Anasazi Fire Read online

  You’re wrong.

  “Huh?” Jane blinked as a weak thought entered her mind.

  It’s not the sex between us. It’s the love.

  Jane smiled as her heart purred contentedly. “So. Where are we going?”

  Eddie waved his hand limply at the windshield. “West.”

  “Okay.” She waited.

  “To the Elder in Los Angeles. Grab a vacation at the same time.” He stretched and moved, then slumped again. “Shit. That was sooo good. I do love you, you know.”

  She was not to be distracted. “And I love you too. Why Los Angeles?”

  “Why not?” He blinked at her. “If you were that old, with those powers, would you want to live in a stone cave? No dishwasher? No Internet? No plumbing?”

  Jane thought about that. “Uh, I guess not.” She frowned. “You mean these Elders are all over the place?”

  “Sure.” Eddie finally found the strength to zip his fly. “There’s one running a bank in New York City. Another is a writer someplace in the Midwest, I think. We’re gonna go see the one in LA. He runs a movie studio.”

  “Jeez.” Jane blinked. “I guess I was expecting something more…more…”

  “Magical?” Eddie grinned.

  “Yes.”

  “Honey, gimme a few minutes, and I’ll be happy to show you some magic. Some very special magic all my own.”

  Jane looked into his eyes and believed him. She looked into her heart and that believed him too.

  Her mind filled with his thoughts, him putting his mouth on her, suckling her, learning her all over again with skilled tongue and hungry lips. She closed her eyes and shivered with the pleasure of anticipation. Whether or not she could ever share his mystical world, or his abilities, or live a thousand years alongside him didn’t matter. Whether she’d become another special agent with super powers and work with him as his partner didn’t matter.

  He was who he was.

  And she loved him.

  She knew she always would. And that was super enough for her.

  Hot Dig

  Chapter One

  “I really don’t think this is a very good idea…”

  Marjorie Hayworth struggled with her suitcase and whined. No doubt about it, it was a definite, not-to-be-confused-with-a-passing-comment, whine.

  “Can it, Midge. You’re going and that’s all there is to it.” Professor Jen Peterson glared at Marjorie as if challenging her to respond with yet another whine. “But…”

  The word had scarcely passed her lips when her chairwoman whirled around and stuck her hands on her hips in a very un-academic pose. “Marjorie Hayworth, you are the most qualified research assistant I have available for this project. It’s taken you quite a bit of time to set up a visit for anybody from our department to go to the Tolikani Canyon site. Your knowledge and published papers helped enormously when it came to dealing with those historical authorities who guard that place like it’s Fort Knox or something. Who the fuck else would I send?”

  “Er…Dan Mitchell?”

  Jen snorted. “That twit? He doesn’t know a potsherd from a goatherd and God forbid he be forced to camp outside.”

  Marjorie nodded agreement. It had been the first name that had popped into her head since Dan had invited her to the faculty tea next week. At least this trip spared her that particular agony.

  “Jen, you know I’m not a fieldwork person. I much prefer doing research in the library or online…”

  “Too bad. Time you got out into the fresh air and got your hands dirty.” To say that Professor Peterson gloated would be overstating things. There was, however, a distinct gleam of mischief in those crinkled eyes.

  Marjorie sighed, accepting the inevitable.

  “You might just enjoy it, Midge. Honestly. Sunshine, the chance to poke around the site, pick up stuff firsthand…some folks would kill for that opportunity.”

  “It’ll probably kill me…” Marjorie mumbled her response under her breath as she lugged her old suitcase to the side of the bus and watched the driver stow it away in the bowels of their transportation.

  “Ah. Here’s the rest of the party.” Jen turned and watched several people, also carrying luggage, stroll toward the bus.

  “Oh goody.”

  With a clear lack of enthusiasm, Marjorie looked at her fellow travelers. It was her worst nightmare combined with every horrid experience she’d ever imagined, all rolled into one.

