"I - " She took a trembling breath, her body rising up under his touch. "I will hurt you if you don't release me this instant."

"I'm not holding you down." Maybe he didn't know the rules of civilized behavior, but he knew a woman who bore such painful stripes on her back would hate to be restrained.

A pause. Then, "You know I can't get up." It was a hissed accusation.

Deeply satisfied with the situation, he kissed the top of her spine. Hmm... He kissed the next vertebra, then the next. "Why would that be?"

She wiggled. Fascinated by the movement, he thought about moving his hand lower, stroking over the lush curves that tempted him to squeeze and pet - but that might make Liliana panic enough to forget about her modesty.

"Micah."

"Yes?" He continued kissing his way down her spine.

"I'm all but naked," she blurted out at last. "If you'd leave, I can get dressed and then - "

"Why would I want that?" he asked in genuine puzzlement. "You looked pretty in the silver dress, but I like you even better bare and warm."

Heat under his fingertips, and he wished he'd thought to light a lamp so he could see the color creeping over her body. Since he couldn't, he indulged himself by imagining what her breasts would look like, all hot with her blush. It made his body heavy and hard in a way that had him considering if this was torture.

If it was, he'd take more of it.

"You - " She shivered as he stroked his fingers over the curve of her waist, played them over her rib cage. "You didn't want to touch me, remember?"

He stopped, frowned, decided he needed to be in a better position. Kicking off his boots in silence, he got on the bed to her gasp and stretched out alongside her, bracing himself on one elbow. "Only because I was dirty." He replaced his hand on her lower back, nudged just a fraction lower.

A long, long quiet. Followed by, "Dirty?"

"There was much filth in the air, but we won't talk of it while I'm kissing you."

Liliana didn't know which one of his statements to challenge first. Finally, she decided on the least confusing one. "You can't just assume I'm going to welcome your kiss after you snarled at me when you came in."

He stopped making those maddeningly slow circles on her back. "I did not snarl."

She couldn't stand it anymore. Clutching the sheet and pulling it up as she moved, she flipped onto her back, almost surprised when he didn't stop her. But his hand was on her abdomen an instant later - on top of the sheet this time. Thank goodness, because the slightly rough skin of his hand -

Her eyes went wide. "Your armor is gone." All of it. And while she could see pants of some tough black material, he wasn't wearing a shirt.

"Of course it is. I needed to bathe."

"But - "

He moved over her, insinuating a muscled thigh between her own, even as he kept his upper body braced above her. "I don't want to talk about anything except kissing now, Liliana."

"You -  I - " Snapping her mouth shut before she started babbling, she tried to relearn to breathe.

Micah ran a finger down the side of her face, found a tendril of hair, tugged. "Your hair is curly here. I like it." Twisting that curl around his finger, he lifted it to his mouth, rubbed. "Soft. Smells like Jissa's pretty-making lotion."

"You stole the lotion from Jissa?"

He dropped the curl, picked it up again, rubbed the strands between his fingers. "I borrowed it."

It was near impossible to think with him so close. His shoulders blocked out the world, the muscled thickness of his thigh nudging hard and intimate against the embarrassingly damp heat between her legs. Each time she took a breath, she took the primal scent of him into her body, until it felt as if he was already inside her.

"Micah?" It took all her courage to speak.

"Yes?"

Her heart a drumbeat against her ribs, she said, "Will you come closer?"

Unhidden interest on his face, he dropped his head until strands of thick golden hair stroked across her forehead, his body warm and heavy. Able to feel herself losing her nerve under the impact of him, she tipped up her head and pressed her lips to his jaw.

The wild taste, the rough feel of the bristles on his skin, the sound of his breath so close, it overwhelmed her. Dropping her head back on the pillow, she stared up at him, wondering what he'd do. He settled even more heavily against her, brought his lips to her ear. "Again."

Shivering at the quiet demand made in that voice, she dared curl her hands over the naked warmth of his shoulders, even as she gave him what he wanted. When he remained in place, she got bolder, trailing kisses along his jaw, her breasts crushed against his chest as he nuzzled at her neck, the thin sheet the only barrier between them.

It was intoxicating and a little terrifying and so breathtaking that she could hardly think. Caressing his shoulders, she tasted him again. It felt beyond good.

Opening his mouth over her throat, he sucked.

"Micah."

