Prologue

       “Jack,” she breathed out. “What are you doing to me?”

       Wai Ashley awoke on a gasp. In a cold sweat, her dark nipples stabbing against the wet silk of her nightgown, it took her a long moment to come to terms with the fact she had been dreaming.

       This wasn’t the first time she’d had the vision. Indeed, she’d been abruptly awoken from the man who haunted her sleep on many an eve these past twenty-six years of her life.

       Jack Elliot.

       Who was he?

       Where was he?

       And what did he want with her?

       She sighed. “You’re being ridiculous,” Wai murmured. He didn’t want anything from her because he wasn’t real. Jack Elliot didn’t exist.

       She needed to get that fact through her thick skull once and for all. He wasn’t a real man. He was a nighttime hallucination—nothing more, nothing less.

       A part of her wished that Jack was more than a passing mirage in a cold, lonely desert night. All these years of dreaming about him and she still knew little of him, though what she did know about her mythical lover more than made up for the parts she didn’t.

       Strong. Tall. Tan. Solid muscles. Long, light brown hair with streaks of gold woven through it. Incredible body. And a really huge—

       Wai frowned. He didn’t exist. There was no use in dwelling on the made-up physical attributes of a fictitious man. Jack, she had long ago decided, was a figment of her overactive imagination. Perhaps a make-believe friend she’d developed in her less than perfect, and often times abusive, childhood.

       The only problem with that theory was that Jack…well, he’d been there with Wai from the crib through womanhood. Warm, protective—almost paternal—from infancy through adolescence. He’d cradled her through all the tears, murmured soothing words to her she hadn’t understood but which had somehow helped regardless…

       Scared all the ghosts inside her away.

       Jack Elliot had been her rock in the darkest hours of her childhood. Her mental protector. Wai’s drunk of a father could beat her body, but he could never take her mind. Her mother could whip her into a bloody pulp, but she never managed to break Wai’s spirit.

       All thanks to her loving, strong, invented protector.

       When she’d hit puberty, though, Jack had changed somehow. He wasn’t less a hero—just more a man. A primal, arrogant male that demanded total attention—and absolute obedience. It was almost as if he’d waited for her to grow up so he could claim her as his possession.

       More than once since hitting puberty, just like tonight, she’d awoken from a violent orgasm courtesy of mythical Jack. He’d leave her gasping and moaning, writhing beneath his knowing hands as she begged for his calloused touch.

       She just wished she could stop dreaming about him altogether. Because of Jack and his nocturnal lovemaking in the world of slumber, no real man had ever been able to compare.

       Lying back down, Wai tightly pulled the covers around her. There was no time to ponder the mythical man her brain had named Jack Elliot. She needed sleep. Tomorrow was a big day. She had waited for this moment ever since she’d decided to go to college. If the ad agency hired her on, the next day could very well mean a turning point in her career.

       “Go away, Jack,” she whispered to the walls, to no one. She was always alone. How would she ever find happiness—completion with a real man—if her fantasy lover haunted her every night?

       Wai blew out a tired, groggy breath of air. “Let me go.” She determinedly closed her eyes. “I’m not a scared little girl anymore. It’s time to let me go, Jack.”

* * * * *

       Major Jack Elliot frenziedly pumped his long, thick cock with his left hand. His eyes were tightly shut, his teeth gritting. Beads of sweat dotted his hairline as he imagined himself pounding into her sticky, wet flesh.

       Over and over. Again and again and again.

       He knew he shouldn’t be touching himself like this. The preachers all said God forbade it. Said he’d go to hell for wasting his seed outside a wife’s body. But she was always there, his intoxicating witch. For as long as he could remember being able to get hard, her imaginary body had summoned him to do things to it he knew he shouldn’t.

       Fuck it. Jack had done a lot worse in his life in the name of freeing his countrymen from the dominion of Great Britain and the king than spill fruitless seed.

       He pumped his shaft harder, mercilessly, his jugular bulging and muscles tensing with the effort. He came on a low growl, his cock jerking in his hand, his vein-roped arm bulging, as cream spewed out on his belly.