  Smiling happily was the beautiful and very blonde Shawna Adams. Shawna was studying Art History and specializing in Southwest styles. She wouldn’t be coming to the site itself, but her thesis advisor had wangled her a seat on this trip. It saved him money and probably also saved his marriage, since there’d been a rumor or two about how Shawna kept her grades as high as her hemline.

  Both were inappropriately stratospheric, in Marjorie’s opinion. But then again, when you were twenty-two and built like the proverbial brick shithouse, it probably didn’t matter how short you wore your skirts.

  Absently she tugged at the waistband of her practical cargo pants and felt to make sure the top button on her denim shirt was fastened at her neck. Not that anyone would notice what a just-turned-thirty research associate with mousy brown hair was wearing.

  Least of all Webster Jones.

  Professor Webster Jones. Greenhill College’s answer to the more famous “Dr. Jones” of movie fame. Some students had even nicknamed him “Indiana”, but he’d shot that down rapidly, saying he was from Massachusetts which did not, in any way shape or form, go well with “Jones”. Nor did he have a dog named “Indiana”.

  The tag persisted though. And the way he looked was certainly in keeping with Hollywood’s idea of a leading man.

  Because Web Jones had been blessed with just about every attribute from a maiden’s dream along with a few from the dreams of non-maidens as well.

  Marjorie sighed as she contemplated the idea of a day’s bus ride with Web Jones. She couldn’t help one or two visions of hot and sweaty sex in the rear seat, but they were fleeting and very definitely unrealistic.

  First off, the seats were probably imitation plastic and would get uncomfortable pretty damn quick. Then there was the business of managing assorted limbs into positions that would ensure bliss. And of course there was also having that bliss.

  Web probably knew how. Marjorie didn’t. Bliss hadn’t been part of her limited sexual experiences.

  Finally of course, there was the one insurmountable obstacle to all these lovely little fantasies—Web didn’t know she existed. They’d passed like the proverbial ships in the night, but with latitudes so separate that they’d been too far away to even toot their horns. He was in the English department—a professor of journalism—and her Archaeology department was on the other side of campus. While his reputation spread like ripples on an ocean of feminine yearnings, her reputation didn’t warrant a splatter on a mud puddle.

  She didn’t actually have a reputation. For anything. Which was, in and of itself, appallingly depressing.

  Web was writing a book—a novel of all things—and he wanted to get some firsthand knowledge of the setting. Apparently that setting placed his characters in the Southwest, in some past time, perhaps around the time of her own particular fascination—the Anasazi.

  Marjorie sighed. The truth of the matter was that her heart lay not in the current goings-on in her academic faculty environment, but in the past. Some thousand years in the past, when a civilization had lived and died and left a mystery behind them to plague future scholars—like Marjorie.

  What had happened to the Anasazi? And why? And the most important question of all—who were they and how did they live? What were their lives like in their cleverly constructed houses built into the steep walls of canyons? Who did they worship in their subterranean religious structures called kivas?

  This particular culture seemed defined more by what historians didn’t know than by what they did know. To Marjorie, it was a source of endless f
ascination. Their story had seized her imagination when she’d first read of them, probably played a good sized role in directing her feet onto the path of archaeology and resulted in her current trip to a deserted little corner of the southwest United States. A chance to touch what was theirs, to see what they saw and to breathe the air they may have breathed.

  A gust of bus fumes soured her nose and made her cough.

  Okay. So the breathing thing might be a bit different, since the air had definitely deteriorated over the past thousand years.

  “Ready?” Jen pushed Marjorie toward the bus.

  “Would it matter if I said no?”

  “Nope.” Marjorie’s boss and good friend grinned. “Have a lovely time. Find lots of artifacts. Soak up the atmosphere. Write many wonderful award-winning papers. Make me look good.”

  In spite of her apprehension about this trip, Marjorie couldn’t help grinning back. “Don’t I always?”

  Then, with her heart in her sturdy hiking boots, she climbed up the small mountain of stairs into the belly of her transportation.

