"Good." The hand on her ankle tugged again.

She fisted her hands in the sheets to stop herself from crawling all over him. "Just because you ask doesn't mean I agree to it!"

Tendrils of black speared out from his eyes, beautiful and lethal. "If you didn't like it, tell me. I'll kiss you another way."

Heat uncurled low in her body, so sinful and wild that she had trouble stringing together her words. "I don't know if I want to be kissed!"

Scowling, he tightened his hold. "Why are you lying, Liliana?"

Oh, mercy. "Because you confuse me," she blurted out. "Kissing is... I need time to get used to the idea." That you want me even though you know about beauty, even though there are other women out there you could take to your bed.

He tugged at her ankle and, unbalanced, she fell onto her back. Gasping as he came over her, bracing his palms on either side of her head, she fought the urge to spread her thighs, cradle him with sumptuous intimacy. "I will," he said in that gentle voice that was so effective at chilling people's blood, "give you until tomorrow morn to get used to the idea."

It made her shiver, but not because her blood ran cold. "I want till the morn after." Before, she might have argued with him about the order, but now she'd learned that that wasn't the way to get what she wanted with Micah.

"No."

She made a mutinous face.

"Tomorrow eve." His tone said that was his final offer.

"If I decide I don't like kissing?" she asked, because he was big and overwhelming and made her lose all sense of self-preservation.

A slow, slow curve of his lips had her toes curling into the sheets. "Oh, you like my kiss, Liliana. I felt your tongue stroke against mine."

"Micah!"

He tilted his head to the side, the black retreating to reveal winter-green luminous in the dark. "Am I not supposed to say that, either?"

"Yes."

"I'm the Lord of the Black Castle. I can say whatever I want."

She didn't know whether to scream or laugh. "You're not the least bit civilized, are you?"

He gave her the strangest look, as if she'd asked a silly question. But to her surprise, he answered it. "I live at the gateway to the Abyss."

"Yes, I suppose the civilized graces aren't exactly useful here." If she wasn't careful, he'd turn her as wild. To be quite honest, she wasn't sure she minded.

The Guardian of the Abyss slept that night. Dreamed. Of the firedancers and the castle with the pennants flying in the wind. A castle with windows full of golden light and sparkling music that floated across the night-dark lake to tickle his ears where he lay on his back in a small rowboat.

"Is it time, Nicki?" he asked the man with silver eyes streaked with gold who sat beside him.

Carefully stowing the paddle so they wouldn't be stranded in the middle of the lake, his brother shook his head and came down on his back beside Micah, stretching out his big, muscled body on the blanket they'd borrowed from the stables. It was kind of scratchy, but at least Mama wouldn't yell at Micah for spoiling her soft fleecy blanket like she had the last time.

"Is it time now?" He wiggled in excitement.

Nicolai said, "Not yet."

Micah liked lying there with Nicolai by his side. Nicolai was the strongest, with the most powerful magic. Breena was the nicest, and Dayn brought the best, most interesting things to show him. Micah, though he was the smallest of them all, was the "stubbornest," everyone said so. He liked being the stubbornest. Especially when it made Mama blow out her breath and then laugh. And laugh.

"Is it time now?"

Finally Nicolai said, "Yes. Look."

Micah sucked in a breath as the first star streaked across the sky. He didn't talk for the whole time the stars fell to earth, so entranced that he forgot to wish until Nicolai whispered for him to, "Hurry, or it'll be over."

Micah didn't want to miss even a minute of the sky magic, but he squeezed his eyes shut and made his wish. It was a strange wish had he thought about it, but he made it as the stars streaked across the sky, and forgot it by the time he scrambled out of the rowboat onto the rocks that led up to the castle.

But when the Guardian of the Abyss opened his eyes, he remembered.

"I wished that we'd all come home," he told Liliana the next day, while she tried to make something in the kitchen. "An odd wish, don't you think?"

Liliana gave him a startled look, her lips parting as if to say something, but then she pressed those lips back together. Lips he wanted to nibble at again. Prowling around the bench where she was rolling out the dough, he put his hands on her hips from behind. "Did you make up your mind about kissing yet?"

"Micah."

Pushing aside a tendril of her hair, he buried his nose in the curve of her neck. She smelled of the soap he'd given her, flour and something sweet. He decided he wanted to eat her up, so he took a bite.

She jumped. "Micah, did you just bite me?"

