The Winter King (17 page)

She stopped and twisted to
face him. “Some day, I’ll publish a book about him. I’ve been
writing it for a while now.” She laughed as she added, “People are
seriously going to think it’s fiction.” Now she
did
smile, and that smile was fully
turned on him, and for just a very real second, he forgot how to
breathe.

When he remembered again, he said, “I love
the way you smile.”

That also just came out. He had no idea what
the hell was wrong with him; it was as if every ounce of smooth
cool he’d ever possessed had been severed from him just like that
root had been severed from the Great Tree. He was stripped down to
pure honesty, and his mouth couldn’t keep that honesty to
itself.

Poppy stared up at him, her eyes wide, her
lips parted in surprise. Suddenly, he laughed. “I’m sorry,” he said
through his laughter. “I don’t know what’s come over me.”

Poppy’s eyes grew just a tiny bit wider, and
he saw something in their reflection. Her pupils expanded, her
parted lips quivered – and just as suddenly as he’d laughed, she
was kissing him.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Oh my God!
Her mind spun wildly out of control. She had no
power over what her body was doing. One second, she’d been sitting
way too close to a man who was way too beautiful, and he’d been
laughing in that way that made her insides turn to absolute jelly,
and in the very next heartbeat her hands were on either side of his
face, and her lips were pressed against his.

There was half a second in which she
processed what she’d done and how she’d actually done it. And then,
with the force of a hurricane, Kristopher Scaul crashed right back
into her.

If she’d had the ability to
gasp or squeal or cry out in any manner, she might have done so, it
happened so fast and so hard. But he claimed her lips in a
take-charge kiss that pried them apart and opened her up without
mercy or pause, and she lost all ability to do anything but
feel
.

She made a small sound, captured hungrily by
him as he expertly turned with her on the bed, and she found
herself pinned beneath him on the mattress, her chest against his.
The weight of his body kept her pressed into the furs beneath them
as his hands encircled her wrists.

She opened her eyes as he suddenly eased
away, breaking their kiss. Her breathing was ragged, shocked into
that fluttering-heart madness that promises pleasure, but threatens
fainting spells. But he rose above her, and their eyes met.

His were glowing.

“
Holy sh-shit,” she
muttered, unable to stop herself. She wasn’t quite sure which
sentiment she was expressing – her surprise over the kiss? Or the
fact that the glowing eyes were one more reminder that he was
supernatural king? Or both?

“
I’m sorry,” he
said.

And despite the silhouette of him, the rock
hardness of a man he was, the odd thing was he actually sounded
like he meant it. “But I like the way you taste. And I love the way
you moan.”

He shrugged even, just a little, and Poppy
felt mystified.

“
You really do like a lot
of things about me,” she whispered.

He gazed down at her
through those eyes that looked like fire-lit glaciers, and then he
laughed, and the sound moved deep in his rumbling chest, like the
engine of a freight train.
Oh
gods
, she thought helplessly as the sound
and movement poured over her like its own kind of magic.

Her heart wouldn’t slow
down. His chest was like a brick wall against her nipples, and they
were so hard at that moment, they actually hurt. Of course, that
could also have been the temperature in the room. It was an ice
hotel. In
Iceland
.

But if he was going to be
honest with her, then she might as well do the same. “I admit,” she
said rather breathlessly. “I like a few things about you
too.”
Like pretty much
everything.

He grinned, flashing perfect pearly whites.
“I know.”

Poppy’s eyebrows rose. Cocky son of a bitch.
“Oh?” He laughed again, and she bit her lip. She was going to rip a
goddamned hole in it. “You’re awfully sure of yourself.”

“
I have reason to be,” he
told her frankly, and then he moved his body against hers, just
enough to prove his point. His hands tightened around her wrists,
his weight shifted where his knee pressed into the mattress between
her legs, and the hardness of his ripped stomach against her hip
bones all served as unwelcome reminders that the man on top of her
was a walking, talking god. The sensation was bewildering. Every
inch of muscle, every millimeter of strength throughout his tall,
strong form, was predatory above her. He had her pinned. He was in
charge.