       Sweet God.

       She was Indian. A Lenape, he supposed. He didn’t know her name, but her face had haunted more dreams than he cared to think back on.

       Long, inky-black hair. Light brown eyes. Thick black lashes that outlined her eyes with a natural kohl that would have made the legendary Cleopatra jealous. Luscious lips. A round bottom…

       And the tightest cunt a man could ever dream of owning.

       “Who are you?” he rasped, his voice sounding scratchy. Jack had barely recovered from the last battle with King George’s men and yet tonight he was already back to pumping himself like a man possessed. “What do you want from me?”

       Silence.

       Jack drew in a deep breath and slowly expelled it. His unblinking blue eyes stared at the animal hide tent he laid in as if they held all the answers. He wished they did.

       Sighing, he tucked his half-erect penis back into the flap of his pants. Rolling to his side, he closed his eyes and determined to fall asleep. Preferably without her waking him up again.

       His jaw tightened. He would need his energy come dawn. There was no use in dwelling on a woman that didn’t exist.

       Especially not on a maple sugar skinned female the laws of the civilized Christian world forbade him from ever taking to wife.

Chapter 1

One year later

       “This is ridiculous,” Wai muttered to herself. She squinted her eyes, trying to see past the slashing rain beating down on the windshield of her rental car. The wipers were set at full-speed, but it didn’t seem to help. “Great,” she sighed. “This is just perfect.”

       She was driving down Interstate 77 in the middle of rural Ohio. The Akron-Canton Airport was a goodly ways behind her. She didn’t know how much further her destination was in front of her because it was getting increasingly difficult to read the small green signs to the right of the road.

       Leave it to her boss, Greg, to give her an account that took half of forever to reach! He’d had it out for Wai since day one for reasons unknown. Didn’t like the competition, she supposed, and especially not from a woman.

       Not that it mattered. She planned to leave the ad agency in Columbus, North Carolina behind in a few months and move on to bigger fish in bigger ponds. Namely, she had her eye on Manhattan, and on becoming an advertising rep at one of the prestigious firms dotting the New York City skyline.

       Wai had several interviews lined up with various Big Apple advertising agencies. Ordinarily she would have bickered with Greg over taking on a seemingly impossible task such as her current assignment, but Wai figured that if she could turn rural, Amish-settled Millersburg into a coveted tourist attraction, then, well…she was a shoo-in for Manhattan.

       She would, come hell or high water, do what the mayor of Millersburg had hired her ad agency to do and get the tiny little Ohioan town on the proverbial map. And then Wai would, finally, get out of North Carolina.

       That’s how she was—stubborn to the bone. Once she set her mind on a goal, she worked her ass off to attain it. It was the very same way when, at the vulnerable age of eighteen, she’d made the decision to leave her native New Zealand behind.

       Moving to America on her own had been difficult at best and downright terrifying at worst, but she’d done it—and thrived. New Zealanders spoke the Queen’s English so language hadn’t been an obstacle in the beginning, but culture had. English speaking she might be, but she was Maori—one of the indigenous people of her native country. A New Zealand Indian, if you will.

       If there was one thing Wai was great at, though, it was getting past cultural barriers. Her body was voluptuously Rubenesque, which she considered a fault even if others didn’t. But more importantly, she had been blessed with a warm, inviting smile that emanated the sincerity and honesty of her heart. Her eyes, almond-shaped and lighthearted, danced with joviality and inward happiness.

       But mostly, Wai reflected, she was also something of a talker! Never at a loss for words, she was able to make any person feel instantly at ease around her. Her gabby nature had served her as well, if not better than, the eyes and smile she’d inherited from her beloved, deceased grandmother.

       No matter what it took, she resolved, steering the rental car toward the first exit she could halfway make out, she would get this assignment completed. If she could overcome her less than idyllic childhood and carve out a new life in a different land, she could also make Millersburg a happening spot.

       Even if that meant bringing cow shit, corn husking, and Amish fashions en vogue.

