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“But you wouldthrowyourself into that pit and take my heart with you.”

She closes her eyes, shakes her head.

“Yes,” Ryon says roughly. “That is your plan. Is it not? To leave me here. Alone.”

“No,” she murmurs quietly.

“I don’t believe you.”

“No,”she urges. And there is pain in the word. Pain and love and resolve, and she opens her eyes to his, finding the flecks of black around his irises. “No. Iloveyou.”

He drops his hand from her jaw, removing that one barrier between them. “Proveit,” he growls.

Her mouth collides with his in the same moment and it takes the breath from her lungs. Her hands scratch at his neck, trying to find purchase on him to leverage herself closer, despite all the ways they press together. It is not enough. Not close enough. Not hard enough. The ache he spoke of begs relief and she seeks it in every piece of exposed skin she can reach. She groans when he lifts her higher, where she can angle her lips with his, dig her fingers into him. “Please,” she breathes.

“Please, what?”

“Let me have you.”

“I told you,” he says, his voice more controlled than hers. “You already do.” He takes her to the rockface then, pressing her back to its smooth surface. As it always does, his strength baffles her. His size overwhelms her, eclipses her. She reaches for his shirt at his waist and pulls it over the hard planes of his stomach, then higher. She lets him pull it over his head while she marvels at the sculpting of his body. Then she pulls at her own clothes slowly, relishing the heat in his gaze as they reveal more and more of her skin. The furs fall to the ground. Then her leathers. Her blouse is tugged free. The control he so recently held slips a little as she pulls the last laces of her stays and lets them stretch over her breasts, lets the straps fall slack over her shoulders and hang loosely, until she is barely covered at all.

“Pull it away, Dawsyn,” Ryon says, and the deep timbre resonates within her. “Don’t play with me.”

She wants to play with him, if only to prolong the moment. She wants to watch him crack and come undone. But the heat of his glare is too much. His hands on her waist are too much, and she finds she can do little more than obey him. Heed to him. She slides down his body until her feet touch the ground and undresses before him fully, sighing with each pass his hand takes over her body.

“Perfect,” he says evenly, tracing a line from her throat, between her breasts, and down the middle of her stomach. Not stopping until he reaches her sex. He cups it, watching carefully as she arches into him.

Perhaps she’d feel the cold if she weren’t ablaze. Perhaps she would notice the sting of the air if it weren’t for his body so close to hers, emanating waves of heat. When she pulls at the ties of his trousers, he makes no move to stop her, or help her, so she frantically wills her shaking fingers to untie them, reaching within to grip him.

He hisses at the feel of her hand wrapped around his cock, then again when she pulls, sliding her hand up its length.

Dawsyn feels his fingers move against her slickness, sinking into her, and she struggles to keep focus. Her eyes roll into the back of her head as he slowly chases the rapid tempo of her breath, invoking each moan, each beckoning of his name. But her hand manages to maintain its clasp, and it lavishes him with her own need. He grows hotter in her palm, harder. And soon, he is thrusting back into her hand, his need as large and urgent as hers.

She lines the head of his cock against her sex and lets it slide against her. His lips crash into hers, nipping and tasting and stealing her sense, and she pulls away only to tell him, “I ache for you. Always.”

His pupils dilate, then he is lifting her off her feet once more, pressing her back into the stone, and sliding inside her.

Her gasp is swallowed by his shoulder. She has yearned to feel this way again, so full with him, so heady. She moves her hips against his without a mind to do so, and he moans. “Not this night, malishka,” he tells her, stilling her hips with his hands. “Tonight, we take what we need.”

His thrusts are slow and languid, and they make the blood in Dawsyn’s veins pound with impatience. Every absence of him feels torturous, each filling is bliss. “Did you think of this, Dawsyn? Those nights we spent apart?”

She barely sees, barely thinks, but nods, murmurs yes, over and over.

“I think of little else. You consume me. Do you understand?”

She takes his mouth and licks into it, trying to convey her acknowledgment where words elude her. He rewards her by increasing his rhythm and she holds on tighter. She meets him thrust for thrust and feels the first quickening deep in her belly. “Ryon,” she pants.

He releases her, putting her feet on the ground and turning her to face the stone. But though she cannot see his face, she feels the wall of his chest against her back, his arms wrapped around her like a vice. She arches her back, her hands finding purchase on the rockface.

He tells her other things that make her blood sing, and all the while she hurtles toward a pinnacle of ecstasy, her mind falling into a trance. He pushes into her harder, faster, until she is unaware of where he ends and she begins, until their shared pieces are indiscernible from the others, and she detonates. She calls his name, and he responds, pounding against her until the tension snaps.

They come apart together.

And are remade with pieces of each other.

They sink to the snow, Dawsyn cradled away from its touch, and in the lingering bliss is only his heartbeat, the most significant sound in the world.

“Stay with me,” he whispers to her. “Vow it.”