Chapter 20
Cold mud squelches beneath my bare feet as I cross the yard, my nightgown dragging low and darkening at the hem with every step. The night presses close, the lantern in the window of my house now distant behind me. I should turn back. I know I should.
But my body keeps moving.
The barn looms ahead, a darker shape against the darker sky. I reach the door and hesitate, nerves crackling beneath my skin as I curl my fingers around the handle and push it open inch by inch.
It groans softly.
I slip inside, breath shallow, the door closing behind me with a muted thud. Darkness greets me at once, broken only by thin seams of moonlight slipping through the gaps between the wooden boards, dust motes drifting lazily in the silver glow.
My gaze sweeps over the ground level first. Bags of seed stacked along one wall, coils of rope, broken tools, hay piled in uneven mounds. Nothing stirs. The air smells of earth and straw and old wood.
Then I shiver. Not from fear, but from cold.
It rolls down from above. My gaze lifts.
The loft.
I swallow hard and move to the ladder, my hands trembling as I climb, rung by rung, the chill deepening with every step. When I reach the top and peer over the edge, my breath leaves me all at once.
Luceran lies stretched across a pile of hay.
His shirt is gone, his fur coat cast aside beside him. Moonlight spills over his bare form, turning pale skin pearlescent, almost luminous. One arm rests behind his head, the other draped across his chest in an easy, relaxed sprawl.
Frost curls through the air around him, whispering and coiling as though drawn to the slow, steady rhythm of his breathing. With each rise and fall of his chest, the runes etched into his skin begin to glow, tracing the lines of his ribs and sides, flaring softly as muscle shifts beneath them.
I step closer, careful and silent, though my heart pounds so loudly I am certain it will give me away. I do not know why I came. I do not know what I expected. Only that something in me refused to let me stay away.
I lift my hand.
It hovers inches from his chest, fingers trembling as the cold radiates from him, curling around my skin like mist. I want to touch him so badly it aches. No, it has gone beyond want. It is a ridiculous, irrational need.
I lean in just a fraction more, surrendering to the pull I can no longer deny.
His hand shoots out.
Cold fingers snap around my wrist, dragging me forward in a sudden, breath stealing pull.
“What are you doing here?” he asks, his voice rough with sleep, low enough to vibrate through me.
“I…I…”The words tangle uselessly in my throat. What am I doing here? The mortifying truth presses down all at once. This is absurd.
“I’m sorry. I’ll go.”
I turn my head, try to pull away, but his grip tightens instead of loosens, fingers locking around my wrist.
“You’re not sorry,” he says far too calmly, as if he hasn’t just caught me hovering over him in the dark. “You came here for a reason. Tell me what it is.”
My heart slams against my ribs, my breath breaking into uneven shudders that refuse to steady. The stillness of him only makes it worse.
“I don’t know,” I admit at last, then the truth slips free before I can stop it. “I wanted…” I swallow hard. “I needed to see you.”
The words hang between us.
His gaze drops briefly to where he holds me, and I flinch as a feathered ripple of frost spreads across my skin.
“I think it’s more than that,” he says. “You were about to touch me while I slept.”
His mouth curves into not quite a smile.
“Is that how you prefer me?” he continues softly. “Unaware. Unable to object? Is that when you find it easiest to press your soft body against mine?”
My eyes widen. My mouth falls open. Heat floods my face even as the cold climbs higher, curling toward my throat.
The night I laid beside him. He knows.
“No,” I rush out. “That isn’t what it was. I was trying to help you.”
“All you did,” he says quietly, “was wake something in me. Something that has been dormant for a very long time, Neve Devlin. Something I believed I no longer needed.”
His gaze holds mine, unflinching.
“Until you molded your body so seamlessly to mine. Far more than was necessary for a simple exchange of warmth.” His voice lowers. “Now I can think of nothing else.”
My breath stutters. “You… you were awake?” I swallow hard. “It was…science.”
Gods, did I really just say that?
I knew it was desperate when I said it to Atilia. Now it’s just pathetic.
He exhales, his gaze shifting from my eyes to the spirals of frost curling into patterns along my collarbone, creeping lower beneath the collar of my nightgown.
“I am no scholar,” he says mildly, “but grinding your bare, smooth ass against my crotch does not strike me as particularly scientific.”
I am speechless, horrified and embarrassed all at once as the frost spreads lower, the chill tracing the curve of my breast through the thin fabric of my nightgown.
