Uncivilized (Uncivilized #1)

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 fuck 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.

I followed Father

Gaul to a longhouse, which oddly had a smaller hut about a quarter of

the size next to it. He stepped inside, calling out a greeting to an

old Caraican man that was lying in his hammock. An old woman,

presumably his wife, tended a fire, where she was spreading the

manioc flour over a clay plate.

Father Gaul spoke

in quiet Portuguese to the man, while patting him on his shoulder.

The man gave a semi-toothless smile amidst a heavily wrinkled face,

and it was clear that they were exchanging greetings. Father Gaul

then pointed at me and fired off a flurry of words I didn’t

understand, but clearly, I was being introduced.

The old man

beckoned me forward with his hand, and I stepped nearer to him.

“ Moira…

this is Paraila… Zach’s adoptive father.”

Father Gaul then

turned to Paraila and spoke more Portuguese. It was the language many

tribes adopted in the last century, born of a necessity to

communicate with the world creeping in on the Amazon wild. Paraila

looked at me and gave me a tender, welcoming smile as his hand

reached out. I took it, and he spoke to me. When he was finished, he

squeezed my hand and Father Gaul said, “He bids you welcome and

is happy to have you in his village. He hopes you will rest for a

while. When the hunting party comes back, there will be a big feast

to welcome us. He also says that he hopes you will take good care of

his adopted son, but by looking at you, he can sense you are a good

and strong woman, and will have no problem handling Zach.”

I smiled wide at

Paraila and said, “Father Gaul… tell him thank you, I’m

honored to be here, and that I will take very good care of Zach when

we leave.”

Paraila smiled at

me one more time, and then he and Father Gaul talked again while I

turned to check out the village some more. There were a few skinny

dogs running around and oddly, in the next longhouse over, I saw a

tiny, black monkey with a leash around its neck made of palm rope,

which was tied to a log on the ground. One of the children was

feeding it plantains and apparently, it was some type of pet, which

was very interesting, because I knew one of their meat staples was,

in fact, monkey.

Resting a hand on

my shoulder, Father Gaul said, “Come. Let’s set up your

hammock, and I’ll show you where the water is so you can

freshen up. Then you can get a nap. The feast won’t be for a

few hours, and it will go late into the night.”

I nodded and

followed Father Gaul out of Paraila’s home, eager to get my

first glance at Zach when he came back to the village.

The feast was

underway, and Zach had not returned. Father Gaul had told me when I

woke from my nap that Paraila was concerned about him. He was not

taking the news of our arrival well and had been adamantly opposed to

leaving with us. Apparently, he and Paraila fought for days over the

issue, and it still wasn’t clear whether Zach had agreed to

return to the States with me.

A large fire had

been started in an open area just a few yards from the huts, and

varieties of meats were roasted. The hunting party had come back

about an hour ago—by my count twenty-two men strong. But Zach

was not among them. When I asked Paraila, through Father Gaul

translating, he said, “Zacharias is tracking a tapir and stayed

behind. He’ll be back soon with more meat.”

I picked at the

food I’d been handed, which was cradled in an oversized banana

leaf. The hunting party was successful in killing a caiman and

several spider monkeys, and they were greeted with cheers from the

women as they came back into the village with their spoils.

The men were just

as naked as the women were except for a tulip-shaped sheath over

their penises made of woven palm. It nestled their uncircumcised

penises in a thick nest of black hair, with their testicles hanging

heavy beneath. Again, I had expected this, and it wasn’t

shocking at all. As an anthropologist, I found those societal

differences between our culture and theirs to be beyond fascinating.

The men made

short work of cleaning their kills at the edge of the jungle, and