"You're so soft, Lily." A lick, hot and wet. She melted.

He'd called her Lily. She'd never had a pet name before. It was rather wonderful to have one now.

Then he bit her.

Her body jerked. "You just used your teeth."

He raised his head, a hotly sexual being in her bed. "No?"

"Well..."

"Shall I do it again?"

"Yes." She fisted her hand in the raw silk of his hair after issuing that wicked invitation, her toes curling into the sheets.

Smiling a sinful kind of a smile touched with the dark arrogance of his power, he gave her another sharp nip, then sucked over the spot before lifting his head. "I'll bite you other places, too. This softest place - " a push of his hips as he changed position to fit himself against her " - first of all."

At that, her mind simply hazed over.

Chapter 14

That was when Micah kissed her.

There was no build-up, no little kisses to get her used to the idea. He just took her mouth, all hot and wet and raw - a kiss as untamed and uncivilized as the man himself. One of his hands pushed into her hair, holding her head at an angle that allowed him to explore her mouth with a wild hunger that had her body attempting to arch into him. He was too heavy, too strong. Frustrated, wanting to feel more of him, she spread her legs without realizing it.

Settling more intimately against her, he made a deep sound of pleasure, his hand moving down to her throat, lower. Breaking the kiss, she gasped, "We have to stop." She'd finally remembered she was naked - or so close to it as not to matter.

"Why?"

She couldn't think of an answer.

Which got her kissed again, Micah's hand lying heavy and warm over her chest, just above the curve of her breasts. When he moved a fraction lower, she gripped his wrist. "A kiss." It was a husky reminder.

He smiled, slow and so charming she knew he planned to talk her into every kind of wickedness. She should've told him no, but he felt so good and that smile was so very tempting that she found herself kissing him.

Micah had kissed Liliana his way and he wanted to do it over and over again, but now she was kissing him her way. She was much gentler than him, her lips lush and bitable, her heart pulsing beneath skin silky and warm. "Use your tongue, Lily," he said when she took a breath.

"Like this?" A shy brush.

As he met her intimate advance with his own, he realized his hand was somehow on her hip, and that she was lush and sweet there, as well. "I like touching you here." He rubbed.

"You can't just say things like that." Whispered against his lips.

"Why?"

She laughed, the sound hushed and intimate. "I don't know."

"Then I'll say what I want." Sucking her lower lip into his mouth, he squeezed her hip, pressing deeper into her. "I want to touch you without the sheet."

A shake of her head. "No."

"Why not?"

"I don't let a man kiss me and...do other things on the first night."

"Tomorrow night?" He petted her hip again, because every time he did, she seemed to soften. And he'd use every weapon in his arsenal to coax her to lie bare and open beneath him. "Say yes."

Her hands stroked down to his back, her response a whisper. "Maybe."

He had the certain thought that he could melt her resistance, but some long-forgotten voice whispered to him of honor.

Shaking his head, he lifted it, stared down at Liliana. "Did you say something?"

"No."

Honor is what makes a man.

"Micah." A gentle touch on his face. "What do you hear?"

Looking down into her eyes, he saw an impossible kind of clarity. "Honor is what makes a man."

"Yes." A single tremulous word. "Those are the words of a great king."

"I'll go now, Liliana," he said, not ready to ask the name of the king, to consider why the thought of it made an unknowable pain awaken deep inside him. "Wear the green dress tomorrow."

"I don't have a green dress."

But when she woke, after a night spent in hazy half-forgotten dreams featuring the Lord of the Black Castle and a carnality that had left her soaked with sweat, she found a pretty green dress draped over the end of the bed. Touching it after her bath, she sighed at the feel of the fine wool against her skin. That was when she realized she'd just washed both pairs of her underwear, having forgotten the intimate chore last night after what she'd thought had been Micah's rejection.

It made her blush bright red, but she went without them. They'd be dry in two hours she thought, checking where they hung on the back of the bathing chamber door. No one would know that beneath her pretty dress, she was bare as the day she'd been born - they'd have no reason to wonder about it.

Pressing her hands to her cheeks, she repeated that reassurance once more before going down to the kitchens to make a cup of chocolate. Flavoring it with cinnamon, she took it to the great hall, but Micah was nowhere to be found. About to leave it there for him, she heard a ghostly whisper in her ear, felt a nudge toward the back right of the hall - where she glimpsed a small door. Stone garden.