Cyberevolution Book One: The Awakening: Fifty Shades of Dark Kaitlyn O'Connor by Kaitlyn O'Connor, Kimberly Zant, Marie Morin, Stacey St.James, Goldie McBride (4)

She did not think that she would mind having a babe of her own, but she did not want their babes in her belly. One day, perhaps, she would do as her mother had and make her way to the village two days down river and find a male she was willing to couple with to have a babe, but she was in no great hurry.  In any case, summer would be a better time for breeding.  Then she would bear the child in the winter when there was little to do anyway and she would be strong enough to plant her garden in the spring.

Having decided that she would do as she was, she went into her yard to survey her beasts and decide which would be best to take to market for trading.  Pig was huge, and ate a great deal, but he was also very good for dragging and carrying the things that were too heavy for her and he mostly foraged for his own food.  She would take him, she decided, but not for trade.  She would need a great many things to carry her through the season.  

It would be better to trade the flock of fat geese.  She was a little unhappy with the thought, for she had planned to keep them until she had enough down to make knew pillows and stuff her mattress again, but it could not be helped.  It would have to be the flock or the pig.

Dismissing her qualms, she went into the shed and gathered up bags for carrying her supplies, a harness for pig and her staff to herd the birds.  Calling to pig when she came out, she slung the bags over his broad back and tied them securely.  He was not happy about the harness, but she insisted.  The villagers would be unnerved if she allowed him to roam at will, for he was a huge pig now, more than waist high to her.

When she had fashioned the harness around him, she attached a lead rope to the harness.  Tucking the end into her sash, she told him to behave himself, called her flock and set out for the village, using the staff to redirect the birds whenever they would try to wander into the woods.

It was nearly noon by the time she reached the edge of the village.  The geese had thoroughly exasperated her.  Her shoulders were aching from swinging the staff.  She was thirsty and hungry.

She supposed that was why she did not notice, at first, that an ominous quiet hung over the village.  It wasn’t until she glanced up and discovered the sullen glances of some of the villagers that she began to feel uneasy.

“Witch!” one of the women hissed, the comment barely audible to Lilith.

She heard, though, and more than heard for it was not as if she had not heard herself called witch before.  There was a thread of hysteria in the comment that she was not used to hearing, however.  Frowning, Lilith looked away at once before the woman could accuse her of giving her the evil eye.

“Look at the animals!  See the way she makes them do her bidding!”

“They are so fat.  Why is that she has such fat animals when all of ours are dying if it is not witch craft?” someone muttered nearby in a perfectly audible whisper.

Lilith’s vague uneasiness blossomed rapidly into full fledged fear.  Something had happened in the village, and they had only to set eyes upon her and she was being blamed.  Realizing she’d left the pig’s lead tucked into her sash, Lilith pulled it free, holding it in one hand and the staff in the other, hoping if it looked as if she was leading the beast they would not be so unnerved.

The urge to turn about and leave as she had come was strong.  She saw, though, that she was already nearing the market in the center of the village before she had emerged from her contemplation of her discomfort enough to realize that the atmosphere within the village was dangerously unstable.  Nursing the tiny hope that their interest in her would wane and they would go about their own business fairly quickly, she did her best to pretend to be deaf and blind to their grumbling complaints and sullen looks.  The atmosphere of hate did not improve once she reached the market, however.  Instead, it darkened rapidly as more and more of the villagers gathered, the growing numbers seeming to bolster the courage of those who’d first eyed her so uneasily. 

The vendors, she saw in dismay, had little to sell.  Most of them were gaunt, as if they had had little food for some time, and glassy eyed, as if with fever—or some madness that seemed to have gripped the entire village.

Feeling her belly tighten sickeningly, with no idea of anything else to do, Lilith tried to behave as if she had noticed nothing and headed straight for the miller, hoping to conclude her business quickly and leave.  “I have geese to trade for grain,” she said, keeping her voice steady with an effort.

The miller looked her over for several moments, carefully avoiding eye contact.  “What about the pig?”

“He is not for trade,” she said firmly.  “I,” she hesitated a moment.  “I have trained him to carry my burdens.  I will need him to carry the grain home.”

He snorted.  “You could carry the grain I have in a pack on your own shoulders,” he growled, gesturing toward the small stack of bags behind him.  “The harvest is poor this year.  I do not suppose you would know ought of that?”

A wash of coldness joined the tension in Lilith’s belly.  Her skin grew clammy with her growing fear.  “How would I know ought of that?  I have not been next or nigh the village in months!”

“See!  She admits it.  She cursed the fields when she was here last!”

Lilith felt the hair on the base of her skull lift, realizing that the people she’d noticed gathering nearby had not come to trade as she had hoped.

She could not ignore that accusation, she realized, and glanced around to address her accuser.  “I did no such thing,” she said, her voice quavering slightly when she turned and discovered nearly a dozen villagers had gathered behind her.  “The planting had barely begun when I was here last.  Why would I have come to trade if I had known that there was nothing to trade for?”

“Came to gloat!”

“Witch!”

“Don’t look in her eyes!” someone near the back of the growing crowd shouted.  “She will bewitch you!”

“I only came to trade for supplies,” Lilith stammered, clenching her staff a little more tightly when several of the villagers abruptly began to chase her geese about the market, trying to catch them.  “What are you doing?  Those are mine!”

A man jostled her, snatching the lead from her hand so that the rope left a stinging burn along her palm.  The moment he did, the crowd seemed to explode into motion, as if they had only been awaiting some signal.  Three men leapt at pig.  Pig squealed and ran, bowling over everyone in his path.  The geese squawked, running around and around in circles and flapping their wings madly.  Men and women screamed, dashing around after the birds, dodging pig, who was frightened by the people charging him and grabbing at him and only wanted to flee.

“Stop it!” Lilith cried out, her anger finally overcoming her fear enough to thaw her.  “Thieves!  You cannot take my stock!” she yelled, beginning to lay about her with the staff.  She was on the point of threatening to summon the constable when she realized that he was one of the men chasing her pig about the market place.

She had managed to beat several of the men on the back and shoulders when someone grabbed her from behind, pinning her arms to her sides.  The staff was wrenched from her hands.  A cloth came down over her eyes.

Screaming, she fought her captors with strength born of fear, managing to wrest free briefly before someone slammed into her back and pitched her forward into the dirt.  She grunted as the air was forced from her lungs by a heavy weight. 

Gritting her teeth, she wiggled and squirmed anyway, jerking against the hold on her arms as they were twisted behind her back and tied with rough hemp.  The heat and stench of unwashed bodies made it evident that the crowd had gathered around her even though she could no longer see her tormentors.

“Don’t let her go!   Hold her!”

A mixture of terror and fury filled Lilith as they dragged her to her feet, pulling her first one way and then another, as if they were fighting over her.  “Free me!” she screamed at them.  “Or I will curse you!  I will make your manhood wither and fall off!”

A gag was shoved into her mouth and bound there by something rough that bit into her cheeks before she could spit it out.

She could hear them though, bickering over what to do with her, how to make certain they rid themselves of her without risking the chance that she would be able to curse them.  A wave of weakening terror washed over her and her heart began to pound so hard against her eardrums that even her sense of hearing was all but lost to her, as well.

“Take her to the cave of the beasts!” someone shouted.  “Mayhap it was them who cursed us and it will appease them if we give her to them?”

“Yes!” someone else seconded the first woman.  “We should take her to the beasts!”

“That is it!  Give her to the evil ones! They will take her into the belly of the earth and we need not fear her curses anymore!”

Lilith would not have thought it was possible to be any more frightened than she already was, but the mention of the realm of the beasts doubled her heart rate until she thought she might pass out from sheer terror. 

Her mother had told her of that place, which was not merely a great cave but a labyrinth of caves where dwelt many demons, creatures so horrific her mother could not even find the words to describe them.  When her mother had been a girl, they had taken her there and left her as offering to the evil ones.  She had never told Lilith what had happened to her there, only that she had escaped when few ever did.  She had said that, despite what she had had to endure, she had been glad, because the ‘innocent’ never escaped according the villagers.   They were forgiven, having proven themselves innocent, but they did not come back.  In their minds, only a powerful witch could do so, and they had been too afraid of her to bother her again when she had come back.

Lilith was in no state to appreciate that particular silver lining at the moment, however.  She could think of nothing except her mother’s comments that ‘few survived to return to the world of man’.

She fought them, struggling with every ounce of strength she could gather to her as they lifted her off her feet and began to carry her.

Twice she almost managed to break free of them, but more hands grabbed her, pulling at her, binding her more tightly still. 

They began almost to chant as they bore her off to the labyrinth, “Vanquish the witch!  Our crops will flourish and our children will not go hungry!”

* * * *

Lilith had expended her strength long before they reached the place where the evil ones dwelt.  The vague hope that her weakness would make them feel less threatened was quickly extinguished, however.  When they had set her on her feet at last, they held her up and tore the bindings from her.  Her clothing, already in tatters from their attack, was ripped from her, as well, until she stood shivering, feeling the chill of the air on her skin.  Her flesh crept from the lascivious gazes of the villagers, but she could not wrest her hands free to cover herself.

“She is without flaw!  Look!  Her skin is as soothe as cream!  She is one of them, else she would not look so perfect!” a woman said, hysteria in voice.

“Her skin is as milky white and smooth as alabaster and the hair on her woman’s mound bright as fire—to tempt men and fire their minds to madness!”

A mixture on anger and despair filled Lilith, for she knew very well that if she had been pock marked, or covered in warts and moles they would have seen those as the kiss of the demons and called her a witch regardless.

“If that is true, then perhaps they will not want her back.  What will we do then?”

“Burn her!”

“Let us hide at the ridge and watch.  If they do not come for her, we can gather brush and burn her!”

Lilith shuddered, summoning the strength to fight them again as she felt the bindings loosen on her wrists.  Despite the fact that she fought them with the desperation born of the desire to survive, the battle was short lived.  She had fought her captors most of the way from the village and she had little reserve. 

She was shoved against a hard surface that bit into the tender flesh of her back.  Grabbing her arms, someone—two men—tugged, pulling them out to her sides despite her efforts to resist.  She heard the clink of chains and something cold and hard closed around her wrists.  A moment later, her ankles were seized in the same manner and her legs pulled from beneath her.  She gasped as her weight settled on her shoulders, almost wrenching them from the sockets.  She found though, once they had locked the manacles around her ankles that she could touch the ground with the soles of her feet, supporting enough weight off of her arms to ease the strain.

Her heart was pounding painfully in her chest when they stepped away from her at last.  For many moments she could do nothing but focus on that, trying to calm the frantic pace, trying to fight back the nausea of fear before she choked on her own bile. 

After a few minutes, she realized she could hear their retreat across the stone, the scattering of tiny pebbles and rocks. 

Silence descended.  She tugged at the manacles uselessly, only succeeding in draining more strength she could not afford to lose.  Time passed.  She had no idea of how much time for her fear made the seconds seem agonizingly long.  After a while, though, slowly but surely, discomfort began to usurp her fear.  As her fear began to subside, she struggled to think of some way she might save herself, of something that she could do.  After trying several times to peer beneath the binding over her eyes she began to try to rub her head against the rock behind her to dislodge it. 

A sound nearby made her freeze.  She listened intently, struggling to hear over the frantic pounding of her heart.  Abruptly, she identified the sound she heard as the flapping of wings, huge wings.  Renewed fear squeezed at her heart.  A bird of prey?  Tipping her head, she tried again to peer beneath the blindfold.  She could see nothing at first, but abruptly something huge and dark landed directly in front of her.

Her flesh pebbled all over her body, trying to lift the fine hair on her nape. Coldness washed over her as the creature folded its wings and moved toward her.

It looked very much like a man, but she knew it wasn’t.

Its wings were those of a great, golden condor.

Its skin was dark, the color of teak.

It was a black demon, she realized abruptly, for his eyes were the same golden yellow as his wings.

She jumped all over when he lifted a hand and smoothed it down her body, as if testing the texture of her skin.  Apparently not satisfied until he had examined her skin all over, he continued to stroke his hands over her belly, squeezed her breasts experimentally and then stroked his hands over her arms.  She tried not to think how much his actions reminded her of testing meat for tenderness at the market.

Finally, he knelt in front of her.  Lifting his hands, he placed his thumbs along the full lips of her sex and parted them.  Lilith was too stunned to move or even to consider trying to evade his touch, but she flinched all over instinctively at his touch.

Paralyzed by horror, she peered down at him as he leaned toward her.  A jolt went through her as she felt the heat of his breath, and then the hot, moist heat of his mouth as he opened it over her sex, sending another hard shock wave of fear through her.  Every muscle in her body seemed to clench with the expectation of feeling the painful slice of his teeth.  Instead, to her stunned surprise, she felt his tongue lap against her several times, almost experimentally. She gasped at the strange, quivery sensation that washed through her.  Her belly clenched convulsively.

Apparently pleased with the taste of her flesh, he settled closer, began to lick at her almost hungrily.  After a moment, he pulled a tiny nub of flesh into his mouth and sucked on it.

She bucked then, trying to escape the heated lathe of his tongue.  He grabbed her hips, holding her still and continued to lap and suckle at her hungrily until a strange heaviness settled over her.  Her head began to spin as if she’d drunk too much wine.

Almost as abruptly as he’d knelt to taste her, he stopped, rising to his full height.  “They will be pleased with the offering,” he murmured, his voice deep, husky, sending quivers through Lilith.

Her mind was so chaotic that it took her several moments to realize what he meant by the comment.  She didn’t know whether to be relieved or more terrified when understanding dawned.  Being burned alive held no appeal, however, and she tried to convince herself that whatever else the demons had in mind for her, it could not be harder to endure than being burned alive.

A tug at her ankles distracted her from her mental chant to try to calm herself, and she peered beneath the blindfold to see that he was unfastening the manacles. 

It was impulse that inspired her to try to kick him, and a poor one at that.

He caught her legs without any apparent effort, but she could see she’d angered him only by attempting to fight him.  He leaned down until his mouth was near her ear.  “You will not survive this, little bird, if you fight, for you will only excite them and inspire them to tame you.  And that is far worse than merely entertaining themselves with you.”

Lilith swallowed with an effort as he straightened away from her and turned to release the manacles on her wrists.  She didn’t try to fight him again.  As frightened as she was, she had her wits about her now.  Even if she succeeded in escaping him, she realized, the villagers were waiting on the ridge.  They would capture her, and either return her to the demon, or they would burn her at the stake.

She was alive.  As long as there was breath in her body, there was a chance to survive.

He scooped her off her feet when he’d freed her.  “Put your arms around my neck, little bird, for you have no wings to fly.”

She was still trying to decide whether to obey his command or ignore it when she felt her belly drop in a freefall as he leapt upward and the sound of rushing air and flapping wings filled her ears.  She clutched at his neck tightly then, burrowing her face against his neck fearfully. 

Chapter Two

It seemed to Lilith that they soared through the air for an endless time, but she knew her fear probably only stretched time, for it could not have been long.  Her belly told her when they began to descend, executing another freefall.  She felt the cessation of movement briefly as he settled to the earth, and then the gentle jolts as he carried her on foot for a time.

Finally, he set her upon her feet.  She wavered, but caught herself as he moved around behind her.  The binding holding the gag in place was tugged free, plucking hairs from her scalp painfully.  Ignoring the stinging pain, she spat the gag out gratefully, trying to gather moisture into her mouth again.

The blindfold followed the other binding.

She was almost sorry for the lack of it when the creature moved around in front of her again for she’d had no more than a brief glimpse of him before. 

He was huge, towering over her and impossibly broad across his shoulders. 

His body, she saw, although shaped very much like a mortal man, differed almost as drastically as it was similar, for there seemed to be no part of his body that did not bulge with hard, glistening flesh or long, ropy muscles.  He was hairless.  She could not see anything more than fine down on any part of him.

And she saw all of him, for he was as naked as she was—more naked.  Hair formed a veil over her woman’s place.  His man root had no hair anywhere around it to disguise the enormity of it.  Flaccid, it hung more than halfway down his long thigh and was as big around as her forearm.

Unable to tear her gaze from the massive bludgeon, she closed her eyes.

He hooked a fist beneath her chin and pushed her face up.  “By what name are you called, little bird?” he asked in the deep voice that had sent shivers through her before. 

