PROLOGUE

She came to him in his delirium.

Clothed in a silvery robe of moonlight and nothing more, she whispered, "Touch me."

At the soft plea, John "Hawk" Adams lifted his feverish head from his folded arms.

Low and soothing, melodious in tone, her husky voice drew him like a siren’s song. Though his mind’s image of her was indistinct, her features undefined, he’d recognize her anywhere, instinctively, the same way an animal knows the scent of its mate.

Mosquito netting enclosed the cot, distorting his already warped view of his surroundings. Yanking the finely woven curtain aside, John slid his naked body to the edge of the mattress, where he slumped, sweat-soaked, contemplating his precious hoard of supplies.

Only one match remained inside the rusted tin can.

"Fuck it," he grumbled aloud, his tongue thick with disuse. From now on, he’d just rub two sticks together if he wanted a damn fire.

He grabbed the last match, struck the tip hard against a nail. When the blue end flared, he lit the kerosene lamp and anxiously surveyed his squatter’s shack.

In the wick’s faltering glow, his hope died a fast death. The single shadow wavering on the patched tarpaper wall belonged to him.

Why hadn’t the cold-hearted bitch waited for him? Why hadn’t she just once followed through on her promises?

In the beginning, he had guarded himself against the debilitating effects of solitary confinement, but despair had crept in anyway, siphoning off his remaining energy, feeding off his loneliness. Eventually, illness attacked his weakened immune system. He was sick and tired now…of having only the noises of the jungle for companionship, of sleeping with only the illusion of her. An apparition wasn’t enough! Only fucking her would appease the want. Only getting inside her would satisfy the craving. He would give anything, his last gasping breath, to claim her as his, to mark her as his, to penetrate her body and leave his cum behind. If not for her cock-teasing, he would have given up long ago—

Picking up the can, he hurled the rusted tin across the room, where the metal exploded against a wooden beam upon impact, shrapnel ricocheting.

Damn her, anyway! She danced for him naked against the patched tarpaper wall, night after night. Writhing, her head thrown back in abandon, her pale throat arched, her shapely thighs open, spread open, she sobbed out his name. Cried for him to take her, and then never put out, never once delivered. A cock-tease, the bane of his meager existence, and yet her seduction kept him alive long after he’d lost the will to live.

With her big tits and soft smile and moist, beckoning pussy, she not only came to him, she came for him. Night after fucking night. Performing a sexual pantomime, she climaxed before his eyes, until he climbed the walls in his need to get at her. The creative pain his prison guards had inflicted was nothing compared to the torture of wanting her.

Crazed, hungry for her flesh, maddened for her scent, he’d changed what remained of his mind and vowed not to die. He swore he’d live…if only to rape her luscious ass. She deserved ass rape and more for the hell she’d put him through, tormenting him until he had to jack off to the sounds of her release. Oh, he owed her, all right, and he intended to give the heartless whore everything she deserved.

Gasping for air, John untangled himself from the rumpled bedding. Carrying the lamp, he dragged his feet across the tiny room, collapsing a few steps later onto a surplus orange crate—his makeshift chair. His lap did double-duty as his desk; his writing materials came improvised. A piece of cloth, torn from his faded shirt, served as paper. His ink, red in color, flowed freely from his slashed left forearm.

Christ, but he ached! His bones were on fire. A toss up, which spiked more, his fever or his cock.

Impatiently swatting a thick hank of blue-black hair from his burning eyes, he willed his erection away—no way could he compose a letter with a hard-on!—and picked up a sharp stick—his trusty pen.

But his brain, like his dick, refused to cooperate.

The phantom half sentences, those ghostly phrases, refused to take shape. Did his brain’s circuitry connect to his hand? And his thoughts? Disjointed. Chaotic. A scattered obsession, a confused compulsion, going round and round inside his head, spinning faster and faster, flying out of control, the jumbled mess circling in an unending loop that led…

Nowhere.

Except to her.

Shit! Why couldn’t he concentrate? Why couldn’t he get it to together? Why couldn’t he write the damned message?

He slumped in his chair. Why? Because he hovered near death, his physical and mental condition rapidly deteriorating, that’s why.

Since his escape from imprisonment, the episodes of illness lasted longer, the attacks spaced closer together. But always, when he sank to his weakest, the green-eyed seductress would come to him and whisper, “Touch me.”

Why wouldn’t she go away and leave him the hell alone?

Sometime between the darkness of a starless night and the hopelessness of an unforgiving dawn, his mind finally cleared. His thoughts converged, grew orderly. Completely lucid, John knew what to say. Exactly. Precisely.

His left forearm clamped over his right wrist, he forced his once dexterous gun-hand to move, to shape the slippery phrases.

The individual red letters were barely legible: Abrupt slashes. Twisted circles. Misshapen dots of ink-blood spilled across the scrap of cloth. Some words stuck to invisible lines; some hung suspended. The result looked grotesque. Obscene. Anyone reading the incoherent message would think a raving lunatic had given substance to the words.

No argument from him. Who else but a raving lunatic would compose a letter there was no way in this hell to send?

Moonwitch,

A wild raptor trembles on the branch, his plumage broken.

Flight is impossible; the sky is too far away.

Will you catch the bird before he falls?

SOSays, Accipiter

Exhausted, John extinguished the small nub of brightness and gave himself over to the darkness…and to the ungentle courtship of his hand.

Fisting his cock, he viciously jerked his fingers up and down the hard length. And just like the devil’s own magic, he saw her once again. Golden fair, as beautiful as any cherished dream he had ever had and lost, she glowed pale and unadorned. When she opened her arms to him, he knew she was his.

For once.

For always.

Catherine.