The Winter King (12 page)

They turned a corner, and Wynter saw the double doors flanked by two Wintercraig guards.

“Your queen’s bedchamber, Sire,” the guide stammered. He stepped aside to let Wynter pass, then turned and ran in the opposite direction.

The guards flanking the doors opened them as he drew near. Hot, heavy air swirled out, heady with the dizzying scents of incense and woman.

Wynter strode into the room and stopped in surprise. What surrounded him was no bedroom but rather a lush, sensuous garden, dense with foliage. Lights flickered along the edges of the room, and a carpeted pathway led through a virtual forest of plants and flowering trees and shrubs towards the dark, shadow- and silk-draped bed in the center of the room.

The hiss of Valik’s sword leaving the scabbard sounded at his back. “Don’t like this, Wyn,” Valik muttered, his voice clipped as it always was in enemy situations. “Don’t trust it.”

A flash of bare skin shone dimly in the great bed, a leg, slender and shapely. Moving restlessly, rubbing against the silken coverlet with the same desperate hunger that filled Wynter’s own body. This was no ambush. It was just that fool Verdan’s determination to see the Winter King fulfill his part of the marriage bargain.

“Get out,” Wynter barked at the men behind him. “Now. You, too, Valik.”

He waited for the click of the latch, then drew a deep breath of the heady, perfumed air and plunged towards the shadowed heart of the garden. The incense was so thick it left him dizzy. The arras leaf made his flesh burn from the inside out. The heat and the assault on his senses jumbled his thoughts. Logic would soon be gone, leaving only rapacious hunger and need.

“Your father is a fool, princess.”

He stumbled towards the bed, crawled into its plush softness. A groan broke past his lips and silks and velvets rubbed against his hands. Hot. He was so hot. Every sensation was a torment. His fingers tore at the silk of his shirt and the too-tight bond of his breeches. Fabric ripped, freeing steaming golden skin. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough.

He reached for her. His hands closed around a slender ankle, ran up towards the softer skin of her thighs. The gown parted without resistance, fabric falling away to bare soft, sweet-smelling skin. Hot, burning skin.

He heard her breath catch, felt her body shift on a convulsive shudder.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped. “I didn’t know . . . I should have suspected.”

His hands tore at the fragile fabric covering her breasts, yanking satin ribbons free. The soft, round weight of feminine flesh filled his palms.

In a groaning voice that seemed torn from her, she cried, “Please.”

He bent his head, drawing the tightly pebbled tip of one breast into the scorching heat of his mouth. His tongue swirled around the beaded flesh. His right hand slipped down between their bodies to the soft curls and even softer flesh between her legs. A strangled cry ripped from her throat and her back arched up against him. Hot cream bathed his fingers. Her body shook in a hard, helpless paroxysm of tremors. The heady, earthy scent of female pleasure filled his nostrils. His balls drew tight in an almost painful clench, and his cock pulsed with sudden, straining urgency.

There was no waiting, no long, drawn-out pleasure. Only driving need and hunger. He lifted his head, eyes gleaming in the dim light.

His mouth closed over her, claiming her lips with the same rapacious hunger as he’d just claimed her breast. His hips surged forward with blind, mindless force. Virgin flesh resisted for a brief instant, then sundered. Tight muscle yielded.

His hands clutched hers, fingers twining tight. Icy Snow Wolf covered burning Summerlea Rose as her body sheathed his in blazing heat.

Lightning seared the sky. Thunder shook the earth with a tremendous, booming crash. Just as it had at the wedding, a wild, storming rush of air swept through the open windows, snuffing every candle and plunging the room into darkness.

C
HAPTER 6

The White King’s Bride

In the dark of night, while Wynter slumbered heavily beside her, soft hands woke Khamsin. “Come sister,” a quiet whisper urged. “It’s past three. Time to go while you still can.”

She opened her eyes to the faint glow of a shuttered candle. The familiar shadowy shapes of her three sisters huddled beside the bed. They carefully lifted the weighty anchor of Wynter’s arm and helped Khamsin slide free and sit up on the edge of the bed.

