I strip off my trousers in seconds, kicking them somewhere behind me. Her hand wraps around my bare cock, and I groan—the heat of her palm against my cold flesh sending sparksthrough my nervous system. She strokes once, twice, her thumb brushing the sensitive head.
“You’re so hard.” Wonder in her voice. “So cold, but so hard.”
“That’s what you do to me.” I position myself at her entrance, the heat of her almost unbearable against my cold length. “Are you ready?”
She answers by lifting her hips, taking the first inch of me inside her.
We both freeze. The sensation is overwhelming—her heat surrounding my cold, her body stretching to accommodate me. She’s so wet, so tight, so impossibly warm. I feel myself sliding deeper, inch by inch, until I’m fully seated inside her.
“Oh god.” Her nails dig into my shoulders. “Auren?—”
“I know.” I hold perfectly still, letting her adjust, feeling her pulse around me. “I know.”
Then she moves, and coherent thought becomes impossible.
We find a rhythm that’s ours alone—not gentle, but not brutal either. Intense. Consuming. The kind of passion that’s been building since she arrived at my gate, carrying a Relic and a burden and nothing else. Every thrust drives us higher. Her hips meet mine with equal force, taking everything I give her and demanding more.
“Harder,” she gasps. “I won’t break.”
I grip her hips and slam into her, and she screams—not in pain, in pleasure so intense, it sounds torn from her throat. Her nails rake down my back. I growl against her throat. She answers with a sound that’s half-moan, half-challenge, urging me faster, deeper, more.
The bed creaks beneath us. Ice spreads across the sheets where my hands grip the fabric. Where her fire touches, the frost melts into steam. We’re creating our own weather system, heat and cold colliding, neither canceling the other out—amplifying instead.
I feel her building again—her inner walls tightening around me, her breathing going ragged, her fire flaring beneath her skin until she glows. I reach between us, find that bundle of nerves, circle it with my cold thumb.
She shatters.
Her fire erupts in a cascade of white light that fills the room. Her body clamps around me, pulling me over the edge with her. I bury myself to the hilt and let go—my release tearing through me with an intensity that borders on violent. Ice spreads across the headboard, the walls, the ceiling. Her fire meets it, and the room fills with warm fog that smells of winter and woodsmoke.
For a long moment, neither of us moves. We lie tangled in sheets that are half-frozen and half-scorched, breathing hard, trying to remember how bodies work.
Then she laughs.
It’s a soft sound, surprised and delighted and somehow lighter than anything I’ve heard from her since Valdoria fell. She turns her head to look at me, amber eyes bright with something that makes my chest tight.
“We destroyed your sheets. And possibly your walls.”
I look at the damage. She’s right—the fabric is a patchwork of ice crystals and scorch marks, beyond salvaging. The headboard has frost ferns crawling across it. There are soot marks on the ceiling.
“Worth it.”
Her laugh deepens, and something in my chest loosens. The grief is still there—I can see it in the shadows beneath her eyes—but for this moment, she’s not drowning in it. For this moment, she’s here. Present. Alive in ways that have nothing to do with survival.
I pull her against my chest, frost patterns spreading across her skin where we touch. She shivers—but presses closer insteadof pulling away, seeking the cold that should be uncomfortable and somehow isn’t.
“Stay,” I hear myself say. “Tonight—stay with me.”
“I’m not going anywhere.” Her hand finds mine, fire twining with frost. “Not tonight.”
She fallsasleep in my arms.
Her fire dims to a gentle glow, warming my chambers in ways they’ve never been warm. Her breath evens out, deep and steady, the rhythm of someone who feels safe enough to be vulnerable. Her body relaxes against mine, trusting me to hold her while she sleeps.
I don’t sleep. Can’t sleep. I’m too busy cataloging every detail of this moment, burning it into memory where it can never be lost.
The way her hair spreads across my chest, copper threads catching what little light remains. The sound of her breathing, soft and slow. The warmth of her skin against my perpetual cold—not uncomfortable, not intrusive, just there. Present. Changing the temperature of a room that hasn’t felt anything but ice in longer than I care to remember.
She murmurs something in her sleep. My name, maybe. Or something else—something I can’t quite catch. Her hand tightens on mine, and even unconscious, she holds on.