She opened her eyes to look up at him.  His features were sharp, angular, but not unpleasing to the eye—in fact, they were strangely beautiful in an exotic way.  “Lilith,” she said with an effort.

“I am called Gaelin,” he murmured, his golden eyes narrowing as he examined her face.  Something flickered in his eyes as he examined her face slowly a second time. An arrested expression settled over his sharp features, almost of recognition.  “I am a Hawkin, guardian of the gateway into the labyrinth.  I serve those who dwell here,” he said slowly after a tense moment had passed.

Lilith couldn’t prevent a shiver from scraping down her spine anymore than she could prevent horrific images from flickering through her mind. 

His gaze met hers almost as if he knew the frightened thoughts skittering through her mind.  “It is my duty to protect you and to prepare you for them.”

Confusion flickered through her and a tiny spark of hope.  “I do not think I understand.”

He tilted his head.  “You are a mortal.”  Removing his hand from her chin, he lifted her arms, examining her wrists.  “You are frail, even for a mortal, but I sense strength in you and wisdom.  They are not always careful with their playthings.  That is why I am to protect you.  To see that you survive so that they may all have a taste of you.”

He released her arms and caught her chin again, his gaze stern now.  “But beware.  If they think you are too frail, they will not be pleased and they will simply dispatch you.

“You are marred by the handling of yon mob,” he added, almost contemptuously.  “Come, I will soothe your hurts.  The horde is accustomed to only the most beautiful mortals.  They will not be pleased to see you as you are now.”

Bewildered, but oddly soothed by his assertion that he would care for her and the gentleness he had displayed toward her thus far, Lilith allowed him to take her hand and lead her. 

They were in a natural corridor, she saw, lit here and there by flickering torches.  The rocky tunnel descended ever so slightly, she realized fairly quickly, feeling the pull in her muscles.  After walking for perhaps ten minutes, they emerged into a wider space that created a room of sorts.  It was used for that purpose, she saw, for there were furnishings in it—a narrow bed, a table and chair.  A brazier stood in the center, warmth radiating outward from the smoldering coals it contained.  Smoke crawled along the low ceiling and out of ‘doorway’, drifting along the ceiling of the tunnel they had just traversed.

“If you have need to relieve yourself, you may go there,” he said, pointing to a narrow opening along another wall of the ‘room’.

She thought she did, but she was so frightened she wasn’t certain if it was bodily need or merely the fear.  Nodding, she moved away when he released her and crossed to the narrow opening.  She saw when she looked inside, that it was a small chamber much like the one she’d just left.  When she’d quickly taken care of her needs, she returned the way she’d come since there was no alternative. 

The Hawkin was crouched before the brazier, carefully settling a skewered hare over the coals.  Her stomach immediately clenched in demand.  She licked her lips, realizing that in spite of everything, she was hungry.

He looked up when she returned and straightened.  “Come.  I will bathe you and then salve your hurts and then you may eat.”

Trying to staunch the dread that immediately assailed her, Lilith didn’t resist as he took her hand and led her through another opening.  The sound of trickling water assailed her almost at once and her throat closed. 

“There is water there to appease your thirst.”

Lilith glanced at Gaelen and then followed the direction of his pointing finger.

Water trickled from the rock of one wall and into a small, natural basin.  Hurrying to it the moment he released her, she scooped up handfuls of water and drank greedily until the cold water had numbed her hands and a painful throbbing began in her head.

“Enough,” he murmured, catching her arm and leading her away from the water.  She resisted when she saw that he was leading her to a pool in the floor of the cave.  He either didn’t notice, or he simply ignored her effort to resist. 

She stared fearfully at the frothing, bubbling water.  “It will boil my flesh from my bones.”

“Nay.  It is not as hot as that,” he disagreed, pointing to a flat rock just below the water’s edge.  “Sit there.”

Gingerly, Lilith poked her toe into the water.  Discovering that he hadn’t lied to her—for the water was hot, but not uncomfortably so—she settled as she’d been told, drawing into a tight, self protective knot and glancing around the chamber uneasily.  Grabbing up a cake of soap and a cloth that lay beside it, he waded into the pool, lathering the cloth liberally.   She jumped when he grabbed her ankle, but at the warning look he sent her, the fight went out of her if not the uneasiness.  She sat perfectly still as he rubbed the cloth over her feet and legs.  When he was satisfied, he took her arms and repeated the process and then began to lather her body.  Uncomfortable as she was with his familiarity, a curious warmth began to gather inside of her as he stroked her with the cloth.  Feeling strangely awkward, she searched her mind for something to distract her mind from what he was doing.  “Why did you … do that to me when you found me at the rock?”

His gaze flickered to her face.  His eyes seemed almost to glow with heat. “To make certain that you were tender and sweet.”

Lilith blinked rapidly at that, feeling her heart seize in her chest.  She swallowed with an effort.  “They will eat me?” she asked fearfully.

His gaze sharpened, a frown appearing between his brows.  Abruptly, he chuckled.

The sound made her belly clench, but, oddly enough, it was not altogether from nerves for it was a strangely pleasant sound.

“You would not make many bites for them, little bird.  They will be far more interested in playing with you,” he said almost gently.

Lilith swallowed with an effort.  As assurances went, she didn’t feel terribly relieved.  A tangle of images instantly flickered through her mind, but although she was absolutely certain from the heated look he gave her that the ‘play’ he spoke of was sexual in nature, her mind simply refused to produce images of anything she could consider ‘play’, for the only intercourse between two creatures that she’d ever observed was the brief coupling between her animals.

He distracted her from her anxiety, however, by grasping her ankles and pulling her legs apart.  Embarrassed, Lilith resisted.  He merely exerted more strength, shoving her knees up and settling them on either side of her hips.  “Do not move,” he growled, his voice threatening now.

Swallowing with an effort, resisting the urge to leap to her feet and run, Lilith squeezed her eyes closed and held as still as she could while he took the soapy cloth and bathed her cleft with a thoroughness that left her gasping.

When he was finally satisfied, he grasped her waist and dragged her into the pool, holding her against him and using one hand to rinse the lather from her.  His man root bumped her thigh, hardened, slipped between her legs.  Her eyes widened as she felt it bump against her cleft.

He sent her a smoldering glance, but he made no attempt to either remove it, or to do anything more. Instead, he settled her feet until she was touching the bottom of the pool and washed her hair as he had her body. 

When he had rinsed the soap from her hair, he lifted her onto the ledge again, released her and climbed out of the pool.  Unable to resist, Lilith stared at his man root as he emerged, feeling her throat close when she saw that it was even bigger than before, standing away from his body now.

Moving behind her, he leaned down and wrapped his enormous hands around her, just beneath her breasts, lifting her to her feet.  She glanced at his face a little fearfully, but he released her as soon as she was standing, wrapped his fingers around her upper arm and led her back to the bed chamber.  Leaving her near the brazier to dry in the heat, he squatted down in one corner to examine something in a chest he’d opened.  After a moment, he turned his head, studied her for several moments and finally closed the chest again and rose to his full height, tucking the small chest he’d lifted beneath one arm.

Lilith tensed as he approached her, but she knew it was useless to attempt to struggle.  Besides, he had told her that fighting would get her killed, she reminded herself.  The only hope she saw of surviving was to try to cooperate.

She hoped that would ensure her survival, anyway. 

It certainly did not take any great intelligence to realize that fighting would avail her nothing more than a swift end, for this demon was easily twice her size and only one of many, and he would need no help to tear her to shreds if the notion struck him.

Grasping her arm again, he led her to the bed and turned her to face him.  As she watched, he set the small chest beside the bed and flipped it open again, taking something from it.  She saw when he straightened that it was a large metal ring, darkened with age.  Around the circumference of it, loops of metal had been fastened.  He pulled on the ring and to her surprise it opened.  Pushing her hair out of the way, he encircled her neck with the thing and closed it again with a tiny latch. 

Feeling more puzzled than threatened, Lilith lifted a hand to explore the ring with her fingers as he pushed her down until she was seated on the edge of the bed. 

Pushing her back, he grasped one of her arms and drew it out to her side.  Lilith’s eyes widened when she saw the manacle he dragged up from the headboard.  “What are you doing?” she gasped in suddenly renewed fear.

“Making certain you are not hurt,” he said calmly, fastening the manacle tightly around her wrist.  “I cannot chance that you will not try to struggle and then you would be injured.”

She did struggle.  She fought him with blind panic as he very calmly grabbed her other wrist and manacled her free arm to the other end of the bed.  When he’d locked the manacle around her wrist and straightened, she lay panting, watching him fearfully as he grabbed her leg, bent her knee until her foot was resting on the bed and then took another manacle and secured it around her ankle.  He caught her other leg and repeated the process despite the brief battle that ensued when she tried to jerk her foot from his grip and kick him. 

Cool air caressed her sex as the tightening manacle spread her legs so wide it pulled painfully at the tendons between her thighs and the petals of flesh that usually protected her sex parted, exposing the more tender flesh beneath.

Thoroughly frightened by now, but unable to move, Lilith watched him with wide frightened eyes as he bent to the chest again.  Lifting it up, he settled it on the bed beside her and then pulled a jar from it.  Dabbing his fingers into some sort of creamy substance, he smeared a dollop on each of her nipples and then knelt beside the bed and pushed the flesh of her sex wider and dabbed more there.

He hesitated a moment and then slipped his hand down to the opening of her body, pushing a finger slowly inside of her.  Lilith’s breath caught in her chest.  Frantically, she pulled at the manacles, trying to move away from his exploration, only to discover she couldn’t move more than a fraction of an inch in any direction other than toward him.  Ignoring her frightened thrashing, frowning in concentration, he moved his finger around inside of her. 

Apparently, he found what he’d expected to find, for he grunted, slowly withdrew his finger and got to his feet.  Leaning down he plucked at her nipples until they were hard and erect.  It was only then that Lilith realized the cream he had dabbed on her skin had numbed her flesh to sensation.  She felt the tugging, but little beyond that. 

Some of her fear abated with the realization that he could not mean to cause her pain if he had taken the time to dull sensation.  She was still anxious, wondering what he meant by it, but she did not have many moments to worry over it, for he lifted a thin length of chain from the trunk and dropped it onto her belly.  When his hand emerged from the trunk again, she saw he was holding several shiny rings, tiny rings little bigger than the links of the chain he’d placed on her belly. 

Leaning over her again, he took one nipple between his fingers, pinched it tightly at the base and pushed one of the rings through the tip.  Realizing what he was about to do moments before, Lilith squeezed her eyes closed, but she felt little more than an uncomfortable tug and a mild stinging.  She still tensed as he grabbed her other nipple and repeated the process.

Relieved when the tugging stopped, she opened her eyes again, watching as he threaded the thin chain through one of the loops and attached one end to the collar around her neck. 

Straightening the chain, he moved down, kneeling at the edge of the bed again and grasping a tiny bud of flesh at the apex of her thighs.  When he’d pinched it as he had her nipples, he pushed the remaining ring through the flesh, threaded the chain through it and then upward through her other nipple ring, attaching it to the other side of the collar around her neck.

She’d almost dawn a breath of relief when he dipped his fingers into the jar again.  Tensing instinctively, she felt almost as if someone had jerked a rug out from under her when, instead of dabbing the cream on her, he caught his cock in one hand and began to slather the cream on his member, massaging it into his skin. 

As she watched, the flesh hardened. 

Even when he knelt on the floor she didn’t realize his intention until she felt his fingers spreading her flesh, felt the hard knob at the end of his cock as he pressed it against her.  Numbed as she was, she could still feel her flesh resist at the enormity of his member as he caught her hips and pushed.  Slowly, steadily, he pushed, embedding his flesh deeper and deeper inside of her.  Something deep inside her seemed almost to pop, giving way beneath his insistent pressure.  She gasped, feeling a radiant heat wash through her, twinges of pain that the numbing cream didn’t completely obliterate. 

When he’d pushed into her until he could go no deeper, he began to pull away.  Relief flooded her.  It was short lived.  He’d no more than pulled back before he began to push into her again, slowly, like before.  Her belly clenched, resisting, but his thrust was relentless.  Again he pushed into her until he could go no deeper and again, after a brief pause, withdrew.

Each time that he withdrew until only the head of his cock remained inside of her, she thought that he would stop.  He didn’t.  He continued to thrust and pull back over and over.  The numbness began to wear off after several minutes.  Her nipples began to throb as did the nub of flesh between her thighs that he’d pierced.  Inside her passage, she became more and more aware of the stroking movements as he continued to pump his thick flesh into her passage. 

She tried to relax, tried to close her mind to the intrusion but found it impossible.  His man root was enormous, hard, and his flesh stretched hers almost to the point of pain. 

As the feeling returned, his did also.  Tiny beads of sweat began to glisten on his body as he continued his slow pumping into her and out of her passage.  He gritted his teeth.  Almost as if it was against his will, he began to move faster until he was thrusting into her in hard jolts that tugged at her bindings.

Heat began to blossom in her belly, an odd tension and expectancy washing over her.  It built, growing stronger and stronger.  The sensation was strangely pleasant and grew more and more intensely enjoyable until she found she could not be still.  She began to writhe, feeling fevered, dizzy as the sensations grew more pronounced.  Soft moans seemed wrenched from her chest.  Abruptly, the building tension seemed to explode outward in a hail of fiery rapture that made her body tingle all over.  It wrenched a cry from her.

He shuttered as she cried out.  Uttering a hoarse groan, he pounded into her harder and harder until he went still abruptly, jerking and shaking.  Something hot spilled inside of her as he stopped, his fingers digging into her flesh, his breath hoarse and gasping.

With an effort, she opened her eyes a slit as she felt his flesh withdrawn at last from her body.  Breathing heavily, he got to his feet and turned away.  Limp, and unable to move even if she’d had any strength at all in her limbs, Lilith closed her eyes again. 

She opened them when she felt the mattress dip beneath his weight. 

“It will be easier next time,” he murmured, settling a platter of food on her belly.  Grabbing a pillow, he lifted her head and pushed the pillow beneath it.

Still feeling strangely lethargic, Lilith merely stared at him in surprise when he pulled a small piece of rabbit from the tray and touched it to her lips.  “Eat,” he commanded.  “You will need your strength.”

She would have far preferred feeding herself, but she found that she was very hungry as she chewed the bite of meat and swallowed.  As difficult as it was to eat lying down, he obviously didn’t intend to release her any time soon.

Her belly clenched when she realized what that meant.

Trying to dismiss the thought, she focused on eating.  Tearing off small bits of food, he would give her a bite and then take a morsel for himself.  After a few moments, when she’d begun to think she would choke from the lack of moisture in her mouth, he fed her a grape.  The plump fruit burst in her mouth, filling it with sweet juice. 

“Why were your eyes covered?”

Lilith glanced at him in surprise.  “They were afraid that I would bespell them my gaze.”

His brows lifted.  “And the gag?”

“So that I could not curse them.”

Amusement gleamed in his eyes.  “They believe you are a witch?”

“Yes.”

His gaze flickered over her, lighting on the nest of curling hair on her mound.  As if he could not resist, he lifted a hand and explored it with his fingers.  “But they did not touch you.  You are fearsome for a little bird.”

Lilith frowned in confusion.  “They bound me and brought me here.”

He tore off another bite of hare, bit down on it, tearing a piece off, and then fed the remainder to her.  “You were a maiden.”

Was, but she didn’t need him to tell her she wasn’t any more.  Her passage still throbbed from his possession.  “Why did you do that?” she asked, trying to keep her voice from quivering.

He tilted his head to study her face.  After a moment, he frowned. “I did not give you pain.  I was very careful.”

Relatively little—very little considering the size of him, she supposed, knowing it could have been far worse.  “But … I did not fight.”

His lips curled at the lie.  “Your fight was not effective.  You have fire in you.  Take care or they will quench it.”

Lilith swallowed audibly. 

He plucked another grape and touched it to her lips.  When she’d swallowed it, she sent him a reproachful glance.  “You said you were here to protect me. I have—tried very hard to do just as you bade me.”

He studied her frowningly for several moments and finally shrugged.  “I took your maiden head because I was willing to be gentle and cause you little pain.  If I had left it, you would have felt much pain when they took it.  Your body has not known a man, but it will grow accustomed.  This will make it easier for you.”

Lilith wasn’t sure whether she believed that or not—or the intension he claimed.  He had called himself a Hawkin, but she knew that was only a word for his particular kind.  He was a demon, just as the others were that dwelt within the labyrinth and they were notoriously bad about lying.

