Heat floods my cheeks.
“I smelt it in your bed,” he continues, voice low. “When you felt my cock against your back. I smelt it in the inn, when I held you so close your heartbeat thundered.”
He leans in, his nose brushing my ear, his breath a whisper of frost along my skin.
“And I smell it again now,” he murmurs. “Stronger than ever.”
His voice roughens, restraint fraying at the edges.
“It is driving me fucking mad, Neve.”
“I cannot,” I whisper, the word slipping out as a breathless whimper as the frost spreads across my stomach, then drifts lower. I gasp when the sharp cold brushes my inner thigh. “You are Fae. It is not allowed.”
His teeth catch his bottom lip as he watches me shudder between pain and pleasure, the clash of cold and heat winding tighter inside me.
“When have you ever cared about rules?” he asks softly. “You are infuriating. Disobedient. Far more trouble than any human I’ve ever known.” His gaze locks onto mine. “So what the fuck is stopping you now?”
He’s right.
What has ever stopped me?
When have I fallen in line, bitten back my words, looked before I leapt?
As my head tips back, as my breath breaks, as I stop fighting the cold and let pleasure rise where pain once lived, I know the answer.
Nothing.
I surge forward and crash my mouth against his, the kiss fierce and fearless, an eruption of everything unspoken between us. My hands fly to his face, fingers splaying along his jaw before threading into his hair, anchoring him to me.
The cold of him ripples over my skin, but I do not recoil. I lean into it instead, press closer, my blood racing hotter, faster, as though my body is determined to meet him blow for blow.
To answer frost with fire.
His breath catches, a sound I feel as much as hear.
Then his hands are on me, locking around my waist as he drags me hard against him. The chill deepens where he touches me, seeps into my skin, but it only drives me closer. My pulse thunders. My lips part beneath his as he takes the kiss from me, a low growl rumbling from his chest and vibrating straight through my bones.
His mouth claims me fully now, unhurried yet relentless. His tongue slides against mine, and the contrast is dizzying, cold colliding with heat, control straining against hunger, until I can no longer tell where I end and he begins.
I gasp softly into his mouth as his grip tightens, as he shifts and draws me onto his lap in one smooth motion. My nightgown rides up as I straddle him, fabric bunching at my hips, my knees braced on either side of his thighs.
Then I pause.
I pull back slightly, and his eyes sharpen, confusion flickering briefly before irritation replaces it. I take him in beneath me, the sight of him so devastating it burns, like staring straight into the sun.
My hand hovers over his bare chest before I lay it against his skin.
I barely feel the cold at all.
That’s when I realize my fingers have gone numb, my skin tinged blue, the chill has claimed me so completely I no longer register it. My hand moves anyway, gliding over his broad chest, across pale nipples, down the hard line of his sternum. My fingers trace the ridges of his abdomen, the valleys between muscle, circle his navel and stop at his belt.
I bite down on my bottom lip.
I have never hated a belt more.
“Are you sated?” he asks quietly. “Or do you need more?”
I swallow. “More.”
