Weeping, Summer dipped her fingers in the pot of salve and smoothed the fragrant gel over Khamsin’s battered skin. “I’m sorry, Storm. If we’d known, we would have stopped him.”

Khamsin frowned and lifted her hair off the back of her neck. The room was stifling. “It’s not your fault. I don’t blame any of you. This is between the Summer King and me, no one else. Are you done? Good.” She took the nightgown from Autumn and pulled it on. The silk settled against her back, sticking to the still-damp residue from the salve. Even without the heavy velvet gown, she was so hot. “Spring, open the window, would you? I’m burning up.”

Her sister hurried to unlatch the window and throw it wide.

“Don’t worry sisters,” Khamsin added as she climbed into the middle of the dark, shrouded bed. “I’ll be fine. I’m actually feeling better than I have all day. Whatever you put in the wedding cup seems to have done the trick.”

A cool breeze blew through the window, wafting across the thin fabric of her gown. A frisson of heat shot through her veins. She couldn’t stifle a groan as her br**sts and belly tightened with sudden, shocking need, almost painful in its intensity.

Her sisters exchanged long, worried glances. Guilty glances.

And then Khamsin knew why she was so warm. She knew why the pain in her back was gone, and where the seemingly boundless supply of simmering sensual energy had come from.

The wedding cup. Tildy.

“Arras leaf,” Wynter spat. “The bastard dosed us with arras leaf!”

Winter’s Frost! His sex was hard as ice and all but burning through his trousers. Each step was an agony, the material of his pants rubbing against tight, ultrasensitive skin, setting nerves on fire.

“Son of a whoring bitch. I’ll freeze his c**k so cold it shatters.” He glared at Valik, who was striding quickly beside him. “Better yet, you find the bastard and lock him up. He drank from the same bottle. Tie him up so he can’t give himself any relief, and leave him that way ’til his balls turn blue.”

“Done. Do you want me to find an herbalist? See if there’s an antidote?”

“No. If he was this determined I should plow his daughter tonight, I’ll see it done. More’s the pity for her. I’d hoped to be gentle.” The chandelier above their heads froze, and as they passed beneath it, it gave a loud popping sound and shattered in a cloud of crystal flakes. The Summerlea guard leading the way into the private wing of the palace flinched.

They turned a corner, and Wynter saw the double doors flanked by two Wintercraig guards.

“Your queen’s bedchamber, Sire,” the guide stammered. He stepped aside to let Wynter pass, then turned and ran in the opposite direction.

The guards flanking the doors opened them as he drew near. Hot, heavy air swirled out, heady with the dizzying scents of incense and woman.

Wynter strode into the room and stopped in surprise. What surrounded him was no bedroom but rather a lush, sensuous garden, dense with foliage. Lights flickered along the edges of the room, and a carpeted pathway led through a virtual forest of plants and flowering trees and shrubs towards the dark, shadow- and silk-draped bed in the center of the room.

The hiss of Valik’s sword leaving the scabbard sounded at his back. “Don’t like this, Wyn,” Valik muttered, his voice clipped as it always was in enemy situations. “Don’t trust it.”

A flash of bare skin shone dimly in the great bed, a leg, slender and shapely. Moving restlessly, rubbing against the silken coverlet with the same desperate hunger that filled Wynter’s own body. This was no ambush. It was just that fool Verdan’s determination to see the Winter King fulfill his part of the marriage bargain.

“Get out,” Wynter barked at the men behind him. “Now. You, too, Valik.”

He waited for the click of the latch, then drew a deep breath of the heady, perfumed air and plunged towards the shadowed heart of the garden. The incense was so thick it left him dizzy. The arras leaf made his flesh burn from the inside out. The heat and the assault on his senses jumbled his thoughts. Logic would soon be gone, leaving only rapacious hunger and need.

“Your father is a fool, princess.”

He stumbled towards the bed, crawled into its plush softness. A groan broke past his lips and silks and velvets rubbed against his hands. Hot. He was so hot. Every sensation was a torment. His fingers tore at the silk of his shirt and the too-tight bond of his breeches. Fabric ripped, freeing steaming golden skin. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

He reached for her. His hands closed around a slender ankle, ran up towards the softer skin of her thighs. The gown parted without resistance, fabric falling away to bare soft, sweet-smelling skin. Hot, burning skin.

He heard her breath catch, felt her body shift on a convulsive shudder.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I didn’t know . . . I should have suspected.”

His hands tore at the fragile fabric covering her br**sts, yanking satin ribbons free. The soft, round weight of feminine flesh filled his palms.

In a groaning voice that seemed torn from her, she cried, “Please.”

He bent his head, drawing the tightly pebbled tip of one breast into the scorching heat of his mouth. His tongue swirled around the beaded flesh. His right hand slipped down between their bodies to the soft curls and even softer flesh between her legs. A strangled cry ripped from her throat and her back arched up against him. Hot cream bathed his fingers. Her body shook in a hard, helpless paroxysm of tremors. The heady, earthy scent of female pleasure filled his nostrils. His balls drew tight in an almost painful clench, and his c**k pulsed with sudden, straining urgency.