For him.

His smile was probably very uncivilized.

Liliana went as if to rise, but he stopped her by the simple expedient of stroking her with his tongue once more. Trembling, she held her position. "You were terrifying," she said. "But you were rather beautiful, too."

He liked that answer, liked that she'd seen both beauty and danger in him. What he liked even better was that when he reached down and rubbed his finger on that little nub at the apex of her thighs at the same time that he kissed her long and deep in her most secret place, she made a hotly feminine sound before her body clenched and grew even more slick for him. Lapping up the proof of her pleasure, he inserted a finger inside her again.

"Micah!"

Tiny muscles clenched on his finger over and over again as tremors shook her frame. Pleased, he stroked his hand over her hip until she stopped trembling. "No, Lily," he murmured when she would've pulled away. "I'm not done."

He'd never had a woman, never wanted any of the silly village creatures so rank with fear. After a while, that part of him had seemed to go to sleep, leaving him the perfect Guardian, cold and without need of any kind. Then had come Liliana. A woman who looked at him as if he was wonderful, told him fantastical tales and filled his castle with laughter. He wanted to lick and suck and bite at her until he knew her every pleasure point, her every sensual weakness. "I like the taste of you."

"Micah, if you - " A short scream as he covered her with his mouth again.

This time, he decided to try little flicks and licks using his tongue, rubs with his thumb and sucks with his mouth. Lifting away his lips when she began to buck against him, he played his finger through her slickness before sliding it inside...then adding another. Quivering, she gasped, but didn't ask him to stop. So he pumped his fingers, slow and deep and again. Her body clamped down on his, tight as a fist. Tighter.

His cock surged.

Feeling her spasms subside into shuddering aftershocks, he withdrew his fingers and pulled her down to sit on his lap, ensuring her nakedness met the pulsing rigidity of his own. Soft and wet, she tensed, then folded back against him, boneless. "I gave you much pleasure, Lily."

He saw her lips curve up at the corners as she lay with her eyes closed, her head against his shoulder. "You sound quite satisfied with yourself."

"I am." Reaching forward, he pulled up her dress, ignoring the small attempt she made to slap away his hands. "I like looking at you," he murmured, and her hands dropped. When he'd exposed her thighs, a paler shade than the honey-brown of her skin where the sun had caressed it, he put his hands on them. It made her shift on him, causing his arousal to nestle more snugly into the hot, wet place between her thighs.

His hands clenched on her, his head dropping back.

The feel of it was so raw, it took him long moments to realize Liliana had gone motionless. "Micah?" Her hand closing over his. "Will you come inside me now?"

"No." He wanted to try this first. "Move on me, Lily," he whispered, nuzzling at her throat.

He saw color tinge her skin, but she didn't deny him, sliding along his hard flesh in small, sensual movements that made his arousal throb. Groaning, he shifted his hands up to close over her breasts. She gasped, her nipples tight points against his palms through the dress, but didn't stop the hot little movements of her body over his cock.

Hands tightening on her breasts, he buried his face in her neck and urged her to speed up with harsh murmurs against her skin. When she did, pleasure shot a lightning bolt through his body, so primal and raw that he knew he wanted to experience it again and again and again.

He tensed before he spilled, clenching his jaw until his bones grated against one another. "Stop."

"Did I do something wrong?"

"No." Petting her breasts, he took a deep breath, lay back. "I want to see your face."

Liliana rose to her feet at his urging. Her cheeks were red when she turned around, but it was pleasure that colored them, not embarrassment. When she touched her fingers to his lips in a shy caress, he pretended to bite. Her laugh was husky, only for him.

Pleased, he pushed up the front of her dress and tugged her forward to straddle him. Her mouth opened in a shocked gasp as their bodies came together, his cock sliding through her delicate folds. "Micah."

He smiled and claimed a hot, deep kiss, realizing the position allowed his cock to rub up against that sensitive nub, the one he was going to suck on when he had her naked and spread out on his bed. For now, he clasped his hands on her bottom and began to rock through her folds over and over again with her lush cooperation, feeling pleasure build up hot and dark along his spine. His cock jerked as she whimpered, went liquid around him and then his own release had him in a grip hard and brutal.

"That was good," he murmured afterward, collapsing against the chairback with her limp against his chest. "Next time, I'll be inside you."

