Boreas snags my arm to draw me back to his front. His face, those blue eyes; everything is open to me. Vulnerability simmers among the banked heat, and affection, and something stronger, something too frightening to name.
Catching me around the waist, he tosses me onto the bed.
The mattress sinks beneath my weight as I survey every inch of his magnificent shape. The muscles of his powerful thighs bunch with each step of his approach. A thatch of dense curls rests at the base of his jutting cock.
Flipping onto my knees, I crawl to the edge of the bed and wrap a hand around his shaft. Boreas shudders and tangles his fingers in my hair, tugging gently so tingles skitter across my scalp. I stare at the pearly bead of liquid that seeps from the crown and swipe my thumb across it, delineating a small circle there.
He releases a slow breath. “Wren.”
I bury my face in his groin and inhale. Part sweat, part musk, part crisp of cedar. Boreas’ fingertips press into the base of my skull, and awave of calm combats the incessant buzzing beneath my skin. Pulling back, I run my tongue along the head experimentally. The flesh gives beneath the pressure of my tongue, and I repeat the motion simply for the pleasure of tasting him.
Those sturdy legs lock, muscle flexing as he releases a short, hissing breath. The notch beneath the head of his cock draws my attention, and I tickle the small indentation, loving how he swells beneath the weight of my wandering tongue. Peering at him through my lashes, I wait until his eyes latch onto mine. Then I suck him down to the root.
He stiffens, his voice cracking on a groan. Filthy expletives spill from his mouth, each dirtier than the last.
My entire body lights up with pleasure. He wants to move, his body craves it, but he should not have allowed me to touch him because now I will take him apart, piece by piece, with agonizing slowness.
His legs begin to shake. I lap at his crown, curling my tongue languorously, drawing another pained sound from deep in his chest.
“Enough,” he growls, attempting to pry me free, but I grab his thighs, slow my strokes. His early seed flows across my tongue like the sweetest wine.
“Wren,” Boreas snarls. His hands tangle in my hair and tug.
I ignore him.
“Wren.”
A smallpopsounds as I pull away. “Patience,” I croon with a flash of teeth.
A slow glide of my tongue as I add my hand to the mess, so no part of his erection is untouched. On the upstroke, a sound of pure torment fills the room, and fractures. The fingers tangled in my hair tighten, holding me in place, a welcome pain. A brief image flickers in the dark recesses of my mind. A fantasy, really. That I might demand him to fuck my mouth as hard and deep as he can go, thrust after thrust, until my throat is wrecked.
“Tell me to stop and I will,” I mumble around his girth. Glancing up through my eyelashes, I meet the fiery blacks of his eyes. “That is, if you can fight it.”
He stills. “Devil.” Gripping me under the arms, he pulls me upright so I’m braced on my knees. His mouth parts mine, stealing my breath. He takes and he takes, and when I am spent, dizzy from lack of air, my limbs pliant and my breasts tender, he sucks one of my nipples into his mouth.
I cry out, pressing closer. He shifts his attention to the other breast, plumping it with his hand and bestowing the tip with damp, languid strokes. My core pulses impatiently.
“Harder,” I groan.
Not hard enough. Not even close. Every time I arch toward him, he mouths the skin around my nipple, and traces the curves of my hips with his hands. Meanwhile, that dull, insistent throb begins to climb.
Pulling away with a frustrated growl, I draw him onto the bed. I anticipated Boreas rushing toward the finale, but he seems to enjoy the touches that are more comforting than sexual, an embrace from behind, a sweet nuzzle into his neck. I’m reminded of the centuries he’s spent grieving in this citadel. When was the last time he received a touch of compassion, of affection?
When my mouth grazes the corner of his, I pull back, one hand cupping his jaw, and take him in.
“You hide it well,” I whisper, “but you are not so cold a man.”
Turning his head, he brushes his lips against my palm. “I am not a man,” he replies, equally soft. “I am a god.”
And then he moves. Down, down, a trail of kisses leading south. As Boreas shoves his shoulders between my legs, smoothing rough hands up the plane of my stomach, I stare up at the darkened ceiling, wondering how I found myself in the Frost King’s bed. It was a slow, reluctant fall. Even now I wonder how he can choose me—a skinny, scarred mortal woman—when he can have his choice of anyone.
I grapple for the blanket beneath me as the need to shield myself takes hold. “My chest is small. I’m bony. And my scar…”
He lifts his head. Our eyes meet, his softened by tenderness. “I like that your skin is not perfectly smooth. I like the shape of your body. I like every part of you, Wren.”
“I’m not perfect.”
“Perfection is an impossible expectation. You did not shy away from my scars. Why should I shy away from yours?”