“And because I wanted it for myself,” he added pensively. 

Surprised, Lilith met his gaze.  “Why?”

Several emotions seemed to flicker across his face.  “I felt … a hunger,” he responded finally, slowly, as if he wasn’t entirely certain of the answer.  His gaze moved over her thoughtfully.  “A need?” he said questioningly, as if he was testing the word.  A faint smile curled his lips.  “Mayhap you bespelled me?”

“I do no know how to cast spells.  If I did, I would not be here.”

He frowned as he picked up the last grape.  After studying it a moment, he gave it to her and then lifted the tray from her stomach and set it aside.

Lilith watched him warily as he rose from the bed, her belly clenching when he knelt as he had before, dipped his hand into the jar and began to stroke it over his member until it was engorged.

Swallowing with an effort, she cast around desperately for something to distract him.  “Why do you do that?  You cannot … feel pleasure, can you?”

He looked up at her.  “I can, but not so much that I cannot hold my seed.  In this way, I can have more pleasure … and give you pleasure.”

Holding her gaze, he aligned the head of his cock with her body and began to push.

Her eyes widened as she felt the resistance of her body to his possession.  She gasped, panted for breath as he slowly pushed deeper.  His eyelids slid half closed, but he watched her face, pulling away slightly when the resistance of the muscles along her passage reached the point of pain and then pushing again.  The moisture of the cream and his seed from before mingled, easing his path after a moment until, despite the tightness, he’d buried himself deeply inside of her. 

He paused then.  Opening her eyes to see why, she discovered that he was looking down at the juncture of their bodies, his face twisted almost as if he was in agony.  Lifting one hand, he flicked at the ring in the bud at the top of her cleft.  Vibrations of sensation rippled through her, such pleasurable sensation that Lilith gasped again.  The faint sound drew his gaze like a magnet. 

Watching her face once more, he withdrew until only the head of his cock was inside of her and thrust deeply again, teasing the keenly sensitive bud with his finger.  Lilith’s belly clenched around his flesh, heat and excitement building in her and pumping through her blood.  The weak, lethargy from before swept through her as she watched the glide of his dark flesh into her passage and then out again.  Within moments, she felt as if she was on fire, found she could no longer hold her eyes open or be still.  Tremors wracked her.  Her hips lifted fractionally, seemingly of its own volition as he impaled her again to the hilt of his man root once more. 

As if the movement had ignited him, he let out a harsh breath and began to move faster, driving deeply inside of her each time and withdrawing from her more and more quickly.  She gasped, groaning as the heat wave inside of her built until she knew what was coming, an explosion of ecstasy.  She cried out with the force of it as it began to rock through her. 

He echoed her cry with a harsh groan, thrusting into her almost frenziedly for several moments before he, too, began to quake with release.

Lilith was so drained with the second rush that she went perfectly limp when the echoes began to die away, drifting toward the edge of consciousness and then falling over the edge.

She roused slightly when she felt a tug on her wrists and then her ankles, groaning at the pain of strained muscles as he removed the manacles, shifted her around on the bed and then, to her surprise, left her in peace.

Chapter Three

When Lilith woke, she thought for several moments that she was in her own bed, in her own little cottage in the forest.  As her mind drifted over the ‘dreams’, though, she frowned, trying to decide what would make her dream such a thing.  She realized after a few moments that it hadn’t been dreams at all and opened her eyes.

Gaelen was seated at the other end of the bed, watching her broodingly.  He looked away when he saw she was studying him.  When he glanced at her again, he jerked his head toward the room where she’d relieved herself before.

Realizing she had the need, she stumbled out of the bed and went, wondering sluggishly how long she’d slept.  It didn’t seem to her that it could possibly have been long, but it had been long enough, she quickly discovered, for her muscles to complain painfully over the things that she’d been through the day before.

He met her at the opening when she came out, leading her to the pool where she’d bathed before.  Without a word, he guided her to the flat rock and bathed her.  She bit her lip as he rubbed the soapy cloth over her skin.  His hand stilled.  “What is this?” he demanded, flicking a finger over the frown between her brows.

“My body hurts from … from ….”

The displeasure vanished from his eyes.  He finished bathing her, but more gently.  Despite that, Lilith’s belly clenched with nerves as he led her back to the room and pushed her toward the brazier to warm herself and dry off. 

“Come,” he said after a few moments.

When Lilith turned, her heart seemed to flip over, for she could see he’d just taken something from the chest.  She settled nervously on the edge of the bed.  To her surprise, he made her lay down on her belly.  The scent of oil filled her nostrils.  A moment later, his big hands settled on her.  Despite her best efforts, she flinched, tensing all over. 

His hands, covered in the oil, moved over her back and shoulders in a motion that soothed, though.  The muscles complained, but even the pain seemed oddly pleasurable and as he moved over her, kneading her flesh, the pain began to subside.  She was more than half asleep when he finally ceased to rub her.

She didn’t even consider objecting when he told her to roll over onto her back.  She discovered the moment he began to rub her breasts, though, that the massaging motion of his hands had the opposite effect as they had had before.  Warmth blossomed in her belly.  Tingles of exquisite sensation radiated outward and collected in her woman’s place as his palms teased her nipples.  By the time he’d moved down to her belly, she was having trouble regulating her breathing, and great difficulty remaining still. 

Lifting her legs and bending her knees, he settled at the foot of the bed and lifted one leg, rubbing it as he had her back in firm stroking motions.  Her belly began to clench and unclench spasmodically as he massaged her thigh and finally settled her foot and lifted the other leg.

She saw when she finally nerved herself to look down at him that his gaze was fixed on the bright, curling thatch of hair between her legs.  His expression was taut.  His eyes, shuttered by half closed lids, seemed to glow with an internal fire.

She closed her eyes, trying not to think about his fascination with her sex. 

Her eyes popped open again when he dropped her foot to the mattress and caught her hips, lifting them from the bed.  Before she could even gasp, he had covered her mound with his mouth.  Her body seemed to seize as his heat invaded her.  He sucked the bud of flesh, teasing the ring with his tongue and sending hard jolts of pleasure through her.  She gasped, bucked against the remorseless assault on her senses.  His hands tightened possessively.  Hungrily, he licked and sucked at her tender flesh until she began to feel the burgeoning of heat within her belly again.  She gasped raggedly, trying to catch her breath, her mind and body on fire.

A ragged cry was torn from her as her body crested, convulsed in merciless spasms as he continued to feed on her flesh until she was screaming and the pleasure had begun to skate the edge of pure torment. 

Relief washed over her when he finally lifted his head.  Her body trembled, jerked, still throbbing and pulsing as he lowered her to the mattress.  For many moments, she could do nothing but fight the blackness crowding her mind, struggling to drag air into her lungs.   She was as limp as a rag doll when he slipped his arms around her and pulled her upright.  Pulling her onto his lap, he settled her legs on either side of his thighs and caught her against his chest.  She dropped her forehead against his hard shoulder, weakly.

“Mount me,” he whispered huskily against her ear. 

Still dazed, Lilith wobbled as she tried to comply and finally merely offered no resistance as he guided her with his hands, lifting her up onto her knees and guiding his engorged member into the mouth of her passage.  She caught her breath as he began to bear down her, looping her arms weakly around his shoulders to keep her balance, biting her lip as the pressure became more and more intense until she was certain she could not take him more deeply, and still he pushed inexorably, lifting his hips and grinding into her until she whimpered, fearing he would split her two.

He stopped, his breath as ragged as hers.  After a moment, he began to stroke her back almost soothingly.  The pain subsided.  Some of the pressure of his flesh pushing against hers eased.   He slipped a hand around her, flicking at the ring in her bud. The moment he did so, pleasure washed through her and her body tightened around his flesh.

He uttered a pained grunt and grabbed her hips, lifting her up and driving her down onto his shaft again and again.  With each movement, her nipples dragged along his chest, the rings sending sharp jolts through her until she was moaning incessantly.  Rapture ruptured inside of her violently, explosively, tearing a keen cry from her.  As if the sound had sent him beyond return, Gaelen found his own release, grinding her down against his body and tightening his arms around her as it quaked through him until she began to think he would crush her. 

Almost as if he heard her distress, his arms loosened abruptly.  Tremors were still shaking his body as he caught her hips, tipped her over onto her back and settled weakly on top of her. 

They lay entangled so long that Lilith drifted off to sleep again.  She woke when he lifted away from her and left the bed.  Realizing after a few moments that he had left the room, as well, Lilith sat up, trying to shake the lethargy that still lingered. 

She sat where she was for a time, uncertain of whether she would arouse his wrath or not if he returned and found her gone.  The stickiness of his seed discomfited her, though, and finally she crept from the bed and went down to the pool to bathe off. 

Gaelen stepped through the ‘corridor’ doorway as she returned.  He studied her frowningly for several moments but finally merely jerked his head toward the bed.  He had food, Lilith saw, and he had only just pleasured himself with her.  Certain she had nothing to be anxious about, she moved to the bed, settling at one end.

He settled beside her, set the tray down and pulled her onto his lap.  Snuggling her against his shoulder, he plucked food from the tray, handing her a small bunch of grapes before grabbing some for himself.  Too weak and weary to do anything but relax, Lilith didn’t even try to remain aloof. 

“You are not afraid of me,” he said after a few moments in his deep, rumbling voice, sounding surprised.

Lilith glanced at his face.  “I am.  I am terrified.”

His gaze met hers.  “You were afraid that I would hurt you.  ‘Tis not the same.  You are a strange mortal.”

Lilith grimaced.  She had heard that before.  It was her strangeness that kept her alone, for people distrusted and feared, or hated, anyone who was different.  She supposed, in a way, he was right about her fear, or lack of it.  She discovered she was afraid, but not terrified as she probably should be.  She wondered if that was because she was more accustomed to the behavior of animals than people.  Animals were never cruel.  They killed when they were hungry and they attacked only when they were frightened or hurt.  They didn’t kill, or torture, or maim for pleasure and because she understood them, she wasn’t afraid of them, knew when she was safe around them and when she was not. 

“We are all beasts,” he said, sounding displeased.  “Even humans.”

Lilith glanced at him in surprise, but there was only one conclusion to draw from his comment.  “You hear my thoughts?”

“When I want to know them.”

That disconcerted her for she doubted that it was possible to guard one’s mind from dangerous thoughts.

“Your thoughts—interest me.  Do I please you?  Is that why you do not look at me in fear?”

Lilith felt a blush rise to heat her face.

He chuckled, tipping her face up to study it.  “I did not mean that, little bird.  I watch your face when I join my body with yours, hear the sounds of your pleasure.  I know that I can satisfy you in that way.  I mean, is my form pleasing to you when you have not seen the like of such as me before?  My appearance did not seem to frighten you and yet most mortals who look upon me cringe in fear.”

She studied his face, realizing she did find it pleasing.  “That is because of what you are, not because your appearance is dreadful.  Why do you call me little bird?”

He looked surprised.  She wasn’t certain if it was the question or the fact that she had readily admitted that his appearance was pleasing to her, but she had seen no sense in trying to lie when he read her thoughts so easily.

He shrugged.  “It came into my mind when I saw you.”  He lifted one of her hands, examining it.  Releasing it, he brushed a hand along her belly.  “Your flesh is pale as milk, your hair as brilliant as fire.  Your eyes are bright with intelligence and curiosity and your body tiny and frail.

“Tell me about your little cottage in the deep wood and the beasts who come to you when they are hurt.”

She was surprised that he seemed interested in knowing, and wondered if he had only urged her to talk because he was trying to lull her fears.  She had been content enough with her life, happy, as often as not, but she could not think it would be all that interesting to anyone. 

She told him, though, about what she did with the endless progression of days. 

She found it oddly soothing to talk about her life before.  It was better than thinking about what had happened in the village, and far better than dwelling on what would happen to her now.

She didn’t delude herself into thinking that what she had experienced was even near the worst of it.  He had said he was there to make certain that she survived and she didn’t want to think of what she would have to endure if she needed his tender care to do so. 

He fed her tidbits of food, sometimes placing it in her hand, at others into her mouth—as if she was a bird, a pet to be stroked and petted, for he did that, too, stroked her skin as if he found pleasure in running his hands along it to feel her softness.

When she could think of nothing else to tell him, she decided to see what she could learn from him.  “You have always been the guardian?”

“Nay.  I was summoned when the last fulfilled his service and joined the others.”

That didn’t tell her much.  “You have—guarded many maidens?”

“None.”

Surprised, Lilith shifted to look at him.  “None?”

“You are the only maiden that has passed this way.  Young, beautiful women, yes, but not maidens.”

“Oh,” Lilith responded, disconcerted, mostly because that also didn’t answer the question in her mind.  It occurred to her after a moment that it was actually an impertinent question to have asked at all.  She wasn’t even certain why she wanted to know how many women he had initiated into the labyrinth.

“They bring us only the most beautiful.”  He stopped, thought it over for a moment and then continued looking puzzled, “Or the ugliest and sometimes very old.  I have never entirely understood their reasoning.”

Lilith stared at him for several moments and finally bit her lip. 

He looked intrigued.  “What have I said that amuses you?”

“It would be difficult to explain.”

“Try.”

“They brought me because they thought that I was a witch and they would rid themselves of me by giving me to the demons of the cave.  I am certain that is why they bring them all, or at least most.”

He frowned but finally dismissed it as of no particular interest.  “We do not care so long as they bring them.  We have … acquired a taste for mortal women.”  He glanced down at the tray and picked up another bunch of grapes.  “And for the food of mortals.”

“Even if they are old and ugly?”

His eyes gleamed at her tone, but he answered seriously.  “The old are too frail to entertain us, but, so long as they are willing to serve they are of use.”

A shiver skated lightly down Lilith’s spine, but, aware of the demon’s facility for reading her mind she carefully redirected her thoughts.

He touched her chin, tipping her face up.  “You are not as frail as you appear, little bird.  Your mother survived.  You will also.”

Lilith sent him a startled look. 

Whether he’d read thoughts she wasn’t even conscious of, or he was simply extremely intuitive, Lilith didn’t know, but he answered as if he had heard her thoughts. “I did not know her.  I was in the nether world when she came.  I know she was here because I saw it here,” he said, touching the tip of one finger to her temple. 

She frowned.  “What is the nether world like?” she asked curiously.

His gaze flickered over her face.  “Why?”

“I just … wondered.  It is hard to imagine what it might be like.”

“And you would still not be able to imagine if I told you.”

“Oh,” she said, vaguely disappointed.

He hesitated and finally placed a palm on either side of her head, closing his eyes.  At once images began to burst into her mind of a sprawling, arid wasteland of red stone with only a bit of brown-green vegetation here and there and no trees.  The sky was dark with angry clouds that were split again and again with bright blue flashes of light.  Fire erupted from the ground from time to time, like fountains except that they spewed molten rock.  Sprouting from the parched earth, however, were great palaces with many sharp spires reaching into the sky like jagged teeth.  They gleamed and twinkled in the light of the blazing sun in the distance, like precious jewels.

“Oh!” Lilith gasped in awe just before blackness descended over her like a clap of thunder.

When she opened her eyes again, Gaelen’s frowning face swam immediately into view.  Lifting a hand to her pounding head, she massaged it.  “What happened?”

“Your mind darkened.”

Lilith blinked at the harshness of his voice.  “I fainted?”

Something flickered in his eyes.  “Faint?”

“Blacked out.”

“You do this often?” he demanded, his expression a mixture of indignation and something she might have considered anxiety if he had been human.

Lilith thought it over, but she couldn’t remember ever fainting before.  “No.”

“Do not do it again.  I do not like it.”  He set her aside and rose abruptly, taking the tray and stalking from the room.

Still feeling more than a little woozy, Lilith watched his departure in confusion.  When he did not come back, she sat up, wondering if it was safe to allow her thoughts to wander at will, or if he could ‘read’ them even from a distance.  She discovered it wasn’t really a matter of choice.  She couldn’t seem to sort through her feelings about anything that had happened.  It was almost as if her mind had shut her away from them, almost as if everything had happened to someone else.

The twinges of her body told her otherwise.  She had been a maiden, and her body was not accustomed to being used to pleasure a man, but she was certainly not ignorant about mating or shocked that he had used her for his pleasure.  She knew men did.  She had certainly understood the mechanics of it most of her life.  She had many animals, and they did not care a snap if she was around or not.  If they decided to mount, they did.