  They were off.

  *~~*~~*

  It was the heat that finished her.

  The nervous week she’d endured making sure all the details were in place, combined with the necessity of packing for herself and making her own personal arrangements, had exhausted her.

  Midge was tired and realized it as soon as her ass hit the warm seat. Now it was all out of her hands and she could relax.

  Her laptop was next to her, along with a small pile of folders she intended to review on the way. But her attention was distracted by Shawna, whose mile-long legs seemed to be on an eternal stroll up and down the aisle of the bus. Nobody should be allowed to have legs that perfect, decided Midge. It was just too damned unfair.

  Of course, if she’d happened to possess legs like that, she might have shown them off to the world in general as well. Certainly the bus driver appreciated the sight, since one of his rearview mirrors seemed angled to give him a super crotch shot every time Shawna sat down in the front seat and crossed her legs. Which she did, quite a few times.

  Then there was Web. To give him his due, he did not plant himself next to Shawna and seduce her panties off. It wouldn’t have taken much seducing either, in Midge’s admittedly biased and bitchy opinion.

  No, Web had his own laptop open a couple of seats in front of Midge across the aisle. She could see the sun dappling fingers of light across his black hair now and again. Rather like she wanted to, come to think of it.

  Midge blinked and yawned. Foolishly, she’d selected a seat that took the full force of the sun as it rose. Even though the windows were made of filtered and shaded glass, it was hot. What air-conditioning there was didn’t seem to penetrate into Midge’s little corner of the world and she quietly unfastened a couple of buttons and fanned her throat with a notepad.

  There was little to see outside—their trip would last most of the day and get them to their destination around sunset, give or take. The highway carved a trail through deserted wilderness, lying hotly in the sunshine, offering nothing much in the way of scenic distraction.

  In the distance a purple band on the horizon told of mountains sleeping peacefully, but as yet, it was all dust and the occasional small town. As the day got hotter, even the mountains would disappear into the shimmer of the haze.

  Midge leaned her head back on the seat and decided it would be okay to close her eyes for a few moments. She could review her plans. After they arrived and the others were settled in the only motel around for miles, she hoped to walk the short distance from there to the actual site. There was a simple campground, set up by the original discoverers of this place. That was where Midge wanted to be.

  Surrounded by the mysteries of the desert, the uncluttered expanse of space and time, the quiet of a night where the stars were huge and magic…all the wonderful things she’d imagined before falling asleep in her tidy little college apartment.

  And she dreamed…

  Midge dreamed of a man. Anasazi most probably, since his hair was long, a black ribbon of shining silk down his spine, unbound and beautiful. His cheekbones were strong, his eyes…mmm, those were eyes a woman could drown in, willingly.

  He was standing on the very top of a mesa, backed by clouds reflecting the sun as it rose. Purple, red and orange flames caressed the billows behind him and he held out his hand to Midge.

  “Come watch with me.”

  She found herself rising, walking toward his outstretched arm, a heat within her stoked higher by the look he gave her body.

  Her naked body.

  Somewhere in Midge a voice shrieked and was quickly smothered. This was a dream. She knew it and accepted it as such. Her scruples could take the day off.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” His voice was sexy, as sexy as the rest of him and Midge found herself standing straighter, thrusting her breasts forward, pulling her shoulders back and relishing the knowledge that he was hers. “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  His arms circled her waist and he pulled her against him, her back to his front. Yes, he was naked too. Why the hell hadn’t she checked out the rest of him instead of losing herself in his eyes? Midge gave herself a solid mental kick up the ass, only to suck in a breath as something else poked her in the ass.

  A real solid length of masculinity was snuggled against her as he held her tightly. “I shall take you soon. When the sun has risen and I can see all of you as I claim you.”

  Midge cleared her throat. “Er…you will?”

  “Oh yes, my little one. Did you think that I could ever let you go after just one taste?”

  “You tasted me?” Damn frickin’ dreams. Always started after the good parts.

  “Your lips are sweet, Midge. I want to taste all of you. I want to drown in your juices, to make them flow as freely as the waters after the rain bathes the mountaintops.”

  Midge thought about that. Briefly. “Okay.”

  “And I want to hear you scream louder than the eagle. I want you to scream my name as you voyage to look the Goddess in the face and return to my arms. And I shall travel with you.”

  Midge swallowed. “Good to know.”

  “You will scream, my sweet one. You will scream until the name Ashiike fills the valleys and the gorges.”

  Midge blinked. “That means boy.” She wrinkled her nose. “In Navajo. I think.”

  “Are you in any doubt that I am male?” The laughing question was accompanied by an extra-strong thrust of his hips and the simultaneous cupping of her breasts. “I am in no doubt that you are female, my Midge. No doubt whatsoever.”

  Strong fingers played with her nipples, arousing them to hard and sensitive buds that he stroked delicately. Little darts of exquisite fire shot directly to her loins without passing go, collecting any money whatsoever, or even asking permission.

  Under his skilled caresses, Midge went from zero to almost coming in about zero-point-seven seconds flat.

  She sighed and moved her feet a little, parting her thighs in what was—for her—a shameless and wanton invitation. Her breasts were heating under the rays of the emerging sun and the attentions of Ashiike, swelling into his palms as he kneaded, squeezed and played with her.

  She hurt, aching for more of his touches, especially in the place that was now busily preparing for new adventures that might involve the insertion and removal of assorted gender-specific body parts.

  Midge blinked. What was the matter with her? She was about to get thoroughly seduced by a super-gorgeous dream Anasazi warrior. It was a time for panting and nibbling and fucking—not analysis or scientific observation.

  The universe swirled around her as he swept her off her feet and into his arms. “It’s time.”

  “Oh good.” She breathed in a unique fragrance—manly, tangy and yet sweet. Like cinnamon or sage or something. She’d never been much use at identifying scents. But this one—well, it would be forever identified with Ashiike in her olfactory lobes. />
  Something soft met her spine and she realized she was lying on a skin, some sort of deer or bison perhaps. Part of her wanted to take a look at it, classify it and make notes. The rest of her was blinded by the sunrise and the man looming over her. His chest was a work of art, his face intense as he gazed at her body. Muscles knotted his arms as he positioned himself between her legs, which she obligingly parted to make room. Nothing said she couldn’t help out this dream lover, right?

  He wore a small band of beads around one shining biceps, which distracted Midge. She knew she wanted to look at the rest of him. To touch, to feel—to fully experience this magnificent claiming she was about to enjoy. So why was she staring at these beads? Noting the turquoise and the white design?

  Her pussy was swollen and wet—she could feel the folds throbbing as they anticipated Ashiike and his cock. He was groaning as he settled himself, sighing with pleasure as his hands skimmed her hips, positioning her where he wanted her, snuggling himself into the vee of her thighs.

  There—she felt it. The head of his cock, velvety against her moisture, slicking around, rooting for the entrance to paradise.

  She closed her eyes for a second, relishing the sensation. Then she opened them once more. This was a time for enjoying every moment, for watching his every move, not hiding within her private physical responses.

  It was a time for—sharing, feeling, loving—for opening herself to him and blooming under his touch like a rose in the desert.

  Midge huffed out a breath of irritation. It was also no time for stupid hyperbole, so she needed to just shut up her brains and let her body take over. She stared up at Ashiike and found inspiration to do just that.

  His eyes were burning, red lights shining from behind dark irises. Whether it was the sunlight or what, Midge had no idea, but as his cock sank past her pussy and into her heat, his eyes definitely flamed with fire.

  And as he pulled back and made ready to penetrate her once more, she saw his features shift—change slightly into something more familiar.

  “Holy shit.” She opened her mouth just as he plunged deeply inside her and hit her clit dead on target. “Web…”