Lord of the Abyss - By Nalini Singh Page 0,56

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