She wasn’t quite certain of what he was doing, or why.  She felt, though, that it was more than merely enjoying his position as guardian. 

He had said the demons would expect to entertain themselves with her.  She shivered at the thought, but it also occurred to her to wonder, if he had meant that they would couple with her, why she had any reason to be concerned.  It might not be pleasant, but surely there could not be a question of not surviving the ‘entertainment’?

The answer seemed unavoidable.  He had said he was being gentle with her.  He knew the others would not.

Realizing that she was only scaring herself, she got up and went to relieve herself and then wandered down to drink from the cold water near the pool.  After staring at the bubbling pool for several moments, she glanced around the cavern.  There was little to see beyond rock and more rock. 

Except that there was a passage on the other side of the pool.

She stared at it, wondering if there was any possibility at all that she could find her way out of the maze of corridors and caverns.  The likelihood seemed great that she couldn’t.  She’d been blindfolded when he brought her in.

Escape teased at her, but the thoughts of retaliation if she should be caught tamped the budding urge to try.  The labyrinth was filled with many demons.  She thought, as demons went, that she preferred to stay with the Hawkin.

She realized after a moment that she was staring at the water in the pool.  It had felt good and she knew the heat would soothe her aching body.  Was she allowed to, though? 

She did not want to anger Gaelen.  She didn’t know if he was being gentle with her because he was supposed to, or because he was simply inclined to be because he thought of her as fragile, but she had a feeling that he could be terrifying if she crossed him.

After a few moments’ indecision, she moved to the pool anyway and climbed in, allowing the soothing, heated water to wash over her until she began to feel so relaxed she felt heavy.  Climbing out again took more of an effort than she would’ve thought and a wave of dizziness washed over her.  Deciding she’d gotten too hot, she crossed to the cold water, splashing it over her face and then drinking her fill. 

When she turned, she nearly jumped out of her skin, discovering that Gaelen was watching her and wondering just how long he had been there.

“Come.”

Her belly clenched immediately at his tone, for she knew by now what that tone meant, but she didn’t dare try to run.  Nodding jerkily, she went to him.  He caught her hand as she reached him, leading her toward the bed.  All of the strength seemed to leave her, especially her legs, and it took an effort to keep from wilting into a puddle on the floor.  He surprised her again.  Instead of pushing her into the bed, he sat down on the edge.  Spreading his legs, he pulled her between them.  Wrapping his arms around her, he dragged her close, covering the tip of her breast with his mouth.  Heat surged through her instantly as he began to suckle and lick it as he had her woman’s place.  She swayed dizzily, trying to hold herself up, but sagging more and more heavily against his arms.  She could scarcely breathe for the pounding of her heart.  When she’d begun to think she would black out from the lack of air, he lifted his mouth and moved to her other breast, suckling the tender nipple until she began to groan and ache with need.

She nearly wilted to the floor when he lifted his head.  He caught her face in one hand.  “This lesson may be more difficult, but it is one you must learn.”

Dazed, her body sizzling from the heat he’d generated in her belly, Lilith merely stared at him uncomprehendingly.  “You will pleasure me as I pleasured you before, milking me until you have drained my seed.”

Lilith blinked, her gaze moving from his face to his cock.

Saliva pooled in her mouth and she swallowed with an effort, realizing the thought of doing what he said made her feel even more needy.  Before she could kneel, he lay back on the bed and dragged her on top of him.  Turning her so that her back was to him, he spread her legs until she was straddling his ribs. 

She stared at his swollen member for several moments and finally leaned down to take him into her mouth.  He was huge.  She had thought he was huge when he was thrusting the great thing into her passage, but she could barely open her mouth wide enough to take him in and at that little more than the knob at the end.  She sucked on it experimentally feeling a rush of heat, feeling her belly tighten as it had before. Discovering that it gave her pleasure as well as him, she began to suck more feverishly, alternately licking the slick knob of flesh.  He took one of her hands and wrapped it tightly around his shaft, guiding it up and down until she grasped the rhythm he wanted.

After a few moments, he caught her hips, drawing her back until she was lying on his belly, and then seized her thighs and pushed them wide, lifting her upward.  She jumped when she felt his mouth cover her sex, but as he began to tease her flesh a fever seemed to grip her and she worked her mouth over him with more fervor.

Another jolt went through her when she felt him push his finger into her rectum, this one not quite as pleasant.  She stiffened, trying to pull away.  He held her tightly, sucking the bud of flesh and pressing his finger into her rhythmically until the discomfort eased and she felt the stroke of his finger along a place inside of her that rapidly spiraled her body toward climax.  Feeling it rushing upon her, she suckled his turgid flesh and stroked him with the desperation of her own need, groaning as the wave of bliss broke over her in pounding waves.

His cock jerked, began to pump his seed into her mouth.  She choked, trying to draw away, but he grasped her head and it flickered through her mind that he had said she had to milk him of his seed.  Obediently, she swallowed, sucking him until his cock ceased to jerk and finally became flaccid.

Gasping for breath, she dropped her head weakly against his thigh.  He lay perfectly limp beneath her for many moments and finally grabbed her arm, dragging her around and flipping her onto her back on the bed beside him.  She felt his gaze on her, but now that the fever had subsided, she was discomfited by her enthusiastic reaction to his tutelage and could not bring herself to open her eyes until he sat up and moved to the edge of the bed.

Anxiety swamped her abruptly, for there was something about his attitude that told her he was displeased.  “I did not do it right?”

He didn’t glance at her.  “Yes,” he said harshly.

Yes she did?  Or yes, she did not do it right, she wondered worriedly? 

If she could not please him did she have any chance of pleasing the others and winning her freedom?

“I will try again,” she said anxiously.

He slid a narrow eyed glance at her.  Rising abruptly, he left. 

Chapter Four

Lilith had worried over Gaelen’s abrupt departure until she was nigh sick with it before he reappeared.  At another time, she might have wondered at her need for him and her anxiety for his approval.  She had been with him no more than a hand full of days, and despite the intimacy between them, he was still very much a stranger to her.  Her very life depended upon him, however.  She did not want to die in this place and Gaelen had become her safe harbor, her life line.  Without him, without his willingness to care for her and guide her, she might or might not have a future.  With his help, she knew her chances were far better, though.  And she was determined that whatever she had to do to survive, she could and would do it.  She knew she could.  Her mother had faced this, as Gaelen had pointed out, and she had survived.  She was determined that she would, too.

He was angry with her when he returned, but for the life of her she could fathom why.  He had been pleasured.  She had done exactly what he had told her to do.  She could not help it if she did not know how to do it well.  She was trying to learn.

She began to be both frightened and angry when he said nothing, scarcely looking at her.  “You think I will not please them,” she said finally.

He slid a glance at her.  “You will.”

That sounded both ominous and cryptic, not like a vote of confidence, possibly because he still looked angry.  “I have not had much time to learn,” she said a little testily, willing anger to her aid to dispel the desire to cry like a frightened child. 

He sent her another glance.  “You know all that you need to know.”

Shivering at the coldness in his voice, she retreated into silence.  After a while, the worry seemed to drain what little energy she had and she slept.

A clatter woke her sometime later.  Rousing sleepily, she pushed herself up and looked around.  Gaelen, she saw, had dropped a tray of food on the table.  Disoriented, with no idea whether it was morning or evening, or how many days had passed since she had been taken into the labyrinth, she threw her legs over the edge of the bed and got up as Gaelen left her alone again.

He appeared again when she had taken care of her needs and eaten.  Summoning her with the crook of one finger, he led the way down to the pool.  Lilith brightened immediately, felt her body begin to hum with anticipation.  He bathed as before, and returned her to stand beside the brazier as before to dry.  She heard him lift the lid of the trunk as she stood drying in front of the heat, and turned curiously.

He held a length of chain in his hands that was the same in size as that that he had threaded through the rings in her nipples and the bud of her sex.  Approaching her, he pushed her hair behind her shoulders and fastened the chain to a link on the collar around her neck.  When he stepped away, he pulled on the end of the chain in his hand experimentally.  Lilith gasped as she felt the tug on the rings embedded in her flesh, felt waves of sensation washing through her. 

Wrapping the chain around his hand, he tugged harder, until she moved toward him instinctively to ease the pressure.  Apparently satisfied, he dropped the chain, allowing it to drag the floor, and returned to the chest.  When he turned to her again, she saw that he was holding manacles linked together.  Confusion washed over her as he grasped her wrists, pulled them behind her back and fastened the cuffs.

His expression was taut as he bent and pulled a strip of linen from the chest and then grasped the chain, winding it around his hand.  “You have been summoned.”

Lilith gaped at him in stunned surprise, but he merely turned away and, tugging at the chain, led her from the room and into the room with the pool.  Passing it, he headed toward the opening Lilith had noticed the day before and down a long corridor virtually identical to the one he’d led her down when he had first brought her. 

The tug on her tender flesh was insistent as she followed him, impossible to ignore, at times painful when she stumbled.  She kept up the best she could, trying to maintain her balance, trying to fight down the growing fear forming tightly around her heart, for the shock of his abrupt announcement had been so profound that she had not been able to wrap her mind around it at first.  She did not know why, but she had begun to accept the situation as it was, expected that she would have some warning before he turned her over to the other demons.

Had he not warned her because he was angry with her, she wondered?  Or had he been so angry that he would have to give her up that he had not thought to warn her that the time had come when she must face the ordeal that she couldn’t begin to imagine lay before her?

She was panting for breath by the time he halted, as much from fear as from exertion.  Grasping her arm, he dragged her around and placed the length of linen he had brought with him over her eyes, tying it tightly.

Immediately, Lilith’s fear deepened.  He caught her shoulders, squeezing them hard enough that it penetrated her fear fogged mind.  “I have left no part of your body untouched … and neither will they, but you will not be afraid because I have shown you that you can find pleasure.”

Lilith swallowed with an effort, nodding her head jerkily instead of telling him she was afraid and asking him why he had blindfolded her.

Because some things are more fearful when you see them. There are demons among the horde that you would find frightening to look upon … or repulsive.  You will not think of that, though.  You will open yourself to the pleasure I have taught your body and you will be rewarded with it even as they take pleasure for themselves.

There was a tug on the chain at almost the same moment that Gaelen’s hands dropped from her shoulders.  Confused, Lilith didn’t react at once.  She was sorry she hadn’t, for the second jerk was painful.  Yielding to the pull, knowing that Gaelen was no longer guiding her, Lilith stumbled blindly along, guided only by the pull.  She felt the heat of bodies moving close, heard sounds of movement that told her she was in a room filled with many creatures, and then her arms were grasped and she was lifted clear of the floor and carried.  Pain shot through her shoulders and elbows at the pressure.  She bit her lip, trying to focus her mind away from it, but she was relieved when they set her on her feet again.

Hands touched her, stroking her body all over and she realized she was being examined, studied.  After a moment, she was lifted again.  This time, though, her legs were grabbed as well, and forced to bend.  She was placed on something cold and hard—rock, she realized—on her knees.  A hand examined her cleft and then she felt another digging into her, peeling the fleshy lips of her sex apart.  Something hard pressed against the mouth of her passage.  She gasped when she felt it, jerking instinctively.  When she did, someone tugged at the chain, sending shafts of both pleasure and pain through her.  She went still, panting as she felt the hands holding her pressing her downward until her body slowly began to engulf the rigid shaft.

There was no give to it as there was to Gaelen’s flesh, even when it was thoroughly engorged and she had thought his man root was as hard as rock.

This felt like rock in truth.  Panicking, she forgot what Gaelen had told her and tried to struggle, but they merely held her more tightly and drove her downwards with less regard for her body’s resistance.  She uttered a cry midway between a gasp and a scream as they impaled her on it, expecting any moment to feel her body tearing apart, to feel pain.  Instead, after a few mindless moments she realized that neither had happened and her panic subsided.  She felt stretched almost to the point of pain, but no real pain, only discomfort. 

She’d just begun to relax fractionally when she felt the hands on her legs again.  Grasping them, they pulled them out from under her, straightening them so that her own weight bore her down heavily on the shaft.  Her heart skipped several beats as she sank more fully upon the rod, felt it pressing against her womb. The hands moved to her ankles and she felt the coldness of metal clamping around them. 

They withdrew, leaving her to sway dizzily, disoriented by the blindfold and off balance.  Slowly, the tightness of the muscles along her passage began to ease, but that only allowed the shaft deeper penetration until she began to pant with the discomfort and the fear she refused to acknowledge that it might be plunged deeper still.

A hot mouth covered one nipple.  She jumped at the unexpected heat of it and the fierceness of the assault, which was almost as painful as it was pleasurable. Despite that, heat blossomed in her belly and moisture gathered round the shaft.  A second mouth covered her other nipple, suckling and nipping at it with sharp teeth so that pain and pleasure alternately rippled through her. 

Her breath sawed in and out of her chest raggedly.  She swayed for many moments between fear, pleasure and pain, but the incessant tugging at her sensitive nipples began to overwhelm fear and discomfort.  Dizziness washed over her as the heat of carnal need enveloped her.  Her body clenched and relaxed rhythmically around the shaft until she began to gasp and moan with pleasure. 

Abruptly, the shaft began to move downward, sliding along her passage, and then upward again, swiftly impaling her.  She gasped, swaying, and teeth clamped over her nipples, bearing down just enough to be threatening, to hold her in place.  She went still, held herself upright with an effort as the shaft began to pump into her at a frantic pace, jarringly, but driving her so quickly toward release that it caught her unaware as it pounded through her so hard she thought her heart would explode.

The thrusting continued unabated, driving her body to convulse on and on until she feared she would black out, until her gasps became hoarse screams.  Abruptly, the shaft began to jerk and spasm and spew hot seed into her, demolishing the thought that it was not flesh at all.

Her knees gave way when the pleasure wracking her body began to dissipate at last.  She came down painfully on the shaft, which she could not tell had diminished in any way.  After a brief moment of respite, the thrusting began again.  She groaned, but the incessant tugging on her breasts and the stroking along her passage awoke her body once more and the tension began to build in her rapidly again. 

When it burst over her the second time, she screamed at the intensity of it, gasping, almost weeping at the hard jerks ripping through her.

Darkness swarmed over her like ants in a stirred anthill, her flesh stinging, twitching.   It was woefully brief.  It seemed to her that it was not more than a blink and then she woke to a relentless tugging and nibbling at her nipples that forced her body to stir to life, that poured heat through her body into her belly where the tension began to wind again even before the huge cock began pumping into her insistently, with an unyielding determination to wring every ounce of pleasure from her body.

Dazed by the powerful expulsions of passion she’d already experienced, her senses were sluggish to respond and that only seemed to inspire the beasts to a more ferocious assault.  The tempo increased until she reached the point of no return a third time and the convulsions of rapture ripped through her again, tearing hoarse cries from her until the waves ceased to pound through her.

The darkness that swept over her that time seemed more profound.  Again she was roused by the tugging at her nipples, but she was so exhausted she merely groaned, her head slumped forward on her shoulders.  She wasn’t even certain of whether the tugging was from the mouths that seemed to have tormented her forever, or if the tug was from the chains as she wavered back and forth, trying to maintain her balance.  Doubt was removed when the tugging failed to yield the expected response and teeth bit into her hard enough to pierce the fog, tearing a hoarse cry from her. 

Apparently even that was not response enough, for a mouth, or what felt like a mouth, latched onto her clit and began to tug on it with a ferocity that shot fire through her.  The engorged member that no number of releases seemed to diminish began to drive into her almost frenziedly at the same moment.  She had been certain moments before that no amount of stimulation could force her body to culminate again, and yet, with a sense of dread, she felt it tightening inside of her within moments, felt the jarring, excruciating waves of exquisite sensation tearing through her again until, thankfully, she knew nothing at all.

She had thought that Gaelen had pushed her in the days she had spent with him, learning the way that she would have to pleasure the demons of the Labyrinth.  She found, though, that he had been indeed gentle, had coaxed far more than demanded, certainly in comparison to the others.  Even her exhaustion did not deter them, for they only prodded her harder until the culminations themselves were almost torture as they wracked her over and over again.

