Prologue

Moira

Present Day

I’m dizzy with lust.

Head spinning, heart racing, muscles clenching in all the right places.

I’m so far out of control, and all of my instincts yell at me to give in… to submit.

Surrender.

“Get on your knees,” Zach commands me in a low voice, which rumbles along my skin and causes blood to rage through my veins.

“No,” I whisper, even though I want to scream, “Yes.”

I know it’s coming.

In fact, I think my crazy denial of his order was done only to provoke him to force my submission. Because that’s more exciting to my senses than just surrendering to his words alone.

Zach grips the back of my neck firmly and squeezes… just hard enough to really get my attention. He had told me once that this is what the male jaguar does to his mate to earn her respect just before he impales her, and I believe it. I fully subscribe to his cultural upbringing in the Amazon wild and actually cherish the way that Zach’s character was formed by the many years he spent away from the modern world.

His breath is hot on my neck as he leans in toward me. “Don’t ever say ‘no’ to me again.”

That’s all he says before he pushes downward, and my knees bend without any hesitation. No sooner do they hit the carpet then he’s bending me forward… down, down, down… until my cheek touches the cream, wool shag, and my ass is tipped in the air to him. I give a small, yielding sigh of contentment and briefly close my eyes as I remember the first time I saw Zach do this to another woman, and how much I yearned for him to do it to me.

It was a distinct moment in my life where all my notions of cultured civility seemed to fade away, only to be replaced by an intense hunger to learn something new from this man.

Odd… because I was his teacher, and yet, here he is… teaching me.

Zacharias Easton is teaching me about a craving I could have never imagined before I met him.

Sad, little boy.

Savage man from the jungle.

Loner, warrior… dangerous at his core.

Curious man who doesn’t belong here or there.

“You remember the first time you saw me?” Zach asks as he squeezes my neck again.

“Yes.”

“It turned you on, didn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“You wanted me to f**k you that way, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You want it now?”

“God yes,” I moan.

“Tell me then,” he urges, and I can hear amusement in his voice.

“Tell you what?” I ask with confusion.

“Tell me all about the first time you saw me. Tell me a story, sweet Moira, and then I’ll decide whether to give you what you want.”

My breath comes out in a whispering gust across my lips, and I close my eyes again. I think back to my expedition to the Amazon just a month ago to collect Zach… the poor, little lost boy who had lived the last eighteen years with the primitive Caraican Indian tribe.

Yes, it was the day my life irrevocably changed forever.

We pushed our way through the jungle, our guide, Ramon, first, then me, and then Father Gaul. After landing at a small airstrip that bordered the southern side of the Amazon River just west of the Columbia-Brazil border, we made our way to the Jutai River where Father Gaul purchased an old, dugout canoe from a river merchant. We took it south, having to port several times to walk it around impassable rapids, traveling another two days until Ramon proclaimed it was time to go ashore.

My backpack was filled with all the necessities I would need until we made it to the Caraican village. Since this was my third trip into the Amazon, I packed light. I had just the most important things I’d need… chlorine tablets for my water canteen, a knife, a lightweight, portable hammock, one change of clothes for me, a set of clothes that I purchased for Zach using Father Gaul’s help in estimating his size, and some military-styled dehydrated rations I picked up in Brasilia before we caught our Cessna flight north.

Ramon, a native missionary that was traveling with Father Gaul, led our tiny expedition, hacking away at the vegetation that seemed to grow right back in place. The jungle was filled with dark shadows, so dense was the tree cover above.

Pointing ahead, Ramon spoke in Portuguese, and Father Gaul translated for me. “See the light ahead… that’s the Caraican village.”

Peering around Ramon, it did seem that the jungle was lighter ahead. As we pressed forward, I saw that we were emerging out of the forest into a large dirt clearing about three acres in size. Several longhouses were built out of slender pillars of bamboo to act as the main supports, with crossbeams above to hold the slanted, palm-frond roofs. As typical of most tribal dwellings, there were no walls, and the floors were nothing more than the dirt ground that we walked upon.

On the western side of the clearing, I saw about an acre of crops planted. I had studied the Caraica tribe via a colleague who had a friend, who had a friend, who spent some time with them a few years ago. I learned that they grew a variety of staples to compliment the meat gathered by the men when they hunted that included bananas, manioc, mangos, sugar cane, corn, and sweet potatoes. I noticed one woman walking from the fields toward the housing with a large basket filled with corn on her back, supported by a palm-frond strap that went around her forehead.

Father Gaul took the lead as we walked into the village. I saw several women throughout the various longhouses, cooking manioc bread on hot clay plates over fires, some nursing babies, and others lounging in hammocks. They watched us with curiosity, but they made no move to greet our group. All the women were naked, but I expected that. While this tribe had some minor trade relations with missionaries and other tribes, they had yet to progress to clothing, and they even shunned things as basic as loincloths over the men.