(Anthology) Forever Read online

Page 2


  “Since childhood, the FBI has kept a running dossier on me. Presumably, now the CIA will cross reference that file and add juicy tidbits of their own to it. I understand paperwork makes everything nice and neat, and for my own reasons, I have allowed the record keeping to continue. In this last year, however, the FBI has also begun to watch me. Surveillance hinders my work. I cannot permit anything to get in the way of my work. Am I making myself clear?”

  Catherine held up her hand when the agent started to defend his agency. “Tell your superiors to call off the watchdogs. Advise them to stop asking questions about me. Inform them that they must leave my coven alone. If the CIA or the FBI harasses me or mine, I will disappear like fog in sunlight and you will never hear from me again.”

  Chapter Two

  After dress rehearsal at the Village, Catherine climbed the stairs to her bedroom. She was about to remove her period costume before starting dinner when her toes started to tingle, then her fingers. A dark-haired man appeared before her unfocused eyes.

  The vision was shadowy, but she knew that Hawk was the bronzed-skinned warrior who was touching her, kissing her, placing her on a bed of green moss beside the river, dipping his firm mouth to her ear…

  “Are you virgin, little pilgrim?” he asked slowly, carefully, as a man unused to speaking English would speak.

  She was afraid, but she refused to cower from the half-naked savage. “I am not wed! Of course, I am virgin,” she spat into his painted face.

  He laughed at her naïve answer.

  His laughter died, as did her pretense of bravery, when he pushed her plain gray gown and single petticoat up to her waist, then placed his enormous hand on her bare belly, spanning her from hipbone to hipbone. “Your skin is as white as winter snow—”

  “Get away from me, you Godless heathen,” she shrieked.

  “Ah,” he gloated, ignoring her plaintive wail, and cupping the curls on her privates. “And your woman’s thatch! Surely, it is as fair as the fairest of honeysuckle.”

  Her skin heated at the unseemly observation, and at the frenzied shouts of the ten or so warriors who surrounded them.

  Every member of the raiding party could see her naked limbs and belly. They were close enough to see the notch of her secret place too.

  Dear God! No one, save her mother, had ever seen her bare limbs and belly! Even she tried not to look where these uncivilized animals were looking now.

  Mortified, she clamped her legs firmly together. Frightened as she had never been frightened before, she tried to pull away from the painted-faced beast holding her down on the ground.

  The wretched swine yanked her back. Smiling broadly, and to the delight of his friends, he ripped her bodice from collar to waist, exposing the upper region of her bosom.

  The savage smacked his lips. “Mmm. These are as big as ripe gourds. I wonder how they taste?”

  More lusty shouts burst from the raiding party when her bosom was fondled over her shift.

  She squealed, swatting ineffectually at the raiding party’s leader as he tugged impatiently at her corset. He was trying to get at her. Did he really intend to put his mouth on her paps?

  Her breasts were her greatest shame, not only because of their immodest size, but because there was a birthmark on the left-hand side, a mark that might wrongly be interpreted as the sign of the devil. Her mother had warned her that no one must ever see it, not even her husband if and when she married, and that she must always—as a modest wife should—wear a nightgown to bed. Otherwise, it would be her husband’s duty to report her to council and she would be burned at the stake as a witch!

  “Stay away from me…you…you…repulsive, dung-smelling Indian!”

  “Call me what you will, but you can not wear white woman’s vestments into my village. If you wish to live, little pilgrim, you must be stripped naked. Then you will be chosen by a buck and taken to his sleeping mat.”

  Her best chance of survival lay with the raiding party’s leader, with this powerful pniese.

  Oh, she knew all about pnieses! It was said that they were men of great courage and wisdom, so highly esteemed that they were members of the sachim’s council. War, or any weighty business, could not be undertaken without their guidance. Of the greatest stature and strength, they endured the most trying hardships, and yet were discreet, courteous and humane. Theft and lying were beneath them, as they were the most reputable of men

  Where were this pniese’s fine virtues? Where was the courtesy of this man of great courage and wisdom?

