The Winter King

  Gunterfys. Giant killer. So, he’d named his sword. Feeling the rock-hard bone and unyielding muscle beneath his golden skin, she had no trouble imagining him battling toe to toe, fist to fist, with those ferocious monsters of the high mountains.

  He lifted her higher, up over his head. Her breasts brushed against his chin. Wickedly, he held her there for a moment, letting her breasts dangle the merest breath from his lips, watching her with eyes of ice blue flame.

  “Lift your feet, little flower,” he growled. His breath was not hot but cold, yet it swirled around her nipples like a breath of fire, making them leap to aching attention.

  She bent her knees and lifted her feet clear of the tub’s edge. A moment later, she was immersed, tingling from neck to toe where the heat of the water penetrated the chill of her skin. Jasmine steam filled her nostrils with heady scent.

  He reached for the bar of soap and a scrap of linen, ducking both into the water and rubbing them together. Her eyes widened when he set the soap aside and began to run the foamy cloth over her arm.

  “There’s no need for you to bathe me. I can do it myself, or Bella can.”

  He gripped her wrist, refusing to let her pull away, and continued to scrub. Hand, fingers, up her forearm. “Bella is gone.”

  Kham’s breath stalled. “Gone?” She hardly knew Bella, they’d only been together those few awful first days of travel, but the little maid was all Kham had of Summerlea. A face from home.

  “I sent her on ahead to the Craig.” His lips thinned. “I should have sent her packing back to Vera Sola. She was worse than useless. Hiding your illness.”

  “On my command.”

  His eyes shot up, pinning her with sudden, burning cold. “You think I don’t know that?” He finished with her arm and quickly soaped the other. “If she’d acted on her own to deceive me, she wouldn’t be headed for the Craig. Or still drawing breath.”

  He rubbed more soap into the cloth and reached for her breasts. Her hands shot out, one closing around his wrist, the other reaching for the washcloth. “I can do it.”

  He pushed past her resistance with effortless strength. “Be silent and be still.” The cloth touched her breast and began scrubbing in small, brisk circles. “I’ve already done more than touch every inch of your body and will do so again. This false modesty has no place between us.” The cloth scrubbing her breasts slowed. His fingers toyed in the slick, foaming suds, sliding over her skin, cupping her breasts. The pads of his thumbs brushed across her nipples, then lingered to tease the small beads that formed in response. “You have beautiful breasts.”

  Her brows drew together. “If there’s no room for false modesty, there’s no room for false compliments either,” she snapped. “I know I’m not beautiful.”

  His gaze lifted. “No,” he agreed. “Beauty is too tame a word to describe you.” He held her gaze for a long moment, and it wasn’t until he turned his attention back to her breasts that she realized she’d forgotten to breathe. “But these,” he murmured, filling his palms with the weight of her breasts, “are indeed beautiful. Perfect. You don’t know how much I’ve thought about them. About the way they fit in my hands.” Her nipples tightened to tiny pebbles. He smiled a little before coolness shuttered his expression once more. “Stand.”

  Forcing her hands to remain at her side, she obeyed. Her chin lifted and she refused to look at him as he soaped her abdomen, her hips, her legs. Think of him as a servant, Kham. A woman servant. His hands slid up the backs of her legs and stroked her inner thighs. An old, wrinkled woman servant, she added frantically.

  But the broad hand that slipped between her legs was so large and strong and masculine, she couldn’t hold the other images no matter how hard she tried.

  Summer Sun! The cloth stroked back and forth between her legs, and there was nothing impersonal or servile about it. Each pass was a languid caress, slow, teasing. Testing. The cloth shifted, and then it was his fingers that stroked her, skin to skin, slick with soap and the warm, feminine cream that betrayed her will.

  She sat down with a splash and glared at him.

  His lips curved. “As I said, I’ve touched you before and will again. And you aren’t half so indifferent to me as you’d like to pretend, eldi-kona.” He shifted from a kneel to a half crouch. The muscles in his thighs and belly rippled with fluid, powerful grace as he moved behind her.

  His brief humor faded, replaced by a sudden, icy chill. The bathwater dropped several noticeable degrees.

