“Where is my lord Kol?” Lara asked Macia.

“I will find his serving man and ask, my lady Lara,” Macia answered and hurried off to seek out the man.

“The lord is in the Women’s House,” Kol’s body servant said when Macia found him. “He does not wish to wear the faerie woman out.”

“Fool!” Macia snapped at him. “Mind your tongue! You do not know who is listening and the lord’s mate must believe she has been here for over a year. If our master heard you he would flay you alive and you would deserve it. The lady Lara is to mother the next Twilight Lord. It needs be done with her consent, not as the product of a rape. All the servants have been told of this and all have acted accordingly but you. If you let your words betray him again, I will report you.”

“You demand such exactness, Macia, but I will be more careful in the future, I swear it,” the serving man said. “Do not report me to the master! Like all of us, I live in fear of his anger. His punishments are extremely cruel.”

“Have I not said that I shall only do so if I catch you at it again?” Macia replied.

Returning to Lara, the serving woman reported, “The lord is speaking with some of his other good servants at this time. He bids you eat, for he may be late or not come until tomorrow. Would you like me to send a message to him that you wish him to be with you now?” She smiled pleasantly and her voice was friendly.

“Nay,” Lara replied. “I will await his pleasure.” She began to serve herself from the bounteous repast that had been brought to her. She was hungry and the variety of dishes offered was generous. Lara realized as she ate that she knew and understood things she had not upon awakening. She only wished all of her memory had returned. Well, it was just her first day back among the living. When she had finished her meal she arose and walked to the open colonnade that overlooked the mountains. The sky above her was dark but between the mountains she could see a sunset of bloodred, purple and gold clouds. Thunder rumbled faintly behind those clouds. It all had a strange beauty but it was also a bit frightening.

Why couldn’t she remember Kol or much of anything else before she awoke in his bed earlier? Still, she had been anxious, nay eager, to taste pleasures with him. If somewhere in her deepest heart and mind he had been a stranger, an enemy, would she have been that impatient, that ardent? The mere act of thinking seemed to hurt her head. And then Lara sensed him enter the chamber. She did not turn about but remained still and quiet where she was. Coming up behind her he touched her robe, which dissolved away. His hands reached about her to cup her breasts in his palms.

“How did you do that?” Lara wanted to know. His hands were cool.

He laughed softly. “I do not wish to imagine your beautiful body. I wish to see it and be able to avail myself of it whenever I so desire. What fun is being a great lord if I cannot always have my own way, my precious?” He squeezed her breasts lightly and began to tease her nipples with the balls of his thumbs.

Lara murmured from deep in her throat and leaned back against him. He was naked, too. She rotated her bottom against his groin, feeling his rod already hard and eager for her. “I have been well fed by your servants,” she said. His rod was very, very long and she did not believe she had ever known a larger one. It rubbed itself against the crease separating her buttocks.

Kol felt the lust rising again and he moved her quickly to a roll-armed couch upon the open colonnade. His hands left her delicious breasts as he bent her back over the silken arm of the furniture. His fingers foraged between her thighs and he smiled to find her already wet for him. He pushed three fingers deep within her and began to move them teasingly about. “Ohh, such a hot and precious little mate I have,” he crooned at her. “Oh, how she likes having my fingers inside her tight and burning sheath. I am glad you are recovering so quickly now, Lara. Soon we must create my heir. You will be my good girl and bear my son, won’t you?” His fingers thrust hard and deep.

Lara moaned. “Yes, my lord Kol, I will gladly give you your son,” she promised him. “Just don’t stop,” she pleaded as his fingers pushed in and out of her.

He laughed low and bending forward he grazed her nipples with his teeth. “Not yet, my precious, for I find I will first need to grow tired of rodding you. And I am not ready yet to give up that privilege. The others in my Women’s House cannot satisfy my longings. Only you can ease the lusts that overwhelm me.”

“You have other women?” she gasped, squirming in his grip.

“While you ate I used up half a dozen of them,” he said smiling into her incredible green eyes. “But as you can see my lust is not yet sated, my precious.”

“I hate you!” she screamed, and reached out to claw him. “I am your mate! There can be no others, my lord Kol! I will not share you!”

But he caught her wrists with his free hand and pinioned her arms over her head as he held her down with his big body. Laughing into her angry face he told her, “Aye, you are my mate but my appetites are great. I must be able to satisfy them and you will not interfere with me, my precious.” Withdrawing his fingers from her sheath he sucked on them thoughtfully. Then he said softly, “Shall I have those women whom I rodded so recently killed for you, my precious?”

“Yes!” she cried. “They shall never boast of having known you. Only I shall have that privilege.”

“Ahh, Lara my precious, I knew the Book of Rule was correct when it said you would be my mate and the mother of my son. You have a deep capacity for naughtiness inside you.” He turned her over so that she was facedown upon the couch arm and sought her woman’s passage. Finding it, he inserted the tip of his rod but a single inch. “Would you like to watch while they are strangled, my precious?” he asked her softly. “One by one by one?” he crooned into her ear.

“Yes!” she gasped. “Oh, please, my lord Kol, rod me. I die for it!”

“You must ask me more politely, my precious,” he purred.

“Please, my lord Kol! Please rod me for I long to have you inside of me,” Lara cried out. She was burning with her lust for him.

“Shall we kill them first, my precious?” he asked of her.

“No! No! I need your rod!” she half sobbed.

