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“Ah, yes,” Ryon murmurs into her hair. “The snoring.”

“I do not snore.”

“You do, but I do not mind it. It helps to drown out the wind.”

“I remember wondering why your body was warm if your blood was Glacian,” she says, letting her fingers trail along his forearms, sifting through the curling black hairs.

“It isn’t known,” Ryon says. “All of the mixed in Glacia are warmblooded.”

“I think it is because your human blood is thicker, stronger,” Dawsyn tells him. “I think you gained the benefits of a Glacian and the best of human nature as well. And if Vasteel thinks so, too…” She pauses, turning to see him. “Well, he’d do what he needed to suppress you, lest you learn of your advantage.”

Ryon’s hands drift from her thighs to the edges of her furs, delving beneath to her stomach. They trace a line under her navel, all without exposing her skin to the cold air. “Careful, girl.” The deep timbre of his voice seeps through his throat to her lips. “If you start being nice, how will I resist?”

“I bear no interest in further resisting,” she responds, casually shifting her body along his. She is rewarded by the hardening of him beneath her, pressing against her.

“Shall I tell you a story of my own now?” he asks, and as he says it, his hands move over her stomach to her belt, which he deftly unbuckles. “It is perhaps my new favorite. It is about a smart-mouthed girl pushing a blade into my neck.”

Dawsyn gives an indistinct mumble, already too lost in the haze of his hands to say much else. They move expertly beneath the waist of her pants, making room as he languidly slides his fingers over her skin, creeping steadily lower.

“She’d press her delicious body against me in the night and curse me by morning, and the whole time, I had to beg my own fingers not to do as they are now.”

He slides the palm of one hand over the mound of her sex, his fingers stroking against her, finding her heat, and all the while, his dark voice fills her ear, his lips glancing over the soft shell. Dawsyn moans, pushing herself harder back into him.

“She even went as far once to undress in front of me, down to nearly nothing. I had to watch her tits press against the thin scrap she wore. I had to know the very color of her nipples and do nothing about it. Absolute torture.” He moves his fingers through her wetness now, the pressure exquisite but the pace… torturous.

She needs friction more than she needs warmth. She tries to move against his hand, but he will not quicken, not yet.

“I vowed to myself never to touch any of her, but the thought of her body,” he murmurs, lifting his free hand to stroke the underside of her breast, “it plagued me. All of her tempted me. Every day.” He slips inside of her, fingertips curling, stroking in and out at that deliberately slow pace.

“Ryon, please.”

“How I love hearing that from your lips,” he says. “I’ve found you use it much more freely when I’m inside you.”

He kneads her breast, and she moans deeper, moving her backside into his crotch and feeling his length rub against her.

“She cornered me one night,” he continues, his voice rougher now. “Dared me to take what I’d wanted for days. She pressed those smart lips to mine, pressed that beautiful body into my hands, and it was like the very best demon had been sent from hell to test me. And I failed gloriously, did I not?”

Dawsyn bites out a response in frustration and feels him quiver with amusement beneath her. She rolls her hips in time with his luxurious strokes, seeking the rub of his palm on her.

“Please,” she begs him once more, adding her hand to his. “Please.”

Mercifully, his fingers move harder, faster, matching the rhythm of her body, which moves of its own accord, fighting for release.

He lowers his lips and lashes her throat with his tongue. “You have no idea how badly I wanted to do this to you, malishka. I wanted to make you wet, make you writhe against me. Just as you are now.”

She calls his name, begging him to never cease, and when he brings his thumb down over that apex of nerves, she detonates. He holds her tightly, possessively to him, as she rides through the waves of her pleasure.

And after, as she lies in the glow of him, of them, he kisses her jaw and says, “That might just be my new favorite memory.”

CHAPTERFORTY-TWO

When the morning comes, they rise and repeat the endless trek. The scenery is almost unchanging, drifts of pearly-white snow glowing dully where the thin light touches it. The creatures of the mountain grow smaller, hardier, the higher they go. Ryon flies them low over obstacles and steep inclines. They stop only for their basic needs, and by the time the peaks of Glacian turrets can be seen in the gaps of trees, it has only been three days.

The straps of Dawsyn’s bag cut into her shoulders terribly, but her feet have not suffered the injury they did on their first trek of the slopes. Her belly does not gnaw for attention. She fears less what lies ahead now than she did before, journeying in the opposite direction.

Nightfall shrouds them, and Ryon guides them at a wide radius around Glacia, away from its palace. They walk at a crouch for an excruciating time, her gloved hands touching the steep incline to steady her.

Wings beat from somewhere in the distance, and Ryon’s hand shoves against her shoulder. They bury their fronts to the snow, not daring to move. Dawsyn’s breath melts the frost below her chin in increments as they wait, listening.