Amid the Winter Snow

  “Where did you and Hugh eat?” I asked, before I thought to stop myself.

  Ami gave me a funny look, still standing beside the chair she’d picked. “Here. If it was just the two of us, he’d sit there and I’d sit here.”

  So formal their marriage had been. It made me angry for her sake, and unreasonably jealous for my own. Sitting in Hugh’s clothes in his chair. “Then I’m definitely not sitting there.”

  The flush on Ami’s cheeks had gone to red. She clenched her fists, then hurled herself at me. “Why are we thrice-cursed fighting about every fucking thing every minute?” she shouted, pounding on my chest while I tried to hold her off my injured arm.

  “Ami, stop,” I said, keeping my tone gentle, trying to soothe her. She wasn’t hitting me hard. In fact, she’d already sagged against me, fingers digging into my shirt as she held on, sobbing softly. I wrapped my good arm around her, ignoring the ache in the injured one in favor of the sweet delight of having her bosom crushed against it. “Ami, my Ami, my sun,” I murmured, kissing her hair and holding her against me. I reveled in holding her, even as I kicked myself for having upset her yet again.

  “I just wanted to have a nice dinner,” she hiccupped. “I wanted things to be pretty.”

  “They are pretty. It’s lovely. I’ll sit wherever you want me to.”

  “No,” she said miserably, face pressed into my chest. “You’re right. It was thoughtless of me. I just…” She let out a long breath.

  “What?” I urged. When she stubbornly shook her head, I levered the hand between us to lift her chin. Her eyes huge in her face, she looked fragile and vulnerable. Heartbreakingly beautiful. “Tell me, my sun.”

  “I just really miss you,” she whispered. “I miss us, how we used to be.”

  I groaned, losing everything to her, as I’d done all along—even before I ever knew her. And I was kissing her, lush mouth soft and sweet under mine, then parting and taking me into her heat. I devoured her, frustrated that I could only hold her with one hand, but using that to cup her head and hold her still so I could drink her in. I’d been starved for the taste of her, for the silk of her hair between my fingers and the delicate curve of her skull in my palm.

  She returned the kiss with increasing heat, whimpering my name, straining on tiptoes to reach me, so I let go of her long enough to pick her up. Even one-handed I could easily lift her, scooting her onto the table. She pushed aside the place settings and something crashed, shattering.

  “Wait,” I said.

  “Fuck whatever it was,” she panted. “Don’t you dare stop.”

  ~ 12 ~

  She’d tugged my shirt loose from the belt and had her hands on my chest, raking me with those deceptively rounded nails. I hissed, pushing between her legs and no more able to stop than if I were a wild and rutting beast. Every moan and whimper of hers fired my blood. She wrapped her legs around me, vising me in place, but the velvet mass of her skirts got in the way.

  “Put your arms around my neck,” I told her, and she complied, deliciously yielding. No longer needing to brace her, I yanked down the pretty neckline of her gown, freeing her naked breasts. A growl tore out of me, a sound of base need. Round and fair, pink nipples so tightly drawn up with her arousal that the areolae barely showed, the sight of her breasts shoved me over the edge of reason. Bracing a hand under the curve of her lower back, I feasted on those perfect breasts and fantastically hard nipples.

  She arched back, offering herself to my mouth, her mewls firing me onward as I licked and bit at her. With her hands in my hair, she hung on, chanting my name and incoherent encouragement. At last she bent so far back her head touched the table, so I let her relax onto it, a feast for my lust. Her hair spilled like liquid fire over the dark wood, her skin impossibly fair against the deeper hues, her turgid nipples and swollen mouth beacons of flushed pink. Like her sweet cunt would be.

  I had to see it, to expose her, taste her, have her. Pushing up her skirts, finding volumes of lace underskirts in different shades of violet, I parted her slim white thighs. Found her naked beneath. Rose-gold framing her pinkness. Hot. Slick.

