashing thunder filled the night as he held me down, his eyes changing from blue to soot black, fire sparkling deep inside them.

His body was hard under my hands, his skin slick with sweat. He spoke to me in languages I didn’t know, as though he’d forgotten English, but the phrases sounded highly complimentary.

I could only cry Mick’s name, because I pretty much forgot how to speak anything at all. I arched into him and enjoyed the crazy, intense lovemaking, the intimacy of being together, seizing every bit of enjoyment out of each other we possibly could. Somehow both of us had known it would soon be over.

I crashed into sleep as the storm died away and woke a long time later in his arms.

The part of me that knew this was a dream suddenly shut up. There was absolutely no reason to take myself back to the present. Mick lay beside me, sleeping deeply, a faint snore coming out of his mouth. I smiled to myself. I should record that—Mick swore up and down he didn’t snore.

It was a beautiful moment, moonlight strengthening as the tattered remnants of the storm clouds dispersed. Mick looked so normal beside me—as normal as a large man with a fantastically hot body lying naked on bedsheets could look. The dragon tatts around his arms were stark in the moonlight, seeming almost separate from him. But even they were quiet, Mick in profound slumber.

This was when I’d been the happiest in my life. I had no idea what was to come, what Mick’s true mission was, no idea he was a dragon. In this reality it was just Mick and me, no magic mirror butting in, no phone calls to tell me of another disaster at the hotel. No dragons trying to kill me, no sisters threatening to tear the world apart, no goddesses trying to drag me down to the underworld and siphon off my power. No Nash Jones butting into my business; my grandmother, the same.

My world was Mick and his world was me. I was happy, blissfully, ignorantly so.

A person could blind herself to the rest of the world when she wanted to hold on to illusion. I grabbed this illusion with both hands and hugged it to me. My true life, the Crossroads Hotel, Emmett, demons, and the rest of it, blurred and faded away.

***

We left the little motel in the morning and journeyed on through the Black Hills and into Wyoming. Ranches spread against sharp mountains in the distance, grasslands rolling by in heart-stopping splendor.

I pulled alongside Mick on the mostly empty highway and glanced over at him. He turned his head, black hair snapping out from under the helmet, his blue eyes covered with dark sunglasses. He shot me a wide grin, and my heart filled with an ache like a hot blue star.

The next morning, when I woke in another motel room, this one in Wyoming, Mick was already up and out of the shower. He’d pulled on jeans but not a shirt, the flame tattoo across his lower back peeking above his waistband.