by Nalini Singh
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.
“Thank you.”
Stepping out into the “garden,” she found the velvet green grass host to the most graceful dancers formed of stone. There was a woman, one leg raised, the foot of the other arched. She looked as if she wou
ld take flight. The sculpture next to her did look as if she had taken flight, the girl’s small body held to the earth by a toetip at best.
But the dancers weren’t only female. There was a male crouching at the foot of the woman poised on one leg, his hands cupped, as if ready to push her aloft. His face was adoring and filled with mischief at the same time, the woman’s with laughter. In front of them, another dancer stood with his hands on his hips, his expression that of a fond friend.
Enchanted, Liliana craned her neck to see the other statues. There were too many to take in all at once, but she noticed one thing. None stood alone. Not like the man at the very edge of the garden, beside a long, rectangular pool filled with water clean and fresh. Several small birds frolicked in it, diving and flicking water at one another, their chatter a bright stream of music.
“Micah.”
“Liliana.” His slow, dawning smile stopped her in her tracks. No one had ever looked at her that way, as if she was the best thing they had ever seen.
“Is that for me?” he asked when she reached him.
She held out the cup. “Yes.” So is my heart.
“No, not that.”
As she stood there, confused, he stepped even closer. “Hold very, very still so you don’t spill the chocolate.”
It was difficult to follow the order with him so near. He smelled wonderful—soap and water and warmth. The black armor covered his chest and legs once more, but his arms were bare to the sky, and his skin glowed under the sunlight, making her want to touch, to stroke. “What—”
“Still, Liliana. So still.” Curling his hands around her neck, he stroked his thumbs over her jaw. “This smile is for me, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
Then she lost her words, because Micah was sipping at her lower lip, his mouth caressing, his hands possessive. The tenderness of it made her tremble.
“Careful.” Spoken against her mouth. “I’m kissing you like you kiss me.” Another soft sip, the feel of teeth. “I like it, but it’s even better when you kiss me this way.” Slanting his mouth over hers, he took her with openmouthed wildness that made her want to push him to the earth and do things no good maiden should even think about.
“You spilled the chocolate,” he said, biting at her lower lip.
She glanced unseeing at her hands. “I did?”
“Let me.” Taking the cup, he placed it carefully on the edge of the pool. Then he rose, lifted one of her hands to his mouth and stroked her fingers inside one by one. Each hot, wet tug pulled at things low and deep within her, her thighs clenching in darkest need.
“Chocolate tastes better on your skin.”
“Don’t stop.” It was a whisper as he started on her other hand.
But he did so abruptly. “I smell blood sorcery.”
Yes. A putrid odor infiltrated the air. That of a corpse defiled, a grave broken.
“Go inside,” Micah ordered.
“I’m a blood mage.” Never would she leave him to face such malignant power alone. “I can—”
Micah snapped out a hand, closing it over Liliana’s wrist when he saw her pick up a sharp stone. “No.”
“I must.” Determination steeled eyes that had been sultry with pleasure only moments ago. “This is who I am.”
“You are not this.” And he wouldn’t allow her to be swallowed by it.
Her eyes flicked up. “Look.”
He’d already seen—the sky was turning a fetid brown streaked with red. The spreading color was no shapeless stain. It had the appearance of a skeletal hand tipped with claws. “Who is that, Liliana?”
“My father.” Her pulse turned rapid, almost panicked under his hand, but her voice was resolute. “He’s found me.”
“Not yet.” Squeezing her wrist, he made her drop the stone she’d intended to use to cut herself. “But he will if you spill your lifeblood.”
“Sorcery of his kind is stronger than other magic. It’s created of death.”
“I am the Guardian of the Abyss and this is my domain.” Releasing her hand, he gripped her chin, looked her directly in the eye. “You will obey me. Do not spill your blood.”
“Take care, Micah.” Shimmering emotions in those eyes that showed her every mood. “I’m not worth your life. You’re meant for far more.”
He didn’t understand what she meant, but saw a silent promise that she would do as he asked. Dropping her hand and anchoring his feet, he awakened the old, old magic that was of this place and that lived in him when he wished it to. Of the Abyss.
The black armor crawled over the exposed parts of his body at the same time, curving over his fingers and around his neck, into his hair and across his face in fine threads of impenetrable jet.
“Please be careful. My father doesn’t play fair.”
Things didn’t touch him in the depths of the Abyss, but he felt the care in her words wind around his heart, protecting it in armor that was invisible. “Wait for me, Liliana.” Then he rose into a sky stained with the malevolence of a dark blood sorcerer.
