The Winter King (36 page)

The temperature in the room plunged. The small meal she’d brought to eat with Wynter’s family went white with frost.

“What are you doing in here?” He advanced upon her, each foot falling heavily upon the ground, all but making the earth shake with each stride. “You knew this room was forbidden. You gave me your oath you would not trespass.”

Kham found herself retreating two steps for every one long stride Wynter advanced. She hadn’t seen him in such a state since the day he’d discovered his bride was not the auburn-haired princess he’d been expecting. No—not even then. She’d never seen him this enraged.

His fingers were clenched in heavy, rock-hard fists. His eyes had gone completely white, and if she hadn’t instantly reached for the power of the sun, his Gaze would have frozen her solid where she stood.

She held out her hands in supplication, truly afraid of him for the first time in a long while. There was no hint of the passionate lover or tender husband in the ice-carved lines of his face. He was all ice, cold and harsh and implacable. “Wynter—I—”

“You what? Thought you’d find some valuable military secrets here that you could send to your brother?”

“No!” Her voice cracked. He suspected she was spying for her brother? She ignored the slight twinge of guilt that reminded her she
had
come here looking for secrets she could use to ensure her survival. “Of course not! I haven’t spoken to my brother in years! I don’t even know where he is.”

“Then what are you doing here? Is this how you honor your oaths? Valik was right. I’ve been too soft, allowed you too much freedom. And you’ve interpreted my indulgence as a sign of weakness.”

“Valik is an idiot!”

“We’re not talking about Valik!” His roar blasted out with such force that icy leaves in the tree above Khamsin shivered, cracked and fell from the limbs, showering down in a hail of broken ice. “Valik isn’t the one who betrayed my trust, broke my law, and invaded a room he was expressly forbidden to enter! Valik isn’t the one who broke his oath! I should have known better than to ever trust a Summerlander. You come from a long line of liars, murderers, thieves, and cheats. Why should I think you would be any different?”

Fire swept through her veins. Anger, fed by the weeks of Wynter’s abandonment and her own defensive rage at having been caught intruding, burst to life. Lightning whipped through her veins, heating her blood. Overhead, visible through the Atrium’s glass roof, the sky grew dark as clouds gathered.

“You call
my
family murderers? Ha! You have more blood on your hands than Summerlea’s last three kings combined! How many of our villages did you raze? How many innocent women and children froze to death or starved in the wake of your conquest? And for what? Because your bride preferred my brother’s company to yours! Frankly, after having been wed to you these last months now, I don’t blame her!”

His brows shot up, and the temperature dropped commensurately. The sky overhead went white as the gathered clouds began pouring out ice and snow. “You complain of the care I have shown you?”

“ ‘Care’?” She all but screeched the word. “To what ‘care’ exactly do you refer? You mean the way you ignore me for weeks on end? That care? Or the way you have made it clear to every member of your court that I am to be ostracized and treated as a source of pathetic amusement?”

“You blame me because you haven’t managed to win my people’s regard?”

“Of course you’re to blame! You’ve done everything but posted a written edict instructing your people to revile me. You and your precious Valik and that vile cousin of his.”

Wind howled through the palace turrets and rattled the Atrium’s glass panes. Her anger had started as a defensive response to Wynter’s own fury, but as the accusations poured from her lips, Kham began to realize just how much rage and resentment she’d bottled up inside her. And considering that she’d spent a lifetime fighting to keep her temper in check—and usually failing with disastrous results—she could scarcely believe that she’d kept so much emotion contained for so long.

“I made you my queen!” Wynter bellowed. His eyes had gone pure white, and a cloud enveloped the pair of them, shifting back and forth between frost and steam as they both unleashed pent-up anger.

“Queen of what?” she shouted back. “Your indifference? You brought me to this iceberg and abandoned me here!”

“You expected love sonnets and roses? You are here to bear my heir, nothing more.”

