Unfortunately for her, Reika hadn’t realized Wynter would interpret her protests so literally. And Kham had no intention of letting her amend her past mistakes.

“I swore an oath to offer you the fruits of my life,” she told him. “You swore the same to me, and you promised to keep only to me. As I honor my oaths, I expect you to honor yours.”

Surprise flashed across his face for the briefest instant before he marshaled his features into an inscrutable mask. “You ask me for fidelity?”

She hadn’t meant to. It had just sort of popped out. But now that she had, she wasn’t going to back down. She lifted her chin. “I demand it. Considering my life lies in the balance, it’s only just that you restrict your . . . breeding efforts . . . solely to me.”

He took a single, purposeful step towards her, a predator stalking prey. His eyes burned like blue flame. “Is that the real reason? Because you fear death?”

Every instinct for self-preservation screamed at her to back away. Pride would not let her. She had issued her challenge, and she would stand her ground. “What other reason could there possibly be?”

He took another step towards her. A growl vibrated deep in his throat.

Her body went weak, legs nearly collapsing beneath her. Heat burst across her skin in dizzying waves. That was so supremely unfair. One intent look, one low, thrilling growl, and she went up in flames.

His nostrils flared, and the muscles in his jaw clenched hard as stone. With a swiftness that left her blinking, he reached out one hand and snatched the underdress from her hands, leaving her standing naked before him. He didn’t even bother to remove his own clothes. He simply freed his jutting sex from his trousers, lifted her up with both hands, and lowered her onto his shaft, growling, “Put your legs around my waist” as his hips surged forward, and his body drove deep into hers with devastating effect.

Then again, she thought dazedly as the first orgasm exploded across her body, perhaps instant, undeniable lust wasn’t so unfair after all.

He bent her backward, one hand holding her spine, the other clutching her bu**ocks, lifting and lowering her with effortless strength as he bent over her body. His mouth moved across her neck and br**sts, nipping, licking, leaving trails of heat and ice burning together in lines of indescribable pleasure. His voice whispered over her skin. “Tell me, Khamsin, why you demand my fidelity. Tell me why.” Whether he was using magic or not, she could not tell, but the words acted upon her like a persuasion spell, dragging the truth closer and closer to the surface with each whisper and each thrust of his hips. “Why Khamsin?” His body drove into hers, then withdrew with aching slowness. “Why?” Another thrust, deeper, making her gasp and shudder. “Tell me.”

She grabbed the soft folds of his shirt, wanting skin beneath her hands, not cloth. “Because,” she bit out, “I will not share with her or any other woman.” Power crackled at her fingertips. The shirt singed in her hands and shredded from his body like paper, baring the silken skin and hard muscle of his arms and chest and back.

“I will not share this.” She dug her fingers into heavy muscles of his chest, then dragged her arms around, running her hands up his back to clutch his shoulders. Her body pressed against his. Her thighs clamped tight around his hips. Her inner muscles clenched his shaft, clinging tight as she lifted her body up and held his gaze with the burning fire of her own.

“I will not share you.” Still holding his gaze, she drove her body down onto his. Tiny threads of lightning danced over his skin in a shocking web of blue-white light. He gave a choked cry. His spine arched. His bu**ocks clenched tight. The tendons in his neck stood out like cords of steel. His hips surged again, powerfully, rising up to meet her downward slide. She felt the shock of it to her bones.

“I will not share,” she cried out fiercely, one final time as both of them shattered.

When the firestorm passed, Wynter lay on the bearskin rug beside his wife. He stared up at the frescoed ceiling overhead and tried to regulate his breathing and gain some measure of strength back in his muscles.

Winter’s Frost! What she did to him.

Although the cold, logical part of Wynter’s mind whispered, Leave her now. Keep a wise distance, he did not. He stayed with her throughout the night, waking her countless times to claim and reclaim her in the darkness. She was like a drug in his system. Every time he touched her, every time he sank his body into hers, she drove him to heights he’d never known, and he would think, This is it. This will sate me. But scant hours later, he would wake again, even more hungry for her than he had been before.

If it was an enchantment, as Valik feared, it was a very powerful one. The only saving grace was that she seemed as incapable of denying him as he was of denying her.

He woke her one last time just as dawn was breaking in the eastern sky. He let his hands skim across her soft skin, relearning the already-familiar curves of her flesh, and watched the passion bloom in her eyes, turning the gray to shifting silver. He smiled in triumph when her hands reached for him, and smiled again when he lowered his head, growled softly in her ear, and felt her body quake. His Wolf called to her as strongly as her scent called to him, and she opened to him like a summer bloom to the sun.

She was so fierce, so passionate, so willing in this, at least, to give him everything without caution or restraint. And so boldly, so fiercely insistent that he be faithful. Elka had never been so possessive. No woman ever had. Not of him. No woman until Khamsin.