  Needing the taste of her with the desperation of a drowning man, I pushed her knees wide and fell on her, drinking in the sea salt sweetness of her body. The delicate folds of her sex slid under my tongue, her urgent cries driving me on. She climaxed, crying out my name in a hissed wail that sounded like anguish, her passage clamping on the finger I’d thrust inside her. She shuddered under my hands and I held her tight, loving the way she came apart for me, loving her cries of despairing pleasure as I drove her up again, not letting her down from the peak but pushing her further and harder.

  When she was close, when she strained and struggled against me, panting as she begged, I freed my cock and drove it home. She climaxed around me, so primed that being filled undid her. Convulsing in the orgasm, she arched, arms thrown over her head in sensual abandon, eyes half-closed and mouth contorted as she cried out. I filled my hand with her breast, pinching the nipple hard so she writhed, calling for more. Her legs clamped so tightly around my hips there was no chance I could slip out, not to mention the way she milked my cock with her internal muscles.

  My Ami might look angelic, but she possessed an uncanny mastery of the sensual skills. Another gift from the goddess of love. I slowed, stroking into her and savoring the way she enveloped me, so warm, an embrace like coming home. She watched me now through slitted lids, blue burning through the lace of fire, her moans like purrs. I bent over her, taking her nipple in my teeth and flicking my tongue that way that drove her crazy. She grabbed my head, bringing my mouth to hers, sucking my tongue in and biting hard enough to draw blood.

  I snarled, losing what little gentleness I’d been able to muster. Holding her in place, pounding into her, my vision blurred into a red haze. A whirl of jeweled stars exploded in my brain, and with a shout of near agony, I wrenched my mouth from hers, sinking my teeth into the vulnerable curve of her neck. The climax vised through me, a rumbling thunder of need that rattled and rocked me.

  Holding onto her like a drowning man, I dropped into oblivion.

  The pain in my arm finally made me move. Trapped between us, the still-bruised flesh and knitting bones protested being pinned. Reality crashed back with it. I’d fucked the Queen of Avonlidgh on the grand table in the main hall of Windroven. An abysmally bad decision, even for me.

  As if there’d been any thinking involved.

  I groaned for my stupidity and started to lift myself, but Ami held on, imprisoning me in a web of white limbs and velvet like a midnight sky. “Not yet,” she murmured and kissed my temple. “I’m not ready for this to end.” She flexed her hips, inner muscles squeezing my sensitive post-come cock almost painfully.

  A harsh laugh escaped me. “The servants might come in.”

  “They’d better not. I threatened to send them out into the blizzard if they so much as cracked the door.”

  I lifted my head, levering up enough to see her face, despite her grumbling protests. “You planned this.”

  She returned my accusing stare evenly. “I hoped.”

  I dropped my forehead against hers, then had to kiss her, with her enticing mouth right there. “We can’t keep doing this,” I scolded her, even as I fell again and again into kissing her. My arm throbbed and I didn’t care. I never wanted to leave the sweet embrace of her body.

  Which was a real problem, as I had to.

  “Why not?” she was saying, holding on and finding my mouth when I tried to pull away. “This is good. This is everything. Why can’t we have this?”

  One of us had to put a stop to it. “Because my arm hurts like hell.”

  “Oh!” She immediately let me go. I slipped out of her, grabbing for a linen to catch our fluids. Once again I contemplated the horrific possibility that I might have planted my seed in her clearly fertile soil. She steadfastly refused to take precautions. Always I resolved not to fuck her again. Always I failed in that resolve
with a pitiful lack of self-discipline. When we’d first become lovers, she’d been pregnant with the twins. She’d even used that to coax me, a low-life criminal, into taking her lovely body, saying I couldn’t get her pregnant. Then she’d been healing from labor. Then, somewhere along the way, she seduced me into fucking her again, only laughing when I cautioned her that any child of ours would be a bastard.

  Not what people would think, that the belle of Ordnung and darling of the Thirteen Kingdoms flaunted convention so carelessly. And yet also so very Ami.

  “Are you all right?” she asked. “Ash?”