The magic in that stain recoiled from his black armor, from the kiss of death that was the Abyss. But it didn’t retreat. Instead, after a short hesitation, it curved around him, and he knew it had tasted the death, decided that it held no danger. It was wrong. The Lord of the Black Castle stood as the guardian against evil, no matter its form.
Arms down his side, he spread his fingers and said a single word. “Rise.”
The ghosts of the Black Castle circled into the sky in a wave of cold, the wind vicious and cutting. He knew they wouldn’t hurt Liliana where she stood looking up at him, a tiny figure clothed in green.
Around him, the ghosts formed a twisting ribbon of ice, and he knew it was time. “Hold.”
The ribbon solidified into shimmering white on either side of him. An instant later, the ice coated his armor in glittering shards bright as diamonds.
The dark sorcerer’s claw reached out again—only to scrape off the ice with a screech that had Liliana clapping her hands over her ears below. Perhaps he should’ve warned her, Micah thought with the part of his mind that remained of the man, not the Guardian, but he had told her to go inside. The shriek reverberated through the sky, through the dark sorcerer’s power, shattering the stain into thousands of lethally sharp pieces. Those pieces began to ricochet back. Hard.
Micah smiled.
Chapter 15
Deep in the castle that had once been the heart of Elden, the Blood Sorcerer fell to his knees with a bone-chilling scream, his entire body covered with hundreds of cuts seeping thickest crimson. He hadn’t seen this much of his own blood in decades.
A banging on the door.
“Leave me!” He couldn’t be discovered in such a weakened state.
Hissing out a breath, he struggled to his feet—it had been a mistake to probe that realm. It was protected by something that had never welcomed the dark magics.
He had ever hated the wall of black that stood between him and the vicious nightmare of the Abyss. Oh, he cared nothing for the sorcerers trapped within, but if he ruled the Black Castle, he would have access not only to wealth incomparable, but also to all that power. Sweet, deadly, beautiful power.
But he couldn’t go there. Not yet.
However, there were others who could—because though he called her stupid, his daughter was very smart, smart enough to have found a way to hide in the one place he wouldn’t follow. His minions didn’t understand why he wanted her back, didn’t comprehend that she was his possession. None of his possessions had ever dared leave him.
He was going to hurt Liliana a great deal when he dragged her back. She’d beg him for death by the time he was done. Maybe he’d give it to her…or maybe not. His daughter was his most amusing toy. But before he could indulge himself with her, he had to find her.
Swiping the blood from one of his cuts, he fed it to the palm-sized spider on his desk. “It’s time, I think, to awaken your brethren.”
Chapt
er 16
Liliana’s ears were still ringing an hour later. “Have you ever seen anything like that before?” she asked Jissa as they sat in the stone garden, shelling nuts simply because they wanted to be out in the sunshine after the cold. Goosebumps broke out on Liliana’s arms at the memory.
Reaching over, Jissa rubbed at her skin with a tsking sound. “Always here. The ghosts. Always here.” She removed her hand after a comforting pat. “Never saw them do that before, never, ever.”
“Their power was different.” It had tasted of death, but been pure in a way her father’s magic never would be. “Jissa,” she said, still thinking of death, “does the thought of the Always scare you?”
Jissa gave her a curious look. “Why would it? Happiness and golden magic, that is the Always. I would like to see it, yes, I would.”
“Yes.” Yet her kind friend remained trapped on this earth because of whatever it was the Blood Sorcerer had done to her when he’d killed her, stolen her life force. “Jissa…I’m sorry.”
“Why?”
“You’ll know one day.” Until then, Liliana would steal a little more time with the first true friend she had ever had. “Here.” She handed the brownie a funny-shaped nut. “It matches the rest of this castle’s inhabitants.”
The other woman laughed, but the sweet sound was drowned out by the roar of violent rage that came from within the castle. Placing the basket of unshelled nuts haphazardly on the ground, Liliana stood. “Micah.”
“Liliana, don’t!”
She didn’t listen, running headlong toward the house. Huge hands clamped over her arms before she would’ve raced over the doorstep. Bard’s eyes were liquid dark with sorrow, the shake of his head slow, so slow.
“Let me go.” She forced herself to sound calm, though her blood thundered through her veins. “Please, Bard, let me go.”
“Liliana.” Jissa’s breathless voice. “You mustn’t, no, no. He is a monster, a terrible monster, when the curse is upon him.”