Kiss of Snow

“I could—” She let out an aggravated breath and removed the remaining bud, placing it on a tray on the dash. “Now who’s being childish?”


He shrugged, relaxing into the seat when she made no further effort to retrieve the music player. “Country and western?” he said as he navigated the forest track SnowDancer kept deliberately crude, with plenty of lowhanging foliage to deter the use of hover facilities—to make sure no one could sneak up on the den by ground vehicle. “I would’ve picked you as a rock ’n’ roll kind of girl.”

She ignored him in favor of staring out the window.

Except it was hard to ignore over two-hundred pounds of muscled male wolf when he didn’t want to be ignored. Reaching out, he tugged on a strand of her hair. “Tell me about Kit.”

She pushed away his hand, well aware she succeeded only because he let her. “Kit is smart, sexy, and gorgeous. A total package.” He was also wickedly funny and could be charming in a way only a feline could be. Too bad she had the terrible taste to hunger for a wolf instead.

Hawke’s hands tightened on the manual steering wheel. “A real prince.”

“You could learn something from him.”

“Careful.” A quiet warning. “You only get to push so far.”

She was too mad and sad and hurting to care. “Wow,” she said with a wide-eyed look of mock amazement, “you lasted an entire two minutes before pulling rank.”

To her shock, he laughed. It was an open, uninhibited sound, and it held her absolute and utter attention. Hawke rarely laughed like that, and never with her. With such open joy, his wolf in his voice, in his face. “You can be a real brat.”

It was difficult to maintain a tough front when his laugh had wrapped around her like a rough caress, eroding her defenses to nothing, but she couldn’t let him see that, see how very vulnerable she was when it came to him. “Doesn’t make me wrong.”

“Fine,” he said. “When it’s just us, there’s no rank, no alpha, no soldier. Only Hawke and Sienna.”

She’d never, in a million years, expected to succeed in getting him to put aside the hierarchy. Her breath stuck in her throat, her palms suddenly damp.

“Lost for words?” A glance of ice blue before he returned his attention to the forest track.

Since Hawke’s eyes never changed color, no matter his form, most people found it impossible to tell whether they were talking to the man or the wolf. Sienna always knew. Always. The power inside of her recognized the same wild energy in the wolf who was Hawke’s other half. “No,” she said at last, “just wondering how long you’ll be able to hack it before you fall back on those rules.”

“Keep pushing, baby,” he murmured in that low, deep voice that touched places in her body it had no business touching. “We’ll see what it gets you.”

“Frustration!” she said, throwing caution to the winds on an adrenalinefueled rush of courage. “That’s all it’s ever gotten me. If sexual attraction followed any kind of a logical rule, I’d be in bed with Kit right now instead of sitting next to a man too scared to take a chance.”

A charged silence.

Sienna couldn’t believe she’d said that. It was going too far, even for her. Hawke was alpha—whether or not the rules were currently in operation between them—which meant he was dominant beyond any Psy or human man, and most changeling males, too. Men like that did not like having their strength questioned on any level.

“After your meeting with Sascha,” he said, his tone silky with menace, “that’s when we’ll talk about fear.”

Sienna leaned back in her seat, trying to control her racing heartbeat. He could hear it, of that she had no doubt. But she was Psy, had been Ming LeBon’s protégée. She wasn’t about to let anyone scare her off—not even a predatory changeling wolf so lethal, the feral wolves treated him as their leader.

Brass balls. Big ones.

The memory of Evie’s words gave her a slightly hysterical confidence, but it was confidence nonetheless. Using every ounce of the will that had allowed her to retain a personality even in Ming’s tender care, she wrenched her heartbeat and breathing under control. It had nothing to do with what she felt and everything to do with playing a very dangerous game with a predator who had much bigger teeth.

A growl filled the vehicle, filled her senses, just as they entered the lane that led to a small clearing not far from Lucas and Sascha’s home. “You taste of ice.”