Lord of the Abyss - By Nalini Singh Page 0,47

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