  “Stop,” she complained. “You’re freezing my bath.”

  “You should have told me what he’d done to you.” She heard the scowl in his voice. “On our wedding night, you should have told me.” His hands touched her back. She felt the slight tremble in his fingers as he traced the path of her father’s cane. “You made a brute of me, when I would not have been one if I’d known.”

  She turned her head and glanced over her shoulder at him. “You would not have consummated the marriage.”

  “No.”

  “That’s why I didn’t tell you.” She turned back around. “You would have found out I wasn’t Autumn, and you would have annulled the marriage. You wanted a Season for a wife, not me.”

  He didn’t say anything. He merely began scrubbing her back in silence.

  What had she expected? For him to claim that, no, he was happy with the wife he’d gotten? Her jaw firmed. Her chin lifted. “Besides,” she declared, “why would you care if you hurt me or not? From what I heard, you’ve vowed to turn me out into the mountains unless I bear you an heir in a year’s time. That’s not exactly the claim of a caring man.”

  “Did your father tell you that?”

  “What does it matter who told me? Is it true?”

  He tossed the soapy cloth aside, snatched up the small wooden pail, and filled it with warm bathwater. “Close your eyes,” he warned the barest instant before he upended the pail over her head. He doused her again two more times.

  “Is it true?” she asked again.

  He reached for the flagon of gelled hair soap, poured a thick stream of the fragrant, viscous liquid into his palm and worked it into her curls. “I need an heir. I cannot afford unnecessary delay in getting one. Too much is at stake.”

  She knew ensuring a clear succession to the throne was no small matter. The stability of entire countries depended on it. History books were filled with tales of kingdoms torn apart by civil wars sparked by kings who died without leaving an undisputed heir.

  She twisted around to see his face. “And if I don’t provide one within the year, you will turn me out into the mountains to die?” she prodded.

  He didn’t say yes straight out. All he said was, “If you don’t provide me an heir, I must take another wife,” but she knew what he meant.

  She turned away so swiftly, the bathwater sloshed over the rim of the copper tub. She stared, unseeing, at the miniature tempest of waves crashing against her kneecaps.

  It was true then. She dragged in a shallow breath and let it out. She had wedded and bedded an enemy king. And if for some reason she did not or could not bear him a child within the next twelve months, he would slay her.

  “Well,” she said. Thoughts spun in a dizzying whirl, all of them moving too quickly to grasp except for one: If you don’t provide me an heir, I must take another wife. Her mind supplied the unspoken meaning: If you don’t provide me an heir, you must die so I can take another wife.

  She slid down beneath the surface of the water, submerging herself completely. The lather in her hair streamed out in frothy currents. She ran her fingers through the tangle of floating curls to rinse out the hair soap, then grabbed hold of the tub rim and stood. Water sluiced down in sheets, splashing into the tub in a dozen noisy streams. She scarcely noticed it.

  “Well,” she said again, turning to him and tipping back her head to meet his gaze. “As the
begetting of an heir holds such dire import, I suggest we get to it.”

  His eyes narrowed, surprise warring with suspicion.

  She lifted her arms and made her meaning more clear. “Help me from the bath.” The motion lifted her breasts as well, and that caught his eye. His nostrils flared, quivering slightly as he drew in her scent, then his gaze rose back to her.

  “Grown bold?”

  “Bold, I’ve ever been,” she corrected. “It’s practical I sometimes lack.”

  His hands reached out to clasp her waist, and he lifted her high as he’d done before, over his head. Beads of water dripped from her hair and breasts onto his face like a light rain.

  “Put me down. I’m getting you wet.”

  He grinned with unexpected humor. “Aye, you are, and you’ll get me wetter still before we’re done, Summerlass.” The grin turned slow and lazy and full of simmering heat that made her heart skip. He opened his mouth to catch a falling drop of water, then he tilted his chin up and licked the moisture directly from her breasts.

  The sensation was indescribable. The chill of the air, the hot rasp of his tongue, followed by a deeper, more erotic chill as he blew cold across her mouth-warmed flesh, making her nipples pucker tight. Then heat again as he closed his mouth over her skin and drew the tight bud deep into his mouth. Tongue and teeth and heat and cold worked sensual magic on her skin until her entire body drew as tight and aching as the breast he held claim in his mouth.