He straightens slowly, watching with brazen interest. He cannot see beneath the cloth, and yet I find myself wondering if he can feel every part of my skin the cold claims, as surely as I do.
“Did you truly think I was not in control of myself?” he asks. “That the way I responded, the way I touched you, was accidental? That I was so lost in my dreams I was unaware of every glorious inch of you?”
He tilts his head, studying me.
“Or did you let yourself believe that?” he murmurs. “Because you did not want it to end… but did not dare ask for more?”
He exhales again, and the chill of his breath washes over me, raising gooseflesh in its wake, stealing my breath as surely as his words.
“I know you want to touch me, Neve,” he says, each word chosen to slip beneath my skin as frost circles my nipple, the thin fabric of my nightgown clinging to its stiffened peak.
“I know you are curious about how my cold body would feel beneath your hands. Whether you could warm it again. Whether that is a power you possess. To thaw the cold from this Fae you claim to loathe. To see if you truly have that kind of control over me.”
I shake my head, but there is little conviction behind it. “That’s not true.”
His grin tells me my denial does nothing but entertain him.
“I know what you want,” he murmurs, “and I am offering it freely. No favors. No bargains.” His eyes linger on my mouth. “You waste breath on protests. Your body has already betrayed you.”
The frost drifts lower, sliding down my sternum, spreading like an aching bloom.
“I can smell the need on you,” he says.
Heat floods my cheeks.
“I smelt it in your bed,” he continues, voice low. “When you felt my cock against your back. I smelt it in the inn, when I held you so close your heartbeat thundered.”
He leans in, his nose brushing my ear, his breath a whisper of frost along my skin.
“And I smell it again now,” he murmurs. “Stronger than ever.”
His voice roughens, restraint fraying at the edges.
“It is driving me fucking mad, Neve.”
“I cannot,” I whisper, the word slipping out as a breathless whimper as the frost spreads across my stomach, then drifts lower. I gasp when the sharp cold brushes my inner thigh. “You are Fae. It is not allowed.”
His teeth catch his bottom lip as he watches me shudder between pain and pleasure, the clash of cold and heat winding tighter inside me.
“When have you ever cared about rules?” he asks softly. “You are infuriating. Disobedient. Far more trouble than any human I’ve ever known.” His gaze locks onto mine. “So what the fuck is stopping you now?”
He’s right.
What has ever stopped me?
When have I fallen in line, bitten back my words, looked before I leapt?
As my head tips back, as my breath breaks, as I stop fighting the cold and let pleasure rise where pain once lived, I know the answer.
Nothing.
I surge forward and crash my mouth against his, the kiss fierce and fearless, an eruption of everything unspoken between us. My hands fly to his face, fingers splaying along his jaw before threading into his hair, anchoring him to me.
The cold of him ripples over my skin, but I do not recoil. I lean into it instead, press closer, my blood racing hotter, faster, as though my body is determined to meet him blow for blow.
To answer frost with fire.
His breath catches, a sound I feel as much as hear.
Then his hands are on me, locking around my waist as he drags me hard against him.
The chill deepens where he touches me, seeps into my skin, but it only drives me closer.
My pulse thunders. My lips part beneath his as he takes the kiss from me, a low growl rumbling from his chest and vibrating straight through my bones.
His mouth claims me fully now, unhurried yet relentless. His tongue slides against mine, and the contrast is dizzying, cold colliding with heat, control straining against hunger, until I can no longer tell where I end and he begins.
I gasp softly into his mouth as his grip tightens, as he shifts and draws me onto his lap in one smooth motion. My nightgown rides up as I straddle him, fabric bunching at my hips, my knees braced on either side of his thighs.
Then I pause.
I pull back slightly, and his eyes sharpen, confusion flickering briefly before irritation replaces it. I take him in beneath me, the sight of him so devastating it burns, like staring straight into the sun.
My hand hovers over his bare chest before I lay it against his skin.
I barely feel the cold at all.
That’s when I realize my fingers have gone numb, my skin tinged blue, the chill has claimed me so completely I no longer register it.
My hand moves anyway, gliding over his broad chest, across pale nipples, down the hard line of his sternum.
My fingers trace the ridges of his abdomen, the valleys between muscle, circle his navel and stop at his belt.
I bite down on my bottom lip.
I have never hated a belt more.
“Are you sated?” he asks quietly. “Or do you need more?”
I swallow. “More.”
He nods.