Chapter 17
Kai drags me down for a furious kiss. I return it a thousandfold, tugging his hair at the roots. Hard muscles and soft hair, his plush lips leading mine, for I have no experience with this beyond what he’s shown me.
Not once has he been gentle with me. He isn’t now.
Kai scoops me up and throws me onto his bed. He yanks off my boots while I fumble with my belt, then strips my trousers almost violently from my body. Naked and shivering, I tug my cloak over me. He tears that out of my hands, too.
“You’re warm enough,” he says. “Any hotter and you’ll combust.”
“It’s barely tolerable in here.”
Still wearing his pants, he covers me. The thick ridge of his cock presses against my thigh. I fling my leg over the back of his, twining around him like a vine. He threads his fingers through my hair.
“Do you know how long I’ve dreamed of touching you like this?”
His mouth sears cold kisses down my throat.
I fight shivers as they course over my skin in sharp contrast to the warmth of the fire.
Kai’s skin is dotted with sweat. I kiss his shoulder and taste salt.
My core clenches around emptiness. I want to devour him, yet he is the one devouring me with stinging cold nips and sucks that only spike me higher.
He’s heavier than I imagined he would be, having fantasized about this moment for years.
His weight pressing me into the bedclothes feels delicious, despite the chill rolling off his body.
I shift my hips wider so he can settle firmly between them.
The light from the flames licks his skin.
Whether it’s an illusion or truth, his pallor seems less pronounced.
Bracing himself on one arm, Kai smooths back my hair. His hand cradles my face like I’m made of glass. He strokes the curve of my cheekbone.
“You are a treasure, Gwen. Brave, resilient, beautiful.”
I shake my head against the pillow. “Haven’t been beautiful in a long time, Kai.” My throat tightens. “I’ve hardly even been a woman. I traveled as a boy to get here.”
I gave up everything to save him. My home. My reputation. I abandoned my only family. We will either prevail together or rest eternally in this frozen palace.
“No one with eyes would believe you are anything other than female.” He bends to nip my earlobe. His cold chest presses against my breast. “Was it worth it?”
“Not yet.” I squirm, clutching his forearm. “But it could be, if you keep going.”
Kai’s mouth quirks up in a smile. Heat blossoms in my core, unfurling like the petals of a spring flower. He brings his hand down to the curve of my hip. Then lower, studying my reaction as he finds my core.
At first his fingers are like icicles gliding through my wet folds. A startled gasp bursts out of me.
“Too cold?”
I shake my head with a low whimper. The sensation is intense, but not unpleasant. I want him to keep going more than I want him to stop.
Then he finds the nub at the apex of my sex and inserts two digits into me in a single wet glide.
I stiffen at the intrusion. He withdraws.
An agonized moan tears out of me. He pushes into me again, setting a rhythm that stretches untouched parts of me until I accommodate his touch.
Pressure coils within me. I cling to his shoulder.
Heat rushes to my cheeks as I cry out, my back stiffening, thighs clamping around his wrist. Kai’s cock twitches against my hip.
Panting, I collapse into the bedclothes, listless. Spent.
“Now is it worth it?” he asks with a satisfied smile. He eases his fingers out of me and examines them. Embarrassment flashes over me at the way they glisten with my desire.
Kai pops two fingers into his mouth and closes his eyes with a low moan.
“I’ve wondered how you would taste,” he says when he’s licked them clean. “That night you ate dessert like a wanton…you have no idea what you do to me, Gwen. I wanted to crawl under the table and feast upon you.”
“I’d have let you do it.” I dare to squeeze his hard length through his trousers. “You still haven’t made this worth my while. Are you going to?”
He unfastens his belt. Metal clicks. Cloth rustles. He emerges from the dark fabric like a winter god. His cock weeps faintly from a slit in the center of its round, ruddy head. This part of him isn’t frozen. At his core, he remains my old friend.
Boldly, I clasp him there. He grunts and shifts onto his side, wrapping his hand around mine and showing me how to stroke him. His skin isn’t as cold. I explore the texture and weight of him, wondering how the heft will feel inside me.
“I’ll go slow,” he pleads into my hair, as though he can read my mind.
“Please.”
He covers me, again settling between my thighs, letting me take his delicious weight. He reaches down to position himself at my entrance, but instead of thrusting forward, he slides his cock up and down my center until I’m writhing.
“Kai, please,” I beg. His hips shift and with a single thrust he pushes into me, filling the aching emptiness that’s plagued me for so long. The stretch isn’t quite comfortable. I wiggle, trying to adjust.
“Gwen.”
“Hm?”
“If you want this to end immediately, keep doing that.” His words are tight and his breath ragged.
“Oh. Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize.”
“So—right. Okay. Now what?”
He chuckles helplessly. I can’t stop the wistful thought of what this might have been like if we had had the luxury of falling in love without The Snow Queen’s interference. If this is all we’ll ever have, we’d better make the most of it.
There’s a beat of held breath when he withdraws. Instantly, the ache comes back, only to be chased away again when he thrusts forward. I let my knees fall open, clutching the back of his sweat-slick neck.
“You’re so hot, Gwen. Burning. I can hardly bear it, but I can’t stop.” He picks up speed, his buttocks clenching.
“You’re cold,” I inform him through gritted teeth. He’s also hard, and wide, and he drives so deep that I feel like he must be rearranging my anatomy. I don’t dislike it. There’s pleasure in the kiss of pain, a rising tide of need with each controlled movement.
I want to break his control. I want him wild.
“Unbearable?” he grunts. “Should I stop?”
I nip his earlobe and lock my ankles around the backs of his thighs. “I will personally dunk you in the Queen’s ice lake if you do.”
He laughs and kisses me.
From there, things turn fun and lighthearted in a way I haven’t been since the days when my romantic fantasies were nothing more than thoughts of leaning forward to peck his lips when Kai was smiling at me on a sunny afternoon. He mutters a litany of sweet and filthy thoughts against my temple.
I always wanted you. I refused to make promises I knew I couldn’t keep, but I desired you for so long.
His confessions are a balm to my wounded soul. I’ll never have to wonder again whether he would have welcomed my advances. I only have to live with the regret that we didn’t act on love while we still could.
While I understand my grandmother’s warnings about falling for a prince I could never truly have, there remains an untamed part of me that thinks it will always be worth the risk to be with Kai.
Even as children, I knew he was my one and only love, for better or for worse—and gods know there’s little good that could come from us being together like this.
But it’s worth it.
So very worth it to feel myself coil around him, taking each increasingly forceful thrust with joy that comes out of me in moans and scratches on his broad shoulders.
I move my hands down to his flexing buttocks and feel the motion that way.
Feel him moving on me and inside me, tensing around him as he comes unraveled.
“Fuck, Gwen,” he grits out. It’s enough to send me spiraling into oblivion, stars shooting across my field of vision as the room around us disappears.
I sob my release into the crook of his neck as his control snaps.
He thrusts so hard and deep that the aftershocks of my pleasure pulse deep inside my abdomen, then collapses on top of me like an unstrung bow.