  “Wrap your legs ’round my waist,” he growled against her damp skin, as his tongue drew a burning line from one breast to the other.

  Mindlessly, instinctively, she obeyed. Her legs hitched up and locked around his waist, heels pressing through the soft fur of his loincloth to the hard, rounded buttocks beneath. Free of her weight, one of his hands splayed against her back, the broad fingers spread wide, holding her pressed against him. The other wandered lower, curving down the deep valley of her bottom to the petals of her hottest flesh opened to him by the position of her legs. His fingers curved up, skimming the slick moisture, stroking.

  She gasped and arched her back, the motion thrusting her breasts closer to his mouth. Her legs clenched tight around his waist. Enemy king or no, in this at least, she bowed to his conquest, and at the moment, it felt nothing like defeat.

  She rode his hand, instinct making her thighs and buttocks clench and unclench, lifting and lowering her in an undulating rhythm that was as natural as the roll of clouds across the sky. Her heart beat faster. Her breath came in panting gasps. Heat rolled off her in waves. The tightness in her wound tighter and tighter until she thought the fire inside would burst from her skin like flames from wind-fed embers.

  There was no arras in her veins, no Summerlea herb to heighten her sensations. This was pure, natural magic. Almost as powerful a force as weather magic. His north wind meeting her southern heat, the storm building in intensity. Against her closed eyelids, she could see the first white flashes, lightning gathering in black clouds.

  His thumb was stroking the small, hard bead of flesh nestled in the folds of her sex. Her body wept from the pleasure of it.

  “Wynter.” His name was a gasp of air. “Husband!” An acknowledgment of his claim. A cry of both surrender and triumph. Her eyes flew open as the storm consumed her, battering her with shivering streaks of cold and heat. She shuddered and flew apart in his arms.

  He held her firm, a rock in the tempest, steady and unwavering. His heavy muscles bunched tight beneath her clenched hands and shaking legs. He wasn’t done. He’d fed the storm, let first the cloudburst pour out its strength against him, but even before she could catch her breath, he’d begun to feed the storm again.

  She wasn’t even aware of how or when he’d stripped his loincloth away. She only knew the moment that he pierced her core. He filled her, stretched her body wide, set her flesh afire from the inside out. His legendary strength held her fast, arms as broad and strong as the branches of the mighty oak, his legs the unyielding granite of the mountain crags. His mouth tracked lines of icy fire across her skin.

  “Put your arms ’round my neck, eldi-kona.” The growl skated across her sensitive flesh like a hand, leaving dancing sparks of lightning in its wake. “Hold tight.”

  She obeyed without conscious thought. Her arms wound up, around the powerful column of his neck, fingers clasping behind it.

  His hands fell to her hips and held her fast, his grip firm yet surprisingly delicate. He could have easily bruised her, and she would hardly have noticed, but when this storm broke, and passion faded back into stillness, her body would bear nary a mark.

  Then his hands gripped her tighter, lifted her up, and plunged her back down on his shaft, filling her utterly. Her eyes rolled back in near-fainting pleasure, and every last rational thought flew from her mind. There was no later, there was no before. There was only now. There was only this: the heat, the ice, the consuming, desperate need for more . . . more . . . his mouth, his hands, his tongue. His strength wrapped around her, holding her fast. His sex plunged so deep, she thought she might die. His teeth closed around one nipple, tugging with unbearable torment as he raised and lowered her on the thick column of his flesh again and again.

  All the while her fingers dug deep into his shoulders. Her nails raked him. Her passion had far less care than his, more savagery. She was a child of the elements, a mage of storms. Rarely gentle. And never well behaved.

  He endured it without flinching, and only growled deep in his throat when her nails broke the surface of his skin. The sound vibrated against her breast and drove her over the edge. Consciousness shattered. Electric threads of lightning shot from her fingertips and raced across his skin, into his veins. Her inner muscles clenched around his sex in wave after wave of powerful, shuddering ripples.

