His eyes narrowed. “You think Reika and I . . . ?”

“Not just me. The whole court. You weren’t the slightest bit discreet. Did you think we all were blind and deaf? Did you think you could just ride off with her for a fortnight, and no one would put two and two together?” When he didn’t answer, she slapped at his hands and shoved at him in irritation. “Let me up, Wynter. You’re squashing me.”

“No,” he said slowly. “No, I don’t think I will.” He caught the wrist he’d freed earlier and pinned her back to the ground. The white Wolf on his wrist brushed against her Summer Rose.

Khamsin gasped. The throbbing pain in her temple evaporated as another, far more powerful and irresistible sensation swept over her. “Stop that.”

“Stop what?” His voice had gone low and throaty.

“You know what. You think you can manipulate me with your . . . your wiles.”

“You think I have wiles?” He brushed his lips against the soft skin behind her ear, making her shiver violently. “So you are wroth with me for being absent so long from your bed? Is that the real reason you came here? Because you wanted to get my attention?” He blew a soft, icy breeze down her throat. The chill against superheated flesh made her shudder with delicious sensation. Her ni**les tightened to hard points, and her mouth went dry.

“I—I—” She couldn’t put two coherent words together. She settled for one. “Stop.”

His tongue touched her ear lightly in a swift, teasing caress. “I thought you would appreciate my husbandly consideration. Lady Frey said you needed time to heal, so I gave it to you.”

“That was weeks ago.” His skin smelled so good. Rich and seductive, the scents multilayered: cool crisp winter freshness, underlain with a darker, earthier, masculine scent, and something else she couldn’t name that made her body throb every time she smelled it. She told herself she would resist seduction, but she couldn’t resist that. She pressed her face to the skin of his neck, breathing him in. Her eyes rolled back in pleasure.

“If you hungered for my touch, you need only have asked.” His teeth grazed her skin. Her eyes closed as his mouth found her breast and he bit down lightly, through the crushed velvet of her overdress.

She moaned, her breath starting to come faster. It wasn’t fair, the effect he had on her. He pressed his wrist to hers, lowered his voice to that sultry, seductive growl, and every cell in her body started screaming in need.

“How was I supposed to do that when you avoided me at every turn?” She fixed her eyes on the pulse in his strong throat. A blush rose in her cheeks. She’d admitted her weakness . . . confessed that she’d wanted him . . . that she yearned for him. “And then you left. With Reika Villani.” The last popped out of its own volition, the tone hurt, wounded. Ah, gods, she was all but weeping.

He pulled back, his gaze searching her face. “You are jealous?”

“Not jealous. Betrayed.” She tried to cling to some measure of dignity. “You swore an oath of fidelity.”

“And I kept it. Reika Villani’s father is dying. I gave her escort to her father’s estate, nothing more. Or did you think I was lying in my note when I vowed to remain your faithful husband?”

“Note? What note?” He was nibbling at her ear now, and her thoughts began to scatter like autumn leaves.

“The one I left on your dressing table.”

“There was no note—ah!” His hips moved against hers. Even through the thick layers of her skirts, she could feel the hard ridge of his flesh. Her hips bucked involuntarily, issuing a wordless demand. Big hands slid beneath her skirts, skating up her stocking thighs to the soft heat between her legs. Fingers stroked across hot, slippery flesh, driving her wild.

“Do you hunger for my touch?”

She hadn’t even realized he’d undone her laces until her bodice parted, and he used his teeth to lower the front of her chemise, baring her br**sts. His tongue swirled around first one nipple, then the other, bathing each in icy fire.

Her hands roved across his back and chest, pulling impatiently at fur and cloth to reach the silky skin beneath. She groaned as the hard, velvety head of his sex pressed teasingly against hers. She reached down to grab his bu**ocks to pull him closer, wanting him inside her.

His hips didn’t budge. And the mouth doing such dizzyingly seductive things to her br**sts stopped, too.

She opened her eyes to scowl at him, and found him pushed back on his hands, watching her.

“Do you, wife? Do you want this?” He gave a little buck of his hips. The tip of his sex pushed just inside her, then retreated, leaving the inner muscles of her channel clenching at unsatisfying emptiness. “Do you hunger for it? For me?”

She was done with trying to pretend indifference. He knew it for the lie it was. She wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his chest, and surged up against him.

“Yes! Yes, damn you, yes!”

He smiled, and it dazzled her. Then he drove into her, and all coherent thought splintered. She gasped with the sharp ache of pleasure. Her arms tightened around him. Her nails clawed at the layers of fabric still separating her hands from his flesh. Her hips tilted up to meet each of his thrusts, taking him as deep inside her as she could.

Gods, help her. She’d missed this. Missed it more than she had ever let herself admit.

Kham shivered under him—not from the cold ice against her back, but from the heat that boiled inside her with each devastatingly erotic, slow-motion thrust of his body against hers.