  She saw none of the good and all of the bad! But because she wanted to live, to survive this day, as the savage plucked at her covered nipple, she said, “Do you have a wife who waits for you on your sleeping mat?”

  “No wife.” He grinned. “But because I am hung like a stallion, many females beg to pass a night or two in my wetus—”

  At his vulgar boast, Catherine licked her dry lips; fear had dried out her mouth.

  “You are the bravest warrior here,” she said, appealing to his obvious vanity. “As the leader, you should be the one who takes me to his wet-wetus.”

  He pinched her very erect nipple. “Hawk likes to play with big gourds on the mat. Perhaps I will choose you—”

  The savage’s name was Hawk!

  Catherine thought quickly. Now that he had granted her his name, perhaps he would grant her more concessions.

  “All I ask in return is to be given some measure of respect, some dignity. Please,” she begged, “permit me to wear my clothes until we are back in your village.” Her birthmark must stay hidden until she had his protection!

  He said nothing, but a disgusting series of unsatisfied male grunts went up in their audience when the tatters of her gown were left in place.

  But no further allowances for propriety were made.

  Her arms were forced above her head, held there by one of the savage’s huge hands, while he yanked his leather breechclout aside with the other.

  Catherine quickly averted her gaze when his male part sprang out from behind the apron, but not nearly fast enough.

  Just as he’d boasted, the warrior was hung like a stallion: His organ was as long as an arrow, as thick as a club, the end was easily the size of her hand when she made a fist. And something bubbled out from the blunt top. She was quite sure that no pious pilgrim man owned such a heathen member.

  “Do not fight me in this, little pilgrim. There must be witnesses to our mating or you will be taken by all. As is their right, these warriors will wait their turn to get on you.”

  “Tell them to go away—”

  “It is their right to see the trophy.”

  “Have pity. These men are swine—”

  “They have never seen a naked white woman before. Naturally, they are curious.”

  “No please. Don’t do this to me—”

  He heeded her not.

  Her legs were folded up to her belly. Whispering words of encouragement, the savage opened her thighs.

  “Oh, God.” She cringed at her immodest positioning. He was actually looking inside her!

  “I see no difference here. You are made like Native women are made,” he offered.

  Catherine started to cry when the male members of the savage’s tribe closed ranks, gathering around them in a tight circle, looking on, their hostile eyes concentrating on that most private part of herself.

  While they gawked and babbled, the pniese tenderly petted her fleece.

  She was sobbing now. “Oh, no. Please, no.

  “Hush,” the leader soothed, and taking two fingers of his free hand gently opened her vagina. “This must be done.”

  She wanted to die when he drew back the moist folds.

  She thought she certainly would die when he fell back on his haunches to give the warriors a wider berth to stare at her genitals.

  The males were exchanging guttural remarks amongst themselves, pointing, and gesturing, excitedly exclaiming, as they surveyed her privates.
<
br />   “They want to see your pleasure bud,” the pniese explained, uncovering the hood of her sex.

  The warrior said something to them in their native dialect and an argument ensued.

  “They are saying that because we are all members of the raiding party that stole you, it is every man’s right to have you. I told them you are mine.”

  She wept at the reprieve; at least, she need only submit to one man, to this man.

  A man who was hung like a stallion—

  And then she could think no more; she was arching to meet the delicate strokes the leader made on the scrap of flesh that he had called her ‘pleasure bud’.

  He was touching her intimately, but he wasn’t hurting her. And that made everything so much worse. Tears rolled down her cheeks when her body lifted to his touch as the members of his tribe made complimentary noises.

  “Shh, little pilgrim. There is no need for tears. You are very pretty and this is a natural part of your womanhood. There is no shame in this.”

  She sobbed all the harder.

