He swallowed instinctively and felt a cool line of liquid run down his chin.

My prey.

He felt himself lifted powerfully and swiftly into darkness on feathered wings of burning light. Her arms held him close and were unimaginably powerful. Darkness, an impression of clouds, stars and the fresh scent of night raced past his senses with eye-watering speed as they rose higher in the evening sky. I thought it was still morning?

The night is my domain,he felt her whisper. Her voice in his mind swelled in a wave of warm velvety fur that stroked him from within.

The dome of the evening sky, the veil of stars and the restless moon are all mine. All darkness is mine.

Her claws dug deep into his back, and her legs rose to wrap securely around him, embracing him and imprisoning him against the heated silk of her body. His hands sought the perfection of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, his mouth sucked in the delicate fruit of her tender nipples, and she encouraged his bite. His mouth captured her breast, and he bit down with her unspoken encouragement, breaking fragile skin, tasting the sweet sharp copper of blood. He felt her lips caress his throat.

The shadows where l.u.s.t and love intertwine, the inner dark of the haunted and hunted soul, the gray veils of sleep are the places where I dwell.

He felt the brush of her tongue and the edged caress of fangs. Her feminine liquid essence slithered across his thighs and belly.

Unto the gates of sleep and death.

Long fangs slid like burning knives into the column of his throat, and he choked. Searing pain screamed across his mind only to become overwhelmed by violent, blood-tinted pleasure screaming through his body.

I am Lillith, the Hunter in the Night, and you are my beloved, my prey.Her lips locked to his throat and she fed.

He gasped, shuddering as pa.s.sion and carnal hunger rose in a vicious, unrelenting inferno. Independent thought became impossible as he felt her needs projected into his mind, overwhelming him to become his most abject desire. His arms pinned her to him. His hips drove upward as his aching c.o.c.k sought entrance and salvation in her damp, voracious heat.

She writhed against him, and he found her moist opening. Muscles strained and he entered triumphant, then burrowed deep. She gasped and he exulted in his possession. Her clawed fingers dug into his back, her raptor's claws gouged his thighs, her damp internal heat sucking at his painfully swollen c.o.c.k. She rode him, her body writhing, her nether mouth hungrily sucking at his c.o.c.k as he strove to thrust in their embrace. Agony and ecstasy intertwined and became one.

Her wings brushed him, and they stopped rising. Momentarily, they held in perfect balance, the night sky all around-no up, no down-wrapped in stars and each other, writhing, gasping as he thrust and she undulated in divine l.u.s.t, impaled by his flesh, locked in each other's ravenous embrace. Ribbons of blood entwined around their bodies as they clawed and devoured each other.

Her wings wrapped, enclosing them both, and they plummeted. Falling at unimaginable speed, the wind and her enfolding wings pressed against his back as she straddled him, rocking against him and taking her pleasure.

Plunging toward the unforgiving earth, he could feel her blossoming rapture, her trembling culmination expanding as it echoed through their joined bodies and entwined souls. A tempest of growing rhapsody rose painfully in his body; they vibrated mind-to-mind, soul-to-soul, in perfect resonance like twinned tuning forks in their mutual intimate pleasure. An excruciating and blinding climax blazed through them and they screamed, incandescent in their exultation.

Falling, searing joy and pain took him. His liquid essence spewed into her eager heat.

She released him, separating her flesh from his. He cried out in loss and turned in his fall to face the world below. The landscape of the earth was very close and he could see the temple below approaching swiftly. He could see the sunlit rim of the world. It was so beautiful.

Suddenly, she recaptured him, hooking herself to his back.Beloved, whispered through his thoughts and the searing joyful agony of her fangs took his throat once more. Music suddenly swelled in his mind.

She spread her moon-bright wings, slowing their decent. Her arms held him against her breast, her finger claws and talons digging deep into his gouged and b.l.o.o.d.y body, slowing their fall to a soft descending glide. He could feel the pulse of his heart pouring into her body, strengthening the pounding thunder of her heart.

Am I dying? Is this death?

And still they fell.

* Incandescence *

The shock of landing.

His body bucked, flinching in unconscious reaction. He felt the heavy bounce of his body hitting a mattress with his face m.u.f.fled in softness.

Sean jerked at the blankets he was lying face down on, sat upon his knees and glanced around. His eyes opened wide in the dim light. The room was cast in grayness but he could still make out the furniture around him. He was in his bed at the hotel in Luxor.

"f.u.c.k!" he swore. "Don't tell me that was all a f.u.c.king dream!" He grabbed a pillow and tossed it across the room, then flopped over onto his back.

Fire lanced him across his back. "Oh G.o.d!" he hissed and sat up. "What the h.e.l.l?" His fingers slid across his back. He winced as he encountered raised welts. He lunged out of bed and slammed the light on over the sink.

"What the f.u.c.k?" He stared in the mirror stunned. His eyes locked on a tattoo of a stylized Egyptian lioness's head biting into his shoulder. "d.a.m.n." He whistled. It was gorgeous. Slowly he turned around to see his back.

The stylized body of the lioness wrapped his entire back, the claws digging ink furrows into his opposite shoulder, down his waist and around his thigh. The tail curled around the opposite thigh. Raptor wings sprouted from the lioness's shoulders, covering his back in stylized feathers. Somehow he knew they were owl's wings.

"So it wasn't a dream." The thread of a tune began to whisper through his thoughts. Sean's eyes widened in the mirror as the tune began to pulse with a heavy Middle-Eastern drumbeat. His music, it was back! Sean stared at his refection as his inner music began to swell powerfully within him.

A banging noise shocked him and he jumped. Someone was at his door.

