“Then today is a good day to start.”

She gasped and nodded. Her eyes fluttered closed. “How?”

She bit back a cry of protest as his hands ceased their erotic magic and slid towards her waist. Damp fingers stroked her thigh. “Put this leg across me and kneel over my body.”

She shifted her weight and rose on her knees. He helped her, lifting her by the waist as she flung a leg across his hips and straddled him. Cool air mixed with warm swirled across the hot, damp skin between her legs. The dark, earthy scent of sex wafted around her like a dizzying cloud of incense. She saw Wynter’s nostrils flare as the wolf tasted the scent on the breeze. The hands at her waist slid down to her hips and squeezed briefly before sliding between their bodies.

“Now, fill yourself with me and ride.” He guided his shaft to the entrance of her body and held it there while she impaled herself slowly on him. Inch by devastating inch, she took him, feeling the burning pull as her body stretched to accommodate him. He watched her with eyes of blue flame and his hands slid up her waist to cup the weight of her br**sts in his palms and roll her ni**les between his thumb and index finger.

Her body clenched. Her hips bucked.

“Gently, eldi-kona. Find your rhythm.” His hips rose and fell, showing her the tempo.

She rode. Slowly at first, rocking against him, feeling the tug and burn where her flesh had stretched to accommodate him, then slowly increasing as she grew in confidence, and the heat coiled within her. He rose on his elbows to capture the tips of her bobbing br**sts with his mouth. Teeth closed gently around one nipple and held fast, so that every time she rocked, she felt the tug at her breast like a spear of lightning shooting from chest to womb.

“Wynter.” She speared her fingers into his hair and gripped his head. He would not let her end the torment. His tongue flicked out in teasing touches, flickering across the tight bead of her nipple in concert with each thrust of her hips.

Her hips rose and fell. The hard, wide shaft worked in and out of her body, in a slow, incinerating slide. “Wynter!” Heat coiled inside her, winding tight.

He grabbed her hips, broad fingers sank into soft flesh and gripped her tight. He lifted her hips and brought her down hard, forcing his body deeper inside her. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. Slow, burning strokes, each one robbing her lungs of breath, each pulse making her heart race. Down. His own hips bucked up to greet her.

“Wynter!” Sensation exploded inside her, radiating out from her womb in jolting electric spikes. Sparks burst in a million dizzying flashes behind her closed eyes. Dimly, she felt the last, pounding thrusts of his hips. Her body exploded again, and she rode the waves of shattering senses into darkness.

When she woke again, sunlight was shining through the holes in the tent roof, and Wynter, fully dressed, was slipping on the last of his armor plate. The wolf’s head helm gleamed white and silver in the hands of a young soldier whose battle-aged eyes didn’t fit a face that couldn’t have seen its first shave more than a year past.

She sat up in surprise and barely caught the covering pelt before it fell away. She was naked beneath the furs, her skin still tingling from the long hours of their coupling.

“This is Stoli.” Wynter jerked a chin at the boy. “He’ll ride beside you. If you need aught, let him know. Get dressed now. Your clothes are there.” A woolen dress, fur-lined cloak, and warm boots had been draped across one of the camp chairs. “You have twenty minutes before my men take down this tent.”

He spared a last look at her naked shoulders rising from the furs, long enough for her skin to heat beneath this gaze. Then his eyes shuttered, and she felt the deliberate, distant chill fall between them. What tenderness they’d shared was gone. He took his helm from the boy, ducked out of the tent, and was gone.

Stoli followed seconds later. He didn’t look at her, but his bitterness was plain in the stiff, prideful line of his back. He didn’t like playing nursemaid to a woman any more than she liked having some downy-faced boy-soldier assigned as her jailer.

Khamsin threw off the pelts and rose. Dizziness made her sway, and she stood still, eyes closed, hands to her head, until it passed. She would dress, and she would eat. She would be in enemy territory soon and would need all her strength and all her wits about her.

Someone had removed the copper bathing tub, but they’d replaced it with a bucket of still-warm, jasmine-scented water, a bar of sweet soap, and a fresh cloth. It had to have been Wynter who’d ordered it, but such thoughtfulness in light of his coolness just now left her puzzled, unsure what to make of him. Was he the enemy king she’d wed or the caring husband seeing to his wife’s comfort?

Both, she decided. Use the care to your advantage, Khamsin, but never lose sight of the enemy.

She dipped the cloth and soap in the water and hastily bathed as best she could. He’d told her she had twenty minutes, and didn’t doubt his men would start pulling up the tent stakes the second that time was up.

Laid across the camp chair beneath the woolen gown was a full white chemise of soft cotton. She tugged it on over her head, and let the billows of fabric drape her still-damp body from neck to toe and shoulder to wrist. Soft, blue lamb’s wool skirts followed, then a separate, formfitting bodice that fastened up the front with two rows of gleaming gold buttons, each bearing the raised stamp of a rose in bloom. The outfit had been Summer’s. Khamsin had never owned a gown so fine except for what came from her sisters’ wardrobes when the Summer King wasn’t looking. The boots were soft kid, with a small, stacked heel, the cloak velvet-lined gray wool, trimmed with the plush, soft fur of a snow lynx around the generous hood. A matching fur muff dangled on a string from one of the cloak’s buttons.