       Wai broke from her reverie as she spotted a highway patrolman near the end of whatever exit she’d just taken. Wearing a neon orange rain slicker so drivers like herself who’d been blinded by the downpour of rain could see him, she pulled her car up alongside his to ask for directions to the country inn she held reservations at.

       “It won’t happen!” the older, potbellied officer informed her, his voice loud to be heard above the relentlessly pounding rain. “The entire county is on a flood watch and the Tuscawaras River had already overflowed!”

       Shit.

       “What should I do?” Wai shouted back. “I’m not from around here. Is there a motel close by?”

       The officer inclined his head as he pointed toward a road Wai could barely make out. “Head east!” the patrolman shouted. “You’ll hit a small little motel on the right about five miles on down the road. It ain’t nothing fancy-schmansy, but the sheets are clean and the food is hot and good!”

       At this point, that sounded like music to her ears. “Okay!” she shouted back over the noise of the downfall, “thanks!” Offering him a quick smile, Wai squinted her eyes and wound her way as fast as she safely could up the small, country road.

       The weather was unreal. Never before had she seen rain pound down so mercilessly from the sky as it did in rural Ohio. The last thing she needed was to be caught up in a flood. She’d take the officer’s advice and heartily park her butt in the motel with the clean sheets and hot food.

       Five miles later, she did just that. Wai breathed out a sigh of relief as she made out the words ZEISBERGER INN. The sign was old and dilapidated, the neon flashes barely working, but she managed to see it and pull into the creaky motel’s solitary driveway regardless.

       Clean sheets and hot food, she thought on a relieved breath. Bring it on.

* * * * *

       The day turned into evening, the evening into nightfall, and the rain continued. Still full from dinner, Wai fell onto the bed with a groan.

       It was difficult enough to pass up gourmet cuisine, but homemade country food? Buttered beans, freshly made bread with apple butter, creamy mashed potatoes, turkey, chicken, gravy—and, she thought on a whimper, the best slice of cherry pie a la mode she’d ever tasted. Her belly was so full she felt an inch away from popping.

       Rolling onto her back with a sigh, Wai stared up at the ceiling. Her mind was blank, her ears attuned to the sound of the steadily falling rain above her. The downpour hadn’t quit altogether, but she could tell it was at least lightening up. Thank God for small miracles. Hopefully she could get back on track by tomorrow.

       Yawning, she stretched out like a sleepy cat and closed her eyes. Surely the rain would be gone by the time she awoke. Then she could get back to the business of finding Millersburg.

* * * * *

       “Jack…”

       Wai jolted upright in the four-poster bed, her brown eyes wide. Breathing heavily, her gaze darted about the small room as it took her a moment to realize she’d been dreaming.

       Oh shit.

       Jack Elliot. He was back.

       She had wished him away about a year ago, and away he had went. There had been no dreams of the mythical man ever since that night she’d asked him to leave. There were times she had missed him, occasions when she’d been half-tempted to lie down and conjure him back, though she refused to admit it aloud.

       Wai had wanted then just as she wanted now: to get on with her life without Jack. To take care of herself and find happiness with a real man—not an imaginary one. Still, one whole year later, hauntingly vivid memories of her dream lover kept her from reaching that goal. The memories didn’t come often, but tended to rear their ugly head whenever Wai was sizing up a potential date.

       No man could possibly compare to territorial, lusty Jack.

       And that very fact was what made the newest vision so troubling now. She had worked hard to forget him—very hard. Nevertheless, he’d found his way back to her.

       The dream this time wasn’t like before. Jack hadn’t been making love to her. He’d been angry with her, the emotion almost frightening in its intensity. He felt betrayed by her, as if she’d abandoned him. Jack had lost his possession and he was taking to it none too kindly.

       “Stop this!” Wai chastised herself through gritted teeth. She ran two punishing hands through her long, black hair and fell back onto the bed. “Jack Elliot does not exist. Jack Elliot does not exist.” She closed her eyes as tightly as possible and repeated the mantra over and over again.

       But he felt so real, smelled so real…

       Was she losing her mind? Was this what it felt like to be schizophrenic?

       “Go away,” she pleaded, her breath catching in the back of her throat. “Please, Jack…please let me go.”