  “I’m fine. Here.” I gave her a clean cloth, a bad idea as I had to look in her direction. She sat on the edge of the table, dark skirts mounded around her, one knee drawn up so her pussy showed pink and open, beautifully framed. She hadn’t fixed her dress either, so her breasts flowed generously over the dusky velvet, bite marks and scratches showing clearly on her fair flesh, particularly the purpling imprint of my teeth at the juncture of neck and shoulder. I rubbed a hand over my head. I’d totally lost control in my lust, yet again.

  “I know that look,” Ami said coolly, cleaning herself without any hint of shyness. “You better not be about to apologize.”

  “I hurt you.”

  “No more than usual,” she replied crisply, then jumped off the table when I winced, pressing my hand over my eyes. “Ash.” She wrapped her hands in my shirt, making me face her. “How many times do I have to tell you I like it?”

  I touched the deep bite at her neck, summoning the healing energy, and she yanked away, dancing back. “No way. No healing the marks.”

  “Ami,” I protested. “Don’t be ridiculous, let me fix it. It’ll show. People will see.”

  “Good.” Her eyes flashed with satisfaction and she patted the mark, then lifted her breasts to survey the others. “I like having your marks on me. It’s not something wrong that needs to be ‘fixed.’” She began tucking her breasts back into their velvet nest, and I watched, helplessly rapt.

  “I hope I didn’t ruin your dress.”

  “Why do you always worry about my stupid dresses? They don’t matter to me. You’re always trying to fix the things that aren’t important and ignoring what is.”

  “All right.” I had no doubt she was correct. I’d always had a gift for making bad situations worse. “What is so important that I’m ignoring then?”

  “Us!” She nearly shrieked it. “What we have together.”

  “We can’t be together, Ami,” I told her in a low voice. “We decided.”

  “Did we?”

  “You know we did.”

  “I’m not so sure of that.” Calming herself, she ran her fingers through her disheveled hair, plucking out the few remaining star pins. I picked up a couple scattered on the floor and handed them to her. “I’ll just leave it down,” she said, tossing them on the table. “My hair’s at this weird in-between stage where it’s so long that it gets in my way, but not quite long enough to braid or stay put up, even without you tearing at it, and—what?”

  “What do you mean you’re not so sure of that?” I said, sounding reasonably rational, which I wasn’t. Since my throat was dry, I poured some wine into a crystal goblet. The other one had been what broke, so I gave the intact one to her and retrieved my mug from by the fire. “You sent me away.”

  “I let you go,” she corrected. “Because you said you wanted to leave.”

  I took a deep breath. And, thrice curse it, refilled my already empty mug. Glorianna give me patience. “What I want doesn’t matter. You and I know this has to end sometime.”

  “I don’t know any such thing.” She tossed her hair defiantly. “I hear you natter on about it, but you’ve never given me one good reason why.”

  I gritted my teeth. “I have so. You don’t listen. To me or to anyone.”

  “Then tell me again. Right now. We love each other. Explain to me why that’s not enough for you.”

  “It’s not about me!” I gripped the mug so hard I thought the metal might give under my hand. “Love isn’t some cure-all. People can love each other and it still destroys them. Better we end this sooner, before we cause irreparable damage.”

  “Damage to who and what?” She demanded.

  I shook my head, unable to explain the hugeness of it, growling at her, incoherent with all those things I could never explain.

  “Won’t you talk to me, Ash?” Ami asked, in a much softer tone. She eased closer, her hand out, like she might with a wild dog. She laid her fingers on me, gazing up with eyes full of compassion. “Trust me with this. What is this terrible thing that might happen? Is this about your parents?”

  I put my hand over hers, pressing her hand to my heart, still unable to find the words. I couldn’t escape that gaping sense of vulnerability, of never being able to explain to Ami how my father’s love had killed my mother, how I’d been so bent on avenging him that I left my mother alone and unprotected. I’d loved her with all my being and I’d let her die, too.

  I must have been disoriented, because it felt like the stones moved under my feet. Except that Ami flattened her mouth into an unhappy line, glancing at the ceiling. Something muttered in the background of my mind, a lonely howl beneath the roaring of the Mornai storm. The scent of scorch and decay wafted past—but in my mind, because the candle flames stayed straight and serene.