Satin, cool and slick, spilled over Kham’s shoulders, drawing an involuntary hiss from her throat as the fabric brushed across the torn and sensitive skin of her back. She tugged the robe into place and accepted the hands that helped her stand up. Her knees wobbled, and her legs started to buckle. She would have fallen, but Spring and Autumn quickly slipped their shoulders under her arms and took her weight upon themselves.

“Careful,” Summer shushed with soft urgency. “You’ll wake him. This way. Hurry.” The pale, golden glow of Summer’s shuttered candle cast a faint illumination across the far wall, lighting the gaping darkness of the open dressing-room doorway.

They had all agreed last night that it would not do for Wynter to wake and find his bride unveiled in the stark, revealing light of day. He was not a man to take deception lightly, and the longer they could hold off the revelation of Khamsin’s identity, they’d decided, the better. And to ensure that he would sleep through her depature, one of the incenses that had burned in the chamber last night included a powerful sedative.

Khamsin cast a glance back over her shoulder. In the faint reflective glow of Summer’s lamp, she could see the shadow of the Winter King, large and magnificently naked, sprawled facedown across the bed. A sharp bite of warmth drew her womb tight at the dimly illuminated sight of rounded, curving buttocks, broad, heavily muscled shoulders, and powerful limbs. Summer Sun! If not for the silky spill of winter white hair, she might think Roland himself lay there in her marriage bed.

For all that he was fearsome, for all that he could freeze a body with a single look, she suspected there were worse fates for a woman than to be tied in marriage to such a man.

Despite his reputed coldness, despite even her own painful wounds, when he’d touched her, he’d turned her body to living flame. And no matter how much she might wish otherwise, she knew that wasn’t just the arras leaf. It frightened her, that power he seemed to have over her. Frightened her . . . and intoxicated her. Even now, she could feel the hunger growing again, the pull drawing her towards him. She tamped it down and resolutely turned away.

Leaving Wynter to his drugged slumber, her torn back aching fiercely, Khamsin crept from the bridal bower and exited through the servants’ corridors to avoid the detection of the guards posted at the bedroom door. Summer hurried before them, holding her lamp. Autumn and Spring kept supporting arms around Khamsin. Together, the four of them climbed the narrow, lamplit servants’ stairs and made their way to the remote wing that housed Kham’s rooms.

Thankfully, Tildy was not there. The nurse had vacated her post and left behind healing cream, a collection of growing lamps, and a pot of herbs on an unlit burner with instructions to simmer the contents for their healing vapors. Khamsin’s sisters helped her to her bed, rubbed the cream gently on her torn back, and started the herb pot simmering. To her surprise, they insisted on staying with her.

“We’ll each take turns watching over you,” Autumn said.

“There’s no need,” Khamsin objected. “You should go, before anyone finds you here.”

“It’s the least we can do, Storm,” Summer said. She smiled so sadly, Kham wanted to weep. “Don’t fight us on this, sister. In your current condition, you know you can’t win.”

“I’ll take first watch,” Spring said. “There’s a bed in the next room. You two go get some sleep. I’ll wake you in a few hours.” When the others were gone, she bent over and brushed a spiral of dark, white-streaked hair from Khamsin’s forehead. “Poor little Storm,” she murmured. “Don’t fight so hard against everything. You’ll batter yourself to death.”

Khamsin turned her head away. When she heard Spring sigh and move to the corner of the room to take Tildy’s chair, Kham let the tears gathered in her eyes spill silently into her pillow.

Wynter woke alone.

He knew it before he opened his eyes. Knew it the moment he smelled the scent of his bride, not warm and womanly soft but cooled by the hours that had passed since her departure. She’d left him. In the middle of the night, while he slept in a drugged and exhausted stupor, she’d fled.

Damn her.

He opened his eyes and jackknifed up into a sitting position on the bed. He would not tolerate arrogance, he would not tolerate defiance, and he would definitely not tolerate rejection from his bride. She would come when he called and stay until he bid her go. That was a lesson he would see to it she learned as soon as he tracked her down.

He rubbed his jaw. The arras leaf had left him with a foul taste in his mouth. His bride’s cowardly flight had left him with a temper to match.