“Nay,” he said. “First we will kill my last six lovers, my precious. Then I shall rod you for the rest of the night. You are strong. You can wait.” He stood, then pulled her up and when he touched her shoulder she was once more wearing the gown she had worn earlier. “Come,” he said.

He led her by the hand from her apartments and across a narrow stone bridge that spanned a deep chasm. On the other side of the bridge was a stone house styled in the same style as the castle. Two giants standing guard at the gates stepped aside to allow them to pass. Once inside they were greeted by another giant. “Ymir, fetch the women I was with earlier and herd them one by one into the execution chamber. Strangle each one in her turn and dispose of the bodies afterwards.”

“Yes, my lord,” Ymir said and lumbered off.

“Come, we will watch from the secret room,” Kol told Lara. He brought her to a small square chamber. Inside was another roll-armed couch facing a stone wall. Kol raised his hand and snapped his fingers; the stone immediately became glass and they were able to view the execution chamber just below. “Now, my precious, we can watch it all,” he murmured softly in her ear as he bent her forward pushing the gown up to bare her legs and buttocks. Lifting his own robe he guided his rod between the twin halves of her bottom, finding her woman’s passage and pushing in just enough to open the way for his further voyage when he was ready. “Can you see clearly, my precious?” he asked her solicitously.

“Aye,” she whispered, unable to take her eyes from the room before her.

Ymir entered with a young woman who was obviously terrified. She cried out, begging the giant for mercy, but he throttled her with one hand and tossed her body into a corner.

The Twilight Lord pushed a short way into Lara’s body. “She always smelled of violets,” he remarked.

A second girl entered and was as quickly dispatched as the first.

Kol moved further still into Lara’s lust sheath. “She always screams when I give her pleasure,” he said. “Do you want me now, my precious?”

“Yes,” Lara gasped as a third girl was strangled and Kol drove himself deep inside of her. By the time the sixth girl had been dispatched Lara was gasping with her lust and Kol was thrusting himself hard-again and again and again-until the woman beneath him was moaning. Suddenly they cried out simultaneously as their passions peaked.

Kol quickly withdrew from her as the Lustlings appeared to attend to them. “Do you see how much I adore you, my precious? From this moment on I vow I will have each woman I use strangled in your honor. You are my mate and you shall be the only one to boast of having pleasured me, Lara. Come now, let us return to your bed. My rod has only just whetted its appetite for you and there is still a good long night ahead of us.” Taking her hand again he led her from the Women’s House. As they crossed the narrow bridge over the chasm they saw Ymir ahead of them carelessly tossing the bodies of the murdered women over the edge into the darkness. He had finished by the time they reached him and stepped aside with a bow to allow them to pass.

Back in their bed he asked, “Did you find it exciting to watch Ymir kill the women, my precious?”

“I am not certain,” Lara answered him slowly.

“But did it not add to the piquancy of our passions?” he questioned.

“It was exciting,” she admitted, “to watch as the deed was being done and at the same time feel your mighty rod within me while knowing that earlier you had rodded them, as well. But I need not such distractions to enjoy pleasures with you, my lord.”

He pushed her back among the many pillows upon the bed, his mouth finding hers and kissing her deeply. His tongue slid within her mouth and she noticed with surprise that his tongue was forked. Still, it entwined itself about her tongue sensuously, caressing, taunting, leaving her breathless with her need for him. Had she ever desired a man like she desired Kol? Her fractured memory would not cooperate and give her the answer. Then she decided that she didn’t care. She wanted him. She needed him. And he was hers and the great rod impaling her was all that was necessary to her existence.

The long night lay ahead of them and they used it well. If there was day in the Dark Kingdom, Lara hardly recognized it. Her world was now nothing more than satisfying her various appetites. If it had ever been anything else she could not remember, nor did she care. Her surroundings were beautiful and comfortable. She was well served by Macia and Anka. She had a wardrobe filled with exquisite and rich robes. Each time she arose she bathed and chose carefully from among them with an eye to pleasing Kol. On those few days when she could not take pleasures with him he visited the Women’s House, and afterwards those he had enjoyed were killed and thrown into the chasm. Lara watched from her colonnaded porch as Ymir deposited them over the balustrade of the bridge and then she welcomed Kol home with a smile.

The Twilight Lord was almost dizzy with his delight in her. Lara the Good, the gracious and generous faerie woman he had stolen, was fast becoming Lara the Wicked. In freeing her from her history and leaving her with just the barest of memories sufficient to survive, by filling her beautiful golden head with his own thoughts he was slowly, slowly, drawing her into his web of darkness.

When he had first stolen her he had let her sleep beneath his spell for two months. It had been difficult but it was important that she believe the tale he had concocted regarding her past. The Munin lord had advised him rightly that the longer she lay unconscious without her memories the easier it would be to convince her of whatever he told her.

For the past two months he had built up her trust in him as he led her further and further away from all she had ever known. Her appetite for lust was incredible. He had never known any female with such desires and such stamina. He could not get enough of her body, her kisses, her hot tight pleasure sheath that enclosed his eager rod over and over again. She was his. All his.

But now the idyll he had woven was coming to an end. He had to impregnate her for the mating lust was ready to peak and at the very moment that it did he must get a son on her, or he would be forced to wait another five years. All his seed would produce in the meantime would be daughters. And once he had made a son, the mating lust would never again come to him. Alfrigg, however, was chiding him daily for his tardiness.