From that day onwards Meremon touches me every chance he gets, gently pulling me into his arms first thing in the morning and kissing me and wrapping his body around mine from behind as we work in the lab. His cold hands and mouth are tender on my skin and I find myself torn between wanting him and fearing what he’s doing to me.

One afternoon he slowly rucks my skirt up and runs his finger along my sex, back and forth, while I pant with need. I open my legs for him and he whispers in my ear how sweet I feel as he rubs slow circles on my pearl. My back is tight against his chest as he holds me to him with one strong arm. When I shatter he buries his face in my neck and crushes me against him, and I only want him to hold me tighter.

Being in his arms is the sweetest feeling I’ve ever known, but with each embrace the guilt becomes worse.

Finally one morning I push him away. “Enough. I am not here for this. There are people in my village who are sick, including my own sister.”

He lifts my left hand to his mouth and kisses my palm. I have the impression he’s not listening to me as his eyes are on the swell of my breasts beneath my gown. “It is too soon.”

I snatch my hand back. “I don’t believe you! I think you’re lying to keep me here.”

If I make him angry with this accusation he doesn’t show it. Instead he sits down on one of his work tables and scoops me into his lap. With gentle fingers he smooths the hair off my neck and plants a row of kisses there. “Nonsense, my Rhona. I am the only sorcerer in these parts. I refuse no request for help.”

“People have died in the village from magical diseases these past few years and you didn’t help them,” I point out, trying to wriggle of his lap but failing.

He keeps kissing my throat, murmuring, “No one told me they were sick. You are the first person to ask for my help since your father came to me about you.”

I realize he’s right. No one dared go up on the mountain after he marked me. They were too afraid what he would do to them.

“I still feel like we should go now. It’s not right that they lie ill while…” While you make me feel like I’m the most precious thing in the world. I’ll see in their eyes how despised I really am as soon as we go down into the village so it’s better we go now before I start believing the way you make me feel.

“I told you, deliciae. I’m not a healer. A necromancer is only of use to a sick person once they are truly dying. Do you remember all that black in your veins that I spat out into the fire? It was your death and the sickness mixed together, which was how I was able to draw the sickness out. I was just in time. I found you and saved you in the same moment.”

“Please don’t say such things,” I moan.

Meremon starts to work on the lacing of my dress. “But why?”

“Because my heart isn’t strong enough to resist them.”

His hand slips inside my dress and splays across my breasts. “I don’t want you to,” he breathes in my ear. I lean back against him, my eyes closing. He goes on murmuring soft words and fondling me. “I’ve thought of a way to satisfy you properly. Can I do that, deliciae?”

“You are asking this time?” I say, breathing hard as his thumbs rub firmly over my nipples. He wants to take me to bed. I should say no because though he calls me his bride I am not his wife and never can be. As soon as the children in the village are healed I must return, because my life is there.

But until then, who’s to know what happens all the way up here in the mountains? As if he knows the direction my thoughts have taken Meremon smiles against my throat.

There is a shuffling sound and I look up and see Filax’s blank gaze directed at us as Meremon keeps loosening my clothing. “Send him away, Meremon.”

“No, we need him for this.”

My eyes open wide. “We need Filax?”

As I watch the lich’s flesh begins to shift and between his legs the parts of a man form, a thick penis with a ridged head and two fleshy balls. He’s erect and takes himself in his hand, rubbing his length with a hand that looks, I notice for the first time, a lot like Meremon’s.

“Yes, we do. Or rather you do.”

I realize what he means and try to pull myself out of Meremon’s arms. “You can’t, Filax is dead—”

“If you keep struggling I will have to cast a spell on you.”

“No, listen, that’s—”

“Soporus.”

It’s as if a warm blanket has been dropped over me and I sag in Meremon’s arms. He carries me in his arms over to a sofa at the side of the room and sits down with me in his lap. His spell dampens my movements but not my anxiety. I watch the lich come toward me and moan in fear. We shouldn’t be doing this. Why can’t Meremon ever do anything in the normal way? It’s as if he’s testing how far he can push me into depravity. Or maybe he just never learned what normal is.