Lightning ripped across the sky. Thunder boomed, deafeningly close. If she’d ever had any doubt that he considered her anything more than a convenient womb, he’d just cleared that up.

“Winter’s Frost! You could drive a saint to murder.” Wynter dragged his hands through his hair. “None of this justifies your presence here. This room is off-limits.”

“Oh, right! Because this room is just full of secrets that could imperil the kingdom! My gods! Just imagine what horrors would ensue if I told my brother that the Winter King once had a family he loved!”

“This is my place. Mine! I don’t want you here! What part of that don’t you understand?”

The rejection drove into her like a knife, parting her ribs and ripping into her heart.

Lightning struck the Atrium’s roof. The glass shattered.

Wynter dove for Khamsin, catching her around the waist with one big arm and sweeping her off her feet, carrying her clear of the lethal rain of razor-sharp glass. They landed in the snowdrift near one of the statues of Wynter and his family.

But instead of earning Kham’s gratitude, Wyn’s rescue only enraged her further. She closed her hands into fists and beat them on his chest. It was like beating a marble statue. He didn’t move and her hands throbbed. She shoved against him, writhing and pushing to free herself.

“Get off me! Get off, damn you! Don’t pretend concern for my safety. It’s just another form of lying, and I’m sick of it! Do you hear me? You’re no different than my father!”

Snow fell through the broken Atrium roof in thick sheets, swirling about on fierce gusts of winds, until the entire room looked like a child’s blown-glass globe filled with oil and bits of white crystal that, when shaken, would “snow” over some tiny carved scene inside the globe.

“I am nothing like your father.” He caught her wrists and pinned her to the snow-covered floor, holding her easily as she struggled and bucked against him.

“No, you’re worse. He’s at least always been honest about wanting me dead.” Her chest heaved. Her whole body was hot and flushed. “There never really was any hope I’d come out of this year alive, was there? You just held out the possibility of mercy to keep me docile and compliant, all the while ensuring none of your people would speak for me when the time came.”

He gave a bark of mocking laughter. “You call this docile?”

The laughter made her temper flare like water poured on hot oil. She began to struggle in earnest, writhing and thrashing about in an attempt to break free. During her struggles, her skull whacked into his jaw with a loud crack. Pain exploded across her forehead. She fell back, dizzy and moaning as stars danced before her eyes.

Wynter, barely fazed, flexed his jaw from side to side and glared at her.

“Damn it, Khamsin, stop before you hurt yourself.”

“I’m fine.” She tugged her arm until he released one wrist, and she laid the free hand against her forehead, massaging the flesh gingerly. “Besides, what do you care?” She gave him a dark look.

“I’ve told you before. You are my wife and my queen. Your well-being is my responsibility.”

“Right up to the time you have me put to death, you mean?” She jerked away from his hand. “I told you I’m fine. And I don’t want to be your ‘responsibility.’ ”

His teeth clenched. He gripped her jaw and forced her to look at him. “Just shut up and let me look at that.”

She glared up at him. “A little whack on the head isn’t going to affect my ability to bear your heir. Of course, how, exactly, I’m supposed to
conceive
that heir when you avoid my bed like the plague is a complete mystery.”

The minute the words left her mouth, she knew she’d made a mistake. Wynter went completely still, and his gaze suddenly went sharp as a blade.

“Is that what this is all about? My recent absence from your bed upsets you?” His voice was silky smooth, his eyes searingly intent.

Not for all the world was she going to dignify
that
with an answer. “No, your
lying
to me upset me. If you won’t keep your oaths, then I won’t keep mine either.”

“When have I ever lied to you?”

Her mouth curled. “Don’t take me for an idiot. I know you took your harlot with you when you left. Did you think I would just sit here playing the sweet, long-suffering wife while you and Reika Villani fornicated your way across the kingdom?”

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 nipples 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 breasts. 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 buttocks to pull him closer, wanting him inside her.

His hips didn’t budge. And the mouth doing such dizzyingly seductive things to her breasts 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.