He rose and yanked on his clothes. He winced a little at the sting of the scratches clawed down his back, then smiled in spite of everything. He’d not been the only one maddened by lust last night. Her passion had been just as wild and overwhelming as his. Not a bad way to start a marriage. His smile disappeared. Then again, her enthusiasm probably owed more to the arras leaf they’d both consumed than anything else. Certainly, the moment her head had cleared of the drug’s effects, she’d fled.

He glanced back at the bed and frowned at the brownish smears on the white linens, recognizing the sight of dried blood. Much more of it than he would have expected from a virgin’s breach. Guilt assailed him as a different explanation for his bride’s flight occurred to him. Had he . . .
hurt
her?

Wynter put his hands to his head, closing his eyes and trying to remember, but so much of the night was a blur. He remembered bodies, scorching heat, the slick, clenching feel of hot flesh sheathing him with unbearable tightness. Lips . . . hot and gasping. Breasts . . . Winter’s Frost, what breasts—plump little pigeons, fitting perfectly into the broad palms of his hands, driving him mad with their lush softness and stabbing, hard peaks.

He’d not been kind or gentle. He knew that. The tormenting burn of arras had driven him wild. But . . .
hurt her
? Had he done so? Had she cried out against him? Had she begged him to stop and he, too drunk on her father’s idiot drug, not listened?

Wynter hung his head in shame and closed his eyes against the silent accusation screaming at him from the bloodstained sheets. Brute. Monster. Rapist.

He was a man of devastating strength, with all the terrible risks and responsibilities that entailed. Even amongst the hard, tough men of the Craig, he stood head and shoulders above most, with bones like Wintercraig granite and rock-hard muscle to match. He had faced a Frost Giant in single combat and emerged victorious. He knew no woman’s strength was a match for him. He knew he could kill with a blow. Always—
always!
—he kept himself in check when dealing with those weaker than he. He wasn’t above threats—a healthy dose of fear was an excellent antidote to recklessness—but he’d never unleashed his brute force against a woman, and it near slayed him to think the first might have been his wife.

He drew a deep breath and caught his emotions in a firm grip. Too much of his discipline had been torn away, by anger and arras and overwhelming passion. He was a Winterman, King of the Craig. Wintermen were not plump, self-indulgent peacocks like their southern neighbors, who wallowed in emotion and called it sensitivity. Wintermen were disciplined, unflappable, stoic, as any man must be to survive the rugged, unpredictable, and oft-inhospitable challenges of life in the Craig.

Instead of wasting his time worrying, he would track down his bride, discover if he had indeed harmed her, and make restitution if he had. But none of that changed the fact that he had made her irrevocably his. He had wedded her and bedded her, and there was no turning back.

So today, whether she liked it or not—and no matter what sort of brute she thought him—his Summerlea princess would be leaving with him, heading back to the cold, fierce beauty of the Craig. Where, he thought grimly, she would learn to face him with her grievances rather than flee like a thief in the night.

It took Wynter the better part of an hour to track Autumn down. He found her just as she was leaving a chamber tucked away in a remote part of the palace.

She looked shocked and horrified to see him. Those pansy purple eyes had great rings beneath them, as if she had slept nary a wink since sneaking from their bed, but it was the fear that struck him like a blow. The door behind her closed with a snick, and she stood before it as if frozen in place. Her voice shook as she said, “Your Grace—you startled me.”

He raked her from head to toe with a cool, brisk gaze. Her wrists were bare, the dark, creamy skin smooth and unmarred by any sign of last night’s passion. He was sure as often as he’d rubbed his face against her, tasting her skin and breathing in her intoxicating scent, there would be some small abrasion from the edge of his teeth or the rasp of his stubble. Some proof of his claim. Yet her skin remained smooth as rose petals.

“You look no worse for the wear,” he murmured. “I did not hurt you, then.” The relief he felt was immense, even if some primitive part of him found its fur ruffled by how untouched by him she appeared to be.

“I . . . no, you didn’t hurt me.”