And her pants would be on
fire and hanging from a telephone wire if she dared to claim that
she didn’t like it. Because she did. A
lot
.

She couldn’t stop herself when she made
another sound, one of absolute and unrestrained need. But those
teeth of hers pressed harder into her lip, nearly to the point of
drawing blood. And the sudden pain that made her wince brought her
mind back into focus and silenced any further sounds that
threatened to escape her rapidly over-heating body.

Above her, Kristopher noticed her teeth, saw
what she’d done, and his glowing gaze narrowed as if in
challenge.

Chapter Twenty-Six

He leaned in so that his words whispered
across her tortured lips. “I want to hear more of those sounds,
Poppy,” he told her dangerously. “Why don’t you make some for me
right now?”

She closed her eyes, trying
to shut him out. He was becoming her world, and she’d only met him
hours ago. Who
did
this? Who jumped straight into bed with a man she’d only just
met? What kind of person would she become? This was too much, too
soon!

She felt him move above her again, and then
she felt the hotness of his breath at her ear – and a hard shiver
rode through her.

“
I can be cold,” he told
her, as if it were a warning. “And I can be just the
opposite.”

She remembered, suddenly,
what she’d felt when she came out of the Starbucks earlier, just
before she’d met him. A cold breath. That’s what it had felt like.
It had whispered against her neck, just behind her ear. And now
she
knew
it had
been him.

Except now there was no hint of cold about
him. The man was a dangerous enigma, one who encompassed an entire
spectrum of sensations. Now he was a furnace surrounding her, and
she was pretty sure she was about to get seriously burned.

A part of her wanted to cry. It was the part
of her that hated her surrender, that helpless part of her that
knew her need outweighed her misgivings and there was nothing she
could do about it. So what if this didn’t make sense? So what if
people didn’t usually sleep together hours after they met? Not in
relationships where money wasn’t exchanged, anyway! But this was
not a usual situation, and they were not usual people. Kristopher
was a king.

And in the end, she knew
she would no longer be able to deny it. The writing was on the ice
castle walls. It was on the walls of her heart. That kind of
writing didn’t take a lifetime to translate. It took
moments.
Heartbeats
.

She was his queen.

His lips parted, and his teeth gently bit
down on her earlobe. She shuddered a sudden intake of breath, and
that damn chuckle came again – right there where it could do the
most damage.

Now she
did
make that sound he wanted to
hear more of. She could almost hear him smiling beside her, his
grin declaring his victory. “Now say my name, Poppy.”

She gritted her teeth, her
stubborn streak kicking in, despite the fact that her muscles were
turning to jelly and blood was flowing hot and fast to certain
parts of her body. “
No
.”

It didn’t even slow him down. In fact, if
anything, he seemed to enjoy the fight in her. “What if I threaten
to freeze an entire neighborhood unless you do?”

She went still. “You wouldn’t.”

“
You’d be surprised what I
would do where you’re concerned.” As if to prove his point, he
released her left arm just long enough to curl his fingers over the
top of her jeans, pulling the top button free. Poppy closed her
eyes, squirming as her mind sped into a tailspin once
more.

This is really going to happen. More heat
flooded her; she was growing wet with a burgeoning and building
want. It was more cruel, hard evidence that she had no control over
herself just then.

“
It’s easy,” he said, and
his hand unfastened the second button, his fingers brushing against
her exposed flesh underneath. Another shiver coursed through her.
“K-R-I-S,” he spelled out for her, speaking each word directly into
her ear. The third button went, and the tops of her white cotton
panties were no doubt in view.

