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 bu**ocks 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 br**sts 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 bu**ocks 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 br**sts. 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.