  Wynter’s back arched. His teeth tugged free of her breast as his head flung back on a shout of triumph and ecstasy. Her musky, feminine scent swirled around him in heady waves, infusing his senses, driving him wild. His hips pumped with urgent, near-violent thrusts. Once. Twice. Inside her clenching heat, his flesh expanded. On the third driving thrust, he exploded. “Winter’s Frost!” he cried, and his seed erupted into her dark heat with such force it was as if his own life were pouring from his body into hers.

  Shaking, he dropped to his knees and bore her down to the furs. Her eyes, pure silver only now beginning to shift back to gray, stared up at him in dazed silence. He took her mouth in a brief, conquering kiss, then rolled away onto his back, his lungs heaving like bellows.

  Khamsin lay on the furs beside him, shaken and trembling. Not even a whiff of arras had touched her senses, yet this coupling had been even more devastating and passionate than their fierce, herb-enhanced matings.

  She drew air into her lungs, forcing herself to breathe deep and even, to gather her shattered wits and calm her racing heart. With effort, she lifted her hands, her arms. Her fingers dragged across the flat surface of her stomach and over her breasts. Still-tingling sparks of sensual energy followed in their wake. The muscles of her thighs and sex continued to tremble, but the earlier, more violent spasms had subsided.

  She threw an arm over her eyes. The Rose burned at her wrist, as hot as an ember in her flesh, throbbing in time with her pounding heart. The smell of sex and Wynter washed over her, bringing with it a flood of completeness and a strange, exhausted satisfaction. Her eyes fluttered shut. Just for a moment, she told herself. No more than a minute or two.

  How long she slept, she didn’t know, but she woke to shadows and lamplight and the feeling of Wynter’s hands playing across her body. Blue flame flickering in the depths of his eyes and the silvery whiteness of his hair slid across her skin like falls of snow.

  If he possessed even a hint of modesty, he did not show it. He knelt before her naked and unashamed, and held her fast when she would have shied away from the lips that sought out the damp flesh b
etween her legs. What he did with his mouth left her fainting, but even as her body folded, he drew her down upon him and set her afire once more. She’d heard her father’s courtiers speculating that the Winter King would be a cold, dispassionate lover at best, but he proved them all wrong. As he had on their wedding night, he demonstrated with breathtaking, mind-shattering mastery that even ice could burn.

  Four times more he came to her. Four times more, he drove her beyond reason, beyond thought. Four more times he rode her, his touch like lightning on the wind.

  The fifth time, she came to him.

  When she did, kneeling naked beside him and reaching out to run a curious finger down the resting length of flesh that now lay limp against his thigh, he gave a wry, weary grunt of laughter. “The mind is willing, min ros, but the body, I think, is done.”

  She glanced up at him, but his eyes were closed, and the small smile that played at the corners of his mouth made her butterflies take flight in her stomach. Careful, Khamsin. He is the Winter King, not some summer lover. And not Roland either. She had to guard herself. It would be all too easy with him to forget why she was here, forget that the pleasure he’d just poured out upon her like water from a fountain was but a means to an end.

  Bear an heir within the year or face the deadly judgment of the mountains.

  Even knowing that, and even knowing he would have shared this same shattering pleasure with whichever Summerlea princess he had wed, she couldn’t keep away. For now, at least, he was hers. Besides, if this really was to be her last year of life, she might as well live it large. What had she to lose?

  For the first time, she was free of the cage of her father’s making, free of his rules and his demands for obedience. She would not willingly step into another. If the Winter King thought to control her, he would find caging the wind an easier task.

  Her fingers curved around him, curious, testing. What had earlier been a long, rock-hard column of flesh, was slightly smaller now and soft to the touch. Beneath the flesh ran several long, thick blue veins. He was still damp and sticky from their last coupling, and that stickiness smelled pungent and musky, a mingling of her scent and his. The hair at his groin was thick and short, as silvery white as the hair on his head. Not wiry, and not curly as her own was, but straight and rather soft. Like a wolf’s pelt, but not quite so densely furred. Beneath his penis, the large, twin globes of his testicles hung heavy in a sac of flesh.