“You’re not sorry,” he says far too calmly, as if he hasn’t just caught me hovering over him in the dark. “You came here for a reason. Tell me what it is.”
My heart slams against my ribs, my breath breaking into uneven shudders that refuse to steady. The stillness of him only makes it worse.
“I don’t know,” I admit at last, then the truth slips free before I can stop it. “I wanted…” I swallow hard. “Ineededto see you.”
The words hang between us.
His gaze drops briefly to where he holds me, and I flinch as a feathered ripple of frost spreads across my skin.
“I think it’s more than that,” he says. “You were about to touch me while I slept.”
His mouth curves into not quite a smile.
“Is that how you prefer me?” he continues softly. “Unaware. Unable to object? Is that when you find it easiest to press your soft body against mine?”
My eyes widen. My mouth falls open. Heat floods my face even as the cold climbs higher, curling toward my throat.
The night I laid beside him. He knows.
“No,” I rush out. “That isn’t what it was. I was trying to help you.”
“All you did,” he says quietly, “was wake something in me. Something that has been dormant for a very long time, Neve Devlin. Something I believed I no longer needed.”
His gaze holds mine, unflinching.
“Until you molded your body so seamlessly to mine. Far more than was necessary for a simple exchange of warmth.” His voice lowers. “Now I can think of nothing else.”
My breath stutters. “You… you were awake?” I swallow hard. “It was…science.”
Gods, did I really just say that?
I knew it was desperate when I said it to Atilia. Now it’s just pathetic.
He exhales, his gaze shifting from my eyes to the spirals of frost curling into patterns along my collarbone, creeping lower beneath the collar of my nightgown.
“I am no scholar,” he says mildly, “but grinding your bare, smooth ass against my crotch does not strike me as particularly scientific.”
I am speechless, horrified and embarrassed all at once as the frost spreads lower, the chill tracing the curve of my breast through the thin fabric of my nightgown. He straightens slowly, watching with brazen interest. He cannot see beneath the cloth, and yet I find myself wondering if he can feel every part of my skin the cold claims, as surely as I do.
“Did you truly think I was not in control of myself?” he asks. “That the way I responded, the way I touched you, was accidental? That I was so lost in my dreams I was unaware of every glorious inch of you?”
He tilts his head, studying me.
“Or did you let yourself believe that?” he murmurs. “Because you did not want it to end… but did not dare ask for more?”
He exhales again, and the chill of his breath washes over me, raising gooseflesh in its wake, stealing my breath as surely as his words.
“I know you want to touch me, Neve,” he says, each word chosen to slip beneath my skin as frost circles my nipple, the thin fabric of my nightgown clinging to its stiffened peak. “I know you are curious about how my cold body would feel beneath your hands.Whether you could warm it again. Whether that is a power you possess. To thaw the cold from this Fae you claim to loathe. To see if you truly have that kind of control over me.”
I shake my head, but there is little conviction behind it. “That’s not true.”
His grin tells me my denial does nothing but entertain him.
“I know what you want,” he murmurs, “and I am offering it freely. No favors. No bargains.” His eyes linger on my mouth. “You waste breath on protests. Your body has already betrayed you.”
The frost drifts lower, sliding down my sternum, spreading like an aching bloom.
“I can smell the need on you,” he says.