“You will enjoy this, my Rhona,” Meremon says, and his eyes are bright with affection and eagerness. He turns me in his arms and places my back against his chest, and he and Filax work together to undress me, stroking my body with two sets of cold hands.

“Can you not understand how wrong this is?” I stare in horror as Filax pulls my drawers down my legs and I’m left naked before them both.

“Filax has no consciousness that isn’t mine. When he touches you it is me touching you.”

I watch them helplessly as they touch me, tears trickling down my cheeks. Even though he has no eyes Filax seems to notice and he lifts my left palm to where his mouth should be, in the manner of a kiss.

The gesture, so familiar now, makes my heart turn over. “It is you,” I whisper, a smile touching my lips through my tears.

Meremon presses his lips to my throat. “You believe me at last. I almost think you would lie still in my arms while Filax penetrates you.”

Be a willing participant. Not cry or turn my face away or try to cover myself. If it is truly just Meremon in two bodies maybe it’s not so wrong to let this happen.

I want him. I feel most alive when I’m being touched by cold, dead hands.

“I will try. Lift the enchantment, please.”

Meremon opens my legs and places my feet on his thighs, exposing me to Filax. He strokes his fingers through my folds which have grown slick and hot as he’s whispered in my ear. “I don’t want to. I like your body like this. Living flesh, warm and sweet, and yet still as stone.”

“Like a corpse?”

“Yes. It’s very beautiful to me, having you like this.” He rubs the nub between my legs, firm and fast, and I gasp for breath. Filax’s fingers dip a little into my opening and I close my eyes, enjoying their touch. But then Filax withdraws.

“Not there,” Meremon explains. “I still have hope that one day I might have you myself.”

Meremon reaches out for the jar of slime and it sails across the room toward him. He dips his fingers into it and applies the slime to my sex, and then lower, pressing against the pucker of my ass. One of his fingers penetrates the tight ring and sinks slowly into me, and I whimper at the strange sensation.

Meremon nuzzles my ear and his breath is cool against my hot cheek. “How sweet you are. How I love to feel you give up your secrets to me. This is a magic like nothing else. You are magic, my Rhona.”

It doesn’t feel bad as he fingers me there. In fact, it feels good and I wish that one of them might touch that sensitive place that makes my whole body shatter at the same time. I’m trying to work up the courage to ask for it when Filax takes hold of my hips and Meremon withdraws his hand. The lich’s thickness replaces him, and the slipperiness of the slime allows him slow entrance. He’s so much thicker than Meremon’s finger, though, and his invasion is too strange to be pleasurable. I breathe fast and squeeze my eyes shut against the sharp pain.

“You would be so tense if it were not for my enchantment. But look how relaxed you are. How easy this is.”

It doesn’t feel easy. I’m too small and Filax is too big. I turn my face away and bury it in Meremon’s shoulder. “He’s too much. I can’t. Make him stop.”

“Shh, don’t be frightened. He’s perfect, deliciae. It is tight at first but he will feel just right very soon.”

I feel like I’m going to be split open as Filax starts thrusting slowly into me. Then I see him position himself to drive himself deeper and I gasp, “No more, please.”

Meremon rubs my pearl again and the intense pleasure and over-fullness fight each other. Then something magical happens and they merge into one powerful sensation. Heat floods my skin and the necromancer feels it and moans softly. “Is it good, my Rhona? Do you like the way he fills you?”

I watch them both, mouth open and panting, as they surround me with their cold and corpselike flesh. Why won’t Meremon take me like this himself? Perhaps he likes to witness rather than be part of it. I turn my head to look at his face and his silver eyes are alight with desire. He kisses my mouth hungrily, still stimulating the place between my legs.

“Tell me Rhona. Is it good?”