Chapter 18

Liliana couldn't look Jissa in the eye that afternoon as they began to set the great hall to rights. She could still feel the heat of Micah's breath on her intimate flesh, the shocking wetness of his seed against her thigh, the rough clasp of his hands on her bottom. He'd left marks, he'd held on so tight at the end, but unlike with the scars on her back, Liliana had found herself twisting in front of the mirror to examine these with a sinful lash of heat.

They'd disappear within the next day or so, but until then, they were a physical indication of not only her own pleasure, but of Micah's. There was going to be pain, terrible pain, when she told him her lineage, but nothing and no one could ever steal this truth from her - that she'd brought him to that extremity of need, of desire.

"Liliana," Jissa said, and from the tone of her voice, she'd been trying to get Liliana's attention for a while.

"I'm sorry." An ache in her heart, entangled with memories of a most beautiful sin. "I was woolgathering."

But Jissa didn't smile or scold her. "He is not himself," she said, "not at all, oh, no, when the curse is upon him. You must not blame him." Distress in every word, in those dark button eyes. "Oh, please, don't - "

"He didn't hurt me," Liliana managed to get in when her friend paused to gulp in a breath. "He didn't, Jissa. Please believe me."

"He is so fearsome, big and wild and terrifying."

"Yes," Liliana agreed, putting broken dishes on the cracked but usable table. "But inside, he is still the Lord of the Black Castle." Her father had tried to twist the soul of the child Micah had been, and succeeded only in twisting the physical shape of him. "Kindness and a little flattery will calm him if you ever find yourself alone with the beast."

Jissa's eyes were huge. "Oh, no, never. Not me. I'm not brave like you."

Liliana thought of how she'd cowered under her father's whip, how she'd lain weak and starving in his filthy dungeons, and knew she wasn't brave. But she didn't say that to Jissa, who finally looked more like herself. Instead, sweeping up the remains of what might've been a chair leg, she asked, "Where is the lord, do you know?" He'd been nowhere to be seen when she'd returned from cleaning herself up - and putting on her now-dry underwear.

"The village elder, sharp and pointy man, came here. A scourge of Bitterness in the village, you see." Seeing Liliana's confusion, she said, "Many arms and feet they have, yes, they do, and they are covered in black, so black, fur. Small creatures, so much trouble. Trouble, trouble."

"Are they creatures of the Abyss?"

Jissa shook her head. "Oh, no, they are simply drawn to the Black Castle. Home, it is, home from long, long ago. But rice and potatoes they love, tsk tsk. Stealing rice and potatoes."

Liliana laughed at the idea of these pieces of "Bitterness" eating their way through potatoes with relish. "What does Micah do with them?"

"He brings them back home," came a familiar male voice from the doorway.

Turning, she found Micah standing there, fully armored again - and surrounded by a small sea of furry little creatures who were making the oddest chittering sounds. Before she could say a word, Jissa put her hands on her hips. "No, no! Pests! No pests in my kitchen!" the brownie said in an unexpected show of temper.

"They've promised to behave." Micah smiled, slow and coaxing, and Liliana all but saw Jissa melt. "They'll only be here for a while. Something scared them and so they've come to hide until the badness is gone."

Liliana felt a chill in her heart. "What is this badness?"

"Bad magic," Micah said. "The Bitterness were created to sense bad magic, and eat it up. But they are too small, and can only eat small bad magics."

And the Blood Sorcerer's magic, Liliana thought, was huge and ever growing. Had she needed one, this was the final sign that there was no more time - she would tell Micah the truth tomorrow, hope he would remember...hope he wouldn't hate her.

That night, while Micah was gone hunting the souls destined for the Abyss, Liliana dreamed of huge spiders as big as horse carts. Their eyes were a malignant red that burned, until she couldn't look at them without tears of blood streaking down her cheeks. And yet she knew she couldn't look away, for their legs were lined with razors, their mouths with knives.

Then she fell, and they were on her, cutting and tearing and ripping.

It was her own scream that wrenched her out of the nightmare.

Sitting up in the huge black bed in the room that belonged to the Lord of the Black Castle, his shirt - the one she had borrowed from his closet, though he had ordered her to sleep naked - stuck to the sweaty film on her skin, she bit the inside of her cheek, creating enough blood magic to open her palm on a ball of light. It floated to the ceiling, bathing everything in a soft glow. There were no spiders in the corners, or if there were, the small creatures were too shy to bother her.

But it wasn't those insects that worried her. "They are coming," she said to the mouse who watched her from the windowsill, his tail twitching as if he sensed it, too. "The Arachdem are coming."