He thought about whether to answer her or not. She'd tasted good. He might want to take another bite later. Better if she didn't have warning. "You didn't tell me what you're making."

"Biscuits," she said, shooting him a suspicious look before returning her attention to the dough. "Normally I'd do it with dried lushberries, but since we haven't had a chance to dry them, Jissa found me a box of raisins."

Regardless of her outward calm, Liliana wasn't sure she drew a single breath until Micah moved around the bench to pick up a small green fruit. That was when she noticed something incredible. "Your armor." It had vanished from his arms, all the way to his shoulders.

"Hmm."

His response startled her less than the fact that his skin was tanned, his muscles defined against skin stroked with warmest gold. "You don't always have the armor on." She'd assumed it was part of her father's twisted spell, but what if the armor had been created by the powerful magic of a small scared boy thrown into the void without anyone to catch him as he fell?

"When are the biscuits going to be ready?"

Looking down, she saw that she'd finished with the preparation. "Not long."

Micah walked over to pull open the oven door, the muscles in his arms gleaming in the heat. She felt her abdomen go tight, her mouth suddenly bone dry.

"Liliana." A deep, coaxing voice. "It's not night yet, so I can't kiss you. But you can kiss me."

Blushing, she put the biscuits in the oven, watched him close it, wanting to lick and kiss her way down those arms. "Where are Jissa and Bard?" she asked, waving a hand to cool her face.

"Playing chess."

"Oh." She went to pour a cup of tea, but her hand was trembling so hard she sloshed it. Putting down the pot, she said, "Go away. I can't think with you here." And she needed to think. He was too deep in her heart now. She didn't want to take him back to Elden, to the evil that awaited there.

But she must.

If she didn't, Elden would fall forever.

And Micah would never forgive her.

She choked back a harsh laugh. He was never going to forgive her, no matter what. The touches, the kisses... they were stolen. Even knowing that, she couldn't stop herself. She would continue to be a thief for the fragment of time that remained.

It wasn't all selfish, she tried to convince herself when guilt reared its ugly head - he'd begun to shed his armor. Every instinct she had told her that that armor needed to be completely gone before he'd remember Elden. And once he remembered, he'd have to rebuild the armor for the biggest fight of his life. But time...time was trickling by so fast. She had only until the moon rose full again, the final midnight too close.

"Liliana."

Clenching her hands on the edge of the bench, she said, "The biscuits smell good."

"So do you."

She folded her arms, stalked across to look him in the face. "I'm not beautiful, Micah." It had to be said, because such sweet lies hurt. "You don't have to say things like that."

His lashes, thick and silky and long, swept down over those amazing eyes, lifted again. "Yes, you are."

That tone of his voice was already intimately familiar. "Just because you say so doesn't make it true!" She felt like stamping her foot like some bad-tempered child.

"I'm the Lord of the Black Castle," he reminded her once again with dark arrogance. "My word is law. Don't forget to think about our kisses. I'll lick up your taste again come sunset."

Liliana was still staring at the closed door minutes later when her smallest friend in this castle full of old magic and whispering ghosts skittered over her foot in sharp reminder. "The biscuits!" Grabbing a cloth, she opened the oven and pulled them out in the nick of time. "Well," she murmured, looking down at the twitching nose of the inquisitive creature who had come to look quite healthy, "I think, for that, you get a whole biscuit to yourself."

She swore he chortled in glee.

Micah left Liliana a vivid silver dress this time, the threads so fine they picked up every shimmer of light and multiplied it a hundred times over. She would look like a falling star, he thought, and he would kiss her.

His body heated within the confines of the black armor, and for the first time, the weight of it irritated him. Still, he couldn't take it off, not tonight. The air had grown heavy with a shadowy energy that told him the condemned roamed the badlands - they had to be collected before they did harm.

"I'll return two hours after moonrise," he told Bard as he left. "Tell Liliana to wait for me." As he stepped out into the velvet dark of the night, his wings unfurling to take him into the air, he thought of her kiss. The village women had attempted to lure him many a time, but underneath all their seductive looks lay a tremor of fear, a quivering hunger to dance with danger.

He had no desire to kiss a woman who would shiver because she was afraid. Liliana shivered, too, but not because she was afraid. His lips curved. It didn't matter that he hadn't kissed other women - he knew she shivered because she liked it. Especially when he licked his tongue against hers. He wanted to lick her in -