“Yes,” I whisper, breathing hard. Each firm stroke of Filax’s length is pushing me higher now. I look up at the lich, studying his body. His grayish flesh is familiar and I have the sense again that he’s been created somehow in Meremon’s image, and that makes him beautiful to me, even if he is monstrous. I can feel myself approaching my peak, but then Meremon takes his fingers away and I cry out in dismay.

“You can reach your climax without my help. I know you can.”

Just from Filax’s thrusts? I don’t know. He does feel good now, his slippery length filling me with warmth and pleasure with every stroke. “It feels good. But I can’t…I’m not…”

Meremon rubs my pearl again and the feeling escalates, but then he stops again. I moan with need. “Meremon, please.”

One slow stroke of his finger. Then another. He’s coaxing what he wants from me slowly and carefully. The spaces between touches of his finger get longer and longer but the sensation keeps growing. “Are you going to climax for me, deliciae?” he whispers in my ear, and I nod, because now the momentum is strong and has concentrated where Filax is thrusting.

“That’s it. Good girl.”

I cry out roughly as the sensation overtakes me, and Filax pounds into me, harder now, and deeper, driving my peak onwards and onwards. Meremon strokes my nub in firm circles and they’re both making me feel so good I sob out their names, begging for mercy, begging them not to stop. It’s more than I ever thought I could feel.

Finally the tension leaves my body and my head falls back against Meremon’s shoulder, and the enchantment lifts. Filax withdraws and brushes his knuckles against my hot cheek, a sweet gesture so like Meremon’s, and then departs quietly.

I enjoyed the feel of Filax’s hard length so much and I want Meremon to feel as good as he made me feel. I put my hand behind me to feel between Meremon’s legs but find that his member is soft.

I pull my hand away quickly, confused. I thought that what we did aroused him and yet he doesn’t seem to be so.

Meremon doesn’t say anything. When I dare look up at him I see he’s frowning hard, a deep line between his brows.

“Do you not want me?” I ask hesitantly.

He draws my left hand up to his lips and kisses me tenderly, but his eyes are sad. “More than anything, but I can’t have you. I have the desires of a man but I cannot act on them.”

“Because that is what happens when you’re…?” I was going to say when you’re old but that sounds rude, and I still haven’t worked out how old he is. In a way he seems timeless.

Even though he’s miserable he manages a short laugh. “If I was a thousand years old do you think that would stop me from taking my bride to bed? No, I am cursed. A demon loved me a long time ago and I didn’t return her love. And so she punished me.”

I turn toward him and wrap my arms around his neck, perplexed. What a terrible thing to have happened. So that’s why he’s so cold and his heart beats so slowly. He’s cursed. The demon can’t truly have loved him if she took away something so important to him. I don’t know much about that but it doesn’t sound like love to me.

He kisses me softly. “But her curse doesn’t stop me from cherishing you. My heart will make yours happy and no demon or spirit or even a god can stop me from doing that.”

Thoughtful, I lay my head upon his shoulder and we sit quietly together, my naked body curled against his chest. I count six beats of his heart. They take a long time.

Did he ever try to lift the curse? I suppose he must have done, but failed, and that is why he speaks so sadly now. In the village we tell each other fairy stories in which curses are broken just like that and everyone lives happily ever after. It must be harder with real curses.

“What happened to the demon?” I ask.

He strokes my hair. “I hunted her down and killed her, hoping that would lift the curse. It didn’t. She laughed as she died and told me that I’d never be free. That was…oh, a long time ago now.”

I think of the way he likes me prone and helpless as he touches me. “So you haven’t been sleeping with corpses after all.”

He laughs again, a deep chuckle. “No, deliciae. I like the flesh I touch to be warm.”

A moment later he’s serious again, smoothing the hair back from my face and looking into my eyes. “I am sorry I cannot be the one to make love to you, my bride. But I will try to make it up to you in any way I can.”