She had no idea how long they entertained themselves with her, but it began to seem endless and each time she became convinced that they had wrung all from her that they possibly could, they would begin again and show her that she was wrong.  Neither did the releases seem to diminish.  Instead, each time her body convulsed, it seemed the spasms were harder, that the waves washed over her longer before they began to diminish until she’d begun to blackout purely from shortness of breath each time her body seized with convulsions of pleasure until at long last her body did finally reach its limit and she fell into a deep pit of oblivion.

When she became dimly aware of her surroundings again, Lilith realized she was being carried.  The effort to lift her head was simply beyond her, however, and after trying a couple of times, she merely hung limply draped over the arms beneath her shoulders and thighs.  She didn’t realize the manacles had been removed from her wrists until she felt the unexpected brush of water against her fingers and instinctively jerked away from the heat.  She was settled on a hard surface and could feel the heated water lapping at her as she heard the splash of water close at hand.  Struggling, she managed to lift one eyelid enough to see that Gaelen stood in the pool next to her, rubbing soap into a cloth. 

She gasped when he began to bathe her.  As certain as she had been that she was beyond feeling much of anything any longer, she discovered that she was completely wrong.  Her skin felt overly sensitive, not numb, and the lightest of touches sent tremors through her, painful echoes of the climaxes that had been wrenched from her over and over until she’d lost count.

He ignored her weak protests, bathing her from head to foot and then pressing her thighs wide and bathing the swollen, bruised nether regions of her body.  When he’d finished, he pulled her into the pool and rinsed the lather from her and then carried her out.  Apparently realizing she was too weak to dry herself in front of the brazier, he simply placed her on the mattress and wrapped the sheet around her shivering form.  Relieved that her trial seemed to be over, at least for a little while, she rolled onto her side, curled into a tight ball and sought oblivion.

She protested when she was roused, but felt herself scooped up anyway and pressed against a hard wall that she realized after a few moments was a chest.  Dizzying movement followed and then she realized Gaelen had settled on the bed with her half lying, half sitting across his lap. 

Something was pressed to her lips.  She turned her head away.  He caught her head and turned it back.  “Eat,” he growled.

She took the bite of food into her mouth, chewing and swallowing, but she had no real idea of what it was and didn’t particularly care. The only thing she really wanted to do was to seek oblivion again, but he was persistent in feeding her until he decided she had eaten enough. 

When he had set the tray aside, he settled her more comfortably against his shoulder and began to stroke her in a soothing motion that set her mind to wandering lazily.  She didn’t know if he was doing it to soothe her, either consciously or unconsciously, or it was merely that he liked the feel of her skin beneath his palms.  It didn’t particularly matter to her one way or the other, however.  She found it relaxing and comforting.

She was almost asleep when he ceased to stroke her back and lifted his hand to her head, splaying a palm along one cheek and tipping her head back to look down at her face.  “I warned you not to struggle against them,” he murmured.  “They can feed upon your passion, or upon your pain.  They do not particularly care which it is, but fighting them only excites their desire to draw from your pain.”

Lilith lifted her heavy eyelids to look up at him dully.  “You watched.”

He frowned, but she could see confusion in his eyes.  “I did not enjoy it,” he said finally, seeming surprised to realize he hadn’t.

Curiosity pricked her, tempting her to ask him why he hadn’t enjoyed watching when he apparently did in general.  She shied away from it, however, not certain why it had even occurred to her to wonder or care.

“Does it matter to you whether its pleasure or pain?”

Again he seemed to ponder the question.  “Yes,” he murmured finally, dipping his head to fit his lips lightly to hers in gentle exploration.  “I do not want you to feel fear or pain.  This is why I tried to prepare you for what was to come.”

She gasped in surprise, partly because his mouth was more coaxing than demanding and partly because she couldn’t fathom why he had any interest in doing anything so obscurely sexual when he had shown no interest before in doing anything that suggested tenderness and caring rather than carnal need.

The tentativeness of it disarmed her.  She found herself kissing him back, warmed by the feel of his mouth on hers, the glide of his tongue.  One of her arms was trapped beneath his along his side.  She lifted the other, placing her palm over his hard male breast and stroking her hand upward along his chest to his neck. 

The touch, light though it was, sent a tremor through him.  The timber of his kiss altered subtly, became more demanding.  Cupping her hand around the back of his neck, she stroked upward to the base of his skull and then down again, following the hard ridge of flesh from his neck to his shoulder.

At about the same moment she realized, dimly, that her light, curious touch, rather than being received as what it was, an offering, appreciation for his gentleness, was driving his urges beyond his control, he tore his lips from hers, tipped her back onto the bed, grasped her thighs and buried his face into her cleft, licking and sucking at the achingly tender flesh with mindless need.  She grunted as the air left her lungs as if it had been punched from her chest, trying to grab at his head and thrust him away.  He caught her hands, pinning them to the mattress and continued to tug at her until the sensation she’d begun to dread tightened until it seemed every muscle in her body seized.

She screamed hoarsely as the tension snapped and exploded in shattering waves.

She was still struggling to catch her breath when he covered her, driving his engorged member into her.  Pain instantly supplanted the ecstasy of moments before.  She was raw from such unaccustomed activity, so sore she felt like she couldn’t bear it.  She began to struggle against him.  For several moments, he seemed oblivious, but some of her panic finally communicated itself to him.  He stopped abruptly, pulling away enough to stare down at her.

Relief surged through her when he pulled out of her and stepped from the bed.  It was short lived.  He returned moments later, smearing some sort of cream liberally on his cock.  “No,” Lilith gasped as he pried her thighs apart and pressed his hard, engorged flesh into her again.

He caught her wrists, pinning them to the bed on either side of her head.  “This will soothe and heal,” he ground out.  “You will suffer more tomorrow if I do not do this.”

She desisted, because she knew it was hopeless, not because she believed him.   Closing her eyes, she turned her head away, feeling hot tears of weakness and exhaustion trickle down her cheeks.  She found after a very few moments, though, that he had not lied only because he was determined to use her body to find release.  The cream soothed the burning pain.

She was still glad when he shuttered and went still.

She didn’t know why she had thought, hoped, that he was different from the others.  He wasn’t.  He was a demon as they were and he had no real conception of tenderness, or affection, or caring.  Her beasts knew more about affection that the demons.  He had only been gentle with her because he was fearful they would break their plaything too quickly and have to wait until the villagers brought them a new one.

Remembering that the villagers were responsible for her plight brought a surge of hate to her such as she had never known.  She was sorrier than ever that she was no real witch and did not have the power to punish them for what they’d done to her.  She resolved, though, that if she made it out of the labyrinth, she would never go near the village again, not even if they came begging for herbs or potions to heal their sick, which they had on several occasions in the past.  They could all die, rot, and go to perdition for all she cared.                

* * * *

Dread settled in Lilith’s mind as she was led into the chamber she had been led to the day before.  Her body had a mind of its own, however, and sent as much excitement surging through her as anxiety, her belly clenching, her passage growing warm and damp in anticipation of the endless pleasure it was already beginning to crave.

Trying to ignore both, Lilith focused on what Gaelen had told her—if she did not submit, she would suffer the consequences and as hard as it was to endure the stimulation and release over and over, it was still far preferable to the possibility of real pain.  She felt like she had a much better chance of surviving the exhausting pleasure than the other.

Despite every effort, she still tensed when they lifted her, knowing what was coming.  She focused on relaxing as she felt the fingers parting the flesh of her sex, breathing as slowly and evenly as possible as she was lowered onto the knob of unyielding flesh.  A tentative flicker of relief and gratitude washed over her when she discovered the salve Gaelen had forced into her had relieved most of the soreness.  She panted to keep her muscles relaxed and yielding as they pulled her legs from under her and her own weight forced the shaft deeper, but she quickly realized she had not really remembered how huge it felt, how impossibly tightly it stretched her body.  Her belly clenched almost painfully as they forced it deeper still, tugging at her legs. 

When they had finally ceased to pull at her legs, something settled on her shoulders.  Surprised at the deviation from the ritual of the day before, Lilith jerked, a ripple of tension rolling through her.  The pressure and weight of it increased, bearing down on her until her toes and then the soles of her feet touched the stone floor and the manacles were secured to her ankles. 

Confused by the change, she realized after a moment that it not only held her down, it supported her back and head.  Relieved that she would at least not to worry that she would hurt herself by losing her balance, she quickly discovered the new devise was in no way intended for her comfort.  Her head was strapped to it to keep her from drawing backwards.

She was still wondering why when something hard pushed against her lips.  Yielding to the pressure, she opened her mouth, closing it again around the cock that was shoved into the cavity.  The mouths from the day before, or different mouths, latched onto her nipples hungrily and began to tug and pull at them, sending radiating heat through her and into her belly even as the shaft began to pump into her passage.  She worked her mouth over the cock that was thrusting into her, at first only because she knew it was expected of her. 

As the pleasurable tension began building inside of her, though, her hunger grew and she began to suck on it as feverishly as the demons tugged on her nipples.  She was so intent with the pleasure building inside of her she scarcely noticed when the turgid flesh began to jerk and spew salty liquid down her throat.  By that time her own crisis was upon her and she hardly knew where she was, sucking on it almost aggressively as her body was rocked with shockwave after shockwave of undiluted bliss.

Afterward, she was allowed to rest until her breathing was more or less normal again.  She realized then that the bondage was not merely for the sake of control.  They were taking turns pleasuring themselves with her and too impatient to wait.  They had bound her so that more than one at the time could entertain themselves with her flesh.

It was almost a relief to realize that she wasn’t servicing one insatiable demon, but several—she thought.  She could not be certain, for she was blindfolded still and had no idea what form these demons had.  Still, hope filled her that she would more rapidly be done and allowed to leave.

If she could only endure a little longer, she added as a mental after thought as she felt them begin to tug her body to life once more and the process was repeated. 

The hopefulness did not outlast the day.  She hadn’t realized that they had been ‘gentle’ the day before in their use.  When her body had expended itself to the point that she began to faint with weakness each time she was forced over the edge again, they merely worked harder to drag more from her.  Eventually she reached the point that even the hard nipping with teeth on her nipples failed to elicit much of a response, but they merely abandoned that avenue of stimulation and began to work on her pleasure bud with equal enthusiasm until they had her screaming again with the force of her release.

As before, time seemed to hang upon her.  She could not focus her mind beyond what they were doing to her, beyond the sensations that poured through her with each coupling, and they would not allow it even if she had tried.  She thought, though, that she was bound far longer than the day before, forced to culminate until her entire body felt like it had no consistency or substance and she finally reached a point of exhaustion where they could not touch her anymore.

She awakened to find herself at the bathing pool—or a bathing pool.  She found it difficult to tell one part of the labyrinth from another, mostly, she supposed, because she had had little opportunity to actually study her surroundings.  She didn’t try to protest the touching required to bathe her as she had the day before, knowing it was as useless to object to that as anything else and deciding to save her energies for more critical expenditures.

Neither did she protest when Gaelen carried her back into the room, dried her with the linen, and cuddled her against his chest to feed her.  She turned her face away, however, when he tried to kiss her.  She wasn’t falling for that again!  She had never considered herself a complete fool, but she’d begun to feel like one.  The villagers had terrorized her, and her fear of the labyrinth had been almost as great.  It was small wonder that she had latched onto Gaelen’s offer to protect her as if it was a lifeline, but she still felt like an idiot for believing anything told to her by a demon.  The truth, to them, was whatever served the purpose, or the moment.

Her throat closed at the thought, because she had needed so badly to feel even a small sense of security and now she had been deprived of even that illusion.  Deep down, she supposed she had realized all along that his agenda was not necessarily her own.  He had not tried to lie about that.  He had told her straight out that his duty was to see to it that she was taken care of.  It was unreasonable to be angry and disappointed because he had failed to meet her expectations, but she couldn’t help but be anyway, anymore than she could have stopped herself from wanting to believe the lie she’d concocted for herself to begin with.

He would not accept her rebuff, but then she had not really believed he would.  She had only meant for him to know that she was not giving. He was taking.

She remained stubbornly passive as he kissed her, even though she felt the lure to yield to his persuasion, keeping her hand carefully tucked against her.  He looked baffled and angry when he pulled away.  “It is not the same.”

She flicked a glance at him from beneath her lashes.  “Taking never is.”

She made no attempt to shield herself from his gaze as he tipped her onto her back, but she couldn’t prevent herself from tensing when he looked down at her sex hungrily. 

After what seemed an endless moment of time, he slipped from the bed and took the salve, lavishing in along his member.  Lilith watched him, torn between a vague disappointment that he had not pleasured her with his mouth and another emotion that seemed equal parts triumph that he had felt the rebuff and irritation that he apparently had no intention of allowing that to put him off finding his own release.

She found her conflicting emotions baffling.  Unreasonable or not, the hurt and anger, she understood.  She even understood the desire to wound him in return.  Why she felt both disappointed and gratified that he had decided not to concern himself with her pleasure confused her, as did the vaguely acknowledged desire for him to wound her more so she could hate him better.

It occurred to her that the last was self-preservation.  The more quickly he thoroughly disillusioned her, the less she would expect of him and the less she would be hurt in the long run.

Theoretically. 

That depended, of course, on how deeply her emotions ran and she could not determine that with any certainty.  She was still trying to sort through reality and the things she had allowed herself to think.  

She tensed when he climbed onto the bed and brushed his cock head down her cleft, wincing as he pushed slowly inside of her.  He ignored her distress, bracing his palms on her wrists, even though she had made no attempt to elude him or to fight.  Her fingers curled into her palms when he succeeded in driving to her core.  She caught her breath and held it as he slid slowly out and then returned, trying to relax the tension in her body.

To her surprise, instead of thrusting with a faster and faster pace, after slowly gliding in and out of her several times, he went perfectly still.  When she opened her eyes to look up at him, she saw that his face was contorted as if in pain.  Slowly, he withdrew—completely.

Settling beside her, he lay staring at the uneven rock ceiling above them for several moments and finally slipped an arm around her and dragged her against his side, stroking his hand down her back.  “Only one day more,” he said after a few moments, “and then they will allow you to rest for three days.”

The first words from his mouth had brought a flicker of hope that died a painfully swift death.

“I do not understand mortals,” he said finally.  “You are given pleasure for the pleasure taken.  How could you not want it?”

Lilith frowned, realizing that that was another point of confusion that she was having trouble sorting out.  The truth was, she had begun to crave it—or at least her body had—to hunger for the release they gave her even while she dreaded it because it was nearly unbearable to feel so much. 

“They all do.”

Lilith glanced at him in surprise.  “They?”

“The mortal women brought to us.  That is why they stay, because they crave our touch as much as we hunger for theirs.”

  It took many moments for that to sink in, mostly because she had believed—as everyone did—that those who never returned didn’t because they weren’t allowed to, or they died.  “The women who have been brought to you?”

“Yes.”

The relief was so profound, her eyes and nose stung with tears.  “I will be allowed to go?”

She saw when he turned to study her face that his eyes were tumultuous with emotion.  “In time.  If you wish.”

Lilith smiled, her heart racing with excitement.  “Yes.  I wish it.”

His eyes narrowed.  “You are not concerned that the villagers will harm you?”

“Oh,” Lilith said, feeling her euphoria promptly dashed.  “I expect I will have to move away,” she added after a moment, trying not to think about all the years she and her mother had put into the cottage in the woods to make it comfortable. 

“If you cannot return to your home, why would you want to go?”

She frowned.  “I miss my forest—the sky, the trees, the animals.  They need me.  They always come to me when they are sick or hurt.  If I am not there to care for them, no one will, and they will die.”

“You will miss the fire in your blood, the passion only we can give you.”

Lilith shivered.  She wanted to deny it, categorically, but she thought in some ways that she would.  Before, she was entirely content with no one.  She had thought, one day, that perhaps she would have a child, but she had not even considered then that she would live with a man and, even if she had, she would only have thought of one—not many.   “One cannot have everything,” she said finally, “and I think if I must give up one or the other I will be happier in my forest.”

Chapter Five

As accustomed as Lilith was to staying busy from daylight to dark to maintain her home in the forest, she might have been bored in the time she was given to rest except that she slept more than she was awake.  It wasn’t until the end of the second day that she finally noticed that Gaelen watched her whenever he was in the room with her with a mixture of hunger, baffled anger, and what she might have interpreted as concern if he had not been what he was.