“There was blood on the sheets . . . more than I had expected. Did I . . . wound you?”

She blushed and looked everywhere but at him. “No, of course not,” she assured him in a faint voice. “There is a wound on my back . . . it must have opened while . . . er . . . during . . .”

Wynter closed his eyes in a brief moment of thanks. “I am glad to know the cause was not any harm I did you,” he said, “but why then did you leave me? Without even a word?”

She swallowed, and he watched her throat move convulsively. She licked her lips and seemed to be having trouble thinking what to say to him.

“I had hoped to wake beside you,” he told her. “I thought perhaps we might enjoy with clear heads what your father’s drug clouded last night.” He let his eyes warm, watched the flutter of her pulse in the delicate skin of her throat. She was shockingly beautiful. No doubt about it. But where was the hot rush in his veins? Where was the electrifying connection between them? Surely that had not all been the arras leaf?

His hands rose to cradle her neck, fingers curled just past her spine, thumbs resting lightly just below her chin. He forced as much gentleness as he could muster into his smile. “Surely, I gave you some pleasure?”

Her cheeks flushed a dusky rose, and she gave a muffled groan of embarrassment. “Please, Your Grace, this is unseemly.”

His brows shot up. She’d been no shrinking flower last night. She’d been pure enchantress, untutored but just as driven as he. Just as ravenous for him as he for her. “Unseemly? My queen, the women of my land would say ’tis far more unseemly had I taken my pleasure from you and given you none in return.” She tried to flee, but he caught her and held her fast. He thought—unkindly, it seemed, to make such a comparison—of the little maid who would have spat defiance in his eye rather than whimper as Autumn was now doing.
Be still, Wyn,
he chided himself.
Forget that maid. She is none of your affair.

“Come now,” he told his reluctant wife. “You fled in the night, without cause that I can see, and now you say a man’s wish to pleasure his wife is unseemly? I know you Summerfolk are not so timid with your desires. Or is it the touch of a Winterman you cannot abide in the light of day?”

“No . . . it’s not that . . . it’s . . .”

“Then you will grant me a kiss, wife,” he interrupted in a tone that brooked no refusal, “and greet me as you should have done more properly at daybreak. In my bed. Where I left you last, and from whence you admit I gave you no cause to flee.”

His thumb traced her lip. He bent his head to hers. With a protesting squeak, she yanked free of his hand and turned her head so that his lips landed not on her mouth but on the high, flushed curve of her cheek. She pushed ineffectually against his chest, but he caught her hands and twined his fingers with hers.

Her scent wafted up to him, gardenias and herbs. Familiar . . . yet not. He frowned and leaned closer, inhaling, separating the scents, examining the flavor of them. Something was different . . . missing. She smelled plainer, less intoxicating than she had last night, and there was none of his own scent upon her. Had she spent the morning ridding herself of all traces of him?

He glanced at the fingers clasped in his own and the frown became an outright scowl. She’d removed his ring, the Wintercraig Star. What kindness he’d hoped to show her shriveled. Her fingers were bare, as if she thought that would undo the vows they had spoken and consummated. Icy rage flooded his veins.

“Not even one day wed, and already you try to deny me? You flee my bed, scrub my scent from your body, refuse my kiss, and now I see you have even discarded my ring? Is this how Summerlanders honor their word?” He glared, feeling the power surge within him, the cold anger gathering.

“Your Grace!” she exclaimed. “You’re freezing my hands!”

He released her with a snarl and thrust her from him. “We leave for Wintercraig within the hour. You will meet me in the bailey by ten o’clock. And when you come, my ring had best be back on your finger. Do you understand me,
wife
?” He was angry enough to be pleased at the way she blanched and nodded. “Do not defy me on this. I promise you will not like the consequences.”

The princess—his queen—clutched her throat with shaking, ringless hands and nodded again. Gritting his teeth against the cold rage burning inside him, he spun on his heel and stalked away.

“Oh, Storm, this was all a mistake. We must find a way to have the marriage annulled.” Distraught, her hair disheveled by the last several minutes of running wild fingers through it, Autumn looked more unsettled than Khamsin had ever seen her before.