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 between 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.

She cupped them in her hand, scraped fingernail lightly on the underside. A muscle in his thigh leapt. His sex twitched, growing straighter and fuller, starting to rise.

“Does it hurt when it does that?” She’d heard her father’s courtiers sometimes cursing the ache in their loins.

She knew the instant his eyes opened, felt the tingling energy of his gaze like sunlight on her skin. She glanced up and, sure enough, found him watching her from beneath the thick lashes of his half-shuttered eyes. “Only if you don’t finish what you’ve started.” His voice was a low growl again, and the deep, raspy sound of it sent shivers racing across her body.

“Ah. I’ll be sure to finish, then.” She turned her attention back to the intriguing mysteries of his sex. She stroked him, traced one long blue vein running the length of his shaft with the rounded edge of a nail, and smiled to herself when, despite his claims of exhaustion, his flesh strained upwards, as if rising to meet her hand. His body was a marvel. So different from her own, yet fascinating and beautiful in its own right.

She curled her fingers around him. The flesh that had only moments ago been soft and malleable was now a thick, rapidly hardening shaft. Her fingers spanned little more than halfway around the base.

She jumped a little when his hand stroked her bare bottom and slid between her heels to caress her inner thighs. One broad finger curved up, found her damp heat, and thrust up while a second finger slid up between her folds and began stroking the tiny nub of flesh that sent flares of electric heat shooting throughout her body. Her inner muscles clenched tight around him.

“Does it hurt when it does that?” he asked with a slow smile.

Her eyes fluttered down, and she swallowed thickly. “Only if you don’t finish what you’ve started.” His finger moved up and down inside her, a pale mimicry of what was to come but dizzying in its own right.

He shook his head slightly. “Nay, Summerlass,” he denied. “This time you finish it.”

“How?” She was willing. The ache was there and building. She wanted more than his finger inside her. Her hand clenched tighter around his shaft, moving up and down in a rhythm that instinctively matched his own strokes.

“Mount me. As you would a horse.”

“I don’t know how. I’ve never ridden a horse.” Oh. She caught her lower lip between her teeth and shuddered on a delicious wave of pleasure. She felt her inner muscles ripple and clench around his finger. It was only the beginning. He’d already taught her to expect much more.