She was too weary in the beginning to give any thought to the fact that he made no attempt to couple with her except to think that she was glad for the respite from sexual congress of any sort.  By the third day, however, she began to wonder why he merely stared at her with hunger in his eyes and remained angry and aloof.

The only explanation that presented itself seemed too farfetched to consider, but she could not help but wonder if her rejection had gone deeper than she would have thought possible.  It was not that she did not think he was capable of any of the more human emotions—he certainly had no trouble with anger—but she had come to think the denizens of the labyrinth were more basic and far less complex creatures than humans where emotion was concerned.  Not like dumb beasts, certainly, for she had found that most were capable of a good deal of affection, but perhaps somewhere between the human and the creatures of the forests and fields?

She was intrigued, but not enough to let down her guard again, particularly now that she had come to realize that the demons would free her once they had satiated themselves with her.

He might have lied to her about that, she knew, but it was the only hope she had to hold onto and she clung to it determinedly, refusing to allow her mind to examine the offer for fear that she might find flaws in it that would mean it was a lie.

As hard as she had tried to convince herself that she detested the things they did to her, she had already begun to feel a mixture of dread and anticipation when Gaelen took her to the pool the night before she was to be summoned again.  She was so focused on it, in fact, that she didn’t realize that Gaelen had deviated from his typical routine when he first settled her on the stone.  He had bathed her with the same slow, careful thoroughness as ever, and rinsed the lather from her.  Instead of leaving the pool, however, and leading her to the brazier to dry herself, he took her legs one at the time and lifted her foot to the ledge.

Her stomach clenched at the intent she saw in his gaze as he pushed her legs wide.  His cock, she saw, was erect, so engorged the skin was shiny with the strain.  His gaze moved from her face to her sex and he brushed the fingers of one hand lightly over her nether lips, parting them, stroking her cleft.

Heat instantly pooled in her belly at his touch.  Her mouth went dry.

He began to stroke his engorged member with one hand as he studied her pink flesh intently, touching her lightly with fingers that trembled noticeably.  Thoroughly aroused, she found her breath hitching in her chest as she watched him.  Anticipation gathered inside of her in heated, moist welcome. 

After a few moments, he placed a palm on the stone beside her and leaned close, so close she could feel the heat of his breath, felt almost as if her skin reached out to him the way it prickled and grew more sensitive.  His breathing grew ragged as he began to stroke himself faster.  His face contorted as if with pain.

He leaned away after a moment, examining her sex again, carefully separating the thin, sensitive petals of flesh, stroking them with the fingers of one hand as he continued to stroke himself with the other. 

Confusion began to usurp the sense of excitement humming through her when he made no attempt to enter her.  She could not bring herself to ask him to possess her, but she found herself arching her hips upward as he stroked her, trying to coax him to pleasure her.  Her heartbeat and breath seemed to keep pace with his as he grew closer and closer to release.  Abruptly, he uttered a wrenching groan, caught himself by bracing his palm on the stone again and pumped his seed from his body.

Lilith found her gaze was glued to his member as it jerked, expelling a milky substance.  For several moments after the convulsions had stopped, he leaned near her, his huge body shaking, quivering, and then he pushed away abruptly and left her beside the pool.

Feeling strangely let down, achy, incomplete, Lilith watched his departure in stunned disbelief.

From out of nowhere the urge to cry descended over her when he had disappeared from her view.  She could not begin to sort through the chaotic emotions tumbling through her, however, and after a while, when she had managed to master the urge, she got up and went into the room. 

Gaelen was not there and disappointment washed over her all over again, banishing the half formed hope that perhaps he was waiting for her there, ousting the heated images that had swarmed her mind of Gaelen pushing her roughly onto the mattress and driving into her until she was screaming with her release.  After standing for some time before the brazier, wondering if he would come, she finally realized he had no intention of doing so and climbed into the bed, pulled the cover over herself and tried to compose herself for sleep.

Her efforts went largely unrewarded.  Quite apart from the fact that her body still sizzled and complained from unappeased arousal, there was a sense of disquiet and unhappiness about the situation that went far deeper.  Was this some sort of punishment for her rejection?  Or did he simply not consider it worth the effort to try to change her mind?

As bad as she hated to admit it, even to herself, he would have found it woefully easy to break through her pathetic defenses.  She was hurt.  She was angry, but she desperately wanted reassurance from him and she would have caved in at once if he’d only come to her with the same gentleness and hunger of before.

When Gaelen woke her the following morning, she staggered drunkenly from the bed and went to relieve herself and then to wash.  She felt little better when she returned, but more alert.  Gaelen had left food for her—left it, for he had disappeared again. 

Her stomach knotted.  She was summoned today.  Immediately, the mixture of dread and anticipation that she’d felt the night before returned.  Between that and her distress over Gaelen’s behavior, she found it hard to eat even a little. 

When he returned, he glanced at the tray, but said nothing.  Instead, he withdrew a harness of some sort from the chest and motioned for her to stand.  When she stood up, he bade her step into the leather loops and then moved the devise up to her hips and fastened it around her waist.  Lilith looked down at the harness in puzzlement.  It was no garment certainly, for it was made up entirely of straps, and yet it fit snuggly along the tops of her thighs and around her waist. 

She could not imagine its purpose.

She did not have to wonder long, however.  He told her to sit again on the edge of the bed and pushed her down onto her back.  Bending her knees, he lifted her feet to the bed and pushed her thighs wide.  Removing something else from the chest, he returned to the bed and knelt.  She saw then that he had two strange looking metal clamps.  When he pinched one edge together, the other end opened like a wide beak.  Catching one side of her fleshy nether lips, he attached the clamping devise and then attached the opposite end of the clamp to the strap around one thigh.  Lilith winced at the pinch of the metal, but it was more uncomfortable than painful.  Within a very few moments, however, the blood began to pulse in the flesh he had clamped.  Lilith was still wondering if it would grow more than uncomfortable when he caught the other lip of her sex and repeated the process.

After studying his handiwork for a moment, he placed a palm on each of her knees and slowly pushed them wider.  The tug increased the discomfort but not unbearably so.

She didn’t have to see to know the purpose.  The moment he spread her thighs wide she felt a caress of chilling air on the tender flesh exposed by the devise.  The muscles along her passage clenched in response, grew moist with expectation.

Apparently satisfied, he dragged her feet from the bed, caught her wrist and pulled her up. 

He studied her for several moments and finally took her wrists and bound them behind her back.  When he had blindfolded her, he caught her arm and led her from the room. 

Bound as she was, it was difficult to walk.  It was even more difficult to take her mind off of her sex and the summons.  She could not expect more of the same, she realized, feeling a touch of dismay, for she had grown at least somewhat accustomed to the other. 

She knew when they entered the room where the demons had gathered to feast upon her flesh.  Gaelen pulled her to a halt and then released her, leaving her to stand alone. 

A moment later, she heard someone approach, felt their presence nearby.  The tinkle of the chain alerted her moments before she felt the tug as a hand grasped the chain attached to her collar and tugged, commanding her wordlessly to follow.  When the pulling stopped, a hand grasped her waist and another pushed on her shoulders, forcing her to bend over until she felt something cold and hard pressing against her chest.  She was nudged forward until her breasts were hanging free of whatever it was beneath her.  The hand that had forced her to bend over moved to the middle of her back and held her.

She could hear movements and an odd assortment of noises, but she could tell nothing about how many were in the room with her or what they were doing.  Something cold, and similar to the piece beneath her breasts, was pressed against the top of her breasts.  It tightened and continued to tighten until Lilith grew tense.  It took an effort to prevent herself from trying to jerk away from the tightening.  She was shaking when it finally stopped, panting for breath. 

As with the flesh of her sex, the tightening around her breasts made the blood pool and throb at the tips, bringing them to a heavy, aching sensitivity in moments.  Her nipples tightened, stood erect, pulsing even harder than the rest of her breasts.  She was still trying to catch her breath when hands grasped her legs.  Forcing them to bend, they tilted her upward slightly and then pulled her legs wide, so wide the tug between them began to skate the edge of pain.   Her knees were settled on something hard and then clamped in place.  She couldn’t fall, but neither could she support the weight of her hips with her legs spread so wide and yet each time she relaxed and settled lower, the clamps on her nether lips tugged her sex wider. 

She heard the sound of movement again and then a mouth clamped over her breast, greedily tugging and sucking at it.  A wash of heat went through her.  A second wave joined the first as another mouth caught her other nipple.  Dizzy with the pleasure shooting through her, she dropped her head forward, struggling to breathe, making no attempt to stem the tide of heated desire that began to coil tightly inside of her.  A moment later she felt a brush along her belly that made it quiver and a hot mouth covered her clit, tugging and sucking at it.  She moaned, finding within moments that she could not be still beneath the assault, nor move more than a fraction of an inch in any direction.  She was so deeply sunk in pleasurable agony, she hardly noticed the hands on her buttocks until they spread the cheeks wide.  Something hard and rounded pressed against the mouth of her sex, spreading the flesh wide as it penetrated her passage.  A moment later, a second shaft, this one smaller than the first, pressed against her rectum.  She gasped, trying to buck.  Hands grasped her hips, tightening, forcing both shafts deeply inside of her and then withdrawing almost at once, ramming into her harder the second time, faster the third.  She groaned as pleasure and pain warred within her, mingled, seemed to heighten sensation all together.

A hand tangled in her hair, dragging her head back and a cock was shoved into her mouth.  Half mad with the exquisite sensations pounding through her, she closed her mouth on the rounded head, sucking and licking it with the desperation she felt building inside of her.  The eruption that burst inside of her within only a few moments was terrific, explosive.  Encompassed in a fire storm of ecstasy, she sucked as greedily at the cock in her mouth as it began to jerk and twitch and spill its seed as the mouths sucked her breasts and clit, as frenziedly as the pounding double penetration inside of her passages. 

She was reluctant to let go when the member was withdrawn, but even as she dragged in a deep shuttering breath another was pushed into her mouth.  And as the frantic thrusting in her sex jerked, grew still, and then withdrew, she was penetrated again.

With no time for her body to cool, the quaking never actually stopped.  It merely quieted and then her body began to build again toward release.  The tugging at her breasts and clit stopped for several moments and then began again as new, hungry mouths, took the place of those before. 

Without sight, her mind struggled to imagine the unimaginable, conjuring dark figures surrounding her, penetrating her body with frenzied need even as other shadowy forms jostled for a taste of her, tugging and suckling her tender flesh.

She climaxed over and over until abruptly everything went black.  She was still gasping when she was dragged back to awareness by the unremitting feeding upon her, forced to culmination so many times in rapid succession that it all seemed to blend together, her body shuttering and convulsing endlessly until everything would abruptly shut down in blackness and then she was brought round again.

She began to feel that she could take no more, feel no more, but the blood continued to pound through her, rapture cresting explosively and then almost immediately beginning to build toward another release.  For hour upon hour, or so it seemed, her breasts and clit continued as acutely sensitive and responsive to the relentless pulling and tugging as they had begun.  And when, after a time, her response became more sluggish, they left her as she was for time, only to begin all over again, sucking upon her fingers and toes until her body began to quake with renewed sensation and then transferring to her nipples and clit again to drag more pleasure from her.  She moaned and cried out with each shattering release until she was screaming hoarsely and still it went on until she could not longer scream at all and finally felt nothing at all.

She could not contain a whimper of pain as she was pulled at last from the bindings and lifted against a hard chest.  Weary past bearing, she dropped her head to his hard shoulder, knowing it was Gaelen who held her.  The bath was nearly as tortuous, for her body still ached and twitched and jerked at the slightest touch. 

He settled in the bed with her on his lap, pressing food against her lips.  She compressed them. 

“Eat!” he growled.

“Not hungry,” she whispered hoarsely.

“Eat anyway.”

She managed to send him a cross look, but she took the food and chewed it.  After several bites, she discovered that some of the weakness had left her and that she felt more alert, still weary almost past bearing, but more aware.  “You wanted me last night,” she whispered after a few moments, remembering what he’d done.

He said nothing for several moments.  Finally, almost as if he were trying to pick apart a puzzle that had been plaguing him for some time, he responded.  “I always want you,” he muttered in his deep, rumbling voice.  “It is a fire in my brain and loins that will not be extinguished.”

She glanced up at him in surprise, whereupon he shoved a grape into her mouth.

Frowning, she chewed it.  “But you did not … do anything.”

He sent her an angry look.  “I took care of my need.  It eased the pain of want.”

“The others take,” she said tentatively.

His face twisted in anger.  Scooping her off his lap abruptly, he plunked her down on the bed.  Grabbing the tray of food, he dropped it to the floor with a clatter that spilled much of the remaining food over the edges.   Ignoring the mess, he stalked to the chest and removed the cream he had used before to soothe her sex.

When he returned to the bed, he knelt, dipped a finger into the cream, pushed her legs apart and thrust his finger into her sex, stroking it along the walls of her passage until he had thoroughly coated it.  Removing his finger after a moment, he scooped up another glob and pushed his finger into her rectum.

When he had finished, he tossed the jar in the general direction of the chest, turned, and stalked from the room.  A little stunned by his fit of temper, Lilith stared at his back until he disappeared and finally settled down on the bed and curled beneath the covers.  She was far too exhausted to ponder his behavior, however.  She was asleep even before she found a comfortable position. 

She roused a little later to feel his heat against her.  He draped an arm across her, dragging her more snuggly against his belly and finally settled.  Surprised, but glad for his comforting warmth, Lilith snuggled against him and drifted away again.

As tired as Lilith was each morning as Gaelen led her to the beasts, she discovered that each day she felt less dread and more anticipation.  Even as she went about her morning ritual of preparation, her blood began to sing in her veins.  The first tug on the chain sent currents through her breasts and clit, stirring her body to life, and as she was positioned for their pleasure and bound, she grew breathless with excitement, warm, wet.  The feel of their mouths and hands and teeth all over body, the unrestrained, often almost violent pounding of their engorged flesh into her body’s orifices seemed to build a hunger for more each time they forced her into the intense explosions of release.

They will leave no part of you unexplored, Gaelen had told her.  At the time she had found that frightening, even though he had gently guided her through her first knowledge of what that entailed.  In time, she began to look forward to each new experience.  Sometimes the things they did to her skated the edge of pain, and sometimes it moved beyond that barrier, but each time they would bring her to release the discomfort seemed to intensify the pleasure.

She was in no state during the time they took their pleasure from her to think.  The focus of her entire world had narrowed to the unremitting stimulation of her senses.  When she was allowed a few days to rest and recover, however, she found she mended much faster than before.  After sleeping for the better part of a day and half, she woke to a nameless restlessness.

Gaelen, she finally realized, had taken to avoiding her, disappearing for longer and longer periods of time.  At first she thought it was because he had ceased to concern himself that she might try to escape.  When she finally realized, though, that he only came to perform the duties assigned to him, she began to wonder what he did when he left her.

The demons, from what she could tell, were creatures of the flesh.  They had no need to toil as humans did for survival and comfort, for they had their powers to ensure that there was food when they wanted it, fire for warmth and cooking.  They seemed to spend most of their days focusing only on feeding their appetite for carnal pleasures.

So what did Gaelen do when he was not with her?  For that matter, what did he do instead of easing himself on her?  Except for the incident in the pool, which had been nigh a week earlier, she had no firsthand knowledge of him seeking release.  She had been with him for weeks, long enough to know that his appetite for pleasure was as keen as the other demons, for even though he had taken care to go slowly with her at first, initiating her with patience to every facet of appeasing desire, she had also had the sense that he was only waiting until he thought she could receive him again without harm.

Thinking back, she realized that, even in the beginning, he had not seemed to have any difficulty curbing his appetite.  He had told her he always wanted her, that she was a fire in his brain and body, but he did not act as if that was true.  He had not taken her as the others did, with a complete disregard for her human frailty, which she would have expected if he had been so needy of feasting upon her passion. 

Was he that different from the others, she wondered? 

Or was it that he appeased his hunger elsewhere?

That thought sent an unpleasant, chaotic jolt of emotions through her. 

He had said there were other human women among them.  Did he go to them to appease his hunger? 

Or had the people brought yet another ‘sacrifice’ to the beasts of the cave?  Was he teaching her even now in the ways of the flesh?  Taming her fears by lavishing her with his gentle ministrations?