  “Surely this is better than death?” he asked quietly.

  She wasn’t so certain. She was trembling, shuddering, writhing, and as a horrible pressure built up inside her that knotted her muscles and made her moan, the males of the tribe fell back.

  A signal?

  It must have been, for the pniese stopped his strokes and came over her, mounting her, his hardness rooting for her woman’s opening.

  He was penetrating her, his heathen male part pushing into what had just been exposed for all the men to see.

  He was hard, so very hard.

  “Oh, God,” she whimpered at the heavy prod.

  And then he was ramming past her virginal membrane, tearing it, as she cried out.

  He filled her gradually, after that.

  His length was formidable. There seemed to be no end to his male part. It went on and on, up into her passage, touching her womb, and while she sobbed on the damp ground in a woman’s shamed pain, he pushed it higher still.

  “It hurts so,” she keened. “Make the hurting stop.”

  “Shh, little pilgrim. You must take all of it and then I will make the hurting stop.”

  The warrior’s muscular body was much too large for her soft, much smaller female body, but taking him at his word that the hurting would stop, she relaxed her muscles and accepted what was unacceptable.

  He took more from her, all from her, and though she thought for sure she would be rendered in two.

  Once he was buried as deep as he could go inside her passage, he started to move, to rock, to make her feel what she had no wish to feel.

  Shamefully, after a few deep thrusts, she forgot her partial nudity, forgot that they were being watched, forgot the rough violence of the coupling, forgot everything but the seeds of pleasure he was sowing within her as he possessed her there on the ground for all to see…

  “The light is beautiful,” the brash warrior said in awe, his tight buttocks pumping between her bloodied thighs…

  * * * * *

  In the vision, their climax ended in light. Explosions of light. Catherine felt the white luminosity in every cell of her physical being; it was more compelling than even the shimmering lights of her visions. They rushed headlong into the glow, convulsing together in the bright illumination.

  In the bedroom, Catherine’s grabbed hold of the corner of her bedroom bureau, her breathing coming in shallow pants, her throat clutching. The room was spinning, the beige walls taking on a cacophony of hues, blending and mixing until all the colors melted together in one slash of heliotrope, the purple so dark, it was almost black.

  “Oh! Oh!” she panted, aloud. “Yes!”

  Her heart pounded in anticipation: fulfillment was teasingly close, radiating like stars from that central dark slash of color. If she just grabbed it, that light would be hers.

  She reached out.

  Before the illumination could explode inside her, the brightness dimmed. The man’s presence receded.

  “Wait,” she cried.

  Catherine blinked as the dream broke up, evaporating like vapor.

  “No. Not yet. Don’t go!”

  But he wouldn’t wait and she had only just begun to crest.

  Sensation had her locked in a state of consciousness that was neither here not there. Betwixt and between. The man she envisioned existed in a magical place of lavender shadows where a delicate balance of reality and dreams merged. Everything she desired was there on that plane, not here in her bedroom.

  Catherine raised her leg atop the bed.

  Fortunately, her period costume didn’t call for panties or pantyhose; she was wearing only a shift and petticoats and boned corset under the severe, gray pilgrim attire. Hot, tense, and unfulfilled, she parted her thighs and touched her labia.

  The folds were damp.

  Did pilgrim ladies pleasure themselves? Catherine wondered as she touched her dewy vulva.

  Catherine knew that Euphremia Prim didn’t self-gratify back in 1644.

  Then again, she had no need to; the pious pilgrim had had Hawk pumping between her thighs morning, noon, and night. For one glorious summer.

  * * * * *

  Hawk, just released from the hospital the day before, headed immediately to find Catherine Covington, the woman whose face had been haunting him for over a year.

  The CIA operative, whose specialty was covert drug operations, had no problem tracing his quarry to the circa 1700 farmhouse on the outskirts of town.