  “Glorianna save us,” I whispered, reflexively drawing Her circle in the air.

  Ami inclined her head. “I’ve certainly been asking Her to. Though you might appeal to Moranu—I suspect awakening dragons falls to the goddess of magic and shapeshifting.”

  ~ 13 ~

  “Why didn’t you tell me the dragon was awake enough to shake the castle?” I demanded for the third time, bolting the delicious, if lukewarm, meal as fast as possible. Ami had pleaded hunger and pointed out that I’d be more reasonable with a full belly. Since I knew I was feeling far from reasonable, and some time to cool my wildly stirred emotions couldn’t hurt, I’d agreed. I had to admit, food helped a great deal to take that edge of desperation away.

  “What could you have done about it, Ash?” Ami replied with some impatience. It took me a moment to realize she meant the dragon. “Up until last night, you were on the verge of dying.”

  “You should have told me the moment I was lucid.” I should have figured out before now that the howling and muttering in my thoughts came from outside my nightmares. If I weren’t so fucked in the head, I might have realized sooner. Some warrior I was, unable to discern the shrieking of his inner demons from the outer ones.

  “Arguably I’m still waiting for that moment to come,” she replied sweetly.

  “Cute.” I pushed back my chair and checked the draw of my short blade.

  “What are you doing?” She frowned at me suspiciously.

  “I’ve eaten, as directed, and now I’m going down to check out the tunnels.”

  “Oh no, you are not, mister. You’re going back to bed.”

  I raised a brow at her. It would be better to have my sword, though I couldn’t wield it well with that hand. Not as well as the short blade, but having the extra length might be worth the tradeoff in loss of dexterity. Dragons were big, so precision might not be as important as a bit more distance. I’d better get the sword.

  Ami had stood, wrapping her hand in my belt and yanking me to her by the hips before I took a step. “Did you hear me?”

  “I’m not Astar to be sent off to my room. Have Graves or any of the men gone to investigate?”

  She looked aside and released me. Then followed when I kept walking. “No, I ordered them not to.”

  “Ami.” I tried to keep my voice gentle, much as I wanted to shout at her for her foolishness. “Danger doesn’t disappear just because you ignore it.”

  She snorted inelegantly. “This from the king of denial.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Give it a little thought.” She leveled me with a fierce glare.
“Come back when you want to have an actual conversation about your feelings.”

  I wasn’t at all sure how we’d gone from discussing an awakening dragon making the stones of Windroven shake beneath our feet to something as irrelevant as my feelings. Having no reply, I said nothing.

  “Well, I guess that non-response says everything,” Ami commented. “At least take Graves with you. Maybe Skunk and some of the other men.”

  “I’ll do better on my own. Faster.” Plus I’d learned a few mind-tricks in Annfwn about hiding my presence. The skilled practitioners could shield a whole group, but I was far from skilled. Ami followed me into her rooms. “Where did you put my sword?”

  She pointed to one of the side chambers, where I found my leathers and other equipment, cleaned and neatly stacked. I eyed the leathers dubiously. Better to wear those, but I doubted I could get into them on my own. Glancing at Ami, I found she stood with arms folded, a stubborn tilt to her chin. “I’m not helping you with this fool’s errand,” she informed me.

  “I understand. The leathers would protect me better, but I can do without.”

  She gave me the look of complete exasperation normally reserved for Willy and Nilly at their most impossible. Then threw up her hands and looked to the sky. “Why did you have to make me love this man?” It seemed Glorianna gave her no good answer because Ami leveled a defiant glare on me again. “Fine, I’ll help you into your leathers, after I put on mine. I’m going with you.”

  “You absolutely are not.”

  “I’m not Stella, to be told what to do,” she neatly threw my words back at me.

  “Stella listens about as well as you do,” I muttered.

  Ami was already digging her leathers out of a cabinet in the next room. I’d never noticed there was a series of chambers, one leading into the next, with storage and another room with a bed in it. “Is this where you’ve been sleeping?”