He had been chosen as guardian, she realized abruptly, because he was different from the others.  In many ways, probably not so very different, but different in the one way that mattered most.  Like her, he understood the creatures in the world beyond his own, sensed their needs and knew how to handle them, to gentle and tame so that they would grow accustomed and cease to struggle in fear.

His task had been given to him because he was willing, and capable, of making certain the others, in their enthusiasm and total disregard for the frailty of humans, did not destroy their gift and none of the others had that self-control or understanding.

When she had grown hurt and angry because she had realized none of the things he had done arose from any real caring for her and turned away from him, had he merely dismissed her and turned his attentions to one he thought needed it more?  Had it not bothered him at all?

She frowned at the direction of her thoughts.  Pushing the covers back, she rose from the bed and took care of her needs.  Gaelen had appeared in the opening to the corridor when she returned from bathing herself. 

“Today we move on again,” he said in the deep, rumbling voice that carried little inflection of emotion.

She was a little surprised by the announcement, partly because she didn’t realize they had moved before.  Everything looked much the same as the first place they had stopped, but she supposed she either hadn’t really been in any state to notice a great deal or the many rooms were simply furnished identically. 

Nodding, she followed him.  As before, he led her past the pool and into another long corridor that opened beyond it.  She was not as stiff and sore as she had been before, not as frightened, not as bone weary, and she glanced around with curiosity.  There was little to see for all that.  The corridor varied little that she could see from the others they had traversed.  She realized after a time, however, that whereas the others had seemed to gradually dip lower and lower into the bowels of the earth, this one reached a point after a while where it began to climb. 

She heard the sound of voices and trickling water after a while.  The sounds became more pronounced as they progressed and finally they stepped into a wide cavern.  In this cavern, she saw a heated, bubbling pool much like the others, except that this was many times bigger. 

There were women lounging around the perimeter, fat, thin and in between, young, old and in between, all naked just as she was, except they bore the collars around their throats that identified them as the sexual slaves of the beasts and chains that looped through nipple rings and clit ring.  They glanced at her with little interest as Gaelen led her through and stepped into another corridor.

She looked back several times until a bend in the corridor blocked them from her view.

He had spoken the truth about the others, but she supposed she had already begun to realize that. 

They were alive because Gaelen had cared for them as he had her, she realized abruptly, feeling a sick sensation knot in her stomach that she would have liked to think was revulsion but knew wasn’t even thought she refused to examine the emotion and identify it.  She had not been able to help but notice that the women had barely glanced at her.  Their attention had been focused on Gaelen, and they had made no attempt to hide the hunger in their eyes.

It seemed to answer the questions that had rambled through her mind earlier.  There were plenty of women quite close by that were eager to accommodate his needs.

She was tired, physically, mentally, and emotionally, when they came at last to a room virtually identical in every way to the others where she had stayed.  He left her to ‘rest’, but she found she didn’t particular want to.  When he’d gone, she got up from the bed and looked around the room, and then peered through the other openings.  She discovered an area like those before for attending her personal needs and, to her pleased surprise, a small pool much like the ones before.  Relieved that she would not be taken to the pool to bathe with the other women, she went back into the main room. 

She had been lounging on the bed for some time, allowing her thoughts to wander at will when her gaze finally focused on the chest.  Gaelen had still not returned, so she got up after a moment and moved to it, lifting the lid.  The contents were neatly arranged, salves and potions in jars on one side, strips of linen on the other.  Piled atop those somewhat more haphazardly, were harnesses, clips like those Gaelen had used on her and a number of objects that she had not seen before and had no idea of what purpose they might serve.  There were several sets of manacles, as well, of varying sizes, either designed for wrists and ankles or simply for larger or smaller people. 

There was also a flay and a whip.  After staring at them for several moments, Lilith took another look at some of the harnesses, which she had dismissed, thinking they must be like the one that had been placed on her.  Some of them differed rather drastically, however, in that once she had examined them she could see that the wearer would experience a high level of discomfort if not outright pain.

Returning everything to the chest, she frowned as she closed it.

Gaelen had said that the demons would feed off of her—either her passion or pain and they did not particularly care which.  A shiver skated along her spine.  It seemed unavoidable that the contents of every chest were the same and equally impossible to dismiss that she might be very familiar with all of them if she had not listened to Gaelen.

Hearing footsteps from somewhere close by, she moved to the bed, resisting the temptation to run when she realized that he, if it was Gaelen, could hear her as well as she could hear him and running would indicate a sense of guilt.

It occurred to her as she settled on the edge of the bed, trying not to look as if she had been doing something she should not have, that she could not recall anything in a very long time that indicated that Gaelen listened to her thoughts.  She knew he could.  Many times, he had responded to things that she had thought as if she had voiced them aloud. 

Had he closed his mind to her thoughts, shut himself completely away from her, she wondered?  And, if so, why?

It was Gaelen she had heard.  He entered the room with a tray of food even as she settled.  He glanced toward her, met her gaze for a moment and then glanced toward the chest.  Lilith looked away before he could turn to examine her face, turning and climbing further onto the bed.

He studied her for a moment and finally turned and set the tray on the small table and left.

Lilith frowned in confusion, and then irritation. 

He might as well have said, feed yourself and do not bother me.

From the time she had come, he had cuddled her and fed her himself, even before she had been so weak and battered and upset that she had not cared if she ate or not.  She had been uncomfortable with his determined petting to begin with, but she had quickly grown accustomed to it, come to expect it.  She had not realized until that moment, though, that the intimacy of that ritual was part of what had made her look upon Gaelen as her protector, a large part of what had made her feel that he held her in affection, that she was more to him that merely a vessel designed to entertain.

She tried to shrug it off, but she felt the pinch of rejection, felt dismay descend over her at the magnitude of the barrier he’d erected between them while she had been so focused inwardly that she had scarcely noticed him building it.

Slipping from the bed she moved to the table, but the idea of sitting in the hard chair didn’t especially appeal.  Taking the tray, she moved back to the bed, setting it down and climbing up and bracing her back against the headboard.  Folding her legs, she was about to settle the tray on her knees when an errant thought occurred to her.

Gaelen had left.  He probably had no intention of sharing the food with her, but she thought it was possible that he would come back.  He would certainly come back to retrieve it later.

If he did, she decided, perhaps she could see just how indifferent he had become to her.

It irritated her that she wanted to know, felt as if she needed to know.  She should not have cared one way or the other, or perhaps she should have been relieved. 

She thought it mostly just irritated her that he was being so stiff and cold when she was the injured party.

There seemed no getting around the fact that he could do cold shoulder far better than she could, which only irritated her more.

She was not really hungry.  She should have been starving, for she had certainly worked very hard.  She saw with a touch of dismay as she looked down at herself that she had grown noticeably thinner.

Maybe that was why he didn’t look at her?  She was not round and appealing enough to suit him anymore?

Feeling a mixture of anger and hurt when she decided that must be it, she tore off a piece of the meat and ate it glumly.  She had eaten a good portion of it and was contemplating going to get a drink of water when Gaelen returned.  Immediately deciding against it when he sent an irritated glance in her direction, she plucked a grape instead.  The fruit burst as she bit into it.  Chilled droplets landed on her upper chest and slid down to form a glistening droplet on the tip of one breast.

She was on the point of wiping it away when she glanced at Gaelen and saw that he had grown perfectly still.  His gaze was fixed on the droplet of juice.  His stance and the look in his eyes sent a shaft of warmth through her.  Slowly, as if he’d forgotten to do so before, he swallowed. 

For several moments, Lilith’s thoughts were so chaotic she couldn’t think at all. As she noticed Gaelen emerge from his trance like state, however, she glanced down at the tray, frowning.  Deciding to pretend she hadn’t noticed either the juice or his fascination with its progress across her breast, she chose another grape.

Gaelen settled at the other end of the bed.  His gaze, Lilith noticed, though, was not on the tray but on the tangle of red curls on her mound. 

Her chest seemed to seize, making it difficult to breathe at all normally.  As casually as she could, she unfolded her legs, setting the sole of one foot against the mattress and moving the other leg slightly wider as she leaned over the tray and picked up a fat, juicy berry.

Leaning forward slightly, she bit into it.  As she’d expected, juice spurted into her mouth, but also dripped, landing on her belly and weaving a trail downward until it disappeared into the hair on her mound.

Gaelen swallowed, audibly.  The sound was enough in itself to set Lilith’s heart to racing a little faster.  It took off like a runaway horse when he leaned forward abruptly, swiped the tray from the bed with one hand and grabbed her around the waist, hauling her across the space that separated them.

Chapter Six

Lilith had time for nothing more than a sharp intake of breath before his mouth closed with ravenous hunger over the tip of her breast.  Gratified by the greedy tug of his mouth, dizzy with the rush of fiery sensation that went through her, Lilith uttered a small sound of need and braced her palms on his shoulders to steady herself, curling her fingers into the hard ridge of muscle along his shoulders.  The sound, or her touch, seemed to incite him.  He shuddered, suckling more feverishly at her flesh before it seemed he lost the little control left to him.

Shoving her back against the mattress almost as forcefully as he’d seized her, he moved over her on his hands and knees, licking and tugging and sucking at first one breast and then the other as if he would consume her.  Lilith was writhing and moaning with need by the time he ceased to torment her tender breasts and moved lower, nipping and sucking at the skin of her lower chest and belly and sending flurries of goose flesh rampaging across her skin that made her achingly sensitive all over.  He sat back on his heels when he had thoroughly explored her lower belly and the acutely sensitive skin of her inner thighs.  Grasping her legs, he hooked her knees over his arms and burrowed his face against her nether lips, parting them with his tongue and lathing the length of her cleft from the mouth of her sex to her bud of rapture.

A shaft of pleasure akin to pain stabbed through her as he caught the ring and tugged ring and flesh into his mouth.  He teased that tiny bud of flesh as he had her nipples, tugging and sucking on it hungrily.  Lilith bucked against him, wriggling, unable to remain still, groaning and gasping as she felt the rising tide of passion inside her, clawing at the linens of the bed.

He continued the exquisite torture until the building volcano of pent up passion exploded, spewing fire through her veins.  She cried out at the force of the paroxysm that rolled over her, making her heart pound almost painfully against her chest wall.  Darkness clouded her mind as she fought for breath in sharp gasps that skated the edge of screams.

She was still shuddering and gasping when he lifted his head away from her, caught her wrists and dragged her up until she was leaning limply against his chest.  Grasping her buttocks, he lifted her upward, aligned the head of his cock with the mouth of her sex and drove her downwards again, impaling her on his hard shaft.  Groaning at the pressure, she looped her arms limply around his neck, pressing her forehead to his chest as he lifted her slightly and pressed down on her again and again until she had sheathed him fully with her body.

He caught a fistful of her hair, dragging her head back and covering her mouth with aggressive possession, parting her lips and exploring the tender inner recesses in a restless quest to claim her completely that sent a fresh stab of exquisite pleasure through her.  Wrapping his other arm around her hips, he pushed into her more deeply still, holding her tightly and grinding against her as if he could not get deeply enough inside of her.

She broke away from his mouth as he lifted her and pushed her down again, setting a jarring pace almost at once that bespoke driving, desperate need. The stroke of his hard shaft along her channel rekindled the embers of her passion.  She caught fire, felt her body coiling to spring free of restraint again.  It erupted as she felt his cock begin to spasm and spew his hot seed into her.

She leaned heavily, limply against him as the waves of rapture finally began to mellow into small aftershocks. 

His broad palm glided along her back, stroking her for many moments, but then stopped as he came to himself.  Shifting, he laid her back against the mattress and withdrew, settling on the edge of the bed, his back to her. Curling onto her side, Lilith watched him through half closed eyelids as he struggled to regain the normal rhythm of heart rate and breathing.  Even as she reached to stroke his hard, muscular back, however, he rose and left.

Disappointment went through her but she found she was too exhausted to dwell on it for many moments before she drifted away in a haze of repletion.

* * * *

There was a comforting familiarity to the ritual of preparation Lilith woke to.  As he had since the time he had brought her into the labyrinth, Gaelen woke her to attend her needs, fed her and took her to bathe her in the pool.  When he returned to the room with her, he affixed the harness he had placed upon her when she had been summoned before. 

A touch of doubt and uneasiness filtered through her, though, as she watched his face when he bade her to lie upon the bed and pushed her legs apart.  He seemed completely detached about the process as he grasped the flesh surrounding her sex and clamped it to the harness on either thigh.  She couldn’t quite put her finger on why that bothered her until he’d pulled her up to stand beside the bed and bound her wrists behind her.

It was the fact, she realized, that he did seem detached about it.  He had pleasured himself with her, taken pleasure from her, but he seemed as distant as before.  She realized as he covered her eyes with the blindfold that she had expected something else.  She wasn’t sure what, but she had expected some change in his attitude toward her, some unbending, some sign that she had broken through the barrier he’d built between them.

The tug on the chain pushed the anxiety to the back of her mind.  Her body immediately began to warm with anticipation and her mind focused at once on what was to come.

She stopped when the pulling ceased, standing still, waiting.  Vaguely, she was aware of sounds and movements around her that denoted a large room filled with many demons, but she was used to that, too, and dismissed it from her mind as she felt hands on her, tugging and pushing until she bent over at the waist.  The cheeks of her buttocks were spread wide and she felt pressure against her rectum, shoving that increased insistently until the muscles yielded and a hard rod entered her.

She panted, trying to relax her muscles to accommodate it as her shoulders were grasped and she was pushed upright again.  Discomfort treaded the edge of pain as she settled onto the shaft as her legs were lifted upward.  At the same time, a hand grasped her bound wrists and pulled down on her arms until her back arched, thrusting her breasts upward.  Something was clamped to her wrist manacles to hold her.

Her legs were forced to bend and then her thighs spread wide, until the chill air brushed her sex, and then wider, until the moist nether lips parted.  Still the pressure against her legs increased until she was panting with pain again.  Relief surged through her when her legs were finally bound and the pressure eased slightly.

She was still struggling to catch her breath as the shaft in the nether area of her cleft began to pump and withdraw from her at a frantic pace.  A mixture of pain and pleasure went through her, each vying for dominance.  Pain had begun to take the upper hand when a hot mouth settled over her bud and began to gnaw and suck at it so vigorously that her focus instantly transferred from the thrusting shaft to the currents of pleasure radiating from her clit and into her belly. 

Euphoria shot through her despite the discomfort, building rapidly.  She’d already begun to quake on the verge of release when she felt the shaft in her posterior convulse.

It was withdrawn as was the mouth that teased her, leaving her teetering on the edge but unable to complete the cycle and find her own release.  She panted, struggling to deal with the abrupt departure of the stimuli her body craved. 

Eagerness swept through her when she felt a tug at one breast.  The sucking and nipping broke her fall, buoyed her upward again.  The shaft, or another, penetrated her, began to thrust at a frantic pace that she knew would swiftly bring him to culmination.  She struggled to keep pace, focused on deriving as much pleasure as she could, but once again they outstripped her, took their pleasure and abandoned her to aching disappointment.

Confusion filled her as they approached her over and over, building the promise of release and each time leaving her panting, unfulfilled until she felt like weeping with frustration.  After a time, when she was left wanting over and over, she ceased trying to find release and struggled against it. 

It made no difference.  It was as if they knew the very moment to stop and withhold what she craved.

By the time the restraints were removed and she was released, she was exhausted, throbbing and aching and so sensitive she could barely stand to be touched.  She was allowed to rest and sleep for a time, to eat, to attend her needs, but it was hellish.  She slept little, unable to rest for the twinges that kept sizzling and jolting through her.

It was far worse, she realized after a while, than anything they had done to her before.  In the beginning she had had fear and dread dogging her each day, but each day that was quickly swept away by the pleasure they wrung from her over and over.

She had no fear now, but dread was already dogging her when she was prepared for the summons the following day.  Hope and anticipation warred with the dread, though, as they bound her again for their pleasure.  It died a swift death.  She had not been long upon the rack when she realized that she could look forward to more of the same as the previous day.  As agonizing as it had been to be taken to culmination until she could scarcely catch her breath, until she screamed hoarsely with each success explosion of rapture, being denied surcease was true torture.  Occasionally, as the day wore on and her body reached overload, she would shudder in tiny shocks of release, but none strong enough, or enduring enough to give her real relief.

She was ready to fight Gaelen when he came to prepare her on the third day.  His face grim, he subdued her without a good deal of effort and readied her anyway. 

