He laughed out loud. “Ice and winter sun. Yes. If we can’t bear to have a conversation about how nobly we intend to throw ourselves into the fire, we don’t get to do so.” He stared at her, relief and love warring in his eyes. “I love you. You know that? Not just because of the mate bond. Not just because you’re too murderous and not murderous enough, and you saved me and everything I thought I had lost forever.”
She swallowed, scrambling to maintain the joking tone she’d had before. “What’s left, other than that?”
“You.”
He kissed her, long and slow, and his voice slid into her mind like a thousand rays of sunlight through the frost.
*All of you.*
He kissed her until her head spun, then laughed and stopped long enough for her to remember how to breathe. His joy was infectious; despite everything that had happened, despite everything that still might, she found herself laughing with him.
Then he kissed her again.
She let him push her down into the bed, his body solid and reassuring above her. And there it was, the mate bond, gleaming stronger than ever before.
“How did you use our magic so easily?” he asked.
“I could see it all, at once. How it worked. How Iwantedit to work,” she admitted reluctantly.
“How to save us,” he murmured against her skin.
“It was like an explosion. Like a wave breaking over a sea wall. And as soon as I knew that was what it was, I rode it and wove the enchantment back from the pieces it had fallen into.”
She closed her eyes, remembering how it had felt. Terror making way for an exultant certainty, that for once—foronce—she’d been right.
“Could you do it again?” he asked, his hands questing below the blankets.
“Now?”
“Not precisely now.” His eyes were pure wickedness. “There are a few things I’d prefer to do first.”
He kissed a line down her side, licking everywhere it tickled, pinning her hips so she couldn’t squirm. His teeth grazed the crease at the top of her thigh. That was bad enough, but there was another ticklish spot right—
There.
She narrowed her eyes at him. “You’re doing that on purpose.”
“Learning you?”
“Tormenting me.”
Dark flooded his eyes. “Is that what you call it?” He straightened, pulling the blankets away so that he could rake her entire body with his gaze. Heat bloomed across her skin. Not a blush of embarrassment, but all the blood in her body singing with anticipation.
He lowered himself over her again, unerringly pressing his lips to the sensitive spot halfway up her thigh crease. She shivered as he licked it slowly. “Do you like this?” he asked, his voice low.
She nodded, and he lifted one eyebrow.
“Would you like it more if I licked you somewhere else, instead?”
“What happened to you letting me order you around?”
Amusement thrummed in her heart. Not her own—his. Communicated through the silvery mate bond that held them together. “Are you telling me to stop?”
“Absolutely not.”
“Like I said, I’m still learning.” He nipped her gently, then kissed her. “Let me know if I do anything wrong.”
He pushed her legs apart. She spread herself for him, and he groaned under his breath. “You’re beautiful.”
