“Your eyes,” she said quietly. “You’ve only looked at me like that a few times. It’s . . . intense.”

“Sorry,” I said. My voice sounded rough to me.

“No,” she said. Cloth rustled softly. Her weight pushed down on the edge of the bed. “I . . . I’ve been thinking about what we talked about last year.”

My throat suddenly felt dry, and my heartbeat accelerated. “What do you mean?”

“This,” she said. Her hand touched my chest and slid up to my jaw. Then her weight shifted the bed a little more in the darkness, and she found my mouth with hers.

It was a good kiss. Slow. Warm. Her lips were soft and gentle and explored mine in gentle surges. I could hear her breathing getting faster, too, and her fingers slid up into my hair, her short nails scratching over my scalp and then tracing down over my neck to my shoulder.

Desire flooded through me in a sudden surge of hot, hungry need, and the Winter in me rose up with a howl, demanding that I sate it. Every instinct in my body told me that Karrin was there, and warm, and real, and pressing more of her body against mine through one fragile layer of cloth—that she was mine for the taking.

I didn’t move my hands. But I broke from the kiss with a gentle groan and said, “Karrin.”

“I know,” she said, breathing harder, not drawing away, her breath hot against my skin. “This thing you have with Mab. It pushes you. I know.”

Then she took my hand and guided it to her hip. After a second, she moved it lower, below the hem of the shirt, and then slid it up. I felt the soft skin and tight muscle of her thigh, the curve of her hip as she moved my hand up to her waist.

She was na**d beneath the shirt.

I absolutely froze in place. It was the only alternative to doing something sudden and primal.

“What?” she breathed.

Something in me that had nothing to do with Winter howled at me for stopping, urged me to start moving my fingers, to get the shirt out of the way, to explore further. I beat it down with a club.

She was too important. This wasn’t something I could decide with my glands.

Unfortunately, my head wasn’t getting thoughts through to my mouth. “You aren’t . . . I’m not sure if I can . . . Karrin, I want this, but . . .”

“It’s all right,” she said quietly.

“I’m not sure,” I said again. I wanted her. But I wanted it to be about more than desire. I could have that if I wanted—mindless, empty sex is not exactly in short supply among the Sidhe of Winter.

But that kind of thing can eat you hollow, if you let it. And Karrin was courage and loyalty and brains and heart and so much more than mere need and desire.

I tried to explain that. Words just sort of sputtered out. I wasn’t even sure they were in the right order.

She slid her hand over my mouth after a few faltering moments. Icould hear the smile in her voice as she spoke. “I’ve had a year to think about this, Harry. And I don’t want to wake up one day and realize that I was too scared to take the next step.” She leaned down and kissed one of my eyelids, her mouth gentle. “I know that you’re a good man. And I’ve never had a friend like you.” She leaned down and kissed the other eyelid. “And I know you’ve been alone for a long time. So have I. And I’m right here. And I want this. And you want this. So would you please shut up and do something about it.”

My fingers flexed, all by themselves, savoring the warmth and texture, the soft, tight skin over the curve of her hip, and she shivered and let out a breathless little sigh.

That set something off. I slipped my other hand around her and all but lifted her on top of me. Karrin was made of muscle, but she was still small, and I was a hell of a lot stronger than I had been at any other point in my life. I pulled her atop me, her br**sts pressing against my chest through the cotton shirt, and tightened my hands on her lower back, sliding them down, feeling softness, warmth, drawing another gasp out of her.

I groaned and said, “I don’t know if I can control . . . I don’t want to hurt you.”

In answer, she found my mouth again with hers, and the kiss was pure, hungry fire. I pressed back into it, our tongues touching, dancing, and she started pushing and kicking the bedsheets down.

“I spar with Viking warriors, Harry,” she snarled. “I’m not made of glass. You need this. We need this. Shut up, Dresden.” Then her mouth was on mine again, and I stopped thinking about anything else.

The kiss got hotter, her hands bolder. I got lost in running my fingers up and down the length of her back, beneath the shirt, from the nape of her neck, down over the supple muscles beside her spine, down over the curves of her h*ps to her thighs and back, over and over, skin on skin. Her mouth traveled to my jaw, my ear, my neck, sending jolts of sensation coursing down my body, until it became almost more than I could bear.

I let out a snarl and rolled, pinning her beneath me, and heard her gasp. I caught her wrists and slammed them to the mattress, gripping tight, and slid down her body until my mouth found her sex. She tasted sweet, and she let out gasping, breathless sounds as I explored her with my lips and tongue, rising excitement in every shivering motion of her body, in the increasingly frantic roll of her h*ps and arch of her back. She twisted her wrists, using them as an anchor point so that she could move—and then her breathing abruptly stopped, her body arching up into a shivering bow.

She gasped a few seconds later, twisting and twitching in reaction, and I could see her again in the dim streetlight, her face flushed with passion, her eyes closed. I was hard, so hard it hurt, and lunged up her body again, this time pinning her wrists down above her head.