"f.u.c.k," he swore. "I almost had that d.a.m.ned tune." Sean grabbed one of the small bath towels to cover his nakedness and tromped from the bright bathroom through the darkened room to the door. His foot caught on something and he tripped. The banging came again.

"Coming!" he yelled out, reached over and clicked on the small lamp on the desk. He flung his arm up over his eyes and hissed. "s.h.i.t! The light wasn't this bright this morning, they must have changed the bulb on me."

Sean turned to look at what he had tripped over. His foot was caught in the strap of his Arte bag. His camping equipment was jumbled in a heap in the middle of the floor on a big pile of sand.

The knock came again only this time, it sounded like someone was actually kicking the door. He stared at the floor for a moment, then ran to the door. He unlocked the door and found the hotel manager staring at him.

"Can I help you?" he said and flinched back from the light in the hall-d.a.m.n, it was bright.

"Sir, I realize that this is the middle of the night, however your car is in the middle of the parking lot and it is blocking our guests. Could you move it please?"

"Um, sure," Sean said in some confusion. What the h.e.l.l was going on? "Let me get some clothes on, I'll be right down."

Sean shut the door in the manager's face and ran for the bedroom. His clothes were scattered all over the room and everything was dusted with fine sand. He bit out a curse, pulled his car keys and more sand from his jeans pocket, and ran to get something clean from his drawers instead.

Sean's booted toe tapped to an inner rhythm as he descended to the hotel lobby in the elevator. The new tune was still with him. His shoulders and back itched under the soft cotton of the T-shirt.

One of the hotel staff met him in the lobby and walked out into the huge parking lot. Sean found his jeep sitting c.o.c.keyed on a huge pile of sand right in the middle of the main lot, as though it had been dropped there. He did not want to think on how it could have gotten there, but he suddenly suspected why he didn't remember the drive back.

* Epilogue *

"Hey are you ready yet?" A fist banged the door of Sean's tiny dressing room. "We got a concert to put on!" It was the distinct voice of his drummer, impatient as always. The smell of clove cigarettes was thick in the cramped room, and thicker out on the dance floor of the Goth club.

"On my way!" Sean shouted back. He shrugged into the silky black shirt, but left it unb.u.t.toned. He was going to take it off during the first song anyway to show off the tattoo. The stylized Egyptian art would go perfectly with the first song from the new alb.u.m. It was the first piece he'd written after his one-year dry spell.

"You know," yelled the drummer through the door, "you would have been done already if you had gotten here during the day-with the rest of the band!"

"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Sean grumped as he slicked his hair back with gel. There was just no way to explain to the guys that he'd come out of Egypt with a problem with daylight. Thank G.o.d for sun block! He grinned in the mirror as he absently tucked his sungla.s.ses into the back of his shirt, hooking them on the collar. They thought the dark gla.s.ses were just so he could look cool. Even some of the stage lights burned his sensitive eyes. Long incisors peeked over his bottom lip, and he automatically adjusted his smile to hide them.

He hurried out of the narrow room and down the hall to ram into a small and soft body. "Oh, sorry!" he apologized, then stopped in his tracks.

"Oh! Hey!" she said. The Goth chick was stunning; exotic onyx eyes outlined in heavy black kohl, long blue-black hair brushing her hips, tight black jeans, a glittering red t-shirt, no bra.

"Hey, wait!" he called as she turned away. "Don't I know you?"

"Maybe," she grinned, turning back. "Tell you what," she dug into her jeans pocket. "If I miss you after the concert, here's my e-mail. Drop me a note and we'll chat."

"Hey, um." he said, taking her card. "You wanna go to breakfast after the concert?"

"Maybe," she smiled, turning away again.

He hurried to catch up to her retreating form. "Hey, I'm Sean!" he called after her.

"I know," she said, and disappeared from view.

He glanced at her card. "Lilli," he read. "What a weird e-mail address."

* Fini *

About the Author.

For me, writing is more than a pa.s.sion, it's an.o.bsession . The stories crowd into my head. I write them down so I can get some peace. According to my mother, I was writing stories before I began Kindergarten with any pencil, pen or crayon that I could get my grubby little hands on. Any piece of paper with enough blank s.p.a.ce became a place to draw my little pictures telling stories about mermaids with long beautiful tails, witches who could fly and wild horses.

To this day my mother likes to gleefully recite to all her friends the tale of how I cried over losing a particularly good mermaid picture that I had drawn on the back of the phone bill. She still insists that the lady who took the bill thought it was wonderful, too-but no, she couldn't bring it back. The copier had yet to be invented at that time.

I published my first story in a magazine during my soph.o.m.ore year in high school; a nice little horror story about a ghost dog and revenge against his murderer. Very lurid and very gory.

I am a voracious reader of Romance, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Erotica, so naturally my stories follow along the lines of what I want to read.

Where do I get my ideas from? Rampant curiosity. I play the game of 'What If?' with everything I encounter. Everything I do and everything I see, triggers a story to be told: What if the waitress being hit-on by a pushy guy is really a succubus?'Night Waitress'

What if Satan uses all those souls he collects for Demonic a.s.signments?'Demoness'

What if you were seduced and discovered that you caught a rare STD: Lycanthropy?'Snow Moon'

I have lived in seven states and spent two years in England. I have been an auto mechanic, a security guard, a waitress, a groom in a horse-stable, in the military, a magazine editor, a bellydancer and a stripper.

These days I work as a copywriter / editor for an adult entertainment Internet company, so I guess you could say that I write for a living. I write promotional material for my company and my non-fiction articles are published in Klix.x.x Magazine and AVN Online magazine. Last year I became a.s.sociate editor for a regional adult entertainment magazine 'V2'. A very interesting experience. I learned a lot about 'writing to order'.

Why do I write? I write to keep my sanity.