She took a small breath, ready to surrender
then and there, but as she prepared to give sound to his name, his
fingers slipped under the denim of her jeans as his hand spanned
the flat expanse of her lower stomach. The touch was electrifying,
a heat so hot it was almost cold. Like lightning. She inhaled
sharply and rose from the bed, unable to prevent her body from
pressing further into his touch.

He laughed again, and she cried out in a
kind of desperation. But then his hand slipped beneath the band of
her panties and sank lower… and lower….

“
Kristopher!” she
exclaimed. But she cried out his name too late, for he’d already
found her hot, slick core – and was pressing his finger into her.
She felt it slowly, inexorably slide deeper, and all she could
think was that she wanted more.

“
There now. Was that so
hard?”

He moved inside her, and she felt the nearly
painful pressure of a second finger joining the first. “Now that I
have your attention, my little blossom, I want you to know that I’m
going to strip you down, lay you bare before me, and torture
you.”

You already are!
she thought helplessly. She hadn’t even realized
that her arms had gone around him, and her hands were in his hair,
her fingers gripping tight. It was soft hair, not what you’d expect
for someone with the rough and tumble appearance he exuded. But
there was nothing expected about Kristopher Scaul at
all.

“
I’m going to make you beg
me to stop, and then I’m going to fuck you like you’ve never been
fucked before.”

She would have growled with
a simple, “
Do
it
already!” but the world tilted just then. Everything changed. The
room around them grew bright with blue-white light, the bed beneath
them melted away to a cool breeze, and every inch of her clothing
vanished into nothingness. She was indeed laid bare, but not on the
ice hotel bed.

The portal of a transport spun around them,
whisking them through time and space. A moment later, the light
dissipated, and the room again solidified. She couldn’t see much of
it over the expanse of Kristopher’s equally unclothed and very
broad shoulder, but she saw enough to recognize the fancy,
intricately carved and dome-type celling she’d seen in the ice
castle.

We’re
back
, she thought in blissful
disorientation as he continued to move his fingers inside her, and
her body responded with a virtual flood of heat and wetness. It
appeared that the king’s powers were back after all.
Full of surprises,
she
thought mindlessly.

The top of the dome above them was clear,
just as it had been in the antechamber of the castle. Beyond that
clear and probably magical ice, a cluster of Cosmos stretched
purple, pink, and black, sparkling like a velvet blanket sprinkled
with diamond dust. She saw it in flashes as she thrashed her head
back and forth and her body arched off the new bed when he found
her g-spot and dug in.

She squeezed her eyes shut tight again, her
hands finding the bricks of his arms, and her nails digging deep as
he moved downward, trailing kisses. He pulled out of her grip,
leaving furrows of desperation carved into his arms, and Poppy
squirmed wantonly beneath him as his lips blazed a heated trail
across her right breast. He stopped to circle her nipple with his
tongue, taunting it into a painfully hard nub before he gripped it
pitilessly between his teeth.

She cried out as he flicked his tongue
across it, then sucked on it hard, pulling blood and pleasure into
one of her most sensitive areas. More heat and wetness flooded her
between her legs, coating his fingers and allowing him to go
deeper. The air of the room grew thick, and she found it hard to
breathe as that pressure built inside her, climbing that mountain
to the point of no return.

Kristopher showed no mercy, sucking hard for
a few more painful, blissful moments as he brushed his thumb across
the hardness of her other nipple, and curled his fingers inside
her. She was being assaulted on all fronts, the sensations
streaming to her core like electric currents, mixing and mingling
in white hot ecstasy that drove her closer and closer to the
cliff’s edge at the top of that mountain. And then he withdrew his
fingers, slowly and teasingly, and the girth of them left her empty
and quivering, desperate for more.

Now
, she thought.
Oh gods, please let
it be
him
now
…. She wanted him inside her –
all of him, all the hardness, all the man that he was, and she’d
never wanted anything more in her life. But his warning returned to
her, his words echoing in the delirious depths of her mind, when he
released her tortured nipples, moved further away from her grip,
and traveled southward along her writhing body.