She was close to weeping with need as she was bound for offering again, but she realized finally what the lesson was.

They could give her pleasure, and they could withhold just as easily.

Gaelen did not come for her after the third torturous day.  Instead, when she was weeping with exhaustion and the burning pain of unfulfilled need, she was released, settled onto a lumpy soft surface and abandoned.  She lay as they left her, drifting in and out of awareness until the blindfold was removed.  There was a tug at her arms and then the manacles were removed, as well.

Surprised and more than a little unnerved, she opened her eyes a fraction.

She was in a huge cavern she discovered.  Mounds of pillows in bright colors were scattered about it.  Around her she saw the demons, taking their pleasure from the women she had seen before in the great bath.

She should have been terrified at the monsters that surrounded her, for although most were man-like in general form, there was no mistaking them for men with their grotesque faces and horny or scaly hides—the snake like creatures, the two headed beasts, the mantakortus with his two pronged cock.

She should have been revolted to see them coupling openly, to watch the faces of the women contort in ecstasy and listen to their hoarse cries.  Instead, she could think of nothing but her own aching need.

From time to time, she felt the gazes of one or another of the demons, but none approached her.  After a time, when she noticed that the women would disappear for a little bit and return, she struggled to her feet and followed them, finding as she’d suspected a place to relief herself and bathe. 

And slowly it dawned upon her that the initiation had ended.  She had become only one more of a harem of women who entertained the demons of the Labyrinth. 

There were trays of food in the center of the great cavern when she returned.  Many of the demons and a few of the women had gathered round to eat.  Feeling weak and dizzy, she crossed the cavern and settled near a tray, more than half expecting to be pushed away when she tried to take some for herself. 

Again, she was ignored and allowed to eat.  When she had eaten her fill, she found a spot among the pillows, curled into a tight ball and drifted to sleep.  She slept fitfully, though, her body still tormenting her with unquenched passion and aching even more when she was awakened by the sounds of coupling nearby and opened her eyes to watch, for the hunger in her instantly escalated to painful need.

Covering her head with a pillow, she drifted to sleep again.  She was awakened by the glide of a hand along her thigh.  Instantly, her heart hitched into high gear as she was rolled onto her back.  The beast leaning near was an ugly brute, but she felt no fear, only the dread that he would take his pleasure and leave her aching for her own release.

She didn’t even consider struggling, however, as he placed his palms on her knees and pushed her thighs wide.  Leaning down, he buried his face against her mound, opening a hot, hungry mouth over her sex.  A shudder went through her as she felt her body surge to life.  She gasped, moaned, reaching blindly for his head.  Her arms were captured and pinned to the pillows as two more demons leaned over her and began to tug and suckle at her breasts.  She wavered, fighting against the rising tide for many moments and then reaching a point where she lost the battle and began to struggle for release instead. 

Disappointment filled her as the demon feeding on the tiny bud of pleasure abandoned it.  Instead of withdrawing from her, however, he merely moved lower, covering the mouth of her sex with his mouth and sucking at the flesh there as he had the bud.  Something hot, wet, and vaguely abrasive pushed into her passage and sent a shock of welcome sensation through her, making her belly clench.  It delved deeper and deeper, undulating against the walls of her channel, rubbing against the walls as it lapped at her, gliding in and out.  She bucked as the sensations escalated rapidly.  He merely pressed harder against her knees, burrowed more tightly against her, sucking and licking ravenously at her body until the bliss crested and detonated in a fiery release.  Ignoring the tremors quaking through her, he continued to suck and lap at her with his mouth and tongue until the tension coiled inside her again and a second culmination, harder than the first, washed through her and then a third. 

She was scarcely even conscious when they moved away from her at last, drifting in a haze of sated bliss.  She was not left long to rest, however.  As if that had been a signal to the others, they drifted to her as it suited them, sated their hunger with her and took her to the heights of passion with them.

She realized, dimly, why she’d been blindfolded, for they were a fearsome looking lot and if they had not already trained her body to respond to them she wasn’t at all certain she could have, or would have.  None were beautiful like Gaelen, and some were truly terrible, but she found she didn’t particularly care so long as they fulfilled her needs as they did theirs. 

The two horned beasts were the most unnerving, but when the first approached her, pushed her onto her hands and knees and plowed his double shafted member into her, her body responded with excitement at the dual penetration.  

Time passed in an endless round of carnal need and fulfillment.  She slept, she ate, she bathed and took care of her other needs, and returned to the great cavern to repeat the process. 

She had no idea how many days had passed when she became aware enough of her surroundings to notice that Gaelen had joined the gathering in the great cavern. Drawn by some force she was hardly aware of, she saw him on the other side of the ring of writhing bodies.  He caught her gaze, held it as he mounted a woman with long, dark hair and began to pump into her furiously.

Heat coursed through her as she watched him, need, and something else she couldn’t entirely identify—resentment, anger.  She looked away when she saw his great, muscled body begin to tremble with release.

She could not tear her mind from him, though.  Each time a demon took her and she looked up, she saw him watching her, sometimes as he coupled with another woman, sometimes merely watching. 

He did not approach her, and she felt a mixture of fierce gladness and hurt that he didn’t.  Angry or not, she wanted him, and she began to imagine the mouths and tongues that fed her passions were his.  She began to fantasize each time she felt a cock plowing and thrusting into her that it was Gaelen driving her to the brink of madness and then giving her surcease before her mind broke.

She thought she knew the moment he went away again, but of course she couldn’t be certain.  She simply looked for him one day and saw that he was no longer among those in the great cavern.

For what she thought must be two days, perhaps three, he was absent and then he appeared one day leading a young woman by the chain he had used to guide her through the labyrinth each time she was summoned.

The demons and the other women stopped what they were doing and watched hungrily as the woman was bound for their pleasure.  Lilith watched too, feeling uncomfortable heat coiling inside of her at the memory of her own trial.

She found that she was both fascinated and repelled by the woman’s torment, recalling her own, and if she had not already completely understood what the sexual torment was about, it was crystal clear to her by the time the woman was finally released and left alone to hunger for the culmination that had been denied.

Her heart slammed against her chest wall and began to hammer painfully when she looked up and saw Gaelen heading directly toward her.  In that instant, she completely dismissed the woman’s pitiable state.

Without a word, he extended his hand to her.  Mutely, she took it after the briefest of hesitations, allowing him to draw her to her feet and following him willingly as he led her from the great cavern and down a long, narrow, winding corridor. 

They came to a smaller cavern, like those he had taken her to before.  Expecting the same ritual as she’d grown accustomed to, she was surprised when he merely bade her sit on the bed and settled at the opposite end, studying her for some time before he at last spoke.  “You crave the passion they have coaxed from your body over and over,” he said slowly.  “You hunger for it when it is withheld.”

It wasn’t a question.  It was a statement of fact, and she knew nothing but the truth.  She did crave it, with more hunger than the food she needed to sustain her, more than she thirsted for water when her body needed it.

“They have a new female to interest them.  Do you wish to stay, knowing that your days will be filled as they have been?  Or to go?”

Despite the fact that she had just acknowledged her need for the passion they coaxed from her, the decision was not difficult.  The moment he offered release, she felt both the pain of loss and a desperate yearning to flee. 

She didn’t want to live as she had been living, not because she didn’t crave it, and not because she still desired her freedom as desperately as before.  She wanted to go because she realized the moment he said it that he was the only one she longed for.  She didn’t want to watch him with the others, even though she couldn’t prevent the heated desire it engendered in her to watch him.  She didn’t want to feel the touch of the other beasts and yearn for him instead.  “I want to go home,” she said, keeping her voice even with an effort.

It startled him.  She could see that it did, and that it touched off an avalanche of emotions in him.  “Why?”

Lilith swallowed with an effort, casting around for something to say besides voicing the truth.  “I miss my forest.  I don’t like the way I have changed.  I don’t want this gnawing craving inside me.  I want to forget it and return to the life I had before.”

His face grew taut with anger.  “I could give you the gift of forgetfulness you ask, but the villagers will not have forgotten you.  In their eyes, you are a threat to them, a witch, and they will not leave you in peace.  If I take the memory of this to give you the peace you want, you will not know the danger they present to you.”

Fear tugged at her, but she dismissed it.  “Then I will go deeper into the forest where they can’t find me,” she said stubbornly, wondering abruptly if that was what her mother had asked for, forgetfulness.  Mayhap she had not merely refused to talk about what had happened.  Mayhap she simply did not know.

He sat up.  “I will give you time to think about it.”

“I don’t want or need more time.”

He settled to studying her again.  This time, though, there was confusion and something else in his gaze, something she couldn’t quite fathom.

He sat tensely for a time.  Finally, as if he could not dismiss whatever it was that bothered him, he swallowed audibly.  “Give to me what I want and I will do as you ask.”

Lilith frowned in confusion.  “What can I give to you?  I have nothing to give.”

“You have yourself to give.  I want that.”

Her confusion only deepened at that comment.  He took, just as the others did, when he wanted.  After a moment, though, she remembered what she had said to him before, remembered the hurt and anger she’d felt when she’d sought comfort from him and found passion instead.  Reluctance settled over her.  Her chest tightened painfully.

She found, though, that the appeal was far stronger than the reluctance.

Shifting on the mattress, she moved toward him.  He sat up, his gaze eager and filled with wariness at the same time.  His hands shook faintly as he turned and pulled her onto his lap so that she was facing him, astride his thighs. 

He sucked in a harsh breath when she lifted her palms and settled them on his shoulders.  His eyes slid half closed as she slipped her hands upward and cupped her palms on his cheeks, leaning close and brushing her lips lightly across his.  Enthralled both by her own reaction and his, she lingered, nipping lightly at his lips, teasing them with her own until he released a harsh breath and opened his mouth over hers, delving inside the sensitive recess with his tongue.  A shudder went through him when she entwined her tongue with his, stroked it, coaxing it into her mouth to suck on it. 

His taste and scent engulfed her in a flash of heat.  Moisture pooled in her sex.  She shifted closer still, luxuriating in the rioting sensations washing through her.  His hands settled at her waist, clenching and unclenching, but he held himself still with an effort.

When she had explored his mouth thoroughly, she lifted her lips from his and explored his face with her lips and then his throat, the side of his neck, the swirls of his ear.  The tremors running through him grew more pronounced as she explored his ear with her tongue, began to explore his body with her hands, gliding her hands lightly over his flesh.  His chest expanded and contracted in deep, harsh breaths as she leaned down to explore the hard bulges and silky skin with her lips, as well. 

Enthralled by his reaction, feeling her own desire rise in concert, she slipped backwards along his thighs and leaned down to take his engorged member into her mouth.  He let out a sound that contained as much pain as pleasure as she sucked at his flesh, stroking her hands along his length.  His hands squeezed her and released and finally withdrew as she cupped his testicles and began to massage them gently.  He curled his fingers into the mattress, his body shaking more violently. 

His trembling excited her, provoked a sense of power, and she began to move more quickly, striving to push him beyond control.  He groaned, shifting beneath her touch as if he could not be still, grasping her shoulders and then releasing them again and curling his fingers into the mattress like claws. 

The fiery tide of desire inside of her grew hotter as she teased him, coaxing his body nearer and nearer the boundary between extreme pleasure and release.  Triumph filled her when she felt his cock jerk.  He grasped her shoulders, as if he hardly knew what he was doing, struggling with the temptation to push her away and the driving need to find fulfillment.  She ignored the slight push, working her hands and mouth over him more feverishly until she pushed him beyond the limits of his endurance and tasted his release, feeling her own body quake in a gentle release as he groaned hoarsely, sucking and stroking him until she had milked him of his seed. 

He lay limply against the mattress when she lifted her head at last to look at him, his eyes closed, his chest heaving with each strained breath he dragged into his lungs.  When his breath had ceased to labor and he lifted heavy lids to look at her, she said, “More?”

He swallowed thickly.  “Yes.”

She began as she had before, stroking her hands over his body, exploring his mouth and his flesh with her lips until he was groaning and shaking with need again.  He jerked reflexively when she took his member into her mouth, groaning, his hips jerking as if he was fighting the urge to pump into her. 

“Take me into your body,” he gasped after a moment.  “I want—I need to pump my seed into your womb.”

She lifted her head, studied him a moment and finally came up on her knees to push his hard flesh into her passage, fighting her own need to impale herself on the turgid shaft and find a quick release.  He groaned harshly as she moved over him with slow deliberation, drawing the pleasure out.

Abruptly, his restraint broke.  Grasping her, he tipped her onto her back and rolled over her, pushing inside of her in almost the same motion.  Grinding, into her so deeply she could feel his cock head butting against her womb with each desperate, unrestrained plunge, he brought her to crisis within moments.  She cried out hoarsely as the spasms rippled through her in hard shock waves.  Gritting his teeth, he drove faster still until his body convulsed, spilling his seed into her in a hot tide.  He groaned, driving deeper still, grinding his pelvis against her to deposit his seed as deeply within her as he could.

Shuddering, weak in the aftermath, he caught the bulk of his weight on his arms, dropping his head so that his cheek rested along hers.  “I have planted my seed in your womb, little bird,” he said harshly.

The words flickered through Lilith’s mind but made little sense.  In the time that she had dwelt in the labyrinth, many demons had bathed her womb with their seed.

“Only mine will grow.  You were promised to me,” he said harshly.

Lilith opened her eyes to look at him as he withdrew his flesh from hers and settled beside her. 

Chapter Seven

Lilith studied Gaelen’s face uncomprehendingly.  “What?” she asked finally, beginning to feel doubt pierce the lingering euphoria.

“The lady of the forest, Gwyneth, she promised you to me long ago.”

Lilith sat up and pulled away to look at him, trying to calm the chaos that had descended upon her the moment she heard him speak her mother’s name.  “You said you were not here when my mother came.”  A dreadful thought entered her mind.  “You lay with my mother?”

Something flickered in his eyes.  His skin darkened, but whether with guilt and discomfort, or anger at her tone she wasn’t certain.  “I did not.”

She stared at him, abruptly scrambling from the bed.  “You lied!  You said you were not here.”

A mixture of dismay, confusion, and anger flickered across his features.  “I wanted her but I was a youngling then.  She said that I was a child and would not give to me all that I wanted, not even as I grew and matured.  She said that I was not meant for her, that you would come one day and I would know you because I would see her likeness in you.”

Tears of rage filled Lilith’s eyes.  “You lie!  She would not have promised me to you.  I was not even conceived until long afterwards!”

He sat up.  “She had the gift of sight.  You know this,” he growled.

She did know, but it made her feel no better to realize that her mother had not offered her, but had merely seen what fate had decreed for her.  She might have been warned!  Why had her mother never said anything at all about the fate that awaited her, she wondered, feeling betrayed.

“I have waited for you,” he said earnestly.  “I was gentle and careful of you as she said I must be if I wanted you to give me what I yearned for.  I gave you my child.”

Lilith squeezed her eyes, allowing the tears to roll down her cheeks, feeling betrayed by the world.  “Take it back!” she said angrily.  “I do not want it and I do not want you!  I only gave because you said you would free me, damn you!”

His expression went blank for several moments before anger blazed in his eyes.  “You lie!   I felt it in your touch!  You gave from here,” he growled, stabbing a finger at her chest above her heart. 

Lilith slapped his hand away angrily.  “You are a creature of the underworld!  You do not even know how to feel any tender emotion!  How would you know when others feel it?”

“I know,” he growled implacably.  “I learned gentleness from your mother.  I learned to see it in her eyes.”

“She did not teach you how to feel things you are not capable of feeling!  She only managed to teach you to imitate the emotions!”

He paled, but after only a moment his face hardened.  “Your womb would not have opened to me if you had felt nothing,” he said harshly.  “I am a creature of the underworld.  I know this much, that we cannot beget upon mortal women … and yet I have, because it was meant to be.”

A flicker of hope went through her that he was right, that they couldn’t, and he only thought that he had planted his seed because he wanted to believe it himself.  “You said that you would set me free.  I will find my own way if you do not.  The others will not care.  They have plenty of women to slake their thirst for flesh on.”

He got up abruptly, towering over her.  “Go then!” he snarled furiously.  “I do not care!  The other females will slake my hunger, as well.”

Too angry to consider that she had no idea how to find her way out of the labyrinth, Lilith turned and stalked out.  She hesitated when she reached the great cavern, but finally headed toward the opening where she had seen Gaelen enter before.