Page 11 of Coyote

"You're a cruel little man."

"You have no idea." He moved his lips next to my ear. "I want you able to hold on to me when I finally climb you. So you heal first. You're not going anywhere, big man. I already decided that part."

Then he stopped, both hands flat on my skin. His face tightened.

"What?" I asked. "What is it?"

"Nothing. I just…" He bent quickly and bit into the meat of my shoulder.

He didn't break the skin. He clamped down and held, his whole body rigid over me, breathing through his nose against my collarbone. Then his jaw eased and the tension left him all at once.

He sat up with everything loose in him again, and nothing in his face said he was sorry about it. "You're a lot to hold all at once," he said.

I looked at the small man sitting on me and decided I wasn't going to understand him by pretending he behaved like everybody else. "It's all right, little one. You can bite if you need to."

He grinned wide enough to show teeth.

I had just given him permission, and I was not going to get it back.

He climbed off me, came back with a strip of dried meat, tore off a piece, and held it to my mouth. "Eat."

"I've got hands."

"You do. Today they do what I tell them and nothing else."

He pressed the meat against my lips until I opened and took it. Before I'd finished chewing, he tore off another piece.

"Eat, big man. I didn't stay up all night to watch you pass out at noon."

So I lay in the dirt and let a killer feed me by hand. He was naked, easy on my hips, and more careful with me than anyone had been since Little John.

Little John would have loved this. He would have laughed himself stupid and turned it into the story he told at cookouts for years.

Hey, did I ever tell you about the time Big John ate jerky out of a naked stranger's hand in the middle of the desert?

Little John had laughed at everything, right until the last week, when he didn't have the air for it. He would have propped himself against a rock, all five foot six of him, and grinned at me.

Took you long enough, you big sad bastard. Couldn't pick an easy one, could you? Had to fall for the one with the knife.

Coyote froze.

Coyote's snake had come off her warm rock and lifted her head, flattening it so she looked like a rattler instead of the harmless thing she was. A second later, I heard what they had.

A horse was coming up the track, unhurried, one set of hooves.

Coyote was on his feet with a knife in his fist. I hadn't seen him reach for it.

The rider came up the last of the slope and stopped. Young. Dark hair. Rifle across his back. He took in the dead fire, the blood on my clothes, the giant stretched out in the dirt, and finally the naked man standing between us with a knife.

He folded his hands over the saddle horn. "Coyote. Jesus Christ. Put some pants on."

Coyote snorted. "Why? I don't have anything you haven't seen before."

The rider sighed and looked at me. "Where the hell did you find Goliath?"

Coyote frowned as he dragged his jeans on. "He's not a Goliath. He's a John. A Big John."

The kid looked me up and down. "Rafe's going to have a stroke. An actual medical stroke. I want to be in the room for it. Where'd you get him?"