  Ringing her bell and explaining what had brought him to her was out of the question; he couldn’t explain since he didn’t understand his desperate sense of urgency himself. Driven by a force beyond his control to be inside her, he knew he would resort to rape if she didn’t give him what he wanted.

  Like a damned thief, he climbed in through an unlocked window at the back of the house.

  From reading Catherine Covington’s CIA dossier, Hawk knew she lived alone; those were her feet moving around up on the second floor, probably in her bedroom.

  As stealthy as a bobcat, he stalked across the wide pine floor and climbed the stairs, his footsteps on the treads silent.

  Hawk peered inside her open bedroom door.

  Eyes closed tight and facing the threshold where he stood, Catherine raised one long, pale leg onto the bed.

  Hawk’s big hands closed into fists. He was no voyeur, but he couldn’t pull his eyes away from her parted legs.

  Catherine’s ash-blond triangle of curls revealed more than it covered, showcased more than it obscured. When she parted her sweet folds, and began to rub the top of her sex, Hawk stepped into the room, his only thought to get his dick inside her.

  “Don’t move,” he spoke the order quietly. “Don’t scream. And don’t be frightened. I’m not here to hurt you. Just give me what I want and I’ll leave. Got that?”

  She nodded.

  “Now listen, I don’t want you to come just yet; I want to be inside you when you climax. Right now, I just want to look at it.”

  Her green eyes widened with fear, but not surprise; her leg remained posed just as it was so he could look his full.

  Except as a hallucination, he had never seen this woman before. As far as he knew, she had never seen him either. So, why did he feel as though he had every right to be there, as if her body already belonged to him, as though he was no stranger to her? Why did he feel as if he was there not so much to stake his claim, but to re-stake it?

  Gaze fixed on her exposed loins, he muttered grudgingly: “You’re beautiful. I knew you would be.”

  “Oh, Hawk—”

  She knew his name! And the sound of his name on her lips sent a heated shudder through him. He’d known that she must have access to his name. But there was a big difference between knowing and knowing, between reading his name in her CIA dossier and hearing her speak his name aloud, between seeing her in a hallucination…a delusion…and seeing her in the flesh and blood.

  He
knew but he couldn’t accept. This microcosm of altered reality was just way too eerie for his blood. He was hard-nosed CIA; he needed some clearly defined perimeters in place before he got into this any deeper, before he got deeply into her.

  “Start talking,” he growled. “Who the hell are you, lady? And why the fuck have you been messing with my head?”

  Chapter Three

  Catherine told herself that she shouldn’t be afraid of Hawk. That this was meant to be. But she was only human, and this tall, powerfully built man did frighten her.

  Hawk’s scarred brown leather bomber jacket had to stretch to accommodate his wide shoulders. His dark, chocolate khakis molded his muscled thighs and exactly matched his eyes. He looked fit and bronzed and very, very, confident. And he was going to hurt her.

  The pain could not be avoided, and though she accepted the inevitability of her fate, the woman in her trembled at the prospect of losing her virginity to a man she’d never seen outside her visions.

  “Are you a witch?” Hawk sneered at her.

  That simple question exacerbated a lifetime of ambivalence in Catherine.

  If Hawk had asked her to explain the changing relevancy of witchcraft through the ages she’d be able to give an intelligent answer. Or, if he had asked her to define, in five hundred words or less, the historical significance of women as witches, she’d be able to do it quite easily. But when the question involved her personally, well, that was a different matter entirely.

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t proud of her heritage. She was. She believed in the power of herbs in healing, and the calmative properties of crystals. She believed in the power of good over evil, and she felt a moral responsibility to help people in need—

  But, she’d never admit to possessing paranormal powers, not to a layperson, and certainly not to a skeptical CIA agent.

  “I have a degree in English Literature with a minor concentration in Theatre Arts,” she began. “Do you have any idea how unqualified that makes me to find employment in the current job market?”

  The agent shrugged. “I wouldn